Riding the Straightest Roads in Central Minnesota


When you need to be somewhere you tend to take the modern highway.   A purpose designed and built concrete runway connecting large cities and states.  There are no intersections crossing this massive path.  No speed limits below fifty five miles per hour.  Outside the metro areas you can set your cruise control at a speed within the range of the general rate of flowing traffic and just roll along.  The Superslab.

In many cases you will find a series of roads running parallel to the superhighways.  Here in the midwest we call them frontage roads.  They have lower speed limits.  They have stop signs and take you to the little towns which the main arteries have been built to bypass.  Towns with family owned businesses slowly being displaced by box stores and convenience style gas stations.  Generally there's a core community you'll recognize by the homes built in earlier eras.  Like a wagon wheel whose spokes are naturally spreading outward, the centers of these town show patches of new homes on the outlying hillsides where farming families took the opportunity of lots of money to give up the family agribusiness.  I've known people who became millionaires with a single signature.

So the other morning, I got the idea in my head to take a succession of these roads to a town a bit of a distance away.  I hopped on the Vespa and took off.  It could not have been a better morning to ride.

I passed through one town and decided to visit a friend whose got a knack for building his own bikes.  He'll take old machines which have been put to pasture and restores them to reliable running condition.  And then he rides the heck out of em.  Sometimes he does a little custom work to suit his interests or chase a direction a particular model seems to have been headed.  Before some corporate accounting dept. told the designers they had to stay within a certain budget.  You know the story.  A concept is built, redesigns happen, things get added, others removed, and you end up with a bland machine which looks not too much different than all the other similar models.  Then an aftermarket company creates bolt-on kits to "customize" these machines.  It's good marketing and most of what aftermarket companies come up with is useful.  Often necessary.  Some is for show and that's alright too.  You probably realized I'm kind of a utility type of person a while ago.

Anyway, the latest machine my friend has been running and building is a...'79 I think it is(?) KZ650.  He bought the Kawasaki from my neighbor and had to bring it home on a trailer.  The engine needed minor work but turned out to have good compression.  Other bits were time worn and replaced.  The bike, good as they were in their day, was your basic Universal Japaese Motorcycle (UJM).  They were very good  machines, really.  Mid sized with enough pep and torque to handle the 55mph gas crunch superslabs of their day.  Even now, despite their age and given their deserved concessions, they're still capable mid displacement light tourers.

He was laying fiberglass over a mold for a cafe style seat when I got there. If you remember old Nortons and Guzzis, you'll recall a single seat racing inspired tailpiece. 

He found straight, downturned handlebars and added a bar and mirror to the left side.  The bike, in mid design stage if you will, is still primer grey.  The frame is a deep red which really offsets the polished aluminum of the engine and flat primer grey of the tank. 

He stripped out whatever it was Kawasaki hung beneath the seat, giving the whole machine an all business attitude.  The fenders are long gone.  And the orignal pipes have been replaced by a set donated by a Ninja and gathered into a Jardine cannister.  It's a bike you'd have to see.  One you'd want to ride.

Oh, and this Kaw' is kick start only.

"Lead the way," he told me.  So I did. 

We headed north along the first frontage road and followed it through one small town after another.

I kept thinking, man I didn't realize this road was so straight! 

We stopped for a bite at a Subway in one of those convenience style gas stations. 

"Man, what a perfect day to ride," he said.

" Boy am I glad you showed up this morning.  I would not have taken the time to do this if you didn't ride up," he said.

I felt better.  I was worried he'd be annoyed all the roads we'd been on were arrow stright. 

"Man, I'm just sorry I took us on all these boring straight roads."

"No worries.  We'll find the twisties another time."  He popped the last two or three bites worth into his mouth in one shot, chewed them down into manageable swallows and smiled. 

We got back onto the road and headed toward our lives' responsibilities.

Even though time constraints put us on the same road back, it felt a lot better.

I guess I'd forgotten being on any road on a bike is better than the alternative.


Harv

Sometimes Group Rides, Sometimes Just bombing Around

Tonight was a night for a group ride.  I started a forum to encourage local riders to get together for some of the local rides.  But it's not the first time something like this has been done. 

Some years ago there was a group started by a gentleman who had started the idea here in town.  He did a lot of work to build a community out of scooterists.   A lot of effort goes into these sorts of things.  Unfortunately he got rid of his scooter and over time the group began to fragment.  I hope that someday he gets the itch to get another scooter. 

So I can't lay claim to doing something new in terms of starting a scooter riding group.  But I will try to continue the best of what he'd built in the time he rode and created what he had.

The group did Wednesday night rides throughout the riding season.  There were always a few and often quite a few people who showed up at the coffee house by the mall.  He also had a ride for the local food shelf.  We would get donations and canned goods and then ride out on one of the bigger treks of the season.

One year I think we had eleven scooterists ride for the food shelf run.  And many more showed up to give and support us.  He even managed to get us into the local paper!  That was quite a day. 

A friend and fellow scooterist brought the idea back to me enough times that I finally realized it would be the right thing to do.  To see if we could round up the old crew and invite new people to join us.  Technically we began at the end of last year.  Not the best time to start a riding group.  Most people were thinking about winter by the time we got "rolling".

This year's weather gave the impression that spring would start early and get warm fast.  Well it hasn't but we're still riding.  The Wednesday night rides starting at 6:30 and the Sunday even rides starting at 6:00 have commensed.

Cold?  Yes, it has been.  Wet?  Started out that way tonight.  But you know, the cold wasn't that bad and the rain turned into a dissipating drizzle by the time I got to our start locale, which is the McDonalds across from WalMart on highway fifteen.

Tonight we bombed around east of the Mississippi.  Through the back country of Sauk Rapids.  I'll have to check the maps before the next ride in that general direction because most of where we rode was, um, awfully straight.  Although we found a fun little stretch somewhere behind Mayhew lake.  I'll be calling on the maps to give us more interesting roads with some destinations in mind.

Harv

Group Rides for St Cloud Area Riders


I put up a forum not too long ago. (You'll find it if you look just to the left)  I don't know what this will eventually become, but I wanted to have a site where local scooterists could find each other.  Seems like every day it's above forty five degrees I will see at least one scooterist out riding.  Whether it's in town or on a country lane.  And I always wonder, would this person be interested in finding other scooterists if they could?  Would they be interested in group rides with like minded people?

Rides on Wednesdays (6:30pm) and Sundays (6-ish?)

When and where can be changed if people prefer other times but for now we'll be riding from different start locations but try to make the start times the same.  Provide some variety. 

Distances will be sugggested by me, but aren't set in stone.  Neither are routes.  If people who come out for the rides choose a different route or distance, we'll do it.  Or if ideas come up on the forum we can talk about them and see if we want to change plans.  Or, we can set up new ideas for future rides too.

One thing and I'm sticking to this:  Riders without motorcycle endorsments will not be allowed to ride with the group.  At least initially.  (we'll review this policy now and then given circumstances) We definitely encourage riding with others to gain the skills and confidence, but once a group is more than a pair of riders, those newer to riding or unfamiliar to riding in groups can, just by the nature of inexperience, become.. more dangerous both to themselves and others. 

