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Apologies, to myself first, and to all of you who log on and look in.
This year was focused mostly on health issues, and my day job. Now I am feeling better, and work has calmed down enough for me to catch my breath for a few days…before it gets crazy again.
This web site needs upgrading so badly. My guru, who did such a gorgeous job putting it together for me, quit his freelance web design business and got himself a real job. He did some custom flash code and a few other trick things… and I don’t have the original codes. I sure wish I knew Word Press code myself.
And my very neglected, Did-it-myself triadhealing.net web site is totally shut down because it got maliciously attacked or something. So I need to figure out how to resolve that.
Get away from the computer and notice the colors of the leaves or pet a cat or a dog or go feed some koi or something. Notice the little things in nature, look at the sky. Watch birds, get out of your head for a while every day. Good for ya.
Remember when the Yamaha Vmax made history when it became the quickest and fastest production motorcycle back in 1984? It was a big deal to Yamaha, and many a motorcycle enthusiast alike. Yamaha shot this incredible photo of Jay Pee Wee Gleason for the Vmax brochure and billboard campaign for the 1985 Vmax. I have gotten a few emails requesting this poster. Jay contacted the factory and they have no more of them. They gave Jay permission to reproduce the poster! He had one or two virgin copies of the folded brochure poster. I have the guy to scan, photoshop as-needed, and print reproductions of the poster. At long last, you can now get your old wall potato chip replaced!
The poster has been fully restored and custom printed to order. They look fantastic and are suitable for framing. The prints are larger than original size, 18″X49″ on glossy thick paper. Please email me at wendy@wendyj.net, if you would like to order a print. Pricing is $40 plus $8 shipping for US orders. International (including Canada) postage will be based on the individual order, but so far, the cost to send the poster out of the US averages about $25 US or more.
The thumbnail below omits the white letter caption at the bottom, but I assure you, it WILL be on the poster as it originally appeared! Please contact me to order your copy now! Once I recieve your payment, I get the posters printed up, then sent out to Jay for custom autographing. Then he ships the poster to you. The whole process can take 2-3 weeks, because there is very little demand for these things, and it’s just him and me doing this. It’s a totally you-driven thing that we made the restored poster in the first place.
I put together Jay’s collection of TV and factory video appearances onto one DVD. It’s a special Vmax Collector’s Edition, with his legendary smoky burnout at the 1984 Yamaha dealer show at the MGM Grand hotel, Las Vegas, 1984 & 1985 Superbike shootouts featured on PM Magazine & Motoworld, his famous Honda V65 Magna TV spot, and lots more. Bikes on the DVD include Honda Interceptor and V65 Magna, Suzuki GS 1100 and GSX-R 1150, Kawasaki Ninja 900, 750, & 600, and Yamaha FJ1100 and Vmax. A special bonus clip of Jay making History in 2009 with the Gen 2, 2009 Star Vmax in late April on a privately owned Max named Eleanor. Jay got her into the low 9′s!!!
Jay autographed a limited number of the DVD. The signed DVDs can be purchased through the VMOA store. Visit www.v-max.com or go directly to the VMOA store via this link: http://www.vmoa.net/xoops/modules/shop/
You do not need to become a VMOA member to buy an autographed DVD! Simply email Rhonda at vmoastore@comcast.net
I also have some non-autographed copies of the Jay Gleason Test Riding Legend DVD available as well. They are $25 (including shipping and handling) for NTSC (domestic orders), and $35 for PAL (Int’l orders). If you are a motorcycle nostalgia buff, a fan of 80s Japanese motorcycles or Jay Pee Wee Gleason, this DVD is a must!!
NTSC DVD
PAL DVD
Happy New Year! I heard this on the radio. Felt it inspiring and thought provoking enough to seek out the transcript to share with you. It is from Michael Josephson, of the Josephson Institute for Ethics http://charactercounts.org/michael/. I hope you will read it, maybe get something positive from it, and share it as well.
