Bill Cammack

I’m sitting here right now, in Manhattan, in my house, able to type this on my computer right now because of the dedication of my friend, homie, brother, etc… Lou.

We went for a ride this morning, and the mechanic had assured me a couple of weeks ago that they checked out the electronics on my old-ass 1993 GSXR sportbike. I don’t doubt that they did. I think today was a NEW problem. It was so hot today, and my engine was running so hot, I’m pretty sure it burned through my cable leading to my ignition fuse. When I took the tank off so I could check my cables, they were different from when I had sent them to the mechanic, so I’m sure they did SOMETHING, and I don’t doubt it was proper. However, the location of my wires is conducive to them getting burnt and essentially “shorting out”.

I had had this happen quite a while ago, and my good friend MK got me out of that jam. This time Lou made it happen, and I just plain wouldn’t be here right now if it weren’t for Lou helping me out. I’d still be in Chester, NY, or wherever we were when my bike shut off.

I had offered to Lou to continue on his trip and just pass back that way when he was done. I didn’t want to ruin his day, but he wouldn’t break out. I was really more upset that I had messed up his plans for the day than that I was stranded out in the sticks without enough bike-mechanic knowledge to get ANYWHERE NEAR my house, where I am right now.

Eventually, we got back on the road and came back home. Thanks, Lou.

……….

There really isn’t any more to say, but it’s still not enough. I’ve had people go the “well, I’ve done all I can for ya… now I have to go” route under similar circumstances, and it doesn’t feel good. That’s an incredible understatement. Similarly, “Thanks, Lou” doesn’t even begin to amount to anything near how appreciative I am that he stuck with me and helped me out of that situation. Not that I *EXPECTED* any less of him, because I met Lou more than half my life ago… But, it’s still nice to receive that gift of friendship…. of dedication. While I wasn’t thinking properly and couldn’t bring myself to find the proper solution, either because I was so upset or because I just didn’t possess the technical, mechanical knowledge to get myself out of that situation, Lou was on-point, and I’m getting to type this right now because of him. :D

I didn’t realize how blessed I was when I first got my bike a few years ago…. I mean, I did, but I never documented it. Another life-long friend, Jay, walked me through learning to ride and then rode with me for VERY VERY MANY of the 20,000-plus miles I put on my bike in two years. Fortunately for Jay, he met the woman of his dreams and got married! :D I hadn’t realized how much of what I considered to be fun in “riding” was actually the fun of “riding WITH Jay”. On top of that, I hadn’t realized how much I was ‘dependent’ on Jay’s technical knowledge of biking. I was *N.E.V.E.R*, *EVER*, ONCE… NEVER worried that I wasn’t going to make it home tonight if I went riding with Jay. NEVER. I knew that Jay took bikes (and cars) apart and put them back together again. This was in the back of my mind… along with his dedication to me as a friend, and my dedication to him. Again, though it doesn’t come close to expressing my heartfelt gratitude… Thanks, Jay. :D

Going riding is like going campaigning or going to war. You go out with a certain number of guys/gals, and you return with that same number. Similar to what’s said about war… It’s EXTREMELY IMPORTANT to trust whomever’s next to you in the bunker. That BELIEF carries you to your greatest potential in riding. This guy Todd went off what I consider to be a short cliff one time when we went on a group ride. We went back to find him and five of us literally LIFTED his bike out of the woods he fell into, maybe 30 feet below. His front rim was jacked, so I suggested that someone remove his front brakes, and he was able to ride with us all the way back to NYC, and to his home in either Queens or Long Island. The point is that we were going to FIGURE OUT how to get him home and get his bike squared away. PERIOD. Even though that was my first time meeting him, he was rolling with US, so MY goal was to get him home. PERIOD. That was the goal of the others too, and we made it happen, hoisting his bike with one hand each and grabbing onto trees with our other hands while digging our boots in to the soft dirt of the ledge we were climbing with Todd’s bike in tow. Todd got home. Mission accomplished.

There are some who will read this and discount my claim that riding is like going to war because nobody’s shooting at us. Well… When you go riding, you’re not SURE you’re going to make it back. I’m NEVER sure I’m going to make it back when I go performance-riding. Anything can happen, from mechanical failure to someone running you off the road to oil slicks or construction to someone rear-ending you. I always thank God when I make it back, because I know I didn’t have to. There are quite a few riding deaths every year. One of them was my friend “Avo”. I didn’t know him for a long time, relative to many other riders, but he was a great guy and a solid rider. When Avo died on the West Side Highway, that was REALLY the first time that I honestly felt like “if it happened to him, it could happen to me”.

