Two Wheels Archives
Burnin’ Love
6:25 pm | 0 | Photo Album | Places, Two Wheels
Here is a direct link to the photoset. I am feeling better, thank you.
The numbers
8:38 pm | 3 | Photo Album | Places, Two Wheels
Miles traversed: 1,800 +/-
Days: 9
Major rivers crossed: 2
Minor tributaries crossed: countless
States traveled: 6 (if you count 5 minutes in Georgia)
States never before visited: 5 (counting Georgia)
Accidents or catastrophes: None!
Riverboats: 1
Museums/tourist attractions: 5
Antique malls: 10 +/-
Hotels in Memphis before we found one we liked: 4
Nights in Memphis: 3
Illnesses acquired and incubated: 1
I have a lot more thoughts to sort about Tennessee and the trip but I have a fever and can barely bring myself to get off the couch. The worst thing about being sick like this is how bored I get. The good news is Butch sent me a copy of Image Capture and I was able to get all my videos off the scootercam. I’ll edit them someday.
Indulging myself in narcicism
2:38 am | 7 | Blog, Video | Girly, Places, Two Wheels
Here’s the video from Chattanooga Channel 12. That’s me in the first montage, kick-starting my scooter in one shot and then revving the throttle a few shots later. That’s also me at the end of the video, rambling about helmet hair. For the record, I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about when I say I can ride “for weeks” on one tank. For those thinking of buying a scooter, that’s not true. She just asked me a mindless question and I responded in kind.
The current *spin* on scooter stories is about how people sick of high gas prices are turning to two wheels to ease their economic woes. It’s the only way the news can come up with to relate to the scooterist community. But I’ve been riding scooters for 5+ years, way before gas prices reached unreasonable levels, and even before then I was raised by a father who raced and was obsessed with moto-cycling. There are so many people out there now who have bought their first 2-wheeled vehicle and who have no idea on how to ride safely (flip-flops? no helmet? tank tops? lane sharing?) and in my opinion they are not the bulk of the scooterist community, nor are they representative of what AmeriVespa is about. I mean, my bike is a greasy 30-year-old 2-stroke highly-pollutive inefficient engine. If I was in it for gas prices, surely I’d be driving a hyrbid. I’m in it for the scooters themselves.
Okay. End rant. Enjoy the video. Sunday Punchers REPRESENT!
Choo choo chaboogie
6:51 pm | 0 | Blog | Places, Two Wheels
We (the royal We) have taken the town of Chattanooga over. We got here about 5 p.m. Thursday afternoon (too late for the ride to Deal’s Gap) but early enough to socialize and meet a few people. We missed the ride today too because SOMEONE (not me) wanted to go antiquing in the morning. Probably a good thing though, because it rained all damn day. We tried to catch up, riding the twists up to Lookout Mountain (where C was once the youngest person ever to hangglide). It started pouring rain. There was fog everywhere. Even after it stopped pouring rain our clothes were so soaked it felt impossible to get warm. Eighty degrees is one thing. It’s a whole lot cooler 2,000 feet above sea level and at 45 mph.
When we got back to town we heard rumors of wrecks. More than 10. The second ride was canceled. But the rain cleared, so we rode up to to Signal Mountain, just C and I. Maybe tomorrow we’ll try Lookout again.
While hanging out at the Chattanooga Choo Choo I was interviewed by a local newscaster. I’d seen her interviewing other scooterists across the street. “I wanted to talk to a girl,” she said. Hopefully I won’t look like a dork. I’ll post the video as soon as it’s online.
AmeriVespa was on the cover of the Chattanooga newspaper this morning. Oh Bumblebee Dude, ride on my friend. Ride on like the Transformer you wish you were.
has a broken clutch cable.
6:05 pm | 1 | Shorts | Two Wheels
has a broken clutch cable.
209 Miles to Matagorda
11:55 am | 0 | Photo Album | Places, The Man, Two Wheels
C and I have been daydreaming of a multi-state motorcycle trip. It’s something both of us have always wanted to do, and now that we have a big person’s motorcycle we’ve been taking day trips and overnight trips just for the pure pleasure of being on the machine.
Last month, in the few days between C’s return home and our trip to Florida, we managed to take a seven-hour ride down to Matagorda and the Gulf, exploring country roads as we went.