Take a Year-End Attitude Inventory 599.5
It’s a wise custom to end an old year and begin a new one with serious self-reflection. What did you learn this year that can improve your life and make you a better person?
Start by examining the way you think and feel about your job, your relationships, and yourself. After all, the single most important factor in personal happiness and your impact on others is your attitude.
In the geometry of life, the axiom is “positive attitudes produce positive results.” They make success more likely, failures less harmful, pleasures more frequent, and pain more bearable. Some people tend to bring warm sunshine wherever they go; others bring cold chills. What do you bring?
To find out where you can improve, take an honest inventory of your predispositions, the attitude you’re most likely to start with.
• Are you generally optimistic or pessimistic?
• Do you tend to assume the best or expect the worst of people?
• Is your first instinct to be empathetic or judgmental?
• Is your first instinct to be supportive or critical?
• Do you send the message that you enjoy life or that you’re barely enduring it?
• Do you come across as the captain of your own ship or simply a passenger?
Wherever you are on the positive-attitude spectrum, think how much better things could be if you were more consistently and self-consciously optimistic, empathetic, supportive, grateful, enthusiastic, hopeful, and cheerful.
So why not resolve to think, act, and speak more positively about yourself, your family, your coworkers, and everyone else in your life?
This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.
Excerpt from one of my favorite teachers, Gahl, taken from his e-zine, “SpiriTalk Newsletter – CosmicNavigator.com”.
Mercury starts his retrograde motion on Jan 11th right after the Full Moon. Mercury will turn direct on Jan 31st. Since Mercury is the planet of tricks, it is tricky to say how Mercury Retro will affect you personally. I have noticed that the best, funniest, and hmm, most embarrassing synchronicities tend to happen in Mercury Retrograde. Mercury Retrograde is a worm hole between lifetimes, dimensions and parallel lives. It creates short-cuts and destroys them right after. Like the stairways in the corridors of Hogwarts, once used they move away. This means that while communication on the mundane level might be hindered, channeling, dreams, aha moments and all other extra sensory communication will be favored and experienced more frequently. In other words, if you are waiting for a check it might take time, or never show up but if you are waiting for an answer from God it will travel faster then light. Here are a few tips that can help you in the next three weeks:
* Back your computer files
* Check your bank statements for fraud or mistakes
* Take longer to drive to meeting, expect traffic to be heavier
* Don’t sign contracts if possible
* Be extra careful from slips of tongues
* Edit and or read emails twice before you send them
* Revisit old projects, ideas and rework them
* Be extra careful when downloading and or upgrading programs
* Don’t buy any new electronic equipment
* Reconnect to old friends, reconcile rebuild past connections
The Chinese New Year, Solar eclipse and New Moon in Cancer will be on Jan 26th. It is going to be a fresh new start for 2009 and can be viewed as the real beginning of the energies of the year. I hope you all have a great New Year and may everything you need (not necessarily want) come to you in an effortless flow…
-Gahl
A bit of trivia for Vmax enthusiasts: Jay shows me his Vmax back in 1999, when I visited him in Florida. I was on a videotaping kick that year, being pre-Y2K & all….but now, on the advent of a newly designed Vmax, I thought the world would love to see Jay’s Vmax. Pure street stock original, as minty fresh as the day it was given to him by Yamaha for his 30th birthday.
My dad found a few little film reels. Gave them to me to maybe put on video. Had them transferred at a really nice mail order place, made DVDs and a digi8 backup. I have a small video editing suite at home, with my tape source a Sony TRV310 Digi8 camcorder. I ingested the footage into iMovie, and cleaned up a couple clips to share with family and friends. Enjoy! Feedback welcome.
Wendy (that’s me) at 18 months, Seal Beach, California. My first swim. Didn’t like the suit. Too scratchy. Who wants to wear clothes in the water anyway? Don’t do it when we take our baths, right? You can see my jovial sense of humor showing already at this early age.
