Premium gas prices give me heart burn. My Honda Civic gets 30 mpg when I keep the tires properly inflated. The Beemer gets 50 mpg, even when the tires are down a pound or so. It has been a month of street and highway riding. Yes I want to be on the track. No, I don't have a steady source of income yet, so that indulgence must be rationed.

Some people look at the stock market for signs of economic recovery. All you have to do is get on the highways to know whether things are improving or not. I used to be able to get to the dojo in Berkeley by leaving an hour and a half before class starts. Nine months ago I would arrive with time help clean the dojo before class.

Now I'm lane sharing up 880 and arriving with just enough time to get out of my leathers and into my training costume, so the economy must be improving. I wish I could coax some of that recovery into my own back yard. I've bitten the bullet, I'm taking the course work for the Project Management certification from UC Santa Cruz Extension.

In addition to learning new information, I'm enjoying an academic organization of material that is jumbled in my head from 15 years of project management experience. Going back to school feels like cleaning out the garage; lots of stuff stored in places where you forgot you had it comes out, gets dusted off, and put in a more useful place. And, you get to make trips to the hardware store for more cool stuff to better organize the good stuff you already have.

If you've read this far in my journal, you might be interested in two other books that are stories featuring the author's bike as a life vehicle, The Perfect Vehicle: What it is About Motorcycles, by Melissa Holbrook Pierson, and Investment Biker: Around the World With Jim Rogers, by Jim Rogers. Both are available as used books (and new) on Amazon.

If you're a Moto Guzzi fan, you might like The Perfect Vehicle. Pierson provides a short history of the development of motorcycles, some characterizations of the different rider communities that made me laugh out loud, and insight into her love life. After reading this book, I will likely never buy a Moto Guzzi bike, not because I have anything again Italian bikes, but more because I adore reliable machines. I suspect I'll forever be riding BMWs or rice-burners.

Jim Rogers' book chronicles his life-long dream ride around the world. In the course of two years, he and his girl friend (on her own bike) cross China, Russia, and the Sahara, ride from the top of Africa to the South African tip, and traverse Central and South America longitudinally. For free, you get a lesson on how an investment banker looks at the world. I was fascinated by his pragmatic observations on human nature, governments and the marketplace, and horrified that he perceived every open pristine land expanse as an opportunity for development. Now, if he was thinking about putting race tracks on these open land expanses, that's okay.