Harv

Rebirth

There's a special feeling when you take that first ride of the season.  Part of you, no matter how many times you check things over before you even fire up the bike, anticipates something catastrophic happening during that first venture out.  You listen so much more closely to every sound, every tick.  You veer back and forth on empty straight roads just to get the senses in touch with how a scooter feels when it leans.  You find yourself squinting at the road ahead, from a carlength to far into the distance.  No one likes to slide out on gravel.  You're watching every driveway, every intersection.  Looking for stray pets and suicidal squirrels.

Then it happens.  You settle down.  Maybe it's by small increments but you begin to enjoy the ride again.  A deep breath brings dry spring air into you.  Another and the smells begin to revive you.  Before long you're in that frame of mind where you're most comfortable.  The dual state of calm cautiousness and content.  You're just happy to be on the road again.

A squirrel pops its head out from a bush next to the road.  Part of you jars into awareness.  Will it dart out ahead of you?  It's doing that... thing.  You know what I'm talking about.  That thing where it bobs its head up and down trying to decided if it can cross the road.  I swear the damn squirrels around here have their own little game of chicken.  Maybe its how they transition from youth to man-squirrels in Squirrel World, I dunno.  The plump little guy (ok, that's an assumption but I'm taking it) decides to just watch me ride by.  We glare at each other.  I've got my eye on you, squirrel.

I leave the neighborhood and pass through farmlands.  Some already tilled by anxious farmers, some still wearing the clipped stalks of last year's corn.  I ride out to my own farm, twenty odd miles from my house in town.  Nature is still not quite awoken.  Everything wears the same light palates of brown it had before and duringf winter.  The roads were almost devoid of gravel and winter salt residue.  A false sense of security. I still slowed down for each bend in the road.

The sun is warm and the sky a beautiful hue of deep blue.  The ground beside the road still looks hard and dry.  We've had little spring rain and even less snow since the Vespa was put away.  Gotta remember to bring something to drink next time I ride.

From a distance of probably just shy of a half mile I can see my land on the top of the hill.  The soil is light brown and hasn't been tilled yet.  But there are signs other tracts have been turned.  Too early to be doing that, I think to myself.  But what do I know...  I'm no farmer.  Just a land owner whose got the property because there isn't much of real value in this world besides the house you live in and the land you own.  It was always understood that one day I would heed my uncles' advice and apply some of my savings toward as much land as I could reasonably afford.  Wise men they are, as Yoda would say.

I swuing back to the T intersection and meandered past where I would normally turn toward home.  Then headed further out and let the little 150 run at speeds it felt most comfortable.  There's something really nice about how a Leader 150cc engine sounds when it's clipping along the country roads.  No stop lights, no stop signs.  Just the even thrum of a single cylinder climbing and descending the minor hills of central Minnesota.

When a particular ride is a good one, there's a sense that you've been on the road for longer than you really were.  That somehow the cobwebs have been cleared away not because of the distance you rode, but because the ride was... good.  There are long vacations and there are short vacations.  Too many variables to anylize it all now.  Different kinds of rides meet different kinds of needs.  That seems to say it well enough.

It is good to have the Vespa.

Harv

A Christmas wish


I originally wrote this as a reply to Scooter in the Sticks.  I can think of no better way to speak to you to share my wishes for whomever might still be reading here.

Merry Christmas to you!


I think back and remember easily how blessed I am. My parents were in Germany during the war. So Christmas was, as they said, what you were able to make of it. Aunts and uncles were seperated from the family and while I've talked to them, not much is really divulged. They look to today, to their children whose childhoods were memorable by those aunts and uncles' efforts. What I have, what my cousins have, is because the spirit of giving and the tenacious obsession to put us first is a gift beyond anything I could ever ask for. Because it is beyond my understanding to have been where they were.

For those who had virtually nothing given to them, know that what you have given of yourself when you could, is the strength which makes your loved ones grateful to have you in their lives.

Christmas is about the tenacity of spirit in spite of conditions. The near obsessive internal will to overcome, in spite of what logic seems to tell us. It is the natural condition of the human spirit which leads us to trust in something which doesn't necessarily make sense to us.

Christmas reminds us to have faith.



Harv

The Does-It-All Motorcycle-ooter



Thirty years ago the average 150cc scooter could run along side cars because the speed limits were lower.  Our highways averaged 55 mph speed limits.  In my home state of Wisconsin the country roads were also 55 mph.   While scooterists generally stayed off expressways, they were perfect for surface streets and country biways.  And we often heard tales of scooter riders cruising lonely state highways far between major metropolitan centers.  Long distance riders who, in our minds back then, were one step away from the two stroke 50cc moped riders who crossed vast tracts of land just to be able to say to themselves that it could be done.  Deep down we were impressed with their daring.  But people who rode scooters more than a hundred miles outside their home bases were considered slightly off.  When the subject of an assumed long distance scooterist came up, we compared their machines to ours.  Mainly for the comfort factor.  How could they do it?  Why would they?  Misunderstood pariahs.

We failed to recognize the logical comparison.  It wasn't anything special to hop on our semi restored late sixties to seventies Japanese standards and pull the same stunts.  Loose groups of riding buddies whose RD400s, Harley Sprints, Suzuki singles and twins (we called em Sushi's back then), Yammies and the ever revered small displacement Hondas who went as far as time allowed.  I rode a two stroke Kawi 250 Enduro myself in those days.

Then we stepped into early adulthood.  Larger bikes replaced smaller bikes.  Money could buy alot in those days.  Or so it seemed.  But it never failed to come up in conversation at some wide gravel shoulder.  We always discussed the roads as we'd once ridden them.  Close to full out, little engines working as hard as they could.  Some of them sucking fuel and oil mix through themselves, trying to create enough power to keep up with the bikes ahead of them.  Rpm's high and loud.  The total rush of going fast on a "slow" bike.

Some of my friends graduated to the eight hundred cc and above class.  Mostly cruisers.  Even I opted for the vintage look with modern reliability.  A Sportster which had finally graduated to belt final drive.  Oh, and the wonderful new overdrive gear.  You'd know it simply as fifth gear.  Fast?  No. Comfortable?  Not too bad really.  But to me that machine was the essence of the unadulterated motorcycle.  I could live with its quirks.  I still have it.

In the quest to gain market share, motorcycles have only grown over the years.  To me they've stepped beyond logical to the point of becoming cartoonish.  The backlash is that scooters have followed suit to some degree.  Or so you might think, but bear with me here.  I'm going to show you something.

The world motorcycle market has a share of buyers who are able to choose something we U.S. buyers cannot have new.  The three hundred to five hundred cc class motorcycle.  Last I checked you could still buy a brand new Honda CB 400cc in other countries.  And the worst part?  They are the natural progression of design we would want to see coming out of that historic past.  But we can't have em.  It's either a 250 road bike or a dual sport, as they're now called.  Although the dualies do meet what I still think is the mid sized dispacement catagory we never should have lost here.  But not a legit road bike with decent accessory choices for road use.  I blame the bean counters.

