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Godzilla and the ’49 Merc.

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By Mike (Roadie) Marino

The Fabulous ’50′s weren’t just about Cold War nuclear politics and the fear of a Soviet takeover of America’s heartland. It was also about Brylcreem, ducktails, ponytails, fuzzy dice, hula dashboard ornaments, rock ‘n roll, V-8 muscle and a Saturday night car culture of testosterone on overdrive. We were Ben Hur and Don Garlits, all rolled into one as we cruised Woodward Avenue in our mighty Motor City mo-sheens, and we owed it all to those magnificent Motown dream machines that cranked out horsepower and style. It was The Chrome-Magnon Decade of Harley Earl’s Jet Age designs that had just the right amount of Liberace flair and panache in every element. The fresh fins of Belairs; stylish, sexy Dagmars big, full and firm, reaching out suggestively and of course, those big chrome grins on giant Oldsmobile grills, ready to eat you alive and smiling all the time as they gained on you in the rearview mirror.. Styling and design had met in the backseat and in a heat of passion created the era of pop culture and chrome meeting asphalt and art.

The Motor City motor culture went from zero to 60 in no time flat, and created a car cruising world on Saturday nights that included, carhops and fast food along with the drive-in movie and the promise of “Paradise By The Dashboard Light”. Drive-in’s had been around since the 1930′s but their numbers exploded during the cruisin’ culture of the 50′s. They popped up like mushrooms across the country and while most could hold 40, maybe 50 cars, some, as was the case at the Ford-Wyoming in Detroit, could hold thousands!!

We paid the price of admission, beer and buddies stashed in the trunk, just one more way to beat the system, and we entered the world of big screen dreams and backseat reality. One by one the cars snaked in, found just right spot, and we were locked n’ loaded and ready for the main feature. The sun was setting beautifully below the horizon and painting the sky with an artists hand, and it was getting dark so it was time for the speakers to crackle to life and soon the giant screen would be filled with Giant Spiders from Mars and The Atomic Lizards from Hell!! Flying saucers, mutants, zombies, hot rod flicks and hot rod chicks; just where did all these aliens, atomic lizards, and juvenile delinquent hot-rodders from hell come from anyway? The answer was in a nitro fuel mixture of nuclear politics and The Red Dread of the march of the Soviet Union. Little green men with a Red philosophy goose-stepping across Iowa, trying to conquer the red, white and blue of Senator Joe McCarthy, while Kevin McCarthy protected us from “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers”!

Godzilla, or “Gojira” as it was originally called, was a Japanese import that was born in the aftermath of Hiroshima. The nuclear nightmare that ended WWII would give birth to a subtle anti-nuclear and anti-war reptile called “Gojira”. In the original, Gojira rises from the cloud of atomic testing in the Pacific Atolls, and the result was a radiation-belching beast that would challenge an unsuspecting world. Eventually, it was released as “GODZILLA: THE KING OF THE MONSTERS” in the United States, where they surgically inserted Raymond Burr as the protagonist of the film. His “insertion” and the two second delay dialogue is what makes this film so damned enjoyable. Godzilla was an immediate hit and as a result created it’s own economic Hiroshima at the American drive in movie box office, not to mention fostering a whole new cult genre of silver screen screamers.

Black leather and bad attitudes also took their toll at the box office as piston pumping hotrod flicks raced across the celluloid landscape. Two of the earliest V-8 films of the Holy Chrome-man Empire were “The Devil on Wheels”, released in 1947, and “Hot Rod” in 1950. In “Hot Rod” the lead character is actually a Motor City Mo-sheen..a souped up ’32 roadster, but also featured the soon to be Dobie Gillis on TV, Dwayne Hickman. The greatest casting however was to include Tommy Bond who was “Butch” in the old Our Gang comedies, yep, the same guy who used to beat the snot out of Alfalfa. Then along came “Dragstrip Girl”, the all time cult classic released in 1957 that grabbed the country by the throat as the high octane version of “The Attack of the 50 Foot Dragstrip Woman”!! It featured Frank Gorshin, who later would gain fame as the Riddler on the high camp “Batman” TV series, and also starred real life dragster hero, TV Tommy Ivo, who would go down in the books with the likes of Mickey Thompson and Big Daddy Don Garlits!!

