Patrick Duff
So long to a good friend
It is with great sadness that I write of the passing of our dear
friend, Patrick Duff. While walking their dog Sheila on November 5th
near their home, a tree was struck by lightning and large branch hit
Patrick and his wife Suzy. While Suzy sustained minor injuries, at
that point we lost a very good friend to
Sound RIDER!
Patrick outside of Vista House during the Anti 5 Poker
Run of 2006. It was so hot we were wearing evaporative cooling
vests.
A
special note to other media. These are copyrighted photographs
DO
NOT attempt to reproduce them.
 I hired Patrick to work with Sound RIDER! back in 2006. He
was instrumental in the creation of the Packing Light/Packing Right
book, doing much of the initial editing and almost all of the
product photography and photo post production.
At the same time he assisted in more than doubling the offerings
in the online store writing much of the copy and uploading text and
photos. He was a great spokesman for the products and fully
understood the mission of Sound RIDER!
In true Packing Light/Packing Right form.
Patrick doing laundry during the Rally in the Gorge.
Patrick also became an integral part of a number of Sound
RIDER! events including The Rally in the Gorge, The Anti-5, the
first Sasquatch Poker Run and the 3 Pass BLA$T. We created more than
a dozen routes and maps that summer and rode a lot of miles
together.
 In
2007 Patrick went to work for a small book publishing company on
Bainbridge Island and married his sweetheart, Suzy. They bought a
home in Shoreline and befriended a sweet Australian Shepherd,
Sheila. Connie and I stayed good friends with Patrick and Suzy doing
outdoor adventures now and then that included hiking and kayaking.
Hiking on a snowy day in the Issaquah Alps, 2009. L-R: Tom, Sheila,
Patrick, Suzy & Connie.
That year Patrick purchased a Yamaha Majesty scooter and became a
regular attendee with our Northwest Scooter Enthusiasts group.
He joined us on many rides to places like Mt. Baker, the Ginkgo
Petrified Forest and Whidbey Island to name just a few.
 This
year we invented the Tuesday Night Camera Club, a good excuse to go
have social time together and hone our photography skills. Wed meet
and share several of our own recent pictures with each other, as well
as a few others that wed admired from other shooters. The conversation
would ensue and before you knew it we were both making better
photos. Wed talk about light, depth perception and placement and
challenge each other with assignments. One night he challenged
me to shoot 100% manual mode for the next month. Not easy to do when
it's so easy to go auto in the digital age. I countered putting him
up to the challenge of working on flash fill techniques.
Patrick snagged this stunning photograph of a
lenticular cloud during a hike in the Cascades and shared it with me
at the Tuesday Night Camera Club.
Although Patrick never worked fulltime for Sound RIDER!
again, he routinely helped out doing sales at the Seattle Motorcycle
Show and we were thrilled to have him back working with us at the
Rally in the Gorge this summer. As Connie says he totally saved me
when she had to check into a motel for three days with sun stroke during
the rally. Patrick and Stacey Swanson manned the registration desk
and store sales throughout Connies absence.
He was a loyal, dedicated individual that we could always count
on here at Sound RIDER! He was a good friend to Connie and me,
and we are all indebted to his goodness. We will miss him greatly.
If this happened to some else, I know Patrick's wit well enough to
figure
he might say something like this:
Well you see Tom, this just goes to show you, if you wear
your gear and keep your riding skills sharp, youre probably more
likely to get struck by a falling branch in a lightening storm, than check
out on a bike.
We'll keep our chins up in this sad time; we know Patrick would
want it that way.
Tom Mehren/Fall 2009 |