Find a need, fill a need.  It's a quote from a kids' movie called Robots.  The character is a visionary named Big Weld.  The whole premise of the story line is no matter who you are, (or what you're made of, considering this is a world of machines imbued with human characteristics) you can be the one with the solution to a problem.

Enter the return of the scooter.

Even though Honda never really let go of the scooter market, Honda also never created the same interest in their scooters as they had when they created the ubiquitous "You meet the nicest people on a Honda" catch phrase, back in the sixties.  But another company was primed for the market.  All it had to do was get it's product in front of consumers again.

First of all, the return of Vespa to the United States came at a time when gas prices were increasing.  Parent company Piaggio banked on the market responding well to a sharp little machine with fine fuel mileage and whatever-that-French-phrase-is-which-connotes upscale cool...  And they made it automatic.  People who'd never ridden suddenly had a reason to find out what made motorized two wheeling so great.  They could skip the whole learning to shift shenanigans altogether!  It happened slowly, but it caught on.

From the air cooled 150cc ET, evolved the LX.  From there, Vespa begat the liquid cooled GT 200.  A legitimately tourable scooter.  One which could keep up with expressway traffic without being swallowed by SUV's and busses.  Before long the 200cc grew to a 250cc and became fuel injected.  Now we have the The Vespa GTS 300ie.  And with it, parent company Piaggio has added larger wheeled scooters using the same engines carried within the retro Vespa line.  Look at the Aprilia scooters some time.  They're everything good you remember from the seventies era "mid" displacement motorcycles and they include even more.  No bungy cord necessary.  There's storage under the seat.  There are rear luggage racks.  And rack mounted trunks ar available.  Windshields too.  Best of all, these new scooters retain what made the earliest Vespas so right when they were introduced to Italy on their debut.  Legshields and floorboards.  In other words, weather protection.  Something those venerable small to mid displacement motorcycles of our past never had.

I've always been a believer in the idea that you cannot really instill confidence in a new rider if you teach them to ride on something they don't initially feel confident riding.  And I mean before they get some training.  If a person doesn't look down at what they're on and say, out loud, "You sure this thing isn't too small???" then maybe the instinct they need to have in an emergency may not be their first reaction.  I'll go so far as to say the moment of emergency will be overshadowed by hesitation.  One deer or loose dog.  A veering car.    The rider has to be so confident on the machine that he or she acts before thumbing through the mental rolodex for the right response.  From lane position to seating position and hold.  You just can't wrestle a bike which takes you for the ride rather than the other way around.  Your confidence has to be in your ability to throw the bike any way you need to in an oncoming possible emergency.  In other words, you have to prevent the emergency before it becomes one.

Is the scooter the better small to mid displacement motorcycle?

Yup.


Harv

Check, check, check, Uh oh...

The time had come to replace another rear tire.  I'd hit the wear marker.  Part of me wanted to click over another thousand mile marker before the change.  But the better part of me decided against it.

I'd ridden locally for the last several rides. Inching closer to the mileage marker I wanted to reach.  What could it hurt, I thought, to go a little further.  There's tread depth beyond that point.  And I thought about friends who'd literally ride a tire with threads showing.  I also realized they were nuts.  Even back in those days.

It took a discussion with a friend I'd just ridden with the other day to remind me of part of the code of Keith Code.  He told me a story he'd read about how Mr. Code described the one similarity of all the crashed bikes Code had seen in bike junkyards.  They all had severely worn tires.  Well beyond the wear markers.

I thought about a certain safety instructor who would kick my ass if I were to fail to follow the most basic and common sense of rules; Only ride a bike which is safe to ride.

So with the shadow of Irondad beside me I set to the task of tearing Kythera down to replace the rear skin.   I began by taking off the exhaust.    On the Vespa LX150, you don't have a choice.  The can is too close to the tire, even though it's a single sided swing arm.  You have to screw open the little door at the front and below the seat.  Then you spend a little time trying to get the right angle to remove the nuts holding the exhaust in place. Then you move to the side of the bike where the can is and unscrew the two allen head bolts before you can begin with the tire removal itself.  And since the bike was partly apart anyway I took the time to change the fluids and such.  Everything went extremely well.  Transmission fluid, check.  Oil and filter change, check.  New spark plug, check. 

So I started the bike.

In no time at all I remembered the one thing I'd forgotten to do.  Put the damn exhaust back on.

There's moment of bewiderment when you hear the cacophony of blatting.  Followed by the fastest shut-off of the machine you ever accomplished.  And you'll probably hit the kill switch before you'll look for the key as I did.  Then I swore.  I used the appropiate four letter S word.  And the exhaust went back without too much trouble.

A spin around the block and a call to a friend led to a nice evening ride.  The bike really did feel like it functioned better.  Probably the new spark.

That scooter does bring a smile to my face.


Harv

She Told Me To

Virtually the entire United States has been under some weird weather pattern which brought heat and humidity over us all.  For months.  In spades.  This same weather pattern also drenched the upper midwest in rain.  The upside to all this rain is it benfits the region's farmers.  While they've had a late start to their planting season, the strong growth portends high yields come this fall.  Although many farmers have suffered storm damage, those storms seem to have been somewhat localized.  Overall, most of Minnesota has had a good growing season thus far.

How does this matter to the Roadbum, you might wonder. 

A few years ago I bought a chunk of farmland which I rent out to a local farmer.  The property is about twenty odd miles from my house in town.  It's a favorite loop of mine for short scooter jaunts.  Lots of twisty roads to choose from to get there and back.  And a myriad of quiet midwest country roads going nowhere in particular that branch out from there. 

Because I'm sort of invested in how my own crops are doing, I'll notice certain fields on the way.  I'll take account of how well the beans and the corn are growing.    Passing by herds of cattle grazing in the sun and noticing how they and the fields they're in, look.

For the majority of the spring and on through the summer, I haven't been riding as I have in years past.  Family schedules and weather kept me off those rides. 

And about those rains...

It wouldn't be an issue if rain was just rain.  Even hard rain is a kind of challenge to me.  I once rode nearly five hundred miles straight in torrential downpours so hard that my buddy and I decided we would only stop to gas up.  Every overpass on the expressways had cars pulling under them.  Were we to be under one of those overpasses and a driver looking for safety pulled up, they could easily plough right over those bikes without seeing them.  We were on two black Harleys and riding in pitch black storms up I94 from Racine Wisconsin to Long Prairie Minnesota.  Fifty degrees.  My boots were full of water.  It was like putting your feet into two large and really cold mason jars and just keeping them there.  Water had soaked up the back of the inside of my helmet to the point the interior fabric absorbed it over the entire internal circumference.  I had ridden numb from somewhere just east of Madison to the rains letting up a few miles from my future inlaws' home.  So rains don't generally bother me.  And I've learned to prepare much better for them since then.

No, the rains which bear fifty mile an hour winds and sometimes hail were the norm here in the upper midwest this spring and summer.  Broken trees, damaged roofs, that sort of thing.    Always the weather channel warnings.  You get older, you start to take those things seriously.

