The Golden Van

Saturday, August 17, 2013

The Joy of Truman Avenue

It used to be called Division Street on the entirely logical, yet pedestrian grounds that the street divided the inhabited parts of the city of Key West from the wilderness elsewhere on the island. The Cuban Restaurant Havana One, seen below appears to be thriving on the north side of "Division Street." That would have been the inhabited side.

Modern Presidents have found favor in the Southernmost City, think of Eisehnhower Drive, Kennedy Drive and of course Truman Avenue which was what they renamed Division Street after Harry Truman spent so much time in Key West while President. Not all of it is uplifiting, unless you find a strip joint to be a morale booster-Bare Assets, happily abandoned to dog walkers in the early hours of the morning.

Motorcyclist Magazine recently ran a cover story on twenty years of the Ducati "Monster" motorcycle, a lightweight simple psorty motorcycle that they say changed the face of motorcycling. The Bike That Saved Ducati, and here's one seen off Truman Avenue:

On an older and more dignified note I found a beuatifully maintained older Japanese motorcycle,a Yamaha XS650 that was built in the 70s to take on the big British twins.

The Yamaha XS650 was a much loved motorcycle in its time and apparently this one still is.

I miss the old used bookstore that used to sit here:

I mean it was musty and dark and had a world class collection of pornographic magazines but it was quintessential old Key West, Bargain Books was.

I suppose if we can't have collections of crazy piles of books to wander through then we must find our entertainment where we can. A painted palm above, a hint of a Minor Basilica below:

Key West, mix and match to your taste.

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Friday, August 16, 2013

Atlanta, Georgia

It was apparent our trip was coming to an end as we were turned toward home at last, first east then south. As we left Birmingham we promptly got stuck in a monstrous traffic jam on the freeway into Atlanta though it was mostly idiots pausing to stare at some poor unfortunate who wrecked, thus holding us all up. Eventually the I-20 parking lot released it's grip and we rolled into the city, home to Coca Cola and CNN. I must say every time I get stuck I traffic I appreciate a water cooled engine and an air conditioning cooled interior as we sit and watch motorcyclists stuck in line unable to lane split to get ahead.

Atlanta is Atlanta and you either like big cities or you don't. I love the HOV lane on I-75 through the city, as it also allows motorcycles and it cuts down the log jam of traffic. I've visited Atlanta and its suburbs in a previous life, a friend lived in a brick house in a leafy suburban street and I got a tour of the city. It is everything a city should be and if you like that sort of thing it will do nicely I'm sure, modern and sophisticated and full of energy. My wife and I had a goal which was annoying while we were stuck in traffic but I got my wife to the classroom with twenty minutes to spare. Her iPhone GPS and my driving- a fearsome urban combination!

The Viking school is an offshoot of a corporation that makes kitchen equipment apparently and they have schools all over the place. We actually got the idea from a travel magazine and my wife was very enthusiastic so this stop in Atlanta was our final goal. I dropped her off and being as how I am the bottle washer in our family, and kitchen ant killer, Cheyenne and I buggered off to find dinner and the La Quinta which my phone said was twenty minutes away. Far by Key West standards, close in Atlanta, a city where even cyclists apparently wait patiently (and insanely) in line...

The traffic jam had one good outcome. While stopped I got a text message asking if I was interested in overtime...anyway we got into conversation among the night dispatchers and when he learned where I was, Fred who knows everything gastronomical, had a dinner suggestion. He claimed they had the best chicken and pancakes in the South....so when my phone told me they were but ten minutes away what could I do?

Gladys Knight & Ron's Chicken and Waffles Restaurant Downtown Atlanta Famous Southern Soul Food Restaurant Open Late is quite a mouthful, but this stop filled a cultural void for me. I'd never heard of the soul singer and certainly I had no idea she liked chicken and waffles, the relatively new food fad. Many others apparently have heard of the place and they lined up to get in. Cheyenne ended up in the line of photography fire.

I don't know if I was there early or what but there was no line to speak of and they promised my food in ten minutes, which gave me time to walk Cheyenne round the block. Apparently at popular times the wait can last two hours, and call me shallow but I think that's insane to wait for food that long.

The food was fine but there's only so much you can do with the ingredients. I once suggested to my wife we make chicken and waffles my way, my first culinary suggestion to my wife who likes to cook. I said lets buy some Dions chicken and get some frozen waffles as a) we don't have a waffle maker and b) waffles are pretty much waffles outside of Belgium (I guess). And you know what? They didn't taste like these chicken wings fried in cornmeal (I think that's what they were), but we did fine with "my" waffles and chicken at home in the Keys. The hunt, as in so many things, was the fun in Atlanta and I enjoyed tracking the place down. My other alternative was a solo dinner with a sandwich from Publix next to the hotel.

I don't habitually travel with a weapon, who does? And my pants weren't sagging so food pick up went uneventfully. The parking instructions were too complicated for me so I parked on the street.

For Cheyenne dinner was just another opportunity to check out the scene which she did.

Meanwhile back at the Vikin g cooking school my wife was studying how to deal with fish. Cooking Classes Atlanta | Cooking Classes Nashville | Viking To Go

She sent me this picture remarking how some husbands were attending class with their wives. Hmm, I know I don't have the patience to cook but I do enjoy washing up.

