Originally published in August 2009.

2022 update: Currently Corndog is Jake Gagne’s Crewchief in MotoA Superbike

Last Summer I saw a guy that I used to know.

We were invited to a couple’s fiftieth wedding anniversary last August and brought the entire brood to the party, held on a warm summer day with the Mississippi River in the background. Forty or fifty people sat at tables and talked or danced to the music–occasionally a Polka–and looked over a scrapbook of the couple’s life together. He was in his late seventies and missed being in the Greatest Generation by just a whisker. He actually flew planes in the military in the dying days of WWII, but most of his career was spent in jets over Korea and later in Viet-Nam. After that he flew the Vice-President around and still flies a small private plane to this day. He and I had an interesting chat about the similarities between fighter pilots and motorcycle racers. He seemed to think that the trait that both had, that made them able to race bikes or fly combat, was the ability to keep a clear head even when most of their breakfast was running down their leg. That conversation ended when he was dragged away to dance with his wife, an act which he seemed to have to drum up quite a lot of courage in order to accomplish.

The party ensued. I never know what to do or what to say at these things. It’s a crap-shoot if you mention motorcycles or racing; you either get the guy whose brother was maimed after a…