New Lamps For Old

Buy a Vespa and you'll get told all about how Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck rode around Rome on a Vespa half a century ago.

Buy a Modern Classic Triumph and what you'll get is a misty eyed memory of Steve McQueen's escape from the Stalag or a slender youthful Marlon Brando asking whats on the menu to rebel against- a wild one meeting a doe eyed waitress in dusty Hollister, California. (I should point out here that even though Steve McQueen is credited with wanting to leap the barbed wire on his camouflaged Triumph {camouflaged to look "German"}, the stunt was performed by the legendary Bud Ekins who died recently).

The modern Vespa doesn't cut it as a Vespa to the aficionado of the original two stroke, geared putt putts of the Hepburn era. The modern Vespa has no gears, a powerful four stroke engine and no spare wheel. The modern Vespa is designed to survive and flourish in the modern traffic conditions in over crowded modern megalopolis's. You can argue endlessly about the connection to the old Vespas but there is no doubt it is very sophisticated motorcycle that neither Audrey Hepburn, nor the princess she played, would never have dreamed of- nor Gregory Peck for that matter. Nevertheless walk into any Vespa store in the US and there you will find an enormous picture of them on their 40mph 125 cc Vespa of yore. Alongside them you will see an oversize poster of Charlton Heston in a toga Ben Hur-ing it on a Vespa at the lot of Cinecitta, the hub of Italian movie making in the 50s.

Equally, a modern Triumph Bonneville has absolutely bugger all to do with the Triumphs of the 60s. Back then they were the symbols of rebellion, powerful, noisy rugged and rough. They roared their message through barely existent mufflers, their riders wore leathers, boots and white fisherman's socks turned down over the tops of the boots. I used to dress like that when I rode (an Italian bike) in the England of the seventies. We pretended to be rebels and stomped around on reliable modern, mostly Japanese bikes; no one but eccentric nostalgics wanted a Triumph. We, modern rockers, intended to get where we were going when we took trips.The old Bonnevilles looked a million bucks aside from leaking oil, but what was worse was they had crap electrics and vibrated like you wouldn't believe. The vibrations snapped the wiring harnesses and they stopped, or their headlights died- not for nothing their electrics supplier was known as Lucas- Prince of Darkness. Very droll I'm sure but a pain in the ass when you're planning on getting home at night to sleep in your own bed. But there again people , men, who rode Trumphs back then were tough, and yes, quite likely rude. Imagine that. They didn't take shit, they dished it out and their motorcycles reflected their devil-may-care attitudes. These days we tend to care, perhaps a little too much, about not just appearances or electrics but electronics and vibration dampers and 12 volt accessory outlets and all sorts of extraneous crap. Never mind oil leaks.The modern Bonneville is a pansy machine by comparison, it doesn't even come with a proper kickstart! Just like Gregory Peck and Vespas, Steve McQueen would never have recognized the modern Bonnie, a well behaved, reputedly reliable, purring pussy cat. Just the way I have always liked it, as it happens, though even I should have liked a kickstart... For a lot of Triumph freaks the modern Bonneville is a museum piece to be kept as close as possible to the T120 its based on, wire wheels, chain drive and LOUD. It strikes me as odd, because if they really want the genuine Triumph of their hobbled nostalgia they can go and buy one, fully restored, for the same money as a new Bonneville. Instead they buy the modern classic, enjoy the comfort and reliability and bitch at heathens like me who just like to ride, and often, on a modern machine that just looks retro.

I feel privileged to have grown up when I did, because mine is the generation that wallows in nostalgia and creates demand for superb machinery in all fields; the generation that also requires the recreation of the visual cues that set us off to reminiscing; the generation that demands engineering function that is completely up to date. The Bonneville looks 1960 but runs 2007.

The best of all worlds indeed. Steve McQueen be damned!

