New joke making the rounds:

Q: Why are there so many hippies in Floyd County?

A: They heard there's no work here.

God, you know times are bad when hippie jokes make a comeback.

Hear an increasing amount of talk lately about the lack of work and/or the lack of income. The problem, of course, is nationwide. Local artists who travel to out-of-town shows say crowds and sales are down. Local businesses report more lookers than buyers. Musicians say paying gigs are fewer.

We've seen a shift in Floyd: Less talk about living and more about making a living.

Let's have a show of hands: How many came here to make money?

How many came here because of the lifestyle?

Lifestyle still wins but he margin is shrinking.

Had a salesman walk into the studio the other day and open the conversation with "let me maximize your income potential."

Looked up from my magazine and answered: "Let me maximize your life expectancy. Leave before I get up out of this chair."

We see more and more emphasis on turning Floyd into a mini-mecca for "business opportunity." We're overrun with those who want to "network." They hand out business cards to everyone they meet and they talk about marketing and business plans and "maximizing your potential" until you want to toss your cookies all over their designer tennis shoes.

Floyd doesn't need more seminars on "turning your business into a success." Discussions on organic gardening or alternative engery would better serve foks around here. Most who come here are not the "hippies" who show up more in jokes than on the town streets. Most are those who made their lives an economic success somewhere else and came to Floyd to enjoy the benefits of those labors. They came here to escape the business cards, the "networking" socials, the sales pitches and the eternal chase for the almighty dollar.

Don't let the magic that is Floyd get lost under the onslaught of those who measure success in financial terms and confuse making a living with just living your life and making the most of it.

A long-time friend had a short, blunt response when he read here that Amy and I had bought motorcycles.

"You're crazy," he said.

His concern that a 60-year-old man with bum knees, a questionable hip and pins holding his ankles together should be tooling around the roads on a motorized two-wheeler is understandable. Conventional wisdom says we shouldn't do it.

But Amy and I have never been conventional and I've always been an adrenaline junkie. It's a shame to waste one of the best motorcycle venues in the country -- The Blue Ridge Parkway.

The other day I met a 67-year-old woman with two plastic knees and a spinal cord stimulator in her back. She and her husband were riding their twin Harley Electra-Glides on the Skyline Drive and Blue Ridge Parkway from Front Royal to Asheville and back. She started riding bikes just two years ago -- after surgery to replace her knees and insertion of the spinal cord stimulator.

At 55 and 60, Amy and I live every day to the fullest. We've both had wonderful lives and we came here to enjoy the years we have left. Once Amy gets her motocycle certification we plan a number of trips on the bikes.

Crazy? Perhaps but life itself is a little crazy. Might as well enjoy it.

This week's full moon, captured over Floyd County with a Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III digital SLR and a 400mm f/2.8 telephoto lens.

The music wasn't the only attraction for this young visitor to the Friday Night Jamboree.

Clyde Williams (center on fiddle) has been a fixture of the Friday Night Jamboree for a long as most can remember. His Old Time Country Band is a crowd favorite and musicians like to jam with him outside the Floyd Country Store. Now a German television audience will know about Clyde and the Friday Night Jamboree. A video crew shot (below) shot footage for an upcoming special on the store and music in America.

As I write this, the streets are filling in Floyd for a summer Friday Night along Locust Street, the town's music row.  As always music will spill out onto the street and musicians will play at Oddfellas Cantina, Blackwater Loft, The Country Store and Cafe del Sol.

Diners will chow down at Oddfellas, Blue Ridge Restaurant and El Charro or they will grab a hot dog and shake at Country Store or pizza at Cafe del Sol.  Some will dine at Pine Tavern or grab a burger at D.J.'s drive-in.

Sooner or later, most end up downtown, listening to the music or jamming with other musicians on the street.

It is a big part of what makes Floyd special -- like no place on earth.

Mowed the yard, also known as The South 40, Thursday. With all the rain and a busy schedule, it was the first cutting for a month. Which means I had to mow each section twice.  When it was over, there was enough grass on the ground to rake and bale.

Some people look at the three-and-a-half acre front yard and ask "why do you mow it all? Hey, this is Floyd and the neighbors get testy if your lawn looks ratty. Besides, the expansive yard was one of the reasons we bought the house four years ago. It takes about four hours to finish the yard and the 275.5 feet of road frontage.  The lowest section is more wetland than yard and the grass is always wet, even after a week of no rain.

But it's worth it. We love our home and the life here. Wouldn't have it any other way.

Amy is an amazing woman. In nearly 29 years of marriage she has surprised me time and again with her refusal to let age or convention get in the way of her enjoyment of life.

Unlike some women I've known over the years, Amy has never been bashful about her age. Her approach to life is still as young as when we met more than 30 years ago.

On her 50th birthday, she decided to get a tattoo.  For her 55th birthday this month, she said she wanted a motorcycle -- a small one that would get good gas mileage and let her run into town and back without busting the budget in these days of $4.00 a gallon gas.

Her request came at a time when small motorcycles are hot sellers. Others want to save money on gas too. She researched small bikes, checked out the bike forums on the Internet, made a lot of phone calls, and finally found what she wanted: A 250-cc Suzuki at Star City Powersports in Roanoke.  We bought it on the spot.

Unfortunately, her new interest in motorcycles rekindled a long-ago love affair that I had with Harley-Davidson. Harleys played a big role in our family. My father rode one. So did my mother. They courted on Harleys and drove from the Navy base in Norfolk to his home in Florida on bikes. I learned to ride on an Electra-Glide and racked up miles on Softtails, Fat Boys and Road Kings.

So Amy's new rice-burner sat in the garage for just one day before we headed down to Roanoke Valley Harley-Davidson to browse. I knew that at my age and with bad ankles, bum knees and a questionable hip, I didn't want a big cruiser. Not any more. But the dealer had a brand new, 105th Anniversary Sportster XL1200 Low on the showroom floor. I pondered the purchase for, oh, about 60 seconds and told the salesman to draw up the paperwork. Amy, with haggling skills honed from selling cars in her college days and by many years at flea markets and yard sales, succeeded in doing something that used to be impossible with a Harley dealer -- she bargained the price down several hundred dollars.

See you on the road.

Recently, I've noticed an increase of commentary posted by some readers with an obvious ax to grind or hidden agendas. Too often, they post wild cliams against other residents of the area -- often public officials or well known residents -- without citing any backup material or source for the information.

Over the past few days, I've had to remove several comments from a few readers who posted information and cited a source of "I've heard" or "someone told me."

That's not good enough folks. When you make accusations against others, you deal with reputations and you will not use Blue Ridge Muse for character assassination. Comments that include unsourced or undocumented accusations against others will be removed unless the information is public record or backed by a link to a credible source. Those who continue to try and use this forum for such activity will be blocked from posting.

This is my sandbox, my toys and my rules. Play by them or play elsewhere.

Captured at the Friday Night Jamboree.