I’ve been riding motorcycles since the tender age of 7. For anyone interested, that’s almost 14 years for me – more than half of my life.

For many of those years, I was enjoying a view of the world from the back of my dad’s motorcycles. And then, three years ago, I took the Motorcycle Safety Foundation course and got my own motorcycle – a sweet little Yamaha V-Star 650.

But, in the nature of things, I grew out of the little 650 engine and wanted to move on to something bigger and better. This weekend, I did.

 
I’ve ridden on five different brands of motorcycles and eight different models of bikes, and nothing has been as wonderful to me as the glorious British-made Triumph.

The first Triumph I rode was dad’s awesome-looking Sprint ST – a sport tourer that would pull a wheelie one moment and be good to ride to Tucumcari, New Mexico, the next – a couple hundred miles in one day was no big deal.

Dad and I took the Sprint on two trips to Colorado for the Triumph Sport Riders Association rallies (joined the second time by mom on a great two-week ride), racking up thousands of miles. I was just a sophomore in high school when we went on the first trip.

While dad was riding his Triumph, I was dreaming of mine. I was in love with the vintage look and feel of the Bonneville, one of Triumph’s most celebrated and popular classic bikes.

Dad eventually moved on to Yamaha bikes himself – first a Venture, then a Road Star, the “super cruisers” of the Star line, so to speak.

I tucked my dream of the Triumph Bonneville away, and when I got my motorcycle license, I gravitated to the little purple V-Star that served me so well.

I ended up taking the V-Star on two long-distance trips – one to Roanoke, Virginia, and one to St. Jo, Missouri. I also took it on countless jaunts around Oklahoma and Texas, including trips to Kerrville, Mineral Wells and the Wichita Mountains.

In the end, I racked up nearly 11,000 miles on my first bike, in less than three years. It was a hell of a good time.

But, not long ago, dad moved back to the British-made bikes – this time to the Rocket III (a truly great piece of motorcycle engineering, featuring a whopping 2300cc). And, while we were at the dealer in Plano, Texas, I fell in love with Triumph all over again.

I cruised the Web for weeks and researched my choices – the Thruxton, the new Scrambler, the America and Speedmaster – but in the end, I came back to the brilliant, classic Bonneville T100.

It was quite a journey to find the right bike. First, there was a trip with mom and dad to Oklahoma City to check out a used T100 – dad was riding in 30 degree weather on his Rocket so he could go with me on the test ride (don’t feel too sorry for him, he has an electric riding suit to keep him warm).

The bike was beautiful, but the deal didn’t pan out, so we turned back to the guy who’d sold dad his bike in Plano, Elvis Jr.

Just a week after out trip to Oklahoma, we were heading to Plano to pick up a brand-new tangerine and white Bonneville T100. My parents, assorted other members of my motorcycle family and I mounted our bikes Saturday to ride down in the cold and the rain to get my new baby.

Elvis gave us a great deal, and great service, and by 2 p.m. I was cruising Plano on my new bike. We stopped at the Harley dealership for one of my “uncles,” and it was there that Triumphs drew a crowd. One old guy said he had a Bonneville almost exactly like mine – it was 40 years old.

We were wet and cold at the end of the trip, but it was worth every mile of it to be the proud owner of a classic piece of what I like to call “superior British engineering.”

My love for the Bonneville grows every day (as true love tends to do), and if I’m not riding it, I’m thinking about riding it.

Maybe this love of British bikes was inherited from dad (as my love of speed, Corvettes and many other things were), or maybe it came about on its own. In any case, two out of three members of my family own Triumphs. Now all we have to do is work on mom.

No end in sight to problems with the Middle East
Christian McPhate | Staff Reporter

I have been freed from the chains of censorship with a question burning within my chest…

What the hell is going on with our Christian lovin’ democratic society?

In a study released by Opinion Dynamics, 59 percent of Americans are in favor of a war with Iran, while another poll released by the Washington Post stated that 71 percent of Americans are in favor of taking economic sanctions against Iran and 42 percent are in favor of bombing the country’s nuclear facilities.

What in the name of Allah, Buddha, God, Jehovah, Jesus, Krishna, Shiva and any other religious god that I forgot to mention are people thinking? Hell, we can’t even afford the reconstruction going on in Iraq, let alone another war with another Middle Eastern country. 

And now, we have compounded our democratic Middle Eastern problems with the country of Pakistan.

On Jan. 13, the United States launched an air strike against the “supposed” whereabouts of Al-Qaida’s no. 2 man, Ayman al-Zawahri, killing four members of the terrorist group and 18 civilians, including five women and five children, without the Pakistani government’s approval or knowledge. 

I wonder what Americans would think if a foreign country came over here and bombed one of our buildings without our knowledge or consent? How does our country justify this act of war?

Republican senator John McCain stated, “We understand the anger people feel, but the United States priorities are to get rid of Al-Qaida, and this was an effort to do so. We apologize, but I can’t tell you that we wouldn’t do the same thing again.”

In addition, the no. 2 Al-Qaida leader that our country supposedly killed on Jan. 13 released a video from Egypt on Jan. 30, stating that he was alive and well, living amongst his Muslim brothers. Imagine that, another case of bad information.

We seem to have a problem with communication, which is amazing, seeing how most of today’s youth grow up with an I-pod attached to their forehead and a camera/computer/game/text messaging/video recorder/state of the art cellular phone attached to their face.

And when the majority of the news stations in our beloved republican state blare nothing but good ole “I am on a one track mind” conservatism. How can today’s youth make a rationale decision when the facts they receive are based on a one-sided agenda reeking of corruptness?

The powers that be scream out over the airwaves and through the synagogues that the war in the Middle East is not about oil! It is about the freedom of democracy that every God-given citizen of this world deserves!

I have a friend who works for Halliburton over in the Middle East, and he has an insider’s view from a civilian’s standpoint on the chaos of our forced democracy.

For instance, Halliburton employees are not allowed to wear their fire engine red coveralls or their red hard hats with the logo plastered across the front. They are required to wear non-descript coveralls with no logo displayed on the uniform while all of the company equipment is unmarked with no sign of the Halliburton logo or name.

It seems that the company is not well liked in the Middle East because they are making an ungodly amount of money off the Muslims’ oil, leeching off the soil as their CEO and shareholder profits swell their gluttonous bellies.

And my friend?

Well, he gets to wake up to a wonderful view everyday, consisting of a 20-foot tall cement wall that surrounds the drilling unit and a mountain of sand that whips into his face as he opens his eyes everyday to the blazing sun of the desert.

By midday, he is fighting with the glare of the sun as it reflects off the razor-tipped wire lining the top of the compound while passing the time by watching the machine guns swaying back and forth in the sandblasted wind.

His only companions are a few English-speaking workers and a buddy called no-name who sits in a Humvee, cleaning his .50 caliber machine gun like a man inflicted with OCD.

One positive note is that he gets to go to town once every two weeks and enjoy the sights and wonders of a walled compound that’s kind of like a little American desert town with a Burger King, McDonalds, and all the rest of our fine capitalistic items that our country is so famous for.

And people wonder why we are not liked over there...

So, I sit back and play my guitar as my cigarette burns down, singing about another group who was forced to adapt to the white man’s conservative Christian ways while the news filters in across the airways, announcing that Al-Qaida cells reportedly exist in dozen of countries and the President demands action….

And, I see that there is no end in sight.

Budget cuts for higher education in the works
Staff Editorial