The water wasn’t any nicer than Galveston, but 521 is a great little tree-lined shady highway with a few twists and turns and plenty of tiny red farmhouses along the way.
This month we hope to ride out to the Texas Hill Country, maybe stop near the Guadalupe River for a dip in the icy waters. It’s all part of our Great Texas Tour. Incidentally, if you’re planning your own Texas Tour, might I recommend two books? Day Trips from Houston and Weird Texas.
Wow. Things sure did get boring around here for a while. Sorry about that. More adventures to come soon.
Little yellow buzzing
2:23 pm | 2 | Video | Two Wheels, Watching
I only wish I’d learned this kind of stuff in my motorcycle safety classes.
Oh, I have another video for you too, but it’s in very, very poor taste.
Texas United River Rally 2008
9:33 am | 0 | Photo Album | Two Wheels
How much fun did I have this weekend?
I’ll post a full update when I get around to it.
P.S. Thanks everyone for the birthday wishes!
Races, wrecks and wheelies
12:11 pm | 2 | Photo Album, Video | Two Wheels
Friday is my birthday and I am unnaturally excited about making my way down to Gruene and New Braunfels, TX, for the recently resuscitated Texas United River Rally. There will be scooting! And tubing! I have never been to the Guadalupe River. I am entering the last two years of my 20s! I am camping alone in my tent but will be surrounded by friends old and new.
Here is a collection of silly videos from the last rally that had no place to live, so I mashed them into one great movie instead.
Sandblast II from Brittanie on Vimeo.
Two-lane blacktop
1:07 am | 4 | Blog, Photo Album | Two Wheels
Things look different on two wheels then they do from inside a car.
In Galveston, I could smell the jasmine blooming every time I drove past the state campground, and could feel the sea spray on my face as we cruised along the beach. I have been to Galveston dozens of times but rest assured I have never, ever driven my car on the seawall. Not the street named Seawall. The actual wall.
Sandblast was great fun. The weather was nice (though a little cloudy) and the rally games were some of the funniest and most entertainingly suicidal I have ever seen. The only bummer was Friday night, when my moto jacket was stolen off the front rack of my bike while it was parked with 20 other scooters in front of the fittingly-named Poop Deck. My scooter keys were in the pocket. Nothing else was stolen, but it wouldn’t be a scooter rally without something going wrong for Brittanie.
The newly revived Texas United River Rally is the weekend of my birthday. Be there or be square.
Christopher and I have been on an extended vacation this month home. Camping, scooting every day, epic purchases and even more epic schemes. I might have to quit my job in order to accomplish all the living we have planned this summer. He’s leaving again Sunday, and knowing we’ll have to spend the next month apart makes the adventures of tomorrow, today, right now, feel extra-super urgent. You want proof? Us deciding at the spur of the moment this past weekend to drive the BMW to Dallas and back in a 24-hour period. Five hundred miles, round trip.
I have gone the distance between Dallas and Houston many times on my drives to and from Oklahoma, but I have never seen dogs fighting on the highway service road, or a raptor actually catching it’s prey, and while I usually just whiz by the forest this time I was able to look around, look closely, without a layer of glass between me and the world, without a radio humming in my ears and a windshield blocking the slight dip in the air temperature as one drives through the natural shade.
It’s kind of silly the fraternity you are automatically inducted into when you buy a motorcycle and take it on the highway. Every passing cyclist gives you a nod or a wave. You are a rebel, a shunner of comfort, a vagabond. It’s absurd but I would be lying if I said I didn’t get a kick out of it.
On the way home, at a tree-covered rest stop just north of Huntsville, we met another cyclist named James, a Brit who is riding the perimeter states of the USA for charity. He is keeping a blog, which you should read.
We were only in Dallas long enough to have dinner and drinks at the recently unsealed tomb of Trader Vics. I didn’t take many pictures of the drive, because with the wind whipping you at 80+ MPH it’s not very easy to hold a camera steadily. I did take pictures of the restaurant though.
Towards the end of our ride Sunday, 30 minutes outside Dallas, the sun was setting on us. C looked down at the pavement to his right, and then patted me on the thigh so he could point to our shadow, two bodies on a motorcycle, my arms wrapped around him.