I am not speaking ill of the dead. I’m simply offering a bit of advice for the living.

On August 30, 2007 at 8:53 p.m., a fatality accident occurred on Stony Point Road. A Yamaha R1 motorcycle lost control in a curve while traveling at what police think may have been a higher rate of speed than that for which the curve is posted, struck a guardrail and threw the helmeted rider. The rider later died.

Police identified the rider as Gabriel Ryan Dean, 25, of Charlottesville.

My respects to Mr. Dean’s family and friends. It’s hard when another rider goes down. Unfortunately, Mr. Dean’s accident is not a rarity in the cycling world. Other than at intersections where cars pull in front of us—and I swear they try to kill us on purpose—the most common fatal accident for motorcyclists is the bike going off the road in the curve. It can be at a slow speed, at the posted limit or at high speed and still be fatal.

Here’s the technique for doing it right: As you come up on the curve and well before it, slow using both brakes and downshift, if necessary into a lower gear. Look all the way through the curve, as far as you can see, and as you enter the curve start to roll on the throttle. Keep looking, keeping rolling. If you feel like you’re going to fast, hold the throttle steady and push down on the handgrip in the inside of the turn (turning right? push on the right). What ever you do, do not brake. It will make the bike stand up. Do not look anywhere but through the curve or your bike will want to go there.

Most important: Slow Down Before the Curve.

I’m sorry, Mr. Dean. I share your love of the bike and the ride.

My footpegs are down if you want to come along.
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We’re going to war.

Charlottesville’s own Monticello Guard is on its way to Iraq.

The members of Company A, 3rd Battalion, 116th Infantry, 29th Infantry Division of the Virginia National Guard finished their training in Mississippi a few weeks ago and spent a week on leave, visiting family and taking a break before heading off today for the Big Sandbox. That is, of course, all unofficial as it’s a troop movement and troop movements are not generally talked about by higher ups, but it’s been confirmed by People Who Know.”

Trust me on that.

This means that our brothers, fathers, nephews, cousins and even daughters, mothers and nieces are going to spend the better part of a year trying to help establish enough stability in the chaotic country to give democracy and peace a chance. Whether you’re for or against the Iraq War doesn’t matter right now. Our People are there and it’s up to us to support them, not by telling them how they should come home now but by sending them tidbits of American life here at home.

“I just got back from Iraq,” said a Person Who Knows. “When you’re there it’s great to hear any piece of news from home. It really makes a difference.”

So go ahead and e-mail me stories about the first Virginia football game of the year or the new Hayabusa you just bought or how that pecan pie you baked rocked the Casbah. I’ll pass them on to People Who Know” so that the members of Alpha Company know we’re thinking about them.

Ever Forward!

I know it’s not polite and it’s certainly not politically correct to tell grieving parents that they are off base, but it’s my duty.

Some parents of students slain by Seung Hui Cho on the Virginia Tech campus are looking for someone to blame. They want someone to go down, to pay for their pain. That’s quite understandable, but is it fair?

Did the Virginia Tech police screw up so badly as to require the firing of the police chief? They had a double-homicide in a dorm room that looked suspiciously like a lover’s triangle—a very common kind of killing in off-campus society—and a former boyfriend with personal possession of guns in question. There was no indication that the killings were the precursor to a random assault on the general student body.

Tech had emergency notification procedures in place. They were cumbersome, quaint, antiquated and ineffective perhaps, but they were in place and they were followed. Since Cho, nearly every university in America including UVa has changed their policies. The fact that the procedures didn’t work in this case is not enough to require the president’s sacking.

Cho was a crazy. No doubt about it. But there is no law in America that says you must remain sane. On the contrary, we long ago closed our asylums and state facilities and sent the mentally ill on their merry way to “community based treatement options” that didn’t exist. There is no law that says I need to follow up on a doctor’s recommendation that I get psychiatric help. There is no law that says, should I get an appointment at a public mental health center that is usually a minimum of three to six months in the future, that I need to show up.

There is no law that says I need to take my medication and some evidence that the medication I would be given might make my psychosis worse.

Who should be fired for that?

Should Cho’s teachers be fired for not reporting his sophomoric writings of violence and hate to authorities? Would a budding Quentin Tarantino be sent to mental health for an early script of Pulp Fiction?

Should Cho’s roommates be kicked out of school for not informing on their brother because he was a fruitcake?

Should every person who seeks mental health for depression—including those related to divorce or abuse—be put on a national register and be forced to attend follow up sessions every month while in school or applying for jobs or to purchase a handgun or rifle?

Who is responsible? Who should be fired?

Cho is responsible. Not the police chief, not the president, not the creative writing teacher, but Cho. Unfortunately, he’s not around to punish.

