| Tankslapper November '09 |
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City Bike: I couldn’t agree with you more than what Editor Ets-Hokin recanted about in a recent column, “Shiftless and Clueless.” I drive a ’71 Landcruiser and a bicentennial Bultaco, and there’s not an airbag, bell, buzzer, or whistle (not to mention a roof or auto tranny) within five feet of those machines. Talk about road feel. You are correct, Americans are getting soft, not to mention more and more insulated from their environment, or more and more tolerant of the omnipresent tentacles of the Giant Ignorant Bureaucracy. Cemoto, Mill Valley Dear City Bike editors, In my “sensory world,” noise is bad and waving at other bikers weighs in at ridiculous also. Dressing like a pirate cracks me up. Scooters feel like death traps. Many of your positions differ from mine which matters hardly at all compared to how we do agree that riding two wheels is fun in a wide variety of forms. (I prefer enduros), Thank you for publishing this motorcycling magazine. Truly, you write to shatter paradigms and largely succeed. Respectfully submitted, Sue Petranck Durango, CO P.S. Enclosed is a check for 1 year’s subscription. Dear CB: Will Guyan’s October article (“Green Valley TT,”) brought back a lot of memories. About 15 or 20 years ago, I found a Velocette MAC in the Santa Rosa paper. It must have been a dirt-track bike at the old Cotati speedway. The seller wanted $500. There was a frame and an engine, and boxes of parts. I bought it, of course, and then asked the seller, “What am I going to do with this?” He replied, “We’ll take it over to Fred’s.” We headed from Sebastopol to downtown Graton (not gentrified like it is today) and found a little shack at the top of a hill. It was very dark. We knocked on the door, a light appeared, the door opened, and a giant stood in the doorway. He asked, “What do you want?” and we replied, “We’re just dropping off the Velocette .” “Fine,” he said, “Just put it ‘round the back.” There it joined a line of other bikes that were awaiting their turn at his ministrations. Every New Year’s for about 10 years I would visit Fred and drop off a bottle and see where it was in the line. Over time, Fred moved to a bigger cottage. About three years ago, he told me that he was moving to Portugal and showed me pictures of his new digs, which didn’t look all that different from his first Graton residence. I told him that he couldn’t move until he finished the Velo. He said he wouldn’t. True to his word, he finished the bike, (probably to better than new) and rode it up my driveway, where it held pride of place in my living room, and in true British fashion, leaked oil on my wood floor. Knowing I would never be able to ride it well, I sold it to someone who traded it for two un-restored Velos, thus keeping the circle going, which is the point of all this, isn’t it? So, Fred—whose name is really Fred Twigg—is somewhere East of Laramie right now, and I hope that wherever he is, he is still burning up the roads on his Norton. Thanks for a wonderful article, Will. Brandy Elitich Via www.citybike.com Honorable Mayor Newsom, T The DPT has tripped up the City’s green, traffic & parking initiatives in one ill-advised swoop down to pick up some change off the sidewalk by nearly tripling the cost to park a motorcycle or scooter in downtown S.F. Even as every public agency is looking for money in these economically stressed times, this is a short-sighted maneuver since motorcyclists are part of The City’s green & livable solution. They reduce pollution & traffic congestion as they glide through blocks of gridlocked cars & SUVs, which belch high levels of pollution idling their engines stuck in S.F.’s streets & “freeways” - making a lie of their much-vaunted highway MPG ratings. Also, motorcyclists help greatly to reduce the shortage of available car parking spaces for everyone else in The City by parking in the compact motorcycle parking stalls, taking up about one-fourth of one car stall, as well as in spaces too small for a car stall to be safely designated. Lastly, just in terms of equitable cost per square foot of vehicle storage, motorcycles should not be penalized with a higher cost per square foot than for cars as a result of their space efficiency. Under the Laws of Unintended Results, by making motorcycle parking meters closer in cost to that of car stalls, many motorcyclists will naturally start to take down car stalls, one bike to a stall, with the net effect being an instant evaporation of even the tiniest prayer of already-beleaguered car drivers in their block-by-block circumambulations searching for downtown parking, the result being more gridlock, pollution, even more cage rage with its usual honking, intersection/crosswalk blocking & more Hawaiian Good Luck gestures being cast about. Please direct DPT to immediately correct their error by rolling back motorcycle meter parking rates to their fair & equitable previous levels, for the benefit of everyone who needs to breathe, and even drive or park cars, in downtown San Francisco. Respectfully, Bruce David Bradsby, A.I.A. Bruce says he still hasn’t received any reaction from the City or other media outlets. Here’s a less-diplomatic missive to our elected leaders: Editors: Those rapacious idiots who pretend to govern this city actually followed through and raised the motorcycle parking rates to usurious levels. Now the big motorcycle parking zones built in the Financial District stand largely empty, and will probably be replaced by car spots. Well done! Phil Bowles, via This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Don’t know what to tell you Phil…we just live here! City Bike: I had fun reading the “Deer and Loathing in Laguna” article by Will Guyan (City Bike, August). It takes big balls to imitate the original Gonzo, Hunter Thompson, without looking like a fool or wannabe, and Will pulled it off. Good job. It looks like the staff is doing a good job of keeping CB steady on its weird little course, and it will be fun to continue reading it. On a different note, I was riding to work yesterday, and saw a rider standing in the landscaping at the Redwood City freeway exit, next to his beater H-D Sportster. The poor old bike had an old shag rug for a back brace, and I could see about an inch of his plastic windscreen, the rest of it covered in various colors of duct and electrical tape. That’s pretty bad when you can’t even afford one color of duct tape to hold your bike together! He was making a cardboard sign to collect gas money from sympathetic travelers, as he’d been riding from Ontario and ran out of gas money. I gave him what I had, and took him over to the local AAA office where I set him up with all of the maps he’d need to get back to Canada, and showed him a few good roads to get him up there. The poor guy was going to slab it on 101. Yikes! Hopefully he’s having a good trip today up Highway 1 on his way home. All CB riders are invited up to Sopiago Springs Resort for our Annual Pashnit Fall Gathering. We’ll be having a few rides on dirt and street from Sopiago, BBQs, and movies on our newly enlarged “Motorcycle Drive-in.” And of course, blazing fires in the fire pits! See you there! Tim Regehr, RN www.pashnittours.com |