Fort Jefferson

It was no surprise to my wife this past Columbus Day when the ride back to Key West from the Dry Tortugas had most of the ferry passengers barfing. It had been honking out of the east for several days, with winds up to 30 miles per hour with no relief, and she knew before she left that the 70 mile ferry ride back from the fort was going to be a bitch. Her buddy Heather was smiling as they settled in to enjoy the downwind ride to the fort. Both Heather and my wife are impervious to seasickness so they had no worries as the tucked into the buffet breakfast provided on the ship. The boat runs every day if weather permits and most days it does permit. Which is one reason Fort Jefferson is less isolated than it used to be, but it still holds the title as the most isolated National Park in the system. The ride also includes a guided tour by Jack, who leads the visitors through the Civil War era fort, and count the million bricks its made of:

Fort Jefferson rises up out of the sea as a solid black block; indeed it looks very much like a floating apartment complex, when it first appears out of the water. I made my first trip there on a sailboat in 1989 and stayed several days anchored out, pausing on one of several trips I took between the West Coast of Florida and Key West. It was and is a great place to anchor. Inside the fort there are acres of greenery, a small campground outside the walls and a very park like ambiance inside the walls. In its time it was a hot dusty place crowded with 1500 soldiers. These days the permanent residents number less than a dozen rangers and their satellite phone, and the grounds have blossomed with rugged plants.Heather has lived in Key West for years and this was her first trip out to the fort. Its always the way, when you live in a tourist attraction you rarely take the time to see the attractions yourself. This attraction is a gun emplacement in the walls. It boggles the mind to think how much effort it took to get these New England bricks here.

Bird watchers see birds, snorkelers can see some of the better reef systems in the ravaged waters of the Keys and the great brick fort is a reminder of the impermanence of human structures; it never fired a shot, it served no military purpose other than a prison and it is always in the process of deterioration; a process held back by the meager National Park funding modern wars permit. In the days when we sailed with our Labrador, the fort was a modest dog walking area as Emma had to be kept outside the walls, per park regs.

Fishing isn't allowed in the national park but commercial fishermen take refuge in the protected anchorage bringing their own brand of stand off-ishness to the isolation. However they are also a source of fresh fish if you have cigarettes or beer to barter while you are anchored on your own boat. Another cool thing about the fort is that the rangers have no supplies at all except postcards and a water fountain. They don't even mind if you land there when arriving from Mexico or other foreign parts as long as you don't nip into Key West on the ferry as they can't clear you into the country. Its a great outpost, only 70 miles from key West yet it's another step back into a slower paced past than even the Southernmost City. Bird Key is reserved for nesting avians during their season in the cluster of barren little islands surrounding the fort.

So my wife got Columbus Day off and watched the trippers puke their hearts out on the three hour ferry ride back to Key West. I got to work; a dispatcher's job is never done.

Imagine

Motorcycles are dangerous, motorcycles are loud, motorcyclists are not nice.

There's a perception issue to overcome before North Americans will embrace two wheelers as a sensible and low impact way to get around. Looked at by the numbers motorcycles make perfect sense for single person trips. They consume fewer resources than a car to build, they consume less fuel on the road and modern motorcycles meet high levels of emission control standards. For humans who demand the convenience of personal transport motorcycles are the obvious answer. When you add roadway congestion into the equation the notion that riding a motorcycle is good for the planet seems obvious.

And yet...

Motorcycles aren't weather proof, they offer no protection in the event of an accident and they don't stay upright on their own making the fear of falling a real concern for many mere mortals. The fact that you can easily expect to get 50mpg or more, much more, with smaller cubic capacity motorcycles doesn't cut much ice with the naysayers. Who wants to reduce their carbon footprint if they are afraid they will be making a big bloody footprint on the ground?

The other funny thing about motorcycles and the environment is that motorcycles are fun. Most North American buyers get a bike to use as a recreational tool, which is all very well as far as it goes, but it doesn't do much for the environment if the motorcycle doesn't replace the car.