Yesterday my wife and I talked about what we would be doing today.  She was going to pick up the kids from her parents and mentioned that I hadn't been riding in a long time.  That this would be a great opportunity to make that time.  You know, sometimes you just can't argue with your wife.  She left, I hit the road.  And I got myself a little lost too.

I headed out to see the land.  Then to Joe's to see how he's been.  We spoke of the fields, the yields, and his cattle.  His kids, my kids and our wives.  Then I left and rode up the west river road along the Mississippi.

I don't know how it is in most places, but here in central Minnesota, when you're this far up, the Mississippi is just the biggest local river.  Homes are sparse along this stretch.  A winding road lazily takes you to a small city called Little Falls.  Home of Charles Lindbergh and the state park named after him.  I rode past the park and took an interesting looking but unfamiliar road west.  Once in a while a sign would off some general indication where I was.  My heading from there was south.  More or less.

Somehow I manged to find Holdingford.  And then Avon.  I know a little route back from there which has some good winding roads so I took it.  The Vespa running as well as it ever has. 

It's good to listen to your wife.



TR

If It Ain't One thing...

Some of you have been wondering where I've been.  Surely there have been some opportunities to ride since the spring.  There have, but they haven't been worthy of posting material.  Short jaunts to scratch the itch but not much more.

When it comes to the second half of the phrase this post is titled, its another.

Oppressive heat makes riding an air cooled anything a lot less fun than sitting in an air conditioned car.  I just don't do extreme heat well.  The heat index has broken records, even in Minnesota.  That makes riding somewhat dangerous for some of us.

When you're cold, you can find ways to warm up.  But when you're overheating, you could actually reach a state some refer to as cooking one's brain.

I didn't think such a thing was possible.  But I found out what it meant during the two weeks I spent in Vegas at the end of June.  I found out first hand what it means when you begin to get so warm your body can't expell the heat fast enough.  How easy it is to run out of water (not to mention just how much you raally need between 100 and 110 degrees).

Up to this stage in my life, cold temps, as in Minnesocold temps, haven't bothered me all that much.  So imagine the relief I was expecting upon my return to the upper midwest.

And then we get this sweltering heat blast.  Vegas temps with sauna liquidy thick air.  Even the insects look tired as they fly by on days like these.  Around here two wheel enthusiasts tend to wait until the sun goes down and temps drop back into the eighties.   Then you hear a lonesome bike somewhere off in the distance.  And you wonder if you could bear the heat thrown off the engine for long enough to make the ride worthwhile.

There's no getting around it.  A rider has to know he or she cannot overlook the safety factor of what kind of heat can really be tolerated.  Hot wind coming through the vents, hot wind blowing across us, unbelievably hot air radiating back from the engine.

I know what I can stand.  My personal limitations.  I'm pretty aware of the line which seperates suffering the heat just to ride versus enjoying the ride.  Suffering the heat only serves to put me outside the frame of mind I need to be in when riding and that isn't safe.

It'll cool soon.  I'm really looking forward to it.


Harv

Spring Finally Arrives

It's been a seemingly endless winter here.  Spring lagged well behind any calendar scheduled arrival and family obligations meant more dust would settle upon the Vespa before I had the opportunity to ride old Kythera once again. 

One fine evening I mentioned how nice our weather had finally gotten and my wife asked me if I'd been riding anything at all yet this season.  I said I hadn't, and she asked why?

"Because there are lots of things to get done around here.  Kinda take priority, you know?"

"Those things will still be here when you get back," she remarked.  "Go ride.  Go take some time.  I'll be fine with the kids."

So I did.  I rolled the scooter into the center of the garage and set about the preliminaries.  Then, for some reason I'm not sure of myself, I gave a step through on the kick start.

Anyone whose owned a modern Vespa knows their kick starts can be temperamental at best and non compliant the rest of the time.  So I don't know why I even thought she'd fire up.  But she did.  One step through and a slightly harder push the second time caught spark.  I couldn't believe it.  I stood there and listened to that little LX's engine percolate until it settled into a warmed idle.

I buzzed all over the city and its outskirts.  Wider and wider circumferances until I was beyond the street lamps and traffic.  The sun was just about ready to bed for the night.  Summer clouds accumulated on the western horizon, bunched pillowy between it and the edge of the world.  Just the hint of coolness in the air.

To the spirit who rides, the bane of winter's ice and salt and sand is only broken in the succor of first rides like these.

Each lean brought more confidence.  Looking further out through the turn.  Lane placement and remembering how to ride fast without being dangerous slipped back into consciousness.  That grinning-too-long-inside-the-helmet feeling kept coming back.

By the time I rolled up the driveway I felt... lighter.  Revived.  A few hours of supplication to body and spirit in a way no bottle could ever match in redemption.  Never mind pouring courage until you get half way past the label. Just to get up the nerve to chase the sylphs before you head home in a stupor.  I've seen married guys do it.  I've seen them argue with the local gendarmes too.

Just give me two wheels and fuel.  You won't hear me complain.


Harv

Where Does the Winter (time) Go?


Wherever that happens to be, apparently Old Man Winter has decided to stay well past his welcome this year.

I haven't been reading or paying much attention to anything involving riding lately.  It just isn't in anyone's best interest to read posts by a guy who longs for more than a calendar spring.  Just about the time the snows are mere piles where the white stuff has been shovelled or blown, another front moves through, coating the roads with sheets of ice.  And then the plows.  Blades up but dropping salt by the ton.

My neighbor Adrian has a 'Guzzi Bistro or Viso... Gristo?  It's one of those machines you cannot help but love.  And Adrian's kids are long out of school.  Mine aren't.  The few nice days I've seen him warming his machine have been days when my kids were home.

Not that I would choose a life different than the one I have.  A bird in the hand and all that...  Yet I can't help but wonder how the odds are so perfectly aligned to match those needle-in-a-haystack nice days with everything but free time to ride.

It's come to this; large carboard containers (which should have gone in the recycling bin months ago) are purposely set to block the view of the three two wheelers.  Just to avoid that slight pain in my chest when I see them and wonder why we stay in this clime.

Winter's gasps are prolonged this time around.  You just can't change the sun or the earth's orbit.  We get what we get.  But our way to combat ordinary weather is to drop tonnages of salt and sand so that the four wheelers (bless their cell phone implanted drivers' hearts) don't lose control because they're just moving too quickly for conditions.

The Ides of March have come and gone.  The big bright orb in the sky burns away more of the cold wisps of winter each day.  It rides higher and longer, fighting the eons old crank who sets upon us with each tilting of this vernal jousting match.  Sorry but to me this part of spring always seems like a battle between time and balance.  And if you're patient, balance seems to return in the end.  It's just a matter of time.

So... in the immortal words of Carl Spackler, "I got that goin' for me".


Harv

Mistresses From the Past and How To Keep Them (and still have a happy marriage)



If I've heard it once I've heard it a thousand times.  Once you marry, forget holding onto the majority of the things you loved to do before you walked down the isle to dedicate yourself to another.

Isn't it always like that?  You find a girl and after a while you turn back to look at who you were. You realize you've changed.  Not quickly, but you made incremental decisions you would not have made were you still single.  The road still calls to you when you see a lone motorcycle cruising the opposite way down a country road.  But you're on your way to shop for curtains.  With your wife and kids.  In a vehicle intended for carrying capacity and safety.

