R e z i n

Where the Adventures began!

When I first attempted to introduce Bishop to riding on a motorcycle, it didn’t go well. I tried setting him up so that he would be supported on the back of my Harley and I thought between the back rest and being somewhat strapped in he would be OK but he really was not into it.

When I first got the Ural, he kept trying to jump out of it as soon as he got spooked. Bishop has very bad PTSD from years of abuse and neglect before he got to the shelter, and was a shelter dog for a few years after. He has always like confined spaces when he was scared, so I turned the sidecar into a crate for him.

I used part of the divider for the backseat of a car for the top, and a bunch of bungee cords to make a spiderweb that would shut the side door. The way I set it up. It would give him incentive to keep his head in the right area, because that gave him the most room. I threw a bunch of treats and a blanket in the sidecar so that he would feel more comfortable.

When we first got going, he was definitely nervous and didn’t know what to make of it, but I had him strapped in as well so he couldn’t jump out if he wanted to. After a few minutes, he started getting acclimated to the fact that we were moving and realized that it was just like being in the car. He absolutely loves riding in vehicles, and I could tell he was totally gonna be cool with it.

We went from my old house in “the hood” to the nice neighborhood nearby, then back around. It was a short ride just to see how everything went, and the experiment was a success!

I had gotten a cheap camera from Amazon because I didn’t have that GoPro money at the time. I felt like the thing actually did well enough to get started. When I was watching the video, I definitely felt like it needed something and decided to add some music. I started digging around my music filea to find something about the right length, and this instrumental RUSH song fit perfectly.

Watching this video a few years later, in a different city really makes me a bit homesick for my old neighborhood in Manchester, Connecticut. The entire neighborhood was built at once as mill housing for the Cheney Silk Mills in the 1920’s. It was originally populated by Italian immigrants. In the 80s and 90s, the older folks passed away or retired to Florida and left the next generation their 2-4 family houses. The children of the 80s mostly wanted to move out to the more suburban areas, and used the neighborhood as their Section 8 piggybank.

They raised families in places like Tolland and Glastonbury while collecting checks on people raising families in the dilapidated old house their family came up in. There was no mutual respect between landlords and tenants. They went back to the old neighborhood to collect their checks and buy their drugs and drink at the dive bar down the street.

When I came into the neighborhood, I bought a house that had been completely trashed right after college. I worked on it over the course of 22 years and became pretty well known in the neighborhood. When I watch this video, I see the home of my old friends and neighbors and think of all the good times that I had with the wild cast of characters that lived there.

By most people’s standards, it looks like a very nice suburban neighborhood. In a lot of ways, it was. It was also kind of a lawless place. in this video I drive by three houses that had been shot up in the time that I lived in the neighborhood. A few others were trap houses. We had people that were shooting at people for stealing their catalytic converters, and the thieves were shooting back. The cops pretty much refused to deal with anything in the neighborhood and had written it off since the early 2000’s. We handled our own business on the East Side. Gangs and Motorcycle Clubs served a purpose and had a place in keeping the order of the chaos. It’s really a shame too, because seeing how people are living in Pittsburgh it’s really shocking how nice that neighborhood was for having the problems that it did.

I still miss the big trees and the big beautiful old houses, but mostly my old friends and neighbors. It wasn’t the same, even at the point that I left, but it’s tough not to watch the video and think of the 22 years that I spent in that neighborhood and the good times I had, even through the bad ones. Live moves on, and we are in a better place, but this really is where Bish Bucket Adventures all began.

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