This clip is very special. It is of my grandfather, Steven Wiencek, attempting the Hoola Hoop in 1957, followed by one of my great aunts, I think. Grandfather died when I was pretty young. All other grandparents lived into thier mid-90s. This one is for my dad, my entire family, and all you hot hippie hoopers out there!!!
I finally got the footage edited, compressed and uploaded to You Tube. Here it is:
I’ve known The Quickest & Fastest Man On Two Wheels since 1982. He is one of my best, longest known and dearest friends. I recently put together a DVD of his TV appearances from the mid-80s, where he was THE man to hire to ride your motorcycle, if you were a factory wanting to know just how fast your bike is in the quarter mile.
Don’t call him PeeWee anymore. Call him Jay. Jay WFO Gleason. (WFO: Wide Fuckin’ Open)
He has been living in the Fort Myers area of Florida since about 1993.
Once the government passed a law preventing the use of quarter mile test times to sell motorcycles, he figured his work was over. His dad passed away in 1991. Lung cancer. Since Jay had never spent much more than a couple visits per year from his mom, he decided to pack it up and move to Florida to be near his mom. The only family he has, besides me.
Jay’s been wrenching bikes and watercraft all this time, but the economy of the area isn’t kind to mechanics.
Seems like the collective consciousness is in sync with seeing this man’s return to the drag strip.
I recently did a web search and found that his name still comes up in conversation, even to this day! I replied on a few motorcycle enthusiast forums, just to set the record straight. Many people though Jay died in a bike crash. That is only partly true. He was flat line for only 7 seconds, but has been back with us ever since. That was a long time ago – during his very brief road racing career. He got into drag racing after that, and as most people know, he’s real good at quarter mile test rides.
Jay is still very old skool. He’s not into computers. His housemate and I are slowly, gradually, getting him up to speed on the internet/email thing. In the meantime, I am the go-between. I am on line alot. Please, if you wish to get ahold of Jay, feel free to contact me, and I will get you in touch with him.
A few months ago, Jay did some test & tunes on an 1/8 mile track in central Florida. He tells me he can still smoke anyone’s times on thier own motorcycle. He still has the magic touch. The man needs to make a comeback.
Jay’s resume is way too extensive to list here. He’s broken many many records (and bones), been featured in hundreds of magazines & publications such as Motorcyclist, Cycle World, Cycle Guide, and Cycle News, billboards and brochures for the 1986 Yamaha Vmax (after he broke the world record, riding the Vmax into the 9s, making it the world’s quickest & fastest motorcycle of the day), and featured on MotoWorld, PM Magazine, and lots of factory videos.
I just finished putting all his TV appearances that were on VHS, to DVD. If you would like a DVD, please email me at wendy@wendyj.net. $10. I will give PayPal instructions. If you are from a factory or magazine, you will get a free one.
Jay sent me some video of his most recent test & tune on a Busa. I will put that together and post it on You Tube.
In the meantime, his very famous Honda V-65 Magna commerical can be found on You Tube.
Rumor has it, Yamaha is coming out with a gnarly new design Vmax for 2009. Time for Jay to give her a few passes down the drag strip, don’t you think, Yamaha Corp? Of anyone, Jay Gleason, the man who made the Vmax the worlds’ fastest motorcycle in 1986, is the perfect jockey for the 2009 Vmax. Let’s do this thing.
Who the heck am I? I used to own & ride a Yamaha Seca 400. My dad used to race motorcycles. I was brought up around boats, water skiing, racing, cars, motorcycles, dirt bike riding, English Trials, etc. I learned to ride in 1986 at the Motorcycle Safety Foundation Rider Course. I put about 18,000 miles on that 400. Gave it up in early 1990. My parents are totally against me riding a motorcycle. Probably because Dad was a firefighter for 30 years. He’s seen alot of squashed ankles & femurs in his rescue career. The asphalt is not kind. I do miss riding, though.