There was, however, one film above them all that grabbed us by the sensibilities of the times, and it’s impact was due to the performance and persona of a young man who rocketed out of the cornfields of Fairmont, Indiana (“Where Cool Was Born”) and would shortly lodge himself firmly into the fabric of American pop culture legend. James Byron Dean, the cool one, emerged in his red jacket in the film “Rebel Without A Cause” and his portrayal of youth in angst struck a resonant chord with it’s audience. The new kid in school trying to fit in, and the adage you can’t please everybody certainly applies. Brilliant portrayals by some of the finest actors of the day, including Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo. (Mineo would be stabbed to death in 1976 at the age of 37, and Natalie Wood drowned under mysterious circumstances in 1981 at the age of 43) The film has many classic scenes but the fave rave involves not just James Dean, but a classic, sexy ’49 Merc. The Merc stole the scene and not surprising for any automotive lover of pure design as art. The scene is a challenge to the Dean character, Jim Stark, by his antagonist, Buzz. It’s a go for broke chicken run scene where Jim and Buzz rev their engines, as they get ready to race towards the Oceanside cliffs and Pacific oblivion. Buzz gets his jacket caught on the door handle and can’t make his escape. He goes over the edge and only Jim Stark remains. In the film our hero avoids an untimely death, but it wouldn’t be long and in reality would Porsche out on a lonely stretch of California asphalt at the age of 24. An icon for the ages.

Godzilla has gone into semi retirement and only a handful of drive-in movie’s remain. Most stand lonely, forlorn and forgotten. Weeds taking the place of cars and speakers, the sounds of radio’s no longer audible and you don’t even have to pay anymore when you pass the empty gate to visit the empty screen…quiet and silent. Sometimes, though, if you listen carefully you can hear the faint sound of a car approaching in the distant, coming closer. It’s a little hazy, almost like witnessing a dream as you peer through the fog of the Fifties. You stand quietly as the car gets closer, and as it races by you in a ghost fog, you’ll swear that you saw a young man in a red jacket, smiling, as he drives by in the most beautiful car you had ever seen…a drop dead gorgeous ’49 Merc!!!

This Dharmabum Roadhead writer’s work has been described as DELIGHTFULLY WIERD and WICKEDLY WONDERFUL!! Mike (Roadie) Marino is a publisher of an on line magazine called ROAD TRIPPIN’ USA. It’s an asphalt kickin’ journey of Roadside Nostalgia and American Pop/Car Culture for the Chrome-Magnon in all of us. The style is lock n load and deals with the realm of where Pop Culture and Chrome meet Asphalt and Art!!

Mike also writes a monthly feature column under the banner THE ROADHEAD for the award winning Offbeat Travel zine. His column deals with bizzare ashpalt and roadside oddities and locales from mechanical museums to Cadillac Ranch. Mike is also a freelance writer of travel and history pieces that have been published in magazines and ezines in the US and Europe.

Most current project includes toiling endlessly on his first book about Pop and Car Culture in America of the 50′s, 60′s and 70′s. Although born in the rustbelt of industrial Detroit, he’s also been the definitive son-of-a-beach and has lived in a treehouse in Honolulu, the tie dyed spare change neighborhood of Haight Ashbury in San Francisco, as well as the North Beach district..where the Beat Goes On!!

Today Mike (Roadie) Marino lives in Missouri near the banks of the Missouri River with his word processor. In addition, to writing and backpacking, Mike has a penchant for Hawaiian shirts, Jimmy Buffett albums and Corona Beer. If you would like to use any of Mike’s articles some of which are included here, contact him at the email address below or at dharmabumroadie@yahoo.com He also accepts contract work and what the hell, a good agent wouldn’t hurt either. So contact him for rates and information. Now…Have Fun Reading…Grab A Cold Corona..And Kick Asphalt!!!

