My friends Heather and Patrick are now on Day Three of the Scooter Cannon Ball Run. Yes, that’s right, a bunch of scooterists are riding across country, from the Oregon coast to New Jersey. An odd contest–so odd, the Washington Post covered it.
It is technically a race, but endurance and technical ingenuity is more what’s being tested. If your scoot breaks down and you can’t fix it right there on the shoulder of some backcountry road, it goes in the support truck. Then you have 24 hours to fix it, before you lose your support truck privileges, and are left in Idaho or Nebraska or Indiana to make your own way home. "Italian engineering" and "reliable" generally don’t fall in the same sentence, and six bikes of the 30-40 registered had already broken down by the end of Day Two.
Heather–who is driving Patrick’s personal support vehicle and serving as the race’s unofficial certified massage therapist–told me last night that one fellow who had temporarily repaired a broken pipe on his scoot with, well, not duct tape, but a similar and slightly more durable quick fix, randomnly stumbled onto a welding shop in Idaho later that day. The shop guys had never worked on a scooter, but with a little guidance from the scooterist/mechanic, the shop guys welded it up like new.
To give you an idea of what this race is about, Patrick built a bike completely from scratch with help and support from First Kick Scooters in SF. It’s a small frame–just 125cc and one of the smallest in the race. But Patrick welded an extra three-gallon gas tank onto the frame, giving him a total of five gallons. See, speed only gets you so far. It’s the number of stops that sucks up your time. Stops to refuel every two gallons (or 150 miles). Stops to replace parts so the scoot still operates in high altitude. Stops for repairs. Patrick’s blog, OopsClunkThud (which I stole the pictures below from), gives you an idea how much work and knowledge this takes.
And Patrick is doing well, so far. He’s come in first and second for his scooter class, and Heather claims he would have come in first overall on day one if he hadn’t run out of gas.
So, the kid who hit my car (well, his dad, probably) took two weeks to return phone calls from his insurance company. But he finally called and accepted full responsibility!
When I woke up Monday morning, I started thinking of metaphors for how my body felt. Beat with baseball bats, played football without pads… but eventually, I settled on "I feel like I was hit by a truck." Which is, I think, a stunningly apt metaphor.
Conveniently, Sunday afternoon, I swung by the Vespa boutique on First & Denny. I went to get a new Halo reflector for my helmet–my current one was so stretched, that it kept falling down around my neck on the Monkey Run ride. At the same time, I figured I’d get the name and number of the "official" Vespa repair shop in Seattle. I had no idea I would actually need that information just six hours later.
Big People Scooters–the recommended Vespa shop–gave me the bad news this afternoon. See the circled gap in the photo to the right (click to enlarge)? That’s a weld point on the frame. Apparently, this is irreparable. To repair my bike, the shop would first need to buy a new frame and get it painted ($2,800). Then, they take everything off my old bike–from engine and wheels to seat and mirrors–and put it on the new frame. That would probably cost another $750. With the towing charges ($300) and 11,430 miles, it’d make more sense to get a new bike.
In short, my little scoot is TOTALED.
So unless the parents of the kid who pulled left in front of me can cough up $3,500 to buy me one of the two used ET4s currently listed on Craigslist, I get to file the police report and have my insurance company sue them. If I don’t hear back from them by mid-day tomorrow, I’ll send in the report.
Filling out the report, I had to measure how far the accident was from a landmark. Google maps is SO useful. I just searched for 520 2nd Avenue W, Seattle WA and zoomed in on the satellite pictures. One-hundred and seventy five feet from the intersection, according to the scale.
God, that kid must have been stoned or something not to have seen me. Take a look at the attached map I shamelessly stole from Google. I was the red line. He was the green line. No other traffic, straight road, and he turns left right in front of me. He even used his turn signal.
Duncan from the VBClassic team summed up how I feel perfectly today. "They took your stuff, and you want it back." It’s true. I mean, it wasn’t theft, but my stuff was taken from me, and I want it back. That’s it.
Then he told the story of how he trashed his wife’s parked car pulling out of his own driveway. 🙂
Two last pics: my little scoot in the red rock desert, and one from the last time I’ll see it.
I’m fine. Just bruised. My Vespa starts beautifully. Just looks bad.
Kid driving an SUV with three of his buddies in the car turned left in front of me. Narrow road, no where I could go. A few more feet, and my brakes would have stopped me.
I decided to go on the Monkey Run ride to Port Townsend (via Whidbey Island–see the shamelessly stolen Google map right) yesterday. Monkey Run is a camping rally, and with my tent and sleeping bag in storage… no, it’s more that I was worried the Seattle scooter crowd would be as annoying as the San Francisco crowd, and I didn’t want to commit to an entire weekend with them until I knew. But I thought it would be fun to go a part of the way and scoot on Whidbey Island. I figured I would turn around before getting on the second ferry to Port Townsend.
