Musings from one who writes, and rides…
When you sit down to create social media content, who are you writing for? I’m writing for Sue. She’s imaginary, of course, but she’s as real to me as my next-door-neighbor. And I think about her every time I create a piece of content for the Monterey Bay Aquarium Facebook page, Google+ page, or Tumblr…
This article was originally published in Motorcyclist Magazine. Last summer, feeling bold, I asked my wife if she might be interested in taking a guided motorcycle tour of the Dolomite mountain range in Italy. I ask questions like this periodically to test the bounds of what is possible—in the same way one might ask for…
The summer of 1969 stretched out endlessly, with days spent swimming in the small, unthreatening waves of Long Island Sound, family dinners in the backyard, and stick-and-ball sports played on the sticky macadam of our neighborhood streets. Steamy hot Connecticut evenings were spent with my ear pressed to a transistor radio, memorizing top-40 songs on…
Sometimes I consider myself an athlete. Nothing spectacular, mind you, but dedicated in my own way. When it comes to bike racing, I’m not the strongest guy in town. But I’m not the weakest, either. I’ve also had more than my share of sports injuries. And I mean that literally. I’m counting more than a…
Note to self: avoid shopping on eBay Motors late at night, after several glasses of red wine. The results can be embarrassing. Witness the 1970 Honda Z50 minibike now occupying a dusty corner of the garage. In the pantheon of irrational motorcycle purchases, this is surely one of my most infamous. Visitors justifiably ask if…
This story was originally published on the Monterey Bay Aquarium blog. It was 3 a.m. on June 25, and Security Officer Clara Nilsen was making her regular rounds of the Aquarium’s ground-floor exhibits. Suddenly, she spied what looked like a banana peel on the floor, in front of our Shale Reef lookdown exhibit. “That’s odd,”…
I spent several years riding the dot.com rollercoaster in the late ‘90s, at one point working for four companies in four tumultuous years. This story was originally purchased by a tech magazine but it, too, went bust! It is the natural impulse of all dot-coms to conquer the world, and my company is no…
This article was originally published in BMW Owners News. The rain is slanting down, and I can hear the wind howling through the cul de sac where I live. I fling open the garage door, and branches fly past as if hurled by some malevolent pedestrian. Small rivers of leaves and debris rush past the…
Several of us on the social media team at the Monterey Bay Aquarium are former journalists, and we sometimes get a little weepy about the demise of “the story” as we once knew it. You know: the traditional article, built on the classic “inverted pyramid,” anchored by an insightful angle, supported with exhaustive research and…
Funny thing about this story in Motorcyclist Magazine. We did go. To New Zealand, that is… No sooner had Meredith and I left Mendocino, than big, fat drops started careening off our helmets and windshield. Fortunately, I have a strategy for these conditions, which is to ask questions through the intercom: “Honey, do you think…