If you're lucky there's still a two wheeler stuffed somewhere in the garage.  It's behind the kids' toys but it's still there.  Maybe your wife hints about what the money from its sale could buy for the house.  Don't blame her though.  You were the one who got down on one knee, remember?

Maybe the mistress(es) were a collection of musical instruments you plotted and saved to acquire over years of playing with garage bands who were at the cusp of "making it".  If they just would have taken managing themselves more seriously.  A '62 Strat..  A priceless Les Paul..  Or if you're like me, you stumbled on great old saxes which cost quite a bit to restore to playing condition but sound nothing like the modern horns on the market today.  Maybe, like me, you craved a vintage Selmer MK VI alto but the four to six thousand dollar price tag kept you at bay.  And your sax tech kept reminding you people came to hear what you could do and didn't care about the nuances of sound attributed to the name and model inscribed upon the bell.  But a King Super 20..  a singular sound recognizeable to other sax players would still be the holy grail.  How much carpet and tile could the price of that rarity afford, asks your loving wife.  Wouldn't you prefer a nice modern flat screen television with all its clarity?  It would cost thousands less and everyone in the family could enjoy it.  The little white angel on your right shoulder reminds you not to say what you're thinking; that screen clarity doesn't make the shows they produce any better.

Marriage is comprised of compromises.  But they don't have to cut away the things which make you who you were when she first met you.  It's important to remember who she was in those early days of your lives together too.  If you think back, you'll realize she's given up alot to make this marriage thing work.  She deserves your gratitude.  She deserves your undivided attention when she's got something to say.  Give her the space to recall who she is.  To do the things she's always loved but put aside for the sake of the family.  Put aside for the sake of your kids.   You aren't the only one who feels the effects of sacrifice.

It isn't enough to simply acknowlege the distances she's gone for you and the family.  You've got to put it into action.  And frankly, wives really don't ask much of us, comparatively speaking.  Think about when you lived the single lifestyle.  No one around to help with all the duties in running a household.

You didn't marry the maid.  Maids can quit employment.  And wives can find more attentive significant others.   Then what'll you have?  Suddenly that single life just isn't as appealing as it seemed in the rose colored memories you conveniently mentally edited.  The married life has its share of jewels to be enjoyed and appreciated.  Why else would you trade the old life for this one, then?

Because you knew it then and you know it now.  You're not one of those guys who can thrive on the single life.  I give those guys credit.  That life takes its own patience and strength. 

But  the married guy has the hardest time being single again.  He can forget how much he depends upon his spouse.  And that's about the time he begins to lose sight of her needs.  It's also about the time she begins to remind him how much power she can wield.

There's an old saying about about how she has the power to keep him from "it" in the bedroom.  But you know, that's only half the story.  Because if he's not getting any, neither is she.  So nobody's happy.  The problem is what we think started in the bedroom, started long before then.  In the kitchen. In the closet where the vacuum cleaner is.  In the flower shop (the cheapest and one of the most effective ways to a woman's heart there is) and at the dinner table where we should have been listening all along.

Don't lose who you are by forgetting who she is.

Look, a yield sign.
Now check your mirrors.

Harv

Vespa Bianchi?

If you're into riding there's a strong chance you're into.. riding anything you can with two wheels.  The motorcycle bug was birthed out of the bicycle bug.  Of course, the bicycle bug was the first taste of freedom most children experience.  And who can't remember thinking, if only this thing propelled itself?

Somewhere in storage is a Schwinn Stingray.  Around a '72 vintage.  Red, banana seat, original ape hangers.  Prett bike, actually.  It was followed by an national anniversary paint schemed Free Spirit from an earlier generation of big box stores, Sears.  I don't have mine in my physical possession but I can tell you exactly where it is.  Hanging in my best friend's parents' garage.  It's um, been slightly altered.  The taped on pattern has been removed, revealing a beautiful red to blue blending color scheme.  The old frame is still intact and from what I've seen, the old chromed rims are not rusted.  Catastrophic failure be damned, it'll have to be the fading brakes which will fail me and send me beyond where I'd hope to go, er, stop.

Then came the Univega.  A flashy red sportscar of a road bike.  Impressive geometry and my first experience with friction shifting.  I'd loved it.  And like a fool I would let it pass from my hands.  A Giant brand road bike took its place.  A stiff aluminum frame with a carbon fork and more gears than necessary.  But a five mile per hour tailwind could coast that thing on level ground.  I have it, but with young children it didn't take long to want a bike which better fit the needs of family oriented rides.  About this time I even won another Giant.  A mountain bike which...well, how to say this... the model name of the machine is Boulder.  I kid you not.  And it rides like one.  I felt like B.C. from the comics.  Riding my Giant Boulder.  My son gets that one in a few years.  Definitely.

Enter the Raleigh Superbe, circa 1972.  It's green.  They're all green.  I heard or read they came in other colors but I don't believe them.  This one made it all the way to central Minnesota by way of the shop closest to my childhood home.  Imagine that!  Original leather Brooks saddle, frame mounted pump, in-hub generator with functioning head and tail lights.  It isn't retro, it's the real thing.

But you're waiting for the bike to which our title is ascribed.

Ever heard of a frame design known as a mixte?  It's supposed to be a unisex frame design from Europe.  Where the top of the diamond frame attaches at the handlebars seems usual enough.  Except that instead of making a horizontal line to the seat post, the bars (there are two of them) are lugged in the front, at the handlebars, and pass on either side of the frame, bisecting the seat tube and ending at the rear sprocket.  Great design strengthwise.  Often considered a ladies bike stateside.  Most often found at garage sales and flea markets although a resurgance of the design is making a comeback.  Trek has recently released a mixte framed model called the Belleville.  Only that one comes with the new price smell.  My VespaBianchi mixte came with the much less pricy forty dollar aroma.  You might be familiar with that one if you've ever seriously considered yard sale bikes.  And don't knock em, some of the neatest old machines can be had for little money.  Machines in barely used condition, often with high end aftermarket parts bolted replacing the originals.  Or, as my crazy Vespa linked find, with about as much use showing as one would expect of a bike moved around the back of a garage since, what the late seventies or early eighties.

Did Piaggio own Bianchi for a time?  I don't know.  I've seen all of two bikes identical to mine on the vast resourse of the internet. And virtually no back story.  The Craigslist ad merely called it an Astrale.  I only discovered it to be a Bianchi when I got there.  I didn't need to think about whether or not to buy [it] when I saw the Piaggio symbols and the Vespa/Bianchi one piece decal down the seat tube.  And this one is definitely a deeper darker shade of Bianchi blue than the Bianchis I've seen.

All I can say is, I couldn't pass up a bike with obviously factory applied decals somehow connecting it to one of the icon brands of all scooterdom. 

C'est La Vespa

Harv

Choices

You can wake up in the morning with a list of things you need to do and want to do.  And then Life comes in, taking precedence over everything you set forth to do.  This was my lot since the early spring.