Anyway… I wanted to get this stuff down while I’m still feeling the immense *GRATITUDE* to Lou for sticking with me and changing his plan for the day from “having a good time” to “getting Bill back home”. I realize this is all my fault, and even though I completely LOVE my bike, I may very well need to sell it, because I’ve allowed it to become unreliable. It’s my fault that the bike’s unreliable. I bought it @ 22,000 miles and put another 20,000 on it in the span of two years. I allowed the ignition electronics to get jacked up. Nobody else. I’m either going to commit to getting it fixed PROPERLY or selling it and getting another bike. I’ve had enough of people saving me from the DEPRESSION of being WAY out of town with NO WAY to get home. :(

The bottom line is that riding isn’t about the bike you’re on… It’s about the people you share your experiences with.

Beleedat! :D

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billcammack

Hey Derek. Thanks for the question! :D

Yes. There’s double truth in your statement. Pretty girls are perceived to be unapproachable, AND there are lots of pretty girls without men because of this issue.

See, first of all, girls are girls. :D When you live somewhere like Japan, there isn’t much difference between the girls, so they all have a chance to get guys. This leads to them being more approachable because they don’t develop a perceived superiority to the other girls.

In the USA, there’s a VAST DIFFERENCE between the looks of the girls. :D There are a few that are really attractive and a lot that are just totally busted. :D What happens here is that all the guys chase after the attractive girls and give them anything they want. This goes to the attractive girls’ heads, and they get this inflated sense of self-worth…. Until they hit 19 and their bodies stop maintaining themselves on their own. When this happens, if they don’t start working out, they get out of shape and become has-beens. :) This is when you see the zombie-like girls that you can tell used to be fine, but now they stumble around town opening their own doors and not having anyone rap to them in the streets or try to pay for them to eat or buy clothes. :D They are now experiencing what life is like for most of the population, and it’s pretty depressing for them.

Until that happens, though… They’re held up as the best of the best of American society. There’s nothing better than a fine chick, so they get everything they want and everyone listens to them and wants to be their friends. Because of this, MANY fine girls get conceited. They act bitchy towards people because they know they can get away with it. This has the effect of giving fine girls a bad name. People think they’re ALL stuck up because of the ones that can’t be gracious about their God-given good looks, which are actually the luck of the draw and have nothing to do with their own actual worth, but instead is a function of their parent’s genes.

So… Guys go out to parties and meet stuck up attractive girls and get tired of getting shot down so they stop approaching fine chicks. They start sticking to the more humble, more personally attractive and still decent-looking girls. This is why you see more girls in this range married. The guys looking to get married are tired of the incessant demands of hot chicks, so when it’s time to get married, they choose someone more ‘Down To Earth’.
Reader Derek writes:

Bill,

I hear that many a pretty girl are without men because they are perceived to be unapproachable. Any truth in that statement?

This is why a lot of pretty girls are without men, as you mentioned. Because they’ve been given a bad rap, everybody wants to hook up with them but nobody wants to keep them. Even if they have the sweetest personality, the guys that would be good for them are tired of dealing with women that attractive, so they have to go without. The only guys willing to kick it to them are players who know what they’re doing and enjoy the challenge. The problem with that is that these guys come in loaded for bear, and the hot chicks end up getting used and dumped.

So… What does this mean for attractive women? Y’all need to showcase your personalities AS.MUCH.AS.POSSIBLE! :D Let the guys know that you’re willing to hear what they have to say, and they’ll let down that shield that they built up from being rejected so many times by the upper echelon of American females. The best bet for very attractive women is to be friendly… not to EVERYBODY, but to the guys that you’d like to talk to you because they’re scared to death that you’re going to be some crabby bitch and they’re looking right past YOU at your not-as-attractive homegirl, because they figure she’ll be more friendly and likely to be good relationship material.

As for the guys… You have to realize that attractive women get a lot of stuff, but they’re also getting played left and right. Sooner or later, they get tired of that and want a “good man” to spend time with that actually likes them for who they are and not just because of their fantastic looks. Pick yourselves up after the thousandth rejection and don’t get jaded towards attractive women. Give them a chance to give YOU a chance and see where it goes from there.

This week, I had the pleasure of interviewing Eric Rochow, the creator and producer of Gardenfork.tv, his “internet show” or “videoblog”.

What is Gardenfork?

Gardenfork is an internet video show – iTunes video podcast about cooking, gardening, and other stuff. Other stuff can include car repair, or how to drop tree with a chainsaw. Its very eclectic; for example I’ve been doing a series of shows on BBQ, stopping at places whenever I can and interviewing BBQ experts, but then I’m also working on a show about how to repair cracks in your basement walls.