The No-Hydrogen Auto Show

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The No-Hydrogen Auto Show – The Greater LA AutoShow 2003
By Jeffrey the Barak

Back at the beginning of 2002, the-vu went to the Greater Los Angeles Auto Show and focused on electric, hybrid, and fuel cell vehicles. People loved the blend of seriousness and silliness in that article, so armed once again with a press pass and some comfortable shoes, it was back for more of the same in 2003.

This year at the 2003 show we were surprised to find that the EVAA is no longer exhibiting. Perhaps saving gasoline is a bad idea if you have to justify a war or two in order to protect your gasoline supplies. However all is not lost. The petroleum and electric hybrid version of the good old ordinary Honda Civic is alive and well. Speaking of alive and well, the amazing Toyota Prius is selling as fast as the company can make it.

Having done very little research in advance of the show, our hopes were raised at the Ford exhibition when we saw a Ford Focus with big plastic letters stuck on the side spelling PZEV. However this is not a hybrid, it is merely an extremely efficient and cleanburning conventional car. Ford say they are bringing out a hybrid version of their mid-size SUV, the Escape, but it’s not ready yet.

The whole Think division of Ford has been killed, leaving Chrysler’s GEM cars alone in their class as short distance, low speed, mild climate, electric cars. This GEM has the Kustom look.

Annother purely electric vehicle on display was the infamous Segway Human Transporter. Sadly there was no one demonstrating this on Thursday January 2nd., Media Day, but it was nice to actually stand beside the device that so tantalised us until the disappointing day when was finally revealed to be nothing more than a battery-powered means of conveyance, albeit a clever one.

No sign of the Nissan Hypermini this year, or the older, two seater Honda hybrid, the Insight, so it was down to two players: the Toyota Prius and the Honda Civic. In either case, the buyer will have to save a lot of fuel before they save back the extra money they spent when they didn’t buy either the regular Civic, or a small Toyota such as an Echo, or a baseline Corolla.

In my humble opinion, the Toyota Prius is currently the undisputed king of the hybrid world.

Fuel Cell Technology seems to have been pushed away from the forefront, and there are few signs in America of the establishment of a hydrogen distribution system, so we’ll all be burning petrol for longer that I would have predicted after last year’s promising show. Honda still displays the FCX,but the emphasis is on the X for experimental. It must be hard to test this car when you have to follow it around with a hydrogen tanker.

On Friday 3rd. January, still a future date at the time of writing (2nd January), a group of fifty local television celebrities and ordinary folks will be bringing their hybrid cars to the L.A. Convention Center to give journalists a ride around the block and attempt to seduce them away from the all gasoline way of thinking. This hybrid Car rendezvous and rally is organised by the Union of Concerned Scientists. This group seems to think that almost all America’s cars and trucks could reach an average of 60 mpg if the best existing hybrid and conventional technology were more widely used to day.

Recently, television actor Ed Begley Jr. drove from coast to coast across the USA and all the way back again, and spent a mere $150 on fuel. He did so in a hybrid car, not on a moped!

Writer Jeffrey the Barak is also the publisher of the-vu.

Riding the Range

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Riding the Range – Stress, Success and Failure at the School for Street Motorcyclists
By Jeffrey the Barak

It may be a cliché to call this a mid-life identity crisis, but at the ripe old age of 45 I suddenly find myself with an overwhelming desire to put an amusement park between my legs.

What kind of amusement park? The wet kind with killer whales or the kind with G-forces, twists, turns and acceleration? Of course! I suddenly want to ride a motorcycle.

Thirty years of car driving have not delivered banking, leaning and acceleration comparable to the forces available to a motorcyclist. The bike is the ultimate thrill ride that can go anywhere and deliver a tilting picture of the world flashing by. To ride is to become intimate with the air around you. The air becomes your aura, something that doesn’t happen when you simply roll down the window in your Ford.