I'm not complaining, don't get me wrong.  As the title of this post clearly states, these are some of the choices one must make because, well, that's just how life goes sometimes.

My kids are still young.  Seven year old twins.  A he and a she.  And they will involve me in every detail of their lives.  I call that a blessing.  I'll take it while it lasts.  And while riding is one of the great joys in my life, kids are a dynamic experience which always changes.  Each day is a little different.  Each year is as new to me as it is to them.   Forgone rides in favor of spending time with my children wasn't really much of a choice.  After all, the bikes wait all winter long for me to ride them and I've never heard one complain about it yet.

My wife went through a major surgery.  She was feeling progressively worse through the spring before going under the knife.  The healing process took most of the summer.   Motorcycles and scooters are inanimate objects.  No emotional healing to bring them back on the road required.  They can wait.

I had plans to ride this summer.  I mean really ride.  Friends of mine did too.  We had plans to take days to get where we intended to go.  Even though direct routes were relatively short, by the wings of the crow.

That isn't to say I didn't get the chance to ride.  The truth is a buddy of mine opened up a door I hadn't noticed before.  He found time in his busy life to duck out on his Aprilia scooter and find me.   While the rides were sometimes shorter, as the song says, you get what you need. ( and once or twice I dragged him along on a longer ride than he anticipated)

The rides I'd planned but never took?  They weren't really options considering what lay in store for me and my family this summer.  As much as you could say I was there for my family, they've always been there for me. 

There's someone in the house who depends upon you.  Someone who looks forward to seeing you home again after those late night rides. Someone who quietly hopes and prays for your safety.

You can always get the chance to ride but there are certain periods in the lives of those who matter to you which should not be missed.  Should not be choices at all.

I'll ride another day.

Or week.


Harv 

Becoming Home

Nothing feels right when you move to a new town.  It takes time to learn your way around.  It begins with getting to know alternate routes to the places you need to be.  Then you find out about the hip spots and the out of the way specialties of the area.  If you're a motorcyclist you begin to wander.  Chances are you find kindred spirits.  Riders who grew up wearing out bicycle and motorcycle tires from their earliest youth, telling you stories about what they'd seen and done.

Just as most riders eventually do, I found myself with guides to this city and surrounding areas.  People who generously showed the way.  With friends you gain knowlege.  With knowledge, familiarity and confidence. 

A long twist of the throttle is like good wine.  There are times when it's proper to sup alone, a thick book of prose the equivalent of the unraveling tale down the unknown road.  Other times, shared with friends who appreciate a certain kind of story.  One that may touch upon memories of rides in their own earlier chapters.

We stop for water and a moment to look around.  Those who've grown up here begin to share past rides, beginning with, "Didja notice just past the long sweeping left after we passed over the river..."  Roads connect us.  Moreso than a mere link to a destination.  For us they are the destination unto itself.  The place to be is in the moment.  This moment.

A friend with an Aprilia became my guide recently.  Showing me roads and places I never knew existed.  So close to the city I would not have believed it.  Yet so removed you forget where you are when you're in that moment.  Afternoons turn into late nights.  When the summer heat is slow to dissipate.  You just can't seem to pull yourself away from the bike.

These are as much the the memories of my youth as they are my feelings today.  Back then, riding everywhere I could.  Simply to explore.  On the outskirts of another city far away.  Today, discovering roads which really don't lead anywhere directly unless you learn to notice this moment.  Because life is what you make of it.

And home is where your bike is.

Harv

Thinking About Bikes on a Stormy Night


I've been visiting various riding sites on the internet, reading about riding on a night when tornado sirens have been wailing. Things cross my mind like what makes up a person's favorite choice in powered two wheelers.  How do you come to that conclusion?  Is it speed?  Torque?  Seating position?  Is it a little about those attributes and a bit about other things?  Do you ride what you ride because of the people you ride with?

Forbid it that anyone choose their ride based solely upon trying to fit in.  Or to try to present an image.  Once a person knows how to ride, their goal ought to be to find that bike which fits them best for the kinds of riding they actually ride.  Nowadays that kind of machine comes from many manufacturers.  It can even come in different skins.  I'll get to that later.

I like a bike I can sling around.  Something nimble and somewhat utilitarian.  I don't need a cruiser in the common style.  Not interested in stretched and lowered.  I think those bikes are trendy fashion statements for people looking for an identity.  Not everyone, mind you, but people who bought into the whole... scene and only ride with others like themselves.  There are those who were there first, so to speak, and they don't exactly appreciate the Johhny Come Latelys.  But that's another story in itself.  For the sake of a simple point about then versus now I'm going to leave that generality stand.  If you get it, you get it.  If you don't, then you're probably offended.  Here's your sign.

We ride what we ride because it's what we ought to prefer.  Another old saying is that no one rides a motorcycle because they have to.  And since that's the case, we should consider if what we ride really meets our needs.

I came to this scootering thing long after having been in the motorcycle thing.  I can't really say I gave up one for the other though.  Rather I parked a few of the latter and chose to ride the former.   A dedicated motorcycle enthusiast trading V twins and in line fours for small displacement singles.  Why do that?

I ride to revive myself.  To clear my thoughts.  I want to be on the bike which best meets what I want out of it.  You wouldn't take an antihistamine for a stomach ache, would you?  That's where I think I'm gettting to with the bike/scooter thing.

Now I'm not saying I'm giving up on the Harley just yet.  Memories and recent rides reminded me what I liked about that machine.  In a way I think I may be growing back into it.  You can get onto that big nearly straight no-stop that criss crosses the country with the old HD.  It seems pretty at home there.  Just hang back and move along.  And if something falls off (I've had it happen.  More than once.) there's usually an HD dealer or subsequent shop not too far off the path I'm on.    Didja ever notice Harley Davidson dealerships seem to be located right near a main exit on the freeway?  Coincidence?  I think not.

But something about the Vespa is closer to what I'm after at this stage in my life.  When I think about riding, that's the one which comes to mind first.  Its only shortcoming is that it cannot quite do all the Harley can.  Though legal for the freeway, I sure wouldn't ride there.  Not on a 150cc.  Uh uh. 

Unfortunately Vespa made a 200cc, a 250cc and now a 300cc.  Would I trade the Harley for a bigger Vespa?  I don't think I can.  Some things are kept for sentimental reasons.

That Harley was our honeymoon chauffeur in '96.  From Milwaukee to central Minnesota where we got married, to Custer state park.  Long days in the saddle, stopping when and where we felt like it.  We visited Sturgis as the rally was on (yes we planned it that way).  Sturgis during the rally is an interesting thing.  Sort of a renaissance fair with motorcycles.  Many were true customs.  Hand fabricated.  I can appreciate that.  Some even improved on the look of the originals underneath.  And there were many that I could not see from their owners' perspectives.

I remember looking at very old bikes and thinking how beautiful they were mechanically.  Simple elegance.  Flowing lines in purposeful design.  It seems as though an unspoken goal of former motorcycle appearance was to take the edge off.  Old Vespas share that.  Not only in curbside appearance but in maintenance.  A roadside fix was easily doable.

But until recently, Vespa scooters weren't exactly on the A list for expressway use.  It's been a long while since the 55 mph speed limits were done away with, but even then, the two stroke 200cc's wouldn't have been thought of as a n everyday use freeway bike.  Maybe to some, but no one I spent time with thought so.

So here I sit.  Thinking about the unlikely motorcycle that meets my needs and wants.

Sure does look like a scooter though, doesn't it?

Harv

ps: I can see that my writing needs some excersize.

The Return Of An Old Friend

After a two year haitus from the bigger bikes to a scooter, I finally got around to bringing an older Harley back to life.  My '93 Sportster.  You can say what you like about the ride these bikes provide, but they're still decent machines for the average enthusiast.  You just have to take them on their terms.  And be prepared to accept what some consider limitations.  Consider it part of the package of owning a bike designed to be reminescent of the technological past.

It took a while to get the bike running again.  From thumbing the starter and hearing nothing to thumbing it and getting a sputter.  From a sputter to an idle to whacking the throttle and hearing the bike choke and die.  Disassembling the carburator a few times and help from a friend showed me the problem.  I'd never opened up a variable ventury before.  He says I'm overly cautious.  Well, I have broken things before.

Aside from the thorough cleansing the main jet required, the machine was in pretty stable condition.  Even after languishing in a corner of the garage while I played with the other bikes.  And I have to admit, I was a little apprehensive about getting this thing back on the road again.  Most people opt for larger machines, mainly because they're larger people than I am.  A Sporty fits me like a glove.  But after riding the Vespa for nigh on two full years the Harly seemed like a hulk of low slung bar steel.  Just look at one.  Compared to a Vespa scooter it's a mass of large metal chunks jutting out at all angles.  All of them hot once the ride begins in earnest.

Still, there's something inherantly fulfilling in the sound of the stock exhaust in the fifty five to sixty five mph range.   And the Harley veritably carries itself along. Its own mass propelling it onward.   Comfortable.  In its own way of course.

On one hand the Harley fits today's standard definition of entry level. A size and displacement considered something of a suburban starter big bike.   They originally came with diminuitive peanut tanks and minimal dressing.  You could buy bolt on accoutrements to make yours anything you liked, but the idea was supposed to be that eventually you would move up to a "real" Harley. 

On the other hand the Vespa is a suburban jousting tool.  You can squirt through traffic without a second thought.  Half the time I wonder if people even notice a scooterist on the boil.  What with their cell phones sending and recieving signals while they obliviously jostle for lane dominance on the way to work or home.

Something just zoomed by and they probably never heard the thing.  Maybe they saw someone seated rather high fly by but only their eyes ever knew the scooterist was there.  Whereas a Sportster tends to announce itself.  Even with stock pipes.  And Sportsters don't squirt anywhere.  You twist the throttle, a cacaphony of machanical noise erupts just forward of your knees and you're off.  People turn to see whether the loud motorcycle is about to run them down.  Really.  The face of the pedestrian does not lie.

The only difference I consider worth noting is that a Sportster can take the superslab and still be an enjoyable ride.  Don't try it on a 150cc Vespa.  They top out too early speedwise.  Someone in a Pruis could easily engulf one from behind and swallow it whole before the driver finished the message they were texting.

Is one better than the other?  Comparing an HD Sportster to a 150cc Vespa scooter is not a legitimate comparison.  But they both fulfill a certain kind of ride requirement.  You have to take each one for what it is.  Even in each machine's own element there will be compromises.

And I can live with that.

Harv

Spontaneous Happiness

I'm what you might call a fair opportunity rider.  I have seven year old twins so my opportunities to ride have to be balanced with all the other obligations family men have.   If we're smart we realize this is a time in our childrens' lives, our wives' lives which we will remember fondly.  If we do this thing right.

Somewhere back in the annals of this site I wrote about the rides becoming fewer but longer.  As it turns out this might be the best thing yet.  Granted these are usually two to three hour late night chunks of time, but the kids are off to bed and my wife is too.  What else would a night owl do?

A friend I've written about recently has gotten himself an '84 Honda Magna V65. An eleven hundred cc V-4.  Back in its day it was rated at 109 horsepower.  It's a clean machine and my friend knows how to take care of 'em.

Loren works twelve hour shifts at a local printing company.  One of those types of jobs where you work three or four days then you get three or four days off.  Sometimes the shifts are easier and one of us is calling the other to see about one of those evening cruises.  Last night was just that kind of night.  I think it was my turn to call...

"Hey bud, I have a question for ya."
"That's a statement.  What's the question?"
"I feel like riding but there's a big blob of rain showing up on the local radar to our south."
"...And this has ever stopped you... when?"

Loren made a valid point.  I ride a Vespa with a cut down large windscreen.

"Probably not very often."
"Probably almost never, Harv."  I hear him chuckle on the other end of the line.
" Is it certain to be coming over us?"
"Hard to say.  Might track slightly over St Cloud, maybe a little east of St Cloud."
"Then we'll stay west of St Cloud.  Besides, I've never seen your land."

My land is a little thirty five acre chunk of a once larger farm I bought about six or so years ago to plant a house on someday.  Different people own segments of it but it seems like I have the biggest piece.  One McMansion set in the woods to my north, a farm house with just a few acres at the bottom of the slope is to my east and an old ranch style home on ten more to my south.  This area is not McMansionville and I don't plan on building that kind of monstrosity for people to google at when they drvie by, commenting on the mount of debt the owner must be holding.  I didn't buy that land for any other reason than to have my "neighborhood" populated with every living thing indigenous to this region.   Don't get me wrong, I'm not an environmentalist.  I just like watching sunrises and sunsets on a horizon unblemished by rows and rows of slapped together homes indwelt by people who seem to move every five years.  You can't get to know your neighbors when they're moving out faster than you change cars.

In the country the pace seems slower. People put down roots.  They actually care about one another.  Not unlike the old city neighborhoods I grew up in.  But times have changed in the big city. 

In the country, time moves slower, more deliberately. 

So I rode the lx150 west down county roads and frontage roads.  Past the town of St Joseph.  Through the back door of Avon and continued west.  I broke onto a gravel road and found Loren ready for the ride.  The big Magna idling quietly.  We set out for an indirect path to my little piece of ground in the county.

Loren usually wants me to lead.  I think its because he doesn't want to lose the little scooter should he forget and begin accelerating in a moment of relaxation.  I can see it now.  Me seeing Loren's helmet in his mirror and his tail light blissfully growing smaller as it moves further down the road from me and my little one fitty.

The evening sky was amazing last night.  Strangely, a bank of clouds were to the west.  Blocking the sun from view. But directly above us those clouds broke.  Opening up to the blue heavens.  A row of ominous white billows collided with each other three quarters of the sky to our east, running south to north.  An occasional flash illuminating them from within.

We parked at the approach and walked the field where the corn had been planted last year.  At the edge of the flat, the beans had already gone in.  You get the feeling you're standing on a worn plateau when you look down the sharp slopes from this point.  Loren commented he was going to find a way to own land like this.  And you know, I believe he will.  He's that kind of guy. 