Then there are the seasons, and that makes a difference. There's not much fun to be had skating around on ice, and even rain or the threat of rain is enough to wipe out the fun factor for many"dedicated" motorcycle commuters. All of which reduces the potential benefit of motorcycles to the environment. Finally I believe the fun element of motorcycles puts off "serious environmentalists." There is something dour about the people who are sure the planet is almost beyond saving and everything has to be done now. The planet thing is just too serious for any levity. Which in turn puts off people, including motorcycle riders, who may not be that committed to environmental preservation and who view green worriers as nutters, so they will ride despite the common sense environmentalism of motorcycles. The other image problem of motorcycles is that when used as tools they come under the heading of "cheap." In emerging technology countries inhabitants rate their wealth and status by the size of their vehicles. Cyclists are wealthier than pedestrians, and motorbikes have higher status than that. Car drivers are big timers, and in North America motorcycle commuters are eccentric or poor, or eccentric and stupid, or eccentric and risk takers. In a nation that values image over all else, motorcycles just don't add up- better to be wasteful!

So, you need to get around and transit doesn't do it for you with your schedule. You have 150 days of the year that are warm and dry. You need to carry packages and bags and you don't want to show up at work sweating. So what do you do? Get a motorcycle. Wake up and make your commute fun. You won't be saving the planet and you will be emitting hydro carbons but don't worry about it. Let the hairy fuzzy serious ones take care of that.

Germans I Have Met

Africa 1979

"I think your motorcycle will be okay," said the wizened German RVer as we stood outside his Mercedes van parked in a Tunisian oasis. "You?" he paused,"you may not.You may break down out there." He shook his white stubbly chin at the vastness beyond the little oasis.

This was not a traveler who stood on ceremony, and he didn't allow politeness to come between him and his tongue. Such was my state of mind that I didn't snap back at him and go build my own camp fire. No, I sat down in the cold night sand and listened to his gravelly voice tell me about his own litany of previous Saharan crossings. "I always wanted my own home along," he said, implicitly turning his nose up at my self contained single cylinder Yamaha SR500. Everything I did seemed to engender the old man's ire. Looking back he must have got off on telling the young fool exactly where he was going wrong and how his Teutonic level of preparedness was the antidote to my fuzzy logistics.

I envied him his self contained world, his retirement checks that allowed him to wander his winters in North Africa. I had yet to meet the North American snowbird phenomenon of driving south to avoid snow; to find a European doing such a thing was a novelty for a sheltered youth like myself. I was on a massive adventure, testing my 21 summers of life. Secretly I also envied him his contentment- he wasn't heading east into Algeria and then south into the Sahara. In his dotage he was piddling the entire winter away in the safe, easy environs of Tozeur. I was scared and uncertain and I took his guff.

Call me co-dependant but I missed his sneers when finally I took off and headed out into the desert alone.

France 1978

I remember it as a hot summer, though in one's memory summers are always long and hot when one was young. I was riding down the Rhone Valley heading back to Italy after a year in England, spent bouncing between jobs, getting thrown out one last time from my step father's house and making friends with feckless motorcyclists who grew into middle aged respectability before ever I did. I was riding a red and black Moto Morini 350, an entirely unsuitable tourer, lightly loaded with panniers and a luggage rack, where up front it had clip-ons and a small bubble cockpit fairing, and the only means of starting was a kick starter. It was, in a world filled with chromed electric start Honda 400 Fours an oddity, a fast nimble oddity. I loved it.

The campground I pulled into that particular evening was dusty and crowded, we were all swathed in multi-colored nylon, riding, driving, pedalling, our vacations away. I fell in with a man sprawled comfortably in the shade of a tent adjoining his RV. He looked like a sheik, fanned, electrically, while his nubile young wife poured copious glasses of lemonade for him. I think he took pity on me and waved me in out of the sun and the dust.

It was a good place to sit. So I sat and listened as he laughed about the size of my tent and the dust in my camping spot. the lemonade was delicious.

"You like my hand?" he laughed, waving a grossly deformed crab claw in the air. I had been trying not to stare. The flesh of the thumb was gross and over sized, while the only finger on his hand was equally large and looked for all the world like a crab pincer with a delicate white nail growing on the tip.

