My fellow Fringies,

There are times in life when you sit down and think hard about what you got, what you not got and what you really, really need. There are times when you meet people, good people, people like you trying to make enough money to get a living and mortgage and picket fence with a few expensive, flowering plants with which to feed the deer. Then you see these people hurting and hurting bad.

The Fraziers are folks like that. Their 2-year-old daughter Kelli, is dying of an inherited disease. They’ve had the courage to turn down experiemental medical treatments that would have been painful at best and fatal at worst, allowing Kelli to pass quietly in her own time, in the arms and hearts of her family.

But medical treatments, including the tiny pharmacy that keeps Kelli as comfortable as possible, are costly and could easily overwhelm a middle-class income in a community where living costs are battering the middle-class.

So what, you’re wondering, am I getting at. I’m getting at what we can do. We can ride.

Here’s the deal. The Stony Point Volunteer Fired Department is putting out a benefit motorcycle poker run for the Fraziers on Saturday. May 5, 2007 with a May 12 rain date. Don’t worry. The weather forecasters call for sun. The ride will start at the department, 3827 Stony Point Road (RT 20 N) and costs $20 a bike plus another $5 for someone on the um, back seat.

Registration is at 8 a.m. and includes breakfast. Eat to ride and ride to eat!

The first bike is out at 9 a.m. and the last is out at 10 a.m and there are the usual prizes and door prizes, raffles and drawings, and lunch.

Call Firefighter Santana at (434) 760-1303 for more information, fill up with some dinosaur bones, get on your bikes and ride.

I zip up my jacket and think of the sweetheart I left asleep inside.

I think of the way she holds court with those around her, bright eyes flashing as she makes an effort to see and greet everyone who’s talking to her. I think of the smile she gave me and how she worked so hard to get a chance to just say “hi” like it might be the last word she ever spoke to anyone, and then smiled again as she said it.

I put on my helmet, flip up the visor, fasten it up and think of the little princess.

She sat on her godmother’s lap, her head held steady as her mom and grandmom encouraged her to greet me. She don’t know Bryan McKenzie from Brian McNeill and probably couldn’t care less but she knew was there for her. At least I think she knew. She can’t talk much. She used to talk a lot more.

I pull on my bright yellow gloves, fasten the Velco-brand fasteners, zip the jacket down around them and think of the wheelchairs and equipment with the padding and the straps in which she used to sit when her muscles started to spasm out of control and her brain lost its dominion over them, the chairs and equipment in which she can no longer stand to sit because the spasms and pain are just too intense.

I think of how Kelli Frazier, 2, surrounded by Disney Princess blankets and paraphernalia like any other little girl of the 21st Century, has only weeks, months or a year before she’s dead. It hurts to think that. It’s hurts to say it. I think of her mother Lisa, to whom I just finished talking. I think of her father whom I didn’t get a chance to meet. I think of the agony they must have gone through when they decided not to put Kelli through the pain and trauma and life-threatening drastic measures of chemotherapy and spinal cord blood transfusion with the slim hope that she might live longer.

I think of how the decision, which seems so right now, must have seemed wrong to them at the time, but they made it anyway.

I throw a leg over my Buell Blast and start it up. I’m about to ride out of the Frazier’s gravel Proffit driveway and back to the world of journalism and heavy traffic when I realize I’m carrying a passenger, one that rides not on the back of the bike but in the heaviness of my heart.

Kelli Frazier is coming along for the ride.

As the rain pulls away from the store and the sun shines brightly in the west, I clamber aboard the Piaggio MP3 at Moto Virginia on Preston Avenue and ride off on what has to rank up with the most bizarre of motorcycling contraptions ever to fray the Lunatic Fringe.

“It’s pretty cool,” grins Dirk Wilson, of Moto Virginia’s first family. Dirk and his mom Priscilla have been running the joint for awhile since buying it from Vespa of Charlottesville. Now that a minor paperwork glitch with the DMV has been ironed out, the Wilson’s are selling road-worthy Vespas, Piaggio (Vespa’s parent company) and KTM, the Austrian cycle maker that is slowly taking over the word with its Adventurer and Super Duke. Helmets, gloves and the usual are available, although the store seems to have fewer flaming skulls and biker-chic than most folks are accustomed to and there ain’t nothing wrong with that.

