Kari Prager, bay area founder of Cal BMW/Triumph and Tri Valley BMW/ KTM passed away Sunday, Nov 14, at age 62 (?) from strange medical problems which apparently had remained undiagnosed until recently. He had been in a head on collision on a single track dirt ride on Memorial day and I'm unclear whether this had anything to do with the medical problems which followed. Kari held degrees from Dartmouth in Anthropology and Fine Arts, and had dropped out of a dotoral degree program at Harvard "but dropped out to become motorcycle technician and other duties in shop", eventually parlaying that into two thriving dealerships. I've known Kari perhaps 10 or 15 years and I've lost count of how many of his shop rides I've been on and the number of times he's offered me free expert technical advice on repairs I decided to do for myself. I recall Kari talking about the Zen of pistol target shooting and his misadventures in Europe when he managed to enter an eastern bloc country presenting among his other travel documents, a totally bogus one that he had artistically manufactured himself from a California driver's license and a couple of borrowed stamps from his local hotel. Kari said that later it finally occurred to him that traveling in cold war era eastern Europe carrying forged documents was really an incredibly stupid trick to pull, even for a motorcyclist. A guy who will be long remembered, admired and missed by many. Deepest sympathy and condolences to his family. [URL]http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=kari+prager&btnG=Google+Search[/URL]
