Vespa flashback, summer of 2005

After I graduated college in 2005, I took a road trip from my parent's house about an hour west of Albany, all the way across Massachusetts, to Rhode Island on my poor-running 125cc Vespa. Here I am mid-trip stopping for lunch in one of those college towns sort of in the Berkshires. I wish I could remember where it was. It might have been Northampton or Amherst. I wasn't really paying attention to where I was. I remember I had directions written on masking tape on my speedometer. I didn't keep track of how many miles, but there's no way it could have been less than 500. I went to a scooter rally in Rhode Island and rode a 50+ mile ride that Saturday. So, the entire trip was most likely more than that. I had a great sandwich for lunch at some organic food co-op type place. I put my camera on timer on a picnic table and took this shot. The shirt says "Geneseo" something or other, one of my many free Geneseo shirts I picked up as a student there. Those Pumas I'm wearing wore out and got thrown out after I used them while washing dishes in a restaurant about 2 years ago. The Vespa and helmet currently sit unused in my garage.

Eye for OG PAINT

Today I got the bright idea in my head that my VW is looking a little too drab and dirty. I love my Volkswagen for its "original ganster" hoodride type patina. But, there's no need for it too look completely shabby and neglected. Thus, I marched off to Autozone and picked up a can of Rustoleum Clear coat. I cleaned the bus with just some rags and water, getting all the imperfections and oxidation off. I just painted the passenger door, because here it started to rain and I ran out of daylight. Here's the result. Notice the contrast between the door and the front end that didn't recieve cleaning or paint.



Here's the hoodride looking a little bit more dignified. Note the muddy tires, from a little urban mudbogging I did this past week (driving the VW off road is great!). Click on the picture to see it in bigger detail.

Here's a picture of the VW from a few months ago when I was getting the back tire patched. Notice the blotchyness of the front door.


I'm perpetually unsure of what to do with the front of the bus. I popped out huge dents up there and scraped off lots of bondo. I prefer just looking at the bus from the sides, because the front end does look terrible. One of my friends comments that it looks like it's been through a warzone.

Maybe I'll tackle that sometime soon. In the meantime, enjoy this requisite dreamy TtV shot I took of the VW not so long ago.

My Lemond: A Love Story.

I love my Lemond bicycle. It's one of my favorite things. I have been getting a ton of use out of it this summer, which I consider to be the most fun summer since the summer of 2003.


Here is my Lemond frolicking at the beach.


Here is my Lemond at the park, near the swings.

Here is my Lemond on its way through the golf course.

New Bicycles

The other day I got this new bicycle frame as a gift! I had wanted a Peugeot for a long time, and I almost bought a very similar one a few years ago. I intend to build it up as a single-speed porteur.

These old french bicycles have a distinctive long fork rake, which gives it a distinctive French ride, in comparison to newer bicycles such as my Lemond.

Here are two articles on the subject: LINK LINK

specs:
frame : peugeot carbolite 103 steel, lugged ~1981 vintage
crank: stronglight

Also, I have this lovely girlbike in my stable:
specs:
frame: Raleigh step-through, grey ~1970s vintage
drivetrain: Sturmey-Archer 3 Speed, thumb shifter
wheels: 26" with newish tires
fenders: matching body-colored painted
accessories: wald front basket



The girlbike is for sale. $200.

The Story of My Honda Elite 50.

Like many people who are so deep in something that they forget just where it started, I have to remind myself exactly how I first started riding scooters. After working in the summer of 2002 at my dad's warehouse, I became the first kid in my college town to have a scooter. I bought a 50cc Honda Elite from Christman's Honda in Palantine Bridge, New York. It cost me $460 out the door, and I also bought a white 3/4 helmet.

I rode it home pretty scared of it, being my first time on the road. I didn't tell my mom I was buying a scooter, but my dad brought me there to pick it up. It was so light to ride - much lighter and smaller than the Vespa that replaced it. It accelerated quickly and was really nice to ride, especially through the rural areas where I lived.

It was a 1987 model, which was kind of a one-year-only type of deal for Elites. It had electric start, a broken odometer, and a plastic top case trunk. I think I had one new tire on the back, but I think both were that old-fashioned type of tread, not the nice style ones that we have now that offer a really smooth ride. Like all Hondas, the suspension was really soft, but since I had nothing to compare it to, it was great. It always started and never broke down. I didn't do any maintenance on it ever.

I brought it with me to Geneseo in the fall and locked it to a tree outside with a big cable lock. The first night I was there some drunk girls were sitting on it, and in the morning it was all knocked over. Its cover was strewn about 10 feet away. I was really upset about it, and got up early to take it to Dunkin Donuts. I added a few stickers to the trunk - Lookout Records, and one that said "R2 is my Co-Pilot."