I had trouble finding the starting point. There are, by my count, six distinct and unconnected Fifth Avenues in Seattle: northwest, northeast, west, south, southwest and normal. I discovered this useful fact the day after the ride. I was only able to find two Fifth Avenues on the map the morning of the ride, and neither was the right one. I finally stopped for directions 20 minutes before the ride was supposed to leave. Not that I was worried: I’ve never seen a scooter ride leave earlier than 20 minutes after the published starting time. Forty-five minutes late seems normal.
So I was more than a little bit shocked that, when I arrived 10 minutes before the published departure time, everyone was putting on their helmets and starting their scooters. I had barely enough time to run across the street, buy a Twix bar, and stuff one half of its chocolatey goodness in my gob before the ride took off (I hadn’t had breakfast yet and was planning to do so during the 30 to 40 minutes I expected to wait for the ride to start).
Then came the next bit of shock. Everyone rode calmly in two staggered lines just like they teach you. People weren’t jockeying for position or trying to get to the front of the pack at every stop sign. No one tried to gun through the center of the staggered lines, and no one raced past the pack in the shoulder. They were just riding.
Taking my scooter on the ferry to Whidbey Island was really cool. I’ve never had my scoot on a boat. Not much else to say about it, though.
At the Port Townsend ferry, three other riders–CJ, Kelly and Angelika–turned around and headed back to the city as well. Angelika told me that the Vespa Club of Seattle actually has rules on how to ride. I guess they enforce them somehow. It was great. CJ (unlike the San Francisco CJ, she is a woman and does not bleed two-stroke oil) also invited me to a scooter barbecue that evening. A barbecue at someone’s house in a nice neighborhood with a fantastic view, good (free) food, no annoying ska music, and conversations that went beyond the restoration of rusted out Vespa hulks from the 1960s.
Not that I’m opposed to restoration of rusted out Vespa hulks from the 1960s. I think that’s pretty cool. I just don’t want to talk about it for more than five minutes.
Scooter Rage XX was the weekend before Pride, and I came specially equipped with a new L series zoom lens (70-200). I bought the new lens because of feedback from Brian about my pictures at High Rollers (gallery): Brian wanted more pictures of scooterists, less of scooters, and he was dead-on. I am often too shy to ask people to take pictures, and I prefer unposed, candid shots to boot. At High Rollers, my longs lens locked up with grit and sand, so I couldn’t use the autofocus, and without that, I couldn’t take those surreptitious candid shots quickly enough. I only half-captured the scooter sub-culture that Brian, Kevin and Dennis find so fascinating (albeit vicariously through me) and exemplified by Patrick and Doug above right.
This rally, I planned to ignore the scooters entirely, and focus on the people. Oddly enough, this isn’t hard–very few people come up to bother me with conversation, because I don’t really interact with the scooter crowd. I don’t fit in, and I don’t want to try to fit in. In fact, I stay so aloof that very few people even notice me (April, to the left, being a notable exception), so I can just plop down in a corner and snap pics.
Patrick actually commented that I "lurk at the fringes" of scooter rallies, but that the end result were fantastic pictures like the ones I took at High Rollers.
But something I ate on Friday didn’t agree with me. My GI tract revolted Saturday morning. I thought everything was flushed out by the first Saturday ride, so I loaded up my gear and headed on out. By the end of the ride, I thought I was just a little dizzy from hunger. When I got off my scoot, though, something was wrong: I couldn’t stop burping despite the empty stomach, and I felt like I might sick-up.
I handed Patrick five bucks for a rally patch, and drove directly home. Well, almost directly. I ran into two lost scooterists on 3rd Street. There was no way they could find the brewery where everyone was meeting–the industrial bayshore southeast of Potrero Hill is my home territory, and it’s a maze. So I led them all the way back, then went directly home. By five pm, I had a fever of 102.7, and everything came up.
I missed the second Saturday ride, the Sunday rides, and all opportunities to take pics. But I shot half a roll on Friday, and added some of them to my SF Scooter Rallies gallery. They’re OK. No flash with a long lens, so a little dark. But I think they capture some of the human side of the scooter community.
When I got off the train this evening, the rain was coming down so hard that sheets of water were running down the sidewalks and streets of Potrero Hill.
I don’t know why, but biking in a downpour is simply exhilarating. I started singing along with my iPod (an Indigo Girls song), and a massive grin was pasted across my face. A fellow bike commuter, Dave, feels exactly the same way. Part of it is the dedication to a healthier commute, part of it is the freedom you feel by just experiencing the weather. But most of it is knowing that your colleagues think you’re a total nut job.
Mike S. also chimed in on my flame war, introducing Godwin’s Law, which states that:
in any Internet flame war, as soon as someone makes an analogy to the Nazis, the discussion is over, and the person who made the analogy has lost the argument.
as the length of the flame war increases, the probability of the introduction of Nazi analogies approaches one.
Of course, you can’t actually invoke Godwin’s Law. You can’t say "you brought up the Nazis, the discussion is over, I win." But when somebody loses it and launches an ad hominem attack, you just walk away.