"This hasn't stopped me from doing anything," he said. And he told me wild stories of dramas taking place in countries I had read about in the newspapers. He talked of fighting in the French Foreign Legion and pulled out black and white pictures of a man with a crab claw in military fatigues. It was terribly Beau Geste.

"I make good money," he laughed some more, breaking the romantic spell. "Still?" I stuttered.

"Oh yes," he said dreamily. "Lots, but I have no photographs of that part of it." And he winked.

I left the next morning, folding and loading my tent before he sauntered out of the RV into the shade tent and thrust a small cup of coffee into my hand. "Sure you don't want a life of adventure?" he asked. I shook my head. He scared me.

I never did figure if he was bluffing lying or bullshitting, but from time to time I wonder if he was opening a new door in my life through which I lacked the nerve to step.

Austria 1976

I had never been to Austria before but I liked what I saw. The mountains were out of the movies, stark backdrops to winding green valleys littered with pointy roofed homes, neatly cropped fields and smooth roads. It had been a long ride north from my home, and I was riding the first true motorcycle I had ever bought. This MV was like the Moto Morini,in that it was totally unsuitable, but because it preceded the Morini it was even less suitable to the tasks I set before it. Like the Morini, the MV Agusta 350 was a push rod twin, but with the cylinders set in parallel not in a Vee. I had hung bags off the back and because it was the motorcycle I had, it was the motorcycle I travelled with. It seemed to work out, perhaps because i knew no better. Nor had I ever heard of ipods, blue teeth or gps, so I neither missed them nor craved them.

My family was gathering near Innsbruck for some function I can't recall but I had promised to show up. I had no car so they were going to have to put up with my boy racer, fire engine red motorcycle.

All I had to do was get there. The long slow climb through the Alps was as much as fun as it could be, winding uphill on a motorcycle designed to be ridden on mountain roads. The ride down was even better as I had passed through customs (an arduous undertaking in those days for a badly dressed dirty young tramp) and the air got warmer the lower I got.

The MV ran just fine but I was young and worried and a long way from home so I fiddled excessively with the chain and got lots of oil on myself and ultimately on my clothes.

My step father had made a reservation for me at a guest house and by some miracle I found it. I remember a Heidi house with a pointed roof, big shutters thrown back from the windows and geraniums in window boxes underneath them. I climbed off the MV, slowly letting go of the clip on handlebars and gently propping the scarlet torpedo on its center stand, the only stand it had. The silence was deafening, because in addition to its other unsuitable characteristics, the MV had suffered at the hands of a previous owner who preferred a loud exhaust and he had gone out of his way to make this little 350cc loud.

The lady of the guest house came to the door, just another glorious vision of Austrian womanhood, a country populated by more than its share of beauties I found. She looked down at me leaning against her door jamb in the bright sunlight and said nothing. She looked down and up and down, and slowly, in a voice filled with disbelief: "Gruss Gott!" which is the traditional Austrian greeting, a catholic form of how-do-you-do that roughly translated means "God's Greetings!"

"Gruss Gott," I said back wearily, summoning up my modest amount of German to ask if she had my room. It had been along exciting day, my first crossing an international border on my own motorcycle. Her head nodded but her voice disagreed.

"Schmutzig!" she said indignantly. I was too dirty to cross her threshold and so, instead of Thor the god of thunder entering her impeccable home it was a small boy in his underwear who hobbled into the cool dark interior, clutching a large bundle of motorcycle clothing. Clothing that would mark him for the rest of his life.

My stepfather took this harmless story and seared it into my brain by introducing me everywhere as his schmutzig son, that summer and then explaining in excruciating depth how i got the exotic nickname. he was so mean its no surprise I ended up emigrating. And motorcycling, if that was what helped to piss him off.

Getting Waylaid

"Is that an old one, or a new one that looks like the old one?" The Dions clerk was sitting on a milk crate under the merciless neon lights of the gas station. Dions is a convenience store institution in the Keys, a chain of deep fryers located in the back of gas stations up and down the island chain famous for its cheap, tasty ( when fresh) chicken, a saving grace when the wife is having a girls night out with the book club. They had gone to the Tropic Cinema in Key West to check out the movie about the Jane Austen Book Club followed by dinner at a Taste of Greece.