You can watch the show on our website: http://gardenfork.tv or subcribe to it through our page on iTunes.

Why do you do your show?

I’ve always been one of those people who wants to tell people about a neat thing I’ve learned, an interesting fact, a cool gizmo I just read about. This stuff swirls in my head and I’m just driven to want to share what I’ve discovered. Gardenfork is a great outlet for this desire to share information that our viewers, for some reason, like to watch.

And, its just a total blast to do. The viewer feedback is just amazing, and almost instant. Once we post a new episode, we start getting viewers emailing us with comments. The connection I have with the viewers is something you can’t buy.

Here’s a review on viewer posted on the gardenfork page on iTunes:

“Eric Rochow is not a self-promoting, self-congratulatory, larger-than-life celebrity chef. He’s the average guy doing an exceptionally good job putting together a podcast that entertains, informs, and encourages.

From the homey feel of his kitchen to the cutaways to watch the dog chew up a stick or yawn to the occasional multiple retakes as he flubs his lines, you can’t help but to love the show. Eric doesn’t pretend to be anything he isn’t and that is a breath of fresh air in today’s world of highly processed entertainment”

I think what appeals to people is that while I can talk in ‘Web 2.0 speak’ with the best of them, I can also talk about the benefits of a big block Chevy, ( FYI: that’s a specific type of engine produced by GM with dual quad carbs ) or how to keep flea beetles off your lettuce.

“Down to earth” is a phrase I’ve heard a lot when people describe the show. Its me doing a project, and that project may or may not come out they way I intended. I leave in the mistakes, because we’re all human, we make mistakes every day.

How did you get started doing Gardenfork?

I’ve worked in creative fields all my life: video, film, photography, design; and I had pitched several cooking-gardening shows to the lifestyle cable channels. The show ideas were always well received, but because no well known personality was attached to the shows, they weren’t picked up.

Last year I was on the web and ran across a video blog, crashtestkitchen, and the lightbulb went off in my head – I could produce and distribute my own cooking-gardening show – and I didn’t need the cable networks to do it.

Then we had our friends over for dinner one night, and I handed my friend Bill my video camera and said, “We’re shooting a cooking show tonight”. I made puttanesca, which is a favorite of mine, we had fun doing it, and that energy came through on the video. I had forgotten to turn on all the lights in the kitchen, so the video is pretty dark, so I called that episode “Puttanesca In The Dark with Bill”

How do you choose what to videoblog about?

Basically, whatever I’m doing on the weekend, I try to make a show about it. Last weekend I made Rhubarb Jam and tried my hand at canning, so we shot that. It was great. Sometimes I plan ahead, sometimes its just whatever project needs doing that weekend. Now we get viewer mail asking for shows on specific topics, like building a grape arbor, so I’ll do that as well.

I have to replace the clutch in my truck soon, so that will be the subject of a two part show. You can’t show how to change out a clutch in 8 minutes.

What’s your background? How do you know how to do all this stuff? :)

My parents are born and bred New Yorkers, my grandfather was a buliding super in the Bronx, but I grew up mainly in Wisconsin. We did a lot of hiking, fishing, hunting. When something broke, we didn’t call the repairman, we figured out how to fix it.

When I was 14, my father bought my brother and I a 1949 Ford Pickup. It was in pieces. We learned about cars by putting one back together. At the same time I started gardening, and when I moved back to NY, I started cooking.

I now divide my time between Northwest Connecticut and New York City, both of which are fertile ground for many episodes of gardenfork.

Is producing Gardenfork.tv paying your bills?

Not yet, but in the future that is a very real possibility. More and more advertisers are moving to the web, and gardenfork viewers are a niche audience that certain advertisers very much want to connect with. The advertising wont be obtrusive, it will be along the lines of how PBS thanks its sponsors, with short pre-roll and post-roll clips.

In the very near future, your TV and your computer will be one appliance, its the ‘convergence’ everyone has been talking about, its finally happening. Gardenfork is part of this convergence of traditional TV and the Web. I wear the “media disruptor” label proudly.

Gardenfork has also helped me in business, as my multimedia company, choplogic, is now helping corporations create their own internal and external video blogs, text blogs, and community sites. My wife calls me “Husband 2.0″

Going forward, we are also in pre-production on a new internet video show, Real World Green http://realworldgreen.com, which is about practical things you can do to lower your impact on the earth. The goal is to appeal to viewers who may not relate to the current crop of ‘green’ programming that’s out there, our emphasis is on practical; less talk, more about things you can do.

Thanks Eric, and good luck with Gardenfork / RealWorldGreen! :D

Bill Cammack • New York City • Freelance Video Editor • alum.mit.edu/www/billcammack