They’ve also got bikes.

“The MP3 is pretty wild because there’s additional stability from having the added front wheel and it has three disc brakes that make it stop on a dime,” Dirk says.

Dirk gives me the keys and I roll down Rose Hill Drive. With the two wheels in front, the turning is more akin to a cruiser than a scooter. It’s straight-line stability is assuring and it holds its own in the curves. I’m not much for the girl’s bike look of scooters with the knees-together riding position nor a scooter’s baby-buggy-sized tires, but the MP3 feels like I’m riding a bigger bike.

On Rio, I get the MP3 up to 55 and pass a Monster Truck (actually, it was more of a gremlin truck. Not quite tall enough to be a real monster.) The man stares at me like I’m from Mars. People on U.S. 29 make double takes when they notice the front has two wheels. There’s also some fun toys on this baby and at U.S. 29 and Hydraulic I apply the lock that holds the bike upright on all three wheels without using the center stand and put my feet up to relax. The guy next to me looks out of his truck festooned with an American-motorcycle brand logo and asks with nary a smile “what the hell is that?”

I tell him it’s a prototype Sportster and he grunts his disapproval.

Back at Moto Virginia I turn the MP3 back to Priscilla. It’s been fun tooling around for a quick ride on something unique enough to get looks from non-Fringies and stares from those in the club. You can give it a ride tomorrow just by stopping by. Go to Piaggiousa.com and sign up and you’ll get a free coupon for an MP3 player.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I gotta get back to work.

Ride on, fellow babies.

To paraphrase and misquote Harry Chapin: Stop writing those sad blogs. Just write about the good times, baby. ‘Cause I’ve read all that depressing schtick so many times before.

Kind of gets a bit boring. Gets kinda heavy. Can’t hardly stand to open the computer window any more ‘cause you just know some bad news is going to fly in all about someone dying or someone doing something stupid or somebody acting a fool.

OK, so let’s get happy at http://www.happynews.com, where “all the news that’s fun to print” is put on line.

Here’s a story they’re running from the Associated Press about a new book about the Khmer Rouge: The first history book written by a Cambodian about the Khmer Rouge is a step toward educating the nation about the murderous regime, a leading genocide expert said Sunday. ‘’Cambodians are at last beginning to investigate and record their country’s past,’’ said Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, an independent group documenting the Khmer Rouge crimes...”

Well, that’s certainly happy!

Let’s try again.

“If you were looking for the skeleton of a prehistoric mammoth, Monday was your day to buy. Christie’s auction house sold one for $421,200 — a world record.”

Skeletons bought by people with too many dollars and not enough sense is more uplifting than the Khmer Rouge, but let’s spin the dharma wheel again:

This from the Associated Press: German Youth Makes Amends for Holocaust: “Felix Muller, 20, was born long after the Holocaust ended, but that doesn’t diminish his sense of obligation to the victims. ‘’As a German, it’s part of my history whether I want it or not,’’ Muller said.

OK, that’s enough good news for now. We don’t want to get too greedy.

I’ve lived in Charlottesville for nearly 20 years. I’m a proud Hokie, but I was always self conscious when I wore my school colors.

It’s not that I have ever really thought maroon and orange was an attractive combination, but sometime you like to support your school.

There would always be the comments or the jeers. Some have been downright rude, others are just friendly ribbing.

That’s understandable. Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia are huge rivals. I accept that. But I love my home here, and I love my school there.

Sometimes its just hard to feel so alone.

Maybe that’s why I wanted so desperately to be in Blacksburg this week ... to be with people who felt the same, who shared the same grief.

Instead I discovered that sorrow blurs color codes.

As I walked on the Downtown Mall in my orange and maroon on Thursday, people looked a me and smiled. A gentleman patted me on the back, a woman gave me a hug. I didn’t know any of them.

A huge Wahoo fan emailed me: “Hello my Hokie friend.”

Then something happened on Friday that I thought I would never see: UVa students, coworkers, friends all dressed in maroon and orange. All of us standing together, proudly wearing the colors to honor Monday’s victims at Virginia Tech.

We, here in Charlottesville, weren’t Wahoos and Hokies.

We became Wahookies.

Thank you more than I can say.