The campus people gave me tons of trouble for having it on campus and not paying for a parking permit, so in a few weeks I had to move it to a bike storage that Mahoney told me about over by his apartments. Luckily, no one ever bothered it there, except for one day I came back and it had its trunk filled with leaves. I was really upset about this until a few months later when my roommate Greg eventually confessed to it.

In the summer of 2003, I stayed in Geneseo, living off campus. I kept it in a weird closet under the steps to the above apartment at our cheapest-in-town duplex. I found out about mail-order performance parts and got a Proma brand expansion chamber and some Malossi variator weights from a site called VT Cycles in Hawaii. I brought the bike to a Moto Guzzi shop in Avon for them to fix it. They called me halfway through the operation and said "Hey we found this weird part - do you want this back in?" I said "No! That's the restrictor! Leave that out!" Riding it back from that shop, I was scared because it was going so fast! It now did 45 MPH in the flats!

Different people had different nicknames for the scooter, my favorites being "T-REX" and "The Red Menace." I rode all over on that thing, including numerous 50+ mile sojourns from Geneseo to Rochester and back. The first one of such trips was a wednesday night when I met up with the Negative Image Scooter Club and rode with them. That was also the first time I ever passed a car on a scooter, even though I was at the back of their pack. We rode in a pack to Mendon Ponds State Park, where it started to rain and we broke up. I overshot and missed a few turns on the way home and I think I ended up in Hemlock at one point.

After that I rode to Conesus Lake a bunch of times. I rode in the cold but did put it in storage in my uncle's basement for the winters. I rode with people on the back even though it was never designed for that. Pretty much all my friends rode on the back of it at some point or other. Geneseo never really had any place to go, so mostly I just went to Dunkin Donuts or Wegmans, or just rode around in the countryside outside of town. I never rode the scooter to go to class or anything. Geneseo was just too small for that.

The scooter had its only break toward superstardom when it was featured in my friend Dhaval's short film "Catharsis." The film also featured my band, The Castawaves. The film really combined those two major forces in my life. I had brought back a drum kit in the fall of 2002 and started the band. I had the idea to make a music video for a Castawaves song involving me riding around on the Honda randomly giving out flowers to girls, but we never filmed it.

I can't remember exactly when I sold it, but I think it might have been just right when I came back from England; probably January 2004. I sold it to a friend of a friend in Rochester, who never registered it, and who had it stolen and impounded. Dan took me to get it out of impound, but by the time I heard of this the cost to get it out was $330 and it reportedly had a lot of damage to the front end, so we had to walk away.

I took the money from the sale of the scooter and put it toward my white Vespa. The Honda was one of the best purchases I ever made.

New Ride: Lemond Poprad

I bought a new bicycle a few weeks ago. I had been wanting a steel-framed road bike for a while, and have decided my bicycle is the one thing I will keep new-ish in my life filled with broken, vintage, and deteriorating whatnot.

I bought a 2004 Lemond Poprad off of some guy on craigslist. It was made in the USA of Reynolds 853 steel, presumably by one of Trek's bicycle factories in Wisconsin.

I really love this bike. Here are some of the parts:

Drivetrain: Shimano 105 2x9
Front Wheel: Bontrager Race Lite
Rear Wheel: Mavic Aksium
Tires: Continental Touring 28
Stem: Salsa
Brakes: Paul Neo-Retro
Fenders: Planet Bike plastic full fenders

Renaults

Some of my photos were featured today on my favorite website, Jalopnik.com:

http://jalopnik.com/5042285/citroens-and-fuegos-roam-the-streets-of-portland

VW Microbus Best of

Here is a link to some of the best pictures of Pre-1967 Volkswagen Split-Windshield buses, as selected by split window microbus fanatics of TheSamba.com

LINK

This is over 50 message board pages of pictures, but I highly recommend it. It is interesting to see people's perceptions of the car change over time. I believe the original VW Bus is such a subjective piece that people can place very different connotations to it. Hippie vs purely industrial, unsafe vs warm nostalgia; It's a strange psychological mirror of an automobile.

Above: 1. VW Samba as surfing icon, in garage surrounded by quiver of longboards. 2. VW Bus as American road trip icon. 3. VW Bus as chicken coop.

Secret Codes of Volkswagens.

Every old Volkswagen has a little plate riveted to it telling a bit of history of the car. I found mine on my 1971 Bus behind the drivers seat and yesterday decoded it. I used the information found on Type2.com as well as TheSamba.com.