Now, it’s not like anyone actually brought up the Nazi’s in the flame war I talked about earlier, but the broader principle, which is what I gleaned onto, is that the person who launches an ad hominem attack looks like an idiot. So the best strategy is to walk away, rather than respond in kind.
Now that my initial ire has cooled, I am reminded of this awfully terribly politically incorrect picture about internet flame wars on a fark.com thread sparked by an article about some entertainment figure insulting the organizers of the special olympics. Always a bit embarassing to become part of a flame war, even if I do think it was justified. Yeah, who cares if it’s justified, or if I’m right. I was still dumb enough to participate in the flame war.
Anyway, to follow-up on my post from below, after I clarified my position about what bothered me about Matt’s post, Matt replied with an ad hominem attack. But in that attack, he made an interesting comment: "It’s not like National Geographic contracted you to go to a scooter rally with your crappy $200 digital camera."
So two minor points:
First, I shoot with a Canon Eos Rebel I’ve owned for eight years now, and, except for the rare roll of black & white, I shoot chrome, (for the last six years, specifically Kodak E100 VS and E200 film). I use three lenses, an 19-35mm wide-angle, a 28-80mm medium-range lens, and a 70-300mm long lens. I’d say I use the 28-80 about 60% of the time, the long lens about 30% of the time, and the wide lens the remaining 10% (it’s rarely necessary, but when you need it, you need it). And, of course, I have a bunch of other crap, including a Manfrotto tripod, some filters, an extension tube, yada yada yada. Probably $3k worth of camera junk. Not a pro rig, barely even pro-sumer, but decent for what I needed when I first got started.
Second, the post implies my photography is of poor quality. I do take pride in my work. In fact, I take my work about as seriously as the owners of some of the scooters I photographed in Las Vegas take their bikes. I will be the first to admit that I’m not a pro, especially when friends suggest my stuff is professional quality. I can tell the difference in a heartbeat. Oh, I have sold some pictures, but I can count the number on one hand.
Now the major point:
But the really interesting implication is that equipment makes the photo. I think that’s a big fallacy. Equipment gives a photographer flexibility, provides a greater range of options. Take, for example, that wide-angle lens I rarely use: For architectural pictures, or for anything where I can’t move far enough back for my medium-length lens to capture the entire subject, it’s invaluable. But that’s not to say I need to capture the entire subject, like clock tower and crowded staircase in Santiago de Compostella (note the slight curve of the tower–that’s distortion from the wide lens). Sometimes, focusing in on just a few details–like this bas relief on the tower, or a man sitting in the crowd, looking up at the steeple— can make just as compelling a picture, if not more so, than the broader subject. The first picture I could never have taken without special equipment. The second and third I could have taken with my cell phone, though it would have been grainy.
But let’s get even more specific, and take a look at some pictures (first and second) I took back in 1997. They look pretty good, they capture a lot of emotion, a lot of pain and distress. Any idea what kind of equipment I used?
I took them with a point-and-shoot, press-here-dummy camera that couldn’t have cost more than $100, and I shot them using low-quality consumer film.
To go in another direction, a friend from business school decided to buy an expensive digital SLR before a trip we took together to Costa Rica. When he got back, he was completely disappointed in the quality of his pictures: they tended to be out-of-focus due to camera shake. His solution was to purchase even more expensive lenses with anti-shake technology. But my pictures, taken with my old, beat-up Canon gear, were all crystal clear, and I didn’t use a tripod or expensive, anti-shake lenses. Why? Just a matter of being familiar with my equipment, and knowing my own and my equipments’ limitations. When I didn’t have sufficient light getting through the rain forest canopy, I knew exactly what shutter speed I could barehand a shot at, and at what focal length. If it was too slow, I braced myself against a tree. Or switched to faster film. Or narrowed the depth of field. Or zoomed out. All sorts of tricks that you could pull off with a thirty-year-old SLR. (OK, I also used a $35 attachment to my $500 flash gun that focused the light, throwing it 100+ feet up into the canopy. But skill had something to do with it, too!).
Anyway, give me a crappy $200 digital camera and a rookie a $20K, top-of-the-line pro kit from Canon, and my pictures will be better than the rookie’s, 99 times out of 100. Give a pro a crappy $200 digital camera and me the top-end Canon kit, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to hold my own.
Had a frustrating interaction with a couple of folks in the scooter crowd. A friend suggested that I share my pictures of High Rollers, so I posted a link to them on the San Francisco scooter group on Yahoo.
First comment was from a guy asking me to put my pictures on scoot.net. Well, it was actually more of a statement/demand than it was a request, but there was nothing judgmental about it, and it was polite, if a bit curt.
After a few more escalating posts, this one guy–let’s call him Matt–said "come on people… if you want to share your pictures, post them on scoot.net. Its tradition in the scooter community."
To me, the "come on people" was a clear statement of exasperation at my not fitting into Matt’s view of the scooter community.
