"i wish that i wasn’t - despite my best efforts, rational mind, etc - in a position to wish that my dad loved me more than he loved motorcycles."

I suspect that's not true. From your story, your father seemed to love you a great deal and vice versa. Don't let your understandable grief make you suspectible to dubious reasoning that attempts to put his passion for motocycle riding in opposition to his love for you. That's a cheap tactic and your father was probably bigger than that.

Time will not heal your wound but it will give you the perspective to truly appreciate that your father died doing something he loved which is extremely rare and that passion was a big part of the reason why you loved him as much as you still do. You'll realize that the time you were riding with him while you were a little girl is inseparable from the time he died riding. It's who he was and apparently he was a lot.

Thanks Kevin, but I'm not having a heart attack or scorching the earth or suggesting that left wing idelogue candidates replace right wing ones. Just pointing out that what the Democrats have been doing hasn't worked. You suggest more of the same in an appeal to a "center" which, while suspectly, has "elected" Shrub twice. Go figure.

It would be interesting to see some sort of comparison of the serious injuries between racers and recreational riders. While there are many more of the latter and assuming that's taken into consideration in the comparison, I suspect that most of the donor bike stuff is based on experiences with recreational riders.

So where's your "rational analysis"? Cutesy turns of phrases that say the same thing don't count. So what we don't know the whole story? We never will. Big Deal. So that means people can't comment on the story she wrote? Actually, that should be people can't comment negatively about the story (that seems to be your real concern)? If so, that's a rush to judgement? Nonsense.

Btw, you forgot "snapshot" but given the other strained allusions that might have been too much.

It always amuses me how that phrase is used

...you don't care so much you had to write a long self centered petulant rant about how much you didn't care.

"As a sportsfan it was impossible to escape the coverage of the planecrash Wednesday."

I'm sure one whole late afternoon and evening was overwhelming for you.

"However we hear little about the emergency crews dispatched to extinguish the blaze and treat the wounded."

The "wounded"? Why would you hear a lot about the emergency crews? Thankfully, they didn't get hurt and they did their jobs just fine.

"Or the residents of the structure injured or displaced as a result of the wreckage."

Injured residents? No. Displaced, yes, but most the building is getting back to normal.

"This was a guy who wanted to pilot so he could get to Pebble Beach or Las Vegas faster.

A concern not shared by 99% of Americans, or sportsfans worldwide. Senseless and unnecessary damage."

Really? I didn't know your average private light plane was faster than a commercial jetliner.

99%, huh? LOL

"The United States has troops involved in global military action everyday.

True, true, just how out of proportion media culture contorts its news events."

And here you are posting about it on a website while our troops are in action! For shame!

"I continue to respond because I have a hard time with folks who insist that marriage doesn't come with any responsibility to your spouse or children to not undertake highly hazardous activities and with those who think that motorcyle racing is not dangerous or no more so than anything else we do. Somehow the fact that we are all going to die eventually is supposed to justify us doing anything we want. The arguments that I've heard so far are all illogical, dishonest, or self-serving."

Who's insisting what you claim? Nobody here. What's self serving is your continued insistence that you get to decide what's responsible for someone else or better yet insinuate that people who don't hold to your nanny standard are irresponsible. The "Reponsible Family Man" lecturing/posing is somewhat tiresome.

The guy in question was racing before he got married so he didn't undertake anything new and as has been pointed out, there are plenty of other highly hazadous activities and jobs, recreational and otherwise. So, those are off limits to married people beacuse you say so? Not responsible, huh? But on the bright side, since we know it's an absolute fact being married automatically means that more people care about you than when you were single, if one does decide to be "irresponsible" and something terrible happens, he/she will have more people to cry over them during the funeral.

Jonathan,

I didn't tell you to get a life numbskull.

What I said was that your silly rant about not caring was petulant tripe. "Gee, I really don't care so let me come here and tell strangers how much I don't care. That will prove how much I don't care." Yeah right. If you really didn't care you wouldn't have written the letter. You care. You just care in a "different" way.

I also never said I was broken up about it because I'm not but doesn't mean that I have to be a graceless ass about it. Speaking of which, the rest of your latest letter is just you trying to smack talk your way out the fact that you showed your ass and the sight wasn't pretty. Spin away...

Now, Gary's problem is that he was being stupid. Aside from the bad parallels, he claims he couldn't get away from the story but yet he didn't even know the basic details of it. Please...