Deja vu

I was in the local Barnes and Noble doing my usual Wednesday hunt for new magazines when I came across this latest issue of the "New Yorker"... and had a flash of deja vu.



It reminds me of that cover I did for "Hampshire life" back in 1980, and which I posted here a few weeks ago.

It makes me wonder if this is a theme that's been used by any other cartoonists. -- PL

Victory Vision 10th Anniversary Edition

Today was another great motorcycle day -- not just because it turned out to be a very beautiful, reasonably warm fall day, but also because I went down to Canton Cycles in Winsted, CT, to pick up my new Victory Vision 10th Anniversary Edition motorcycle.

This bike is very much like the Victory Vision I bought late last year (and on which I have put over ten thousand miles since then), but with a lot more "bling". Victory is producing only one hundred of these models to celebrate their tenth year of operation. It has all the bells and whistles, including a GPS system, and quite a bit of chrome and nice paint accents. The color is also significant -- it is the same red with which Victory's first motorcycle model was painted.



Much like the first Vision I purchased, this one is great, and even a little bit slicker. I had a lovely ride back to Northampton, taking some back roads. One of them was a little side road to Haystack Mountain State Park in Norfolk, CT. That's where this photo was taken. -- PL

Honda Rune with Corbin saddlebags

Back in 2003, Honda introduced an 1800cc version of its "Valkyrie" series of cruisers, called the "Rune". Not only did it have the newer, bigger motor from the new Gold Wing, it was a wild-looking "factory custom"-type of motorcycle. Lots of chrome, one-off pieces, cool front suspension, and so on.

I bought one, and liked it a lot, although in all honesty it was not in any sense a practical motorcycle. It was powerful, handled great, and looked fantastic, but it had virtually no weather protection and zero storage space, and there weren't any passenger accomodations. So I stopped riding it for the most part, but didn't forget about it. In the back of my mind, I hoped to someday find a way to make the Rune more practical while still keeping its wild looks.

This year, I finally found a way to make it so. One of my favorite aftermarket vendors is Corbin (http://www.corbin.com), a company which made its name crafting excellent replacement seats for motorcycles, and then branched out into other stuff. One of their signature products is their line of "beetle bags" -- hard, lockable saddlebags sculpted to fit with the lines and designs of a number of different motorcycles. I'd purchased several of these before, for a Honda VTR 1000 and a Triumph Rocket III, and found them to be very nice products.

But I have to say these new bags they've made for the Rune have blown me away. First off, they have accomplished something that I thought was not possible -- they've sculpted bags for the Rune which actually complement the Rune's custom lines and actually look like they were part of the original design from Honda. Not only that, but they are extremely capacious. And to top it off, they look SWEET -- both the design and the excellent job Corbin did matching the "illusion blue" original Honda paint..



The photo above is one I took today. The Rune is parked in front of McCuskers in Shelburne Falls, one of my favorite spots to get a cup of coffee. I have to thank my good friend Ed, who keeps all my machines running well, for doing the somewhat complicated but ultimately very "sano" installation of the bags. I installed the windshield kit (not a Corbin product), which was a slightly easier job. (Okay, a lot easier.)

The end product is, in my opinion, not only great looking, but finally a practical bike. I am psyched to be riding it now, even though (sob!) our riding season is drawing to a close as the weather gets colder. -- PL

flooding in Northampton

It's a wet day in western Massachusetts, and while going through some old photos I coincidentally happened upon these images from another even WETTER day in Northampton back in June of 2000.

We had a brief but very intense rainstorm, and the torrents of rain coming down in such a short time overwhelmed the ability of the storm drains to remove it quickly. Also, I think there may have been some detritus clogging the drains in this location, a railroad overpass in the center of town.



I remember how bizarre it looked to see this much water in a normally dry and clear spot, and how strange it seemed to see people pushing floating cars around in the water, attempting to get them up to dry land. -- PL

Blast from the Past #27 repost: "Election 1980" / Hampshire Life

(Apparently, when I originally posted this on the "Blast from the Past" page of the planetracers.com site, we were in the throes of a Presidential election. In an interesting coincidence, here I am reposting it on this blog just as we are a couple of weeks away from another election. Let's hope this one has a more salubrious outcome for our country and the world. VOTE!!!)

This has nothing to do with the TMNT, but it is a "blast from the past", and in honor of this year's election, I thought I’d share this drawing I did for Hampshire Life, a tabloid-sized "lifestyle" insert for the local Northampton paper, The Daily Hampshire Gazette, in 1980.



That year, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and John Anderson were running, and I did this cover for the Hallowe’en edition (the joke is that these politicians -- even in the form of little plastic Hallowe’en costume masks -- are scarier than the monsters!). This is one of my favorite drawings from my Hampshire Life years. -- PL

flying alien dude

Sometimes you will draw something that -- for whatever reason -- just feels RIGHT. It doesn't happen often enough, in my opinion, but it did with this little drawing. I have no memory of WHY it was drawn -- I seriously doubt it was any kind of commission for publication -- so it was probably done just for fun.



I don't know what it is, exactly -- but I do like the pose. And what is that thing he's wearing on his back... and the thing on his head? You got me. I just like it! -- PL

Luke and Chewie fight Stormtroopers

Here's another one of my "Star Wars" drawings. I'm pretty sure I did this for a fanzine called "Galactic Flight", sometime in the early 1980's. I like how Luke has got his ninja action thing going! -- PL

(STAR WARS characters TM & © Lucasfilm Ltd. 2008)