As I rode past the oncoming motorcyclist I dropped my hand off the left bar, leaving the clutch uncovered, touched my ring finger to my thumb and flashed the three-fingered gang sign of the Three Percent Crew, also known as the Step-Children, a gang known for riding their American-built machines as fast as the law allows, popping wheelies on occasion and taking corners at the highest rate of speed that is safely possible.

It’s the sign of Buell motorcyclists whose chosen brand makes up about three percent of the sales of Harley-Davidson, the parent company. Unlike other groups out there with super secret gang signs, some of which are on the front page of today’s The Daily Progress, we really aren’t dangerous except at cocktail parties where our conversation about centralized mass and zero-torsional load braking systems can glaze anyone’s hors d’oeuvre. Several people have actually suffered suicidal delusions after listening to our members.

We’re not Bloods. We’re not MS-13, although some of us are old enough to have done really stupid things on our bikes and become Crips. The thing is, a lot of folks walking around doing the secret handsigns and the graffitti aren’t Bloods, either.

Let’s play Peabody and Sherman and take the Way-Back machine to 1984. There, on the walls of Happy Canyon in Douglas County, Colorado, upside down pentagrams and other “Satanic” symbols led nearby neighbors on a Chic Freak Out about the roving gangs of Devil Worshippers stealing children, killing animals and having illicit sex somewhere in their neighborhoods. Even worse, they were conning kids into such dangerous activities as Dungeons and Dragons, which, everyone knew, led to suicide and ritual deaths.

Seriously, it was a bona fide panic that took over the neighborhood watches, PTOs and law enforcement youth divisions. No one was actually caught in these Satanic episodes, but the graffitti was proof. As an intrepid reporter (I covered the intrepid beat and about everything else including 4-H despite growing up near Detroit where the only wildlife we had on the city streets were rats, squirrels and the family down the street) I found a couple of kids who confirmed they had painted the rocks because “pentagrams are, like, cool looking and they scare people.”

My guess is some of the gang graffitti is of the same nature. That, however, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look out. As animals mark their territory with body fluids, gangs mark theirs with paint. There are horrorshow stories from L.A. and N.Y.C. and D.C. and even N.Va that show the gangs exists, are recruiting and mean business and we need to be awake and aware. However, saying you’re a Blood, painting Blood wall art and giving the pretzeled finger sign (check out the front page of The Daily Progress: How do they do that? I’d freakin’ need surgery to unlock my knuckles and I wouldn’t be able to type for a week. No wonder there aren’t many 49-year-old reporter Bloods out there) does not a gang member make.

It’s good to be wary. It’s bad to be whacko.

Saturday’s storm was a doozie.

We were coming home from a friend’s surprise birthday party. I’ll call her Connie. I use that name to protect the innocent, since she was about to turn 50.

Anyhow, it was a lovely event. Connie, oh, I mean my friend, got lots of swell gifts, including a golf cart decked out in UVa colors. I gave her 50 golf balls ... each individually wrapped. Three of them had UVa logos on them, but she will have to open the other 47 just the same.

Anyway, I had to get home because Winston, my Yorkie, was in need of food and a walking.

All was going well, until we hit the Greene County line and someone turned on the waterworks. It poured. I could tell because the giant bolts of lightning gave me a clear view of the sheets of rain.

Electricity was off everywhere. Poor Winston, I thought, he must be scared to death.

So we made our way down Matthew Mill, but, whoa, what’s this? A giant tree was stretched across the road in a most unnatural manner. No worry; there are a couple of other roads to home.

We’ll try the back way. All was well, except the downpour made visibility next to nothing. Then, whoa again. This way was blocked. The creek was way up over the bridge. Cars were turning around in people’s driveways.

OK. There is the entrance off U.S. 33.

It was getting a little dicer.

Boom. Scream. Boom. Scream. The lightning and thunder outside alternating with the sounds from inside the car were keeping time with the rapidly moving windshield wipers.

Ahh, the road was ahead somewhere. Yes, right up there where ... the red lights were flashing.

Fire trucks.

All three routes home were blocked.

Boom. Scream.

Sitting in a line of cars under a power line wasn’t an appealing alternative.

So let’s find a restaurant. Sure there are no lights, but there must be people.

Water standing in the road careened off both sides of the car. U.S. 29 is straight ahead, but whoa. There’s a car wreck. Route 29 is blocked.

We—meaning me and another friend who I will call “Anne”—found an opening in the Post Office parking lot. We pulled in, turned off the car and waited. Boom. Scream. Anne has a lovely voice.

Finally, in what seemed like hours, the symphony ended. The cars moved. The tree was gone, and Winston was resting, exhausted, in my lap.

My neighbor said he had 5 inches of rain in his bucket the next morning. He also lost part of his garden to the rapidly rising creek.

But we were safe ... and we were home.

And … Connie officially turns 50 today.

Surprise!