It was a warm night on Summerland Key (my optional NewBonneville.com temperature gauge showed 82 degrees), and business as always in October was slow, so it was a perfect time to lean back and listen to his reminiscences about his old BSA 441 dirt bike from when he was a young somewhat careless young man.

"A lot of my buddies died on the streets, killed by turning cars, so I took the safe route, trail bikes and dirt racing." He smiled and the eager 20 year old peered out from behind his thick lenses and bushy mustache.

"I'm not sure why I'm still alive after all these years, an exaggerated fearfulness perhaps."

"You just got that? " a man gassing an enormous black pick up leaned across the bed and joined our conversation detailing the cubic capacity, the resemblance to the Norton Commando's capacity and all that.

"You run it in? How fast you got it going?" I knew I was facing a barrage of opinion about how to run in a Triumph so I popped my noggin into my new full face helmet (the type that flips up in front and makes it easy to put on with glasses). I reached to the headlight and turned on the key letting the engine purr a moment while i pulled on my gloves. My fried chicken was nestled in my newly installed top case and all was right with the world.

I had put two and a half gallons of 89 octane in the tank and that showed 43 mpg with 108 miles covered.

Back home I had a copy of that very silly boys movie Wild Hogs ( I watched the Jane Austen flick at the matinee...), and some left over candy from my afternoon off at the movies. And a warm, clicking Bonneville downstairs cooling under my house, ready for my commute in the morning.

Life is good again.

250 Miles Later

The first 45 miles were in traffic, the next 55 miles were slowly rolled over on Florida's Turnpike ( and very boring they were too). The rest were unrolled on the magic carpet of the Overseas Highway; they were the best miles.

"You're going to ride away?" they looked, as the English would say in horrible jargon, gobsmacked. "Most people put them in their pick up trucks."

"Why?" I asked,more than a little taken aback. Why wouldn't brand new owner want to ride as soon as possible?

"Nerves," they said, shrugging. Well, on that count I'm no superman, I've already learned the Bonneville is a smooth easy ride. It was no problem at all to engage with the relatively genteel mid week traffic on Fort Lauderdale's urban boulevards. Miami, the Latin half of the bi-city equation prefers to drive fast and take no prisoners, which is also okay if you know your machine and aren't hampered by running in requirements.

The ride home involved some mainland shopping for the patient wife, who was driving the Maxima home after dropping me off at Pure Triumph. We stopped by Whole Foods and Target and putzed around the malls and set our sights on home an hour before darkness was to descend.

We separated on Card Sound Road, my wife pulled away as she was not trying to baby a brand new engine and shortly after I passed the toll booth marking the northern edge of the Florida Keys the rain started. And the rain didn't stop, so I did, and I started the mighty struggle to swathe myself in nylon. Unfortunately I was in a lonely wooded stretch of the roadway and there were no unoccupied overhangs to lurk under while doing the huffing and puffing and zipping to get encased in the rain suit and over boots and over gloves. Eventually I was done and I took to the road again in that snug muffled world of protection against the elements.

The Bonneville ran perfectly of course, thrumming along at 55 or 60 miles per hour where possible and gently floating in fifth at 50 where the lower speed limit was in effect. I loved the ability to open the throttle just a bit and watch the cars disappear behind me as I zipped past them. By the time I reached Marathon it was ten pm, the rain had stopped and I was 155 miles into my tankful of gas and estimated I had another 12 to go before the reserve tank was drained. I stopped and pirouetted in reverse unwinding the layers of nylon and breathing the warm night air through every unfettered pore. I felt 23 again and "on the road."

Today its sunny and bright and clear and I took a quick run past my chores on Big Pine Key, after I opened a package that arrived yesterday, loaded with a luggage rack and thermometer and clock which I bolted on this morning. It was a good morning to enjoy a few modest "twisties" on a side road I happen to like. The bike takes turns as smoothly as it pulls past traffic and it's fun all round. As it should be.