Two Wheeled Tales: Boston Medflight Charity run

I’d been kicking around the idea of going back to the low-profile windshield for a while now. Maybe I’d been too quick in my original assessment of its performance, way back when I’d first tried it out. I’d figured what the hell, right? Give it another shot. And, since I’d just hung in on Friday night taking things easy anyway, it gave me the opportunity to make the switch. A few turns of the wrist and the windshields had been swapped back out. Nice! I’ll be able to give things a decent test on the run we had scheduled; Boston Medflight Charity Run. (Mother Nature rewarded my decision with handing us the first rain we’ve had in weeks. But not just rain; a Nor’Easter! But more on that later…)

Pre-game festivities were at Danno’s, once again. 9:30 sharp, and the riff raff began arriving.

What draws these people, week after week? Is it the camaraderie? The lure of the open road? Personally, I think it’s the breakfast of Champions that draws them in…

After we’d washed the donuts down, it was off to Bill Cabino’s house (fortuitously located just behind the Canton American Legion, where the run was located out of). With a line of cars already stacked up on one side, we turned something that had been a one-way street, into basically a no-way street.

Luckily we were only there for one road soda before saddling up and heading over to the rally point. We paid our fees, signed our names on the “You can’t sue if you die” forms, and took our spots. Turnout wasn’t too bad…

I didn’t get any action shots from this run, but once we returned, we were treated to the arrival of one of the Medflight helicopters. Sweet! We heard it coming so I grabbed my camera, set it to record video and was all ready to have a great vid of the bird coming in. Ready…aim….*click!* DAMMIT! I hit the power button instead of the ‘record’ button. And by the time I had it turned back on, the copter was already on the ground. Stupid fingers. And, adding insult to injury; the rotors stirred up all kinds of dust, dirt and other debris, leaving me with this memento.

Anyway, Thanks go to Greg for being on the ball and getting some good pics… (I had to look up the explanation for the bend in the rotors, apparently it’s due to the camera’s shutter speed, as well as the how the camera records the image in its memory.)

Here’s the man himself, getting up close and personal…

Danno takes a break (he actually asked if he could sit in the cockpit but thankfully, he was told no.)

Yeah, no thanks. I have a hard enough time with “On / Off”.

Here’s hoping this is the only time I see the inside of one of these things…

While we were checking this thing out and talking to the flight crew, everyone behind us was having a great time, eating, drinking…mostly eating, it seems.

Why “mostly eating”? Because they ran out of food!! Yeah, half of our crew didn’t even get anything to eat! Bastards! Once word of this reached us, we said screw it, let’s ride. Where to? Why, to our friend Bill’s house. But Bill was away in NH this weekend. No matter, we’ll make sure his stores of Bud Light (as well as any food lying around) was well accounted for.

And, of course, we had to take the obligatory pic and text it to Bill on his phone.

Sadly, Bill had no food. But he did have beers. AND! He’s got Danno’s drum set in his basement! Cool! Danno, let’s see you hit the skins!

I asked Danno for a quick bit of instruction and here’s what I came away with…

Ok, I majorly sucked. I tried and tried, but I could not get a rhythm going. Danno kicked my ass to the curb and took over.

From there, we beat feet to a local pub to get some much needed grub into our bellies. When we’d finished there, we took up a collection, which I then brought to a local establishment while everyone else headed off to Zig’s house. What kind of establishment, you ask? Why, an establishment where one may procure beverages of an alcoholic nature. And from said establishment, I returned with two cubed containers containing many light blue cylindrical containers inside. And with these cylindrical containers, we whiled away the rest of the daylight and eased on into the evening hours. Another successful day was in the books.

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Oh yeah; I forgot to mention that we had the rare luck to hang out with a couple of celebrities at the helicopter. They must have been going for the incognito look, what with the EMS outfits, but how can you not recognize The Mario Bros?