Back at the bikes we talked for a bit then headed toward Avon.  Flashes from within the eastern clouds to our left grew more frequent and brighter.  They began to topple over each other.  Crashes within the collisions sparked amazing lightshows.  I would be riding right into it before too long.  I could already smell it in the sticky over-hot evening air.  Bugs were plastering my legshield, windscreen and helmet like someone drubbing their fingers on a wooden desk.  Constantly. 

We parted at Avon.  He headed west, away from the storm.  I headed east.  Right at the storm.

I was alone on the frontage roads.  My eyes peeled for deer, dogs and coons.  I kept it down to fifty mph for the most part.  The sky went black.  The flashing clouds were now above me.  A constant patter of smashed insects on the 'shield and my helmet.  The occasional conk from a June bug.  Then the rain came.  I love these moments.

This was going to be the first downpour of this season for me, I thought.  But the rains faded to a drizzle.  Then nothing. Then faintly they started again and came steady.  But only briefly before becoming indistinguishable from the persistant glopping of bugs dying instant death on painted steel and plastic.  The windshield looked almost gooey.  Water and splattered insect remains pressed and streaked in the wind created by a moving bike.

Suddenly I was rolling up my driveway.  Once in the garage, listening to the tick of the cooling bike I hazarded a look at the front of my scooter.  Collateral damage for a great night of riding I hadn't even planned on a few hours ago.  This thing needs a bath.

Small price to pay for an unanticipated chance to ride.


Harv

When a Meal Tastes the Best

I've never been a big eater.  Stomach problems have plagued me all my life.  This isn't to say that I don't appreciate a good dish but I can never eat much before my gut warns me away from taking another bite. 

When I was a child my parents took me to doctors who told them they couldn't find the cause.  That I would have to pay close attention to how much I ate.  Don't force the kid, doctors told them.  He simply won't be able to keep it down.

There is alot of really tasty food out there.  And they bring it to you on steaming plates filled with heaping goodness.  Flavors that stand alone and others that blend into complex delites for the palate to savor.  Amazing what a good cook can accomplish with some basic ingredients.  Take someone with training or a real passion for the kitchen and the plates brought before you almost seem like a sinful luxury.

I come from a family of cooks.  Two aunts on my dad's side were professional bakers back in their day.  We would go to our second home, Chicago's deep south side, knowing what was in store for us.  The big treat for the year was Slava. 

Slava is the Serbian celebration of God's blessing upon a household.  The partiarch would invite every person he knew to come and eat in his house.  Preparation would last for days.  The women of the family would come early just to begin the process.  The aromas drifting in the steam of the open windows of that south side house were rich and inviting.  Everything from the special breads to the lamb.  They used both kitchens in that house just to keep up.

The first day would begin thus; the priest would come to bless the family and pray over it.  He would bless the bread (phonetically known as Poga-tche) and share the first wine with the head of the household.  He would bless the children and sit to the first meal.  It was a momentous occasion.  As soon as the first group of men left the table the women cleared it and the second group of men took their places. And so it went.  As long as there were guests, the dining room table fairly creaked with the weight of the bounty shared upon it.

I ate what I could when I could.  Often fighting a raging gut.  But how could you pass up what you saw and smelled?  I paid for it.  Oh, I paid for it dearly sometimes.  Between my mother and my aunts Anna and Maria some of the potential overdoings were abated.  Try everything, they would say, but only a little at a time.

Those days are long gone.  Traditions faded.  Mom has passed on and the aunts are in poor health. The German cooking of my Milwaukee upbringing is also drifting into memory.  But one tradition remains.  Because although it is never quite the same, the experience is equalled each time it happens.

Since the first times my friends and I headed out into the countryside we've always been drawn by the smells emanating from family owned restaurants.  It didn't matter that we were riding two strokes in those days.  It didn't seem to follow the wind patterns.  Someone in the group would catch the succulent aroma of something cooking and get everyone's attention.  The ride would become a quest to find that source.

When you've spent the better part of the day on the road, even a guy like me will be haunted by lure of a true family owned roadhouse.

For some reason these places have always reminded me of family gatherings.  People are most happy when they anticipate sitting down to what their noses told them would be found here.  We all look forward to it.

For me, the memories and the anticipation guided by what my senses tell me, draw me here.  Even if "here" is a place I've never been before.

The simplest foods from a family owned roadhouse just taste so good when you're riding.  Even the coffee seems better.

I can almost smell a family restaurant my bike led me to last summer..

I gotta find that place again.


Harv

Prettier With Age

I sold the Virago.  I know, I know.  How can you sell a bike you've had that long?

Same way you sell anything else.  You finally realize the time has come to sell it and then you act on that notion.

I rode that sweet little machine to Wisconsin for the last time.  An old friend who always liked her said he was ready to buy her.  So from central Minnesota to Wisconsin we went.  The old girl and I. 

I pulled on a sweater because the weather channel told me I would be crazy not to. In town it was forty three degrees. Out here? I try not to pay too much attention to that. You sort of induce an oversensitivity to what the weather feels like versus what it actually is if you convince yourself X degrees is too freakin cold instead of what you actually feel. But I was still shivering by the time I hit the east side of St Paul.

The winds that Saturday were anywhere from thirty five to forty five miles per hour.  Gusty.  That bike tracked straight though.  Just as she always has.  Through small towns and long stretches past lakes.  An overcast day in the northern midwest.

The Virago would be replaced by a new ride.  Well, ok, not a new ride.  Just one that's been waiting to be ridden for the last fifteen years.  An '83 Honda Nighthawk 650 I got for a song.  The Nighthawk and the Virago have been stablemates.

I've always been a fan of Honda.  Fit and finish.  Attention to detail.  Shaft drive.  Hydraulic clutch and lifters. An oil cooler.  Broad seat and amazingly well detailed instrumentation. (Clock?  We all wore watches back then.)  I'm definitely a shaft drive kinda guy.  But I'm too short for most Beemers.  And if I'm getting a Beemer it would be an opposed engine with the classic shaft final drive.  So what's a short guy to do?  Find a clean Honda Nighthawk and squirrel it away.

But as you can imagine, there are slight maladies percolating to the top each time I ride her.  Things to be sorted out.  Gremlins which creep into a well running machine stored away for far too long.  Things loosening from the simple onset of time. 

Yet each ride coaxes a deeper appreciation for this deep red machine.  Long and heavier than the 535 my old friend now has, I can see stretching her out on longer rides.   Time has been kind to this 1983 Honda Nighthawk.  It's an easy bike to get familiar with.  Something I can see myself looking forward to riding as much as the ride itself. 

Not every bike is this way, you know.  Some seem to work well enough until you find their replacements.  Others fit a time in your life better than others you've owned.  Some are dream machines you realize never really worked that well for you.

Is the Nighthawk one of the memoir-able bikes?  Or is it a stepping stone to a Beemer with a lowering kit?

Either way, time has been kind to this machine.  The Japanese standard in more ways than one.  What with all the retro-hype going on in the world it's hard to know if something is new or just old and immaculately kept.

Nostalgic?  Maybe.  Still, some old things just seem to gain appreciation against the backdrop of the present.

Harv