The problem with having an obsessive-compulsive personality is that once a different rabbit runs across your path, the rabbit you were chasing ceases to exist. And off you go, chasing the new rabbit.

I have one of those personalities as diagnosed by a mental health professional with enough letters after his name to make up his own personal alphabet. We O-C types get so far into something and are so single-minded that we tend to succeed, and those around us are flabbergasted when one day we're off hounding the next rabbit.

Well, I'm off hounding the next rabbit.

I bought a motorcycle. For the last six months or year I've told friends that there was a motorcycle coming up, and it has. For those of you that care, it's a '74 Yamaha TX650A 650cc twin that doesn't run, but is complete. Within a few months it will be 750cc, low, fast and a predatory black, with an exhaust note reminiscent of the glory days of British twin flat-track victories.

The bike sits in pieces in my studio (now renamed "shop") and I'm making arrangements for machine shops and platers and parts, while stripping the poor old girl to her knickers and beyond, polishing the aluminum that hasn't corroded while she spent the last 25 years ridden then parked in the salt air of Santa Cruz. I'm mapping out the frame tabs that will stay and those that will go, thinking about the possibility of doing some carbon-fibre composite work to replace steel here and there, and trying to hustle conversion coating for the aluminum prior to painting it, for as we all know, you can't really paint bare aluminum, for there is no such thing, what with instantaneous oxidation of the stuff.

Photography. I'll still do some of it. I've had to cancel three shoots out East, including one with a beautiful girl that offered to fly me to NY to shoot her, due to dayjob schedules. (The bike I can work around travel.) I am accepting paying work - after all, anodizing and boring and parts cost money. But I probably won't be doing much testing anytime soon. And I'll probably be putting some lenses and stuff up on eBay, though not the equipment I actually use.

Having such a one-track mind isn't bad. I derive huge pleasure from each new challenge. But what I don't want to do is lose my friends in the process. Please feel free to write, drop by, stay a month (if the smell of penetrating oil doesn't prevent you from sleeping), or even propose photographic projects. It just occurred to me today that I haven't been to a bookstore in a month, so I'm going to do that tonight. Likewise it will probably seem like a good idea to photograph a beautiful woman once in awhile through this next phase.

Anyway, I'll probably be back - if nothing else I'll post some pix of the motorcycle.

-Don