Apparently the class was worth it. Of course the food was not allowed to leave the premises, liability or one of those obscure corporate lines of reasoning, so we can only guess how the students did. It looked pretty good to me and she enjoyed it while she learned some tricks new to her.

A stray Atlanta cat. Not impressed by Cheyenne. I wish I had a home for every animal.

But this is the only one I get to torture this time around. She was ready to be done with the car.

We got home close to midnight, driving the Keys when all the good tourists were tucked up in bars drinking, or in bed asleep, leaving Ighway One wide open. It was a thirteen hour day but well worth it to avoid the weekend jams on the only reading the Keys. A fitting end to an excellent road trip.

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Thursday, August 15, 2013

Barber Museum 1960s

I love the Barber Vintage Motorsport Museum near Birmingham, Alabama. Sometimes they display not one but two examples of an incredibly rare motorcycle, like this:

The AJS "Porcupine" is a legendary race bike equipped with lots of spiky cooling fins on the engine, hence the porcupine nickname. It also had a huge weird saddle fuel tank. And here we see two pristine rarities displaying the wonders of this unique bike. Amazing to see two in one museum highlighting the particular oddities of the motorbike.

They have more than a thousand bikes here at Barber and the display does rotate from time to time, so on this visit I decided to focus on the 1960s, the time when I was wishing for a motorcycle and I could only read about them in magazines. Ah nostalgia.

If you have no interest in motorcycles skip this essay and wait for tomorrow! These pictures are purely my pleasure. The pictures of the bikes are accompanied by pictures of Barber's own notes on display, legible I hope on enlargement on your screen, as they are on mine.

First the 1960s icon, a Bonneville: well not quite actually. It just looks like a Bonneville. Read on and discover the single car TR6!

Here's an actual Bonneville 13 years on and not that different. Sigh, they had no money to improve anything, that the factory knew needed upgrading, so they just did some fancy paintwork to celebrate the Queen's 25 years on the throne and called it good. It was all they could afford in the 1970s at Triumph.

Harley Panhead 1961 Duo-Glide.

The valve cover on this Duo-Glide is supposed to resemble a frying pan, thus the nickname Panhead. Motorcyclists aren't always masters of the subtle.

Like these chromed "pans" on the replica of the chopper used to film Easy Rider. Both bikes used in the iconic movie, ridden by the late Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda had back up models in case of damage to the bikes that were actually ridden on screen, but all four of the original machines disappeared, so Barber has a replica on permanent display... A Panhead!

Yet this is obviously not a factory original Harley Davidson Panhead! Fonda said it was desperately uncomfortable and impossible to ride in anything but a straight line. Yet the movie got us on the road. I used a Vespa though I did think of taking a Harley on my cross country trip in 1981. That might have been tough!

The Trident built to save Triumph in the late 60s though it was ugly and lacked amenity and was fiddly to set up right and it got blown away by Honda. Bummer. This bike is why the signature of modern Triumphs is a three cylinder engine - done right.

Better styling and less maintenance came later... Very collectible today, are these beautiful and well put together later Tridents. They had five speeds, electric start and disc brakes. Too late to save the company.

BSA had their version of the triple, the Rocket 3 seen here with the small American tank and huge buckhorn handlebars.

Big touring Harley. Some things never change! And they are going from strength to strength today.

MV Agusta is known for sport bikes and in the Seventies they made some great machines, double overhead cam four cylinders with shaft drive (designed not to outdo factory race bikes with chain drive). I love them. My first motorcycle in 1975 was an MV350 twin, so I have a soft spot for it's big brothers. If Barber had an MV350B on display I'd show it, of course.

But their first big bike was a pig. No, really, look at this ugly 600cc four cylinder heaving pig:

I want to see a lightweight touring 500 single on the modern market, like these Indians.

Narrow and light.

These bikes were part of importer Floyd Clymer's cunning plan to use a much loved American name and put a British engine in it. Ta Da! Not a success however and Clymer had a heart attack and died before he could work his marketing magic. He mixed British engines, Italian frames and US labels in ways that were very promising

Try this one out.. A Spanish 500 single by Sanglas.

They were popular in Spain when the Caudillo Franco limited imports into his dictatorship.

Slow sweet and simple. And old fashioned, even then.

Triumph had a hot 500. Ted Simon struggled round the world with this poorly assembled but fast twin. He got the last one from the factory and he became a mechanic fixing it as he went. Simon is no motorcyclist but he is a great writer and motorbikes are his schtick. He is revered by motorcyclists today ironically enough! In a fever in India he dreamed himself a god and thus the book's title, Jupiter's Travels was born .

But then in 1969 Honda changed everything. Clean reliable, electric start. Fast. Didn't leak oil and came in weird sexy colors. You meet the nicest people on a Honda.

And a few years later the much easier to ride and live with 500 version appeared.

Would rather buy this or the more expensive leaky, vibrating Triumph Daytona above?

I rode Italian bikes and in Italy Japanese imports were limited and expensive so I supported the Italian bikes which I thought were sexier. They were too but it was years before I rode a bike with electric start, mirrors or turn signals...this was the one I wanted but couldn't afford. And yes it turned heads did Moto Guzzi's LeMans Mark One. It's still lovely in Mr Barber's museum.