Here are the codes and their meanings:

12 = Unknown, possibly a code meaning 1971 model year
162 = Bumpers with Rubber Moldings
191 = Outer and Center Underfloor Reinforcement Plates (these reinforced the structure of the bus to compensate for the hole in the roof for the camping pop top)
E = Unknown

4747 = Neptune Blue on top and on bottom
51 = Dark Beige Leatherette Upholstery
A02 = USA DOT Specifications
177 = Rear Bench Seat
507 = Vent wings in Cab doors
697 = Rumored to be "Fitted With Continental brand tires"

10 2 = Date of manufacture: either February 10th, 1970 or Tuesday on the 10th Week of 1970
7998 = Unknown, possibly a serial number of production runs at the VW factory
UP = Port of Delivery was Portland, Oregon
2310 = Kombi wwith Sliding door on the right, Left hand drive
21 = Upright cooling 1600cc engine, Manual Transmission

I encourage all Volkswagen owners to use the online resources to discover the meaning of their M Codes.

Low quality photography of bands: SPECIAL! Stephen Malkmus

Stephen Malkmus (left) performing "Cut Your Hair" with students of the School of Rock.

Wonder Ballroom, Portland - December 28th 2007.

This may have been the oddest show I've ever been to. The whole thing was organized by Ben Barnett aka Kind of Like Spitting, a School of Rock teacher now. Other performers included Ben Gibbard, Hutch Harris (Thermals), Sam Henry (Wipers), Sarah from Unwound, and a dude from the Decemberists. My neighbors, the Shins, cancelled.

West of Wakefield - "Lottery"

There is very little information on the internet about this band. They are called West of Wakefield and have one CD, the five song ep "Connecting the Dots." I believe they were from Michigan and released this CD around 2001. Here is the first song.

West of Wakefield - "Lottery"

I came across this as a DJ at WGSU in 2001. It has a real autumnal feel, with a song about winter. It's got a real midwestern pop-emo vibe, heavily influenced by The Get Up Kids and The Anniversary. The recording is clear, and I consider it so good it must only be listened to once in a year. Yes, pop punk worth savoring.

One of the members of this band went on to a band called Flashing Red Airplane, who are really good too.

Photo: Mamma Mias Pizza Geneseo NY Winter 2002.

The Mountain Goats on 2StrokeBuzz

2StrokeBuzz.com, the blog I have been reading longer than any other blog, recently referenced a Mountain Goats song in a post about a scooter rally, trumping anything I've written recently.

Check it out: http://2strokebuzz.com/index.php/?p=3700

Apples OTE on Indie MP3! I join thepunkguy.com!

After a new low of reviewing my own music, I have become the first other contributor to one of my favorite blogs, New York City's Thepunkguy.com

I posted one review so far: of NYC's punks, Gloryhole. Check it out.

Also, my band Apples of the Earth was reviewed on one of my other favorite blogs, Indie-Mp3.co.uk

Also the other day I found an Eames chair on the sidewalk with a free sign. I have been wanting one of these chairs for a while and now I have one!

Weakerthans return to USA!

My favorite band from Canada, The Weakerthans, are coming to the USA again!

Yes! They are supporting their new album, Reunion Tour, which should be good!

Click here for more information.

(picture: our friend Joe with John K. Samson of the Weakerthans)

How to live in a van.

http://www.rockinvan.com/slummin_it.html

Apples OTE mentioned on Indie MP3

Apples of the Earth received an approving nod on indie-mp3.co.uk

http://www.indie-mp3.co.uk/2007/07/my-space-has-talent.html

(Photo: rain on the sunroof of my VW.)

Now in the carport.

1971 Volvo 164! 3 Liters of Swedish brickness!

Wiki entry

Boys Life - "Sleeping off summer"

I'm going to rip off this blog and post a follow up to my Christie Front Drive post, which had encouraging comments from people I don't know!

Christie Front Drive did a split, one that I still don't have, with one of my favorite emo bands ever. The band released one of my favorite emo albums entitled Departures and Landfalls. This album I like so much because you can't even understand most of the lyrics and it has field recordings of rainfall and crickets and trains mixed in. I love it. It's one of my favorite true albums ever, in the sense that all the songs compliment each other for one artistic whole statement. I even bought a poster of the album cover for my room.

The band is Boys Life and here is track five from it, entitled "Sleeping off Summer." The picture above is a really cool treehouse I walked by this afternoon.

LINK

Low quality photography of bands: Part One.

Of course, while I promise a series of compelling "greatest hits" and "best ofs" posts, it's only natural to start another series.

I used to be very opposed to concertgoers taking pictures of bands during their shows. In my old age, it's one of those things I guess I just don't care about, like boycotting Old Navy and The Gap.

I am not a very good photographer and I take pictures only with my cell phone. Here is !!! from a thursday night show a few weeks ago at the Someday Lounge:

My new ride

1976(?) Raleigh Grand Prix fixed gear.
Thank you Dan!

Fixed gears are the new skateboards.