And then there is self-image! There’s the image of spluttering around on an old Italian two-stroke scooter with a fifties style Italian beauty sitting sidesaddle on the back seat. There’s the image of a racing styled street bike with a rear mono-shock, dipping into the curves and prancing out into the straights. And of course there’s the fat and noisy giant cruiser, gleaming in the sun and setting off all those useless car alarms.

Why now? Why at 45? Well every boy likes his toys, and a quarter of a century ago I came pretty close to becoming a motorcyclist. But a deadly meeting between a close friend’s head and the asphalt and a visit to the motorcycle ward of the local hospital inspired me to retire to the metal shell of the motorcar for the rest of the century.

But lately I’ve been standing in the wind upon a 15MPH electric scooter, obeying bicycle laws and diligently calculating battery range and distances between two points. It occurs to me that with the proper training, the chances of getting injured in a motorcycle accident are no greater than the chances of being wiped out in the bike lane. It’s time for a calculated and managed risk.

With this in mind, I part with $200 and sign up for a 16 hour Basic Rider Course at the Motorcycle Training Center in North Hollywood, California, otherwise known as 1-800-CC-RIDER. Eight hours in a classroom and Eight hours on a small motorcycle in a huge college parking lot, guaranteed to greatly increase your chances of survival in the traffic, and also a way to waive the riding part of the DMV test that adds that magic letter M to your driver’s license.

They provide the bikes and the helmets; I bring the gloves, boots and eyewear. The instructions are clear. Boots must cover the anklebones; leather gloves must cover the wrists and there should be no bare skin showing on the legs or arms.

Easy you say, just wear jeans and a leather jacket! Well it’s not that simple, 90-degree April temperatures in North Hollywood have led to the rules relaxing as far as upper body clothing goes. They let you ride the range in a sweatshirt.

The Classroom

My first morning in a sweltering and stuffy classroom under the supervision of an instructor named Cary, is fun, aside from the heat. North Valley College is air conditioned, but apparently not on this day. On the way in I see the earlier students riding the range in their first and second on-bike classes. The bikes look reasonably new and everything looks like a fun game.

In the classroom for the first of two four-hour sessions, I am relieved to note a slow pace of learning. The information exchanged in over four hours is the equivalent of say four minutes in an advanced physics lecture room.

We are shown slow and amusing videos depicting talking bikes and bad actors, but it’s not all bad. There is a fairly well produced video section explaining leaning and controlling the machine. This first four-hour classroom session is really to prepare us for the written test the second week and also to prepare us for our bike time on the range early the second morning. The characters that make up my fellow students vary greatly in age, appearance and attitude. A young girl named Linda arrived late this first morning and having heeded the warning in our mailed reservations, proceeds to beg for forgiveness and permission to join. The instructor has clearly already decided to give her a break but she begs in such a lovely manner that watching this is a pleasure.

Our teacher teaches in the friendliest way possible and introduces us to basic principles such as the most critical differences between riding and car driving.

The words stability and vulnerability sum it all up. We know riding motorcycles is potentially dangerous. It’s about managing the risk to make it as safe as possible. That’s why we are here on the range instead of learning the hard way out there on the streets and highways.

We learn that in the event of a mishap, which is a nice way of describing a potentially lethal and certainly painful accident, the proper gear can often prevent injury. We learn that knowing when and how to corner, swerve and brake can often help us to avoid collisions.

From time to time Cary repeats something. He had pre-warned us at the start of the class that when he did this, it was a tip that we would be tested on the answer. From time to time a key point would be repeated three times, a sure clue that it would be on the test the following week.

And then we get to ride our invisible bikes. In the classroom we are instructed on types of bikes, types of helmets, types of clothes and pre-ride checks of the motorcycles. We are taught to mount and dismount our invisible steeds and act it out en masse in the class. We are taught about braking, stopping, shifting up, shifting down, and the “friction zone” which is the point when the clutch begins to engage during the easing out of the left lever.

We are told where we will usually find all the controls, levers, buttons, taps and stands on the average bike and what to do with them. Finally, Cary demