Lisa Thompson:
CLASS OF 1978
La Canada High SchoolClass of 1978
La canada flintridge, CA
North Allegheny High SchoolClass of 1978
Wexford, PA
St. Martin of Tours SchoolClass of 1968
Kankakee, IL
Lisa's Story
UPDATE May 2024:
Oh, you know what time of year it is! Our Women in the Wind Honey Badgers Chapter 7th Annual Longest Day Charity Ride & Event benefiting the Alzheimer's Association! Our ride this year is on Saturday, June 8, 2024. Find our event page on Facebook by searching for The Longest Day Ride (our page is the only one that comes up), or go to the website TLDRide (with the usual ending) and that is our official fundraising page with Alzheimer's Association. Donate in honor of a loved one, or in the memory of someone who has passed with this horrible disease. If you're in the area of Virginia Beach, come on by & join us on June 8th! This years flyer is posted in my photos.
More on our 2023 RV/motorcycle trip last August/Sept - I guess I never finished sharing our big RV/motorcycle trip last summer. We saw SO many cool places and did some great riding (not nearly as much as we would have liked), got COVID in South Dakota LOL; that slowed things down for about 10 days. Favorite places we stayed in/rode include: Titan RV Park in Vilonia, Arkansas (a Titan II nuclear missile complex that a guy bought & turned into an RV campground & Air B&B) AMAZING!!, Tombstone RV Park, AZ (super fun riding around Tombstone, side trip to Bizbee, AZ - GREAT area to ride in!), Rain Spirit TV Park located between two AMAZING places... Cottonwood, AZ & Jerome, AZ - great mountain riding & historical places to see. Moab, UT and Dutch John, UT (Flaming Gorge - OMG the riding out there was PHENOMENAL!!). So many other places in between those mentioned! That trip lasted just over two months! What an excellent experience. (photos added to the album of some of these places).
In South Dakota, we stayed with our nephew & family on their farm (like literally FARM - pigs, hogs, turkeys, chickens, quail, rabbits.... oh yes, and there was 'harvesting' of the turkeys while we were there).
2023 UPDATE - My life in a nutshell (right where it belongs!!)
August 2023…. The big RV & bike trip west! Good times in South Dakota & Utah so far. Beautiful country we live in! I’ve added a few photos.
Updated July 4, 2023: WE DID IT AGAIN!! Five years in a row, WITW Honey Badgers have exceeded our goal in fundraising for the Alzheimer's Assn Longest Day event! Our goal for 2023 was $17,000. So far, we have raised $17,446.00 The fundraiser does not officially end until the last day of August, so if you're still interested in supporting this cause, please do so!! The website is shown on the flyer in my photos. IT'S NOT TOO LATE!!
HAPPY 4TH OF THE JULY!
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I've been officially RETIRED for two years now! My current motorcycle just 'flipped' 100,000 on the ODO - YESTERDAY! More on that & the truck & trailer we bought to enhance our retirement travels will be covered after the next paragraph. Ah, yes - I am still passionately pounding the pavement (and social media) trying to raise awareness of #ENDALZ #TheLongestDay
Saturday, June 24, 2023, is the BIG DAY for our Women in the Wind Honey Badgers Chapter 6th Annual Longest Day Charity Ride & Event! in that time, we have raised OVER $50,000 for the Alzheimer's Assn! WE GOT TV NEWS COVERAGE THIS YEAR! If you would like to see the video interview & article - go to the website for WTKR (in Hampton Roads) and in the search box, type in "Women s motorcycle group" and you will see the link. Gonna be honest - I did get a little misty when I started talking about my mom (she had Alzheimer's and passed away in 2017). OK, enough about that. Be sure to check out my new photos, one is of the flyer for our charity ride, which includes the LINK for those who would like to make a donation to honor a loved one who had, or currently has Alzheimer's Disease, or any type of dementia (100% goes directly to Alzheimer's Assn, and is tax deductible).
RETIREMENT so far..... has been amazing. I highly recommend it LOL. Our plan to buy an RV to travel around in finally happened! We also got a great truck - big enough for both motorcycles to go in the bed, and pull the trailer. Go big or go home, right? We've taken several trips in the year we've had it so far. It's a learning curve, to be sure. Thank God I married a guy who is hands-on and can fix or work on virtually ANYTHING, that allows more $$ to go into actually taking trips & enjoying life.
THE TRAILER - a 37 foot, 2017 Outback Super-Lite with three slides. Longest trip so far has been two weeks in Nashville, but there were many other trips that were shorter. LOVE having the bikes with us and NOT having to give up space in the trailer for them. We looked at toy-haulers, but honestly, I couldn't get around the fact that no matter how much lipstick you put on that pig, part of your "living space" is still just a garage. LOL.
THE TRUCK - looking for a truck during the pandemic "supply chain" disaster was interesting. Everything we saw advertised was gone before we even made a phone call on it. Went to a dealership to see one that was on their website & they JUST happened to have the truck we ended up buying that was just traded in and not advertised yet. GMC Sierra 3500 dually. YA BABY. I think this truck could pull our HOUSE if we needed it too. It's amazing. Long bed so both bikes fit into the bed, was a requirement. Jim's VTX 1800 just BARELY makes it, my 2011 Vstrom is no problem.
100,000 miles on my bike! Finally. It's been killing me for the past few weeks watching the ODO inch up by just a few hundred miles here & there. FINALLY, yesterday it hit the 100K mark. This is my 6th or 7th motorcycle - never put that many miles on a single bike before. A very satisfying feeling, indeed!
OUR KIDS - What can I say besides... they are both AMAZING. Our daughter is now working for SiriusXM as Strategy & Operations, Artist & Industry Relations, Associate Director. We live vicariously through her with her travels and celebrity encounters LOL. Our son, equally as AMAZING, works as a Senior Software Engineer at Ghostpunch Games (yes, dream career for most guys.... he makes video games!) and he just purchased his first home last October. What we did to deserve squeezing out two kids as great as ours... I have NO idea!
That's all for now. Be sure to check out the new photos I uploaded!
8/16/2022 - Another UPDATE...Expand for more
for our 5th Annual Longest Day Charity Ride & Event benefiting Alzheimer's Association... our total donations have now reached $15,749!!
SUCCESS! Our 5th Annual Longest Day Charity Ride & Event benefiting Alzheimer's Association was a great success! With the cash donations on the day of our ride, added to what had already been raised, we were able to EXCEED our goal of $12,000!! As of 6-22-2022, Women in the Wind Honey Badgers Chapter has raised $12,960.27. Thank you to all who donated to our fundraiser. BTW - we have until August 31st to add to our donations. Check out my photos below for the info on our event flyer (posted in photos) if you would like to support the Alzheimer's Association! Photos from the event day are now added as well.
UPDATE: June 2022
Apparently my profile was put in "classmates jail" because I dared to mention a website {{{ OH THE HUMANITY }}} I just attended a Women in the Wind motorcycle event in Apex NC which was amazing. You should definitely take a look at the photos I posted. There may or may not be a photo of the flyer with information related to the site I referred to above. You know, over 6 MILLION people, in America alone, are currently suffering with Alzheimer's disease. You can be part of the solution..... just check out my photo!
Just took an AMAZING motorcycle trip in August for 24 days! That is the longest trip I've taken on my bike and I LOVED IT. Well, I loved all it besides riding through Kansas LOL. What a nightmare! Note to self for future bike trips - I will add a couple days on to the trip just to ride AROUND Kansas to avoid it completely. Sure, it's beautiful for a few hours, but almost two days of riding through "nothing" with winds so strong I had to use my skills of riding at the track (practically hanging off the side of the bike) to keep it straight in my lane. It worked really well, but definitely took a toll on my body LOL.
States we covered... Virginia, West Va, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, South Dakota, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, North Carolina. We covered about 6,800 miles between August 3rd - August 26th. Ahhhh... retirement - gotta love it! Photos of the trip have been added to my album.
UPDATE: Virginia's DMV released a new PSA for motorcycle safety and some of the area MSF Rider Coaches are in it - including me! If you want to view the video just use these words to search "Virginia DMV's newest PSA for motorcycle safety." and there will be a link to Youtube with that exact sentence in the header. I pop up in the commercial a few times - red riding jacket. Also, I am the rider during all the night time riding. It was super fun to do.
AND NOW - BACK TO MY REGULAR PROFILE.......
2020 is just around the corner..... my husband and I are looking forward to retiring in about two years... maybe less, maybe a little more, but it's on the near horizon! YA BABY!! Our plan for retirement is to either get a toy hauler (RV to load motorcycles & go), or to possibly just look into renting furnished condos (or whatever) for a few months at a time in different areas of the US and enjoy our time riding in those areas, then move on to the next. We haven't yet looked into the pros/cons or cost of each yet, so not sure which way we will go.
Both our kids have moved on to bigger/better jobs in their chosen career fields. Our son, James, now works at Kinemagic in New Orleans - not video game programming any more, while he's still programming virtual reality, it's for training purposes, not gaming, and he LOVES the stability of not working in the gaming industry. If you're not familiar with the major issues in the video gaming industry for workers, try watching the Netflix program "Patriot Act" and the episode on the gaming industry, for a real eye-opener!
Our daughter, Alina, has moved from CMA (Country Music Assn) to Pandora (no, not the jewelry, but the music streaming service). She is also loving the change and now has the opportunity to work with and meet people in more than just country music, although country music is her mainstay in Nashville.
Both our kids are AMAZING!!!!!
My Spouse
We were originally penpals. He was stationed on Diego Garcia (US Navy). We exchanged letters for several months - I met his plane when he returned from deployment and he flew down to LA from San Jose every weekend from 7/86 - 2/87 when he asked me to move up & live with him. I did. 1 year later we were married.. 1 year later our first child was born... 2 years afer that our 2nd child was born. We were married for 26 years July, 2014. I am an MSF certified Rider Coach and teach classes primarily on military bases here in the Hampton Roads area. I currently coach the Basic Rider Course and several experienced courses including the sport bike class. My husband retired from the Navy after 20 years & is now in a GS position working with NETC - Naval Education Training Command. The garage is packed with motorcycles now - can't even turn around in it! We've got 5.... 4 are runnin' and one is rustin' ha.
I'm on my 7th bike... but currently still own three (Suzuki Vstrom, Ninja, Honda Nighthawk). It's a good day when you can wake up and ask yourself... "what bike should I ride today?" My husband is more loyal - he bought his bike in 2002 and still has it. VTX 1800. He's rebuilt the engine, got a custom paint job, hand-tooled saddle... and over 100K miles on it. He still loves it.
(old info on kids/family).......
My Kids
2 kids. My son is 26. He is into his computer & video games, and graduated from Digipen Institute of Technology in Washington to be a gaming programmer. James' first job was in Florida at Dark Side Gaming Studio and is now with High Voltage Games in New Orleans. He's really enjoying it. My daughter is 24. She graduated from Belmont University in Nashville going for a degree in Music Business. Her first job was with CMT - Country Music Television, then she worked at CMA (Country Music Assoc) for several years. She recently accepted a new position with Pandora (streaming music) in marketing. And yes, the little hooker gets to meet everyone. Both our kids are doing GREAT. Could not have hoped for more for them.
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