What a great word! It's defined by Merriam-Wedster's 11th Collegiate Dictionary as "the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for".
I had a bit of serendipity today. My wife and I took advantage of beautiful weather during the early part of the afternoon to take bicycles from Northampton to Florence on the bike path, all the way up to Look Park, a privately-owned but open to the public facility which is one of the gems of this area. It's a great park.
As we were riding the paved road around the outer edge of the park, what should we come upon but a show of vintage japanese motorcycles! I had no idea such a thing was happening at Look Park today. and had to stop and check out the old iron.
Fortunately, I had my digital camera with me (well, I very nearly always do -- it's one of the handy things about wearing shirts with four pockets) and was able to snap a few shots of some of the cool bikes. Here are two of them:
I consider the Honda CB750 to be one of the -- if not THE -- most beautiful motorcycles ever produced. And not only is it a gorgeous piece of two-wheeled artistry, it's also a model which changed the face of motorcycling when it was released.
This other Honda is an SL350, the same model I had in high school and college and a few years afterwards. It's even the same color as the one that I had. That SL was a great bike -- I beat the crap out of it and it kept running with very little upkeep. It was my first "grown-up" motorcycle. (And as I was preparing the photograph of the SL350 for this blog post, I noticed that there's a Segway leaning against the tree directly behind it. Cool!)
Actually, the more I look at this photo, the more I think this may be the first model of the SL350, with electric start -- I had the second model with just a kick starter and a different type of frame.
Serendipity... you gotta love it! -- PL
5 comments:
LOL... and though I don't know her at all, I have this image of your wife thinking "can't we just ONCE get away from motorcycles?"
But you're right-- it's a perfect example of serendipity!
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J - Bikes ** ..
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That's really neat that you got to see such cool bikes!
I really like that 750, its classic. Once in a blue moon I'll see one like that or a similar model out here.
I'd love to have a bike but it's the other drivers...they're manics out here. Nobody sees the bikes. Being on the road all the time, I've seen one too many tragedies. :(
A friend of mine had a 750 in high school. He was the only one with a motorcycle and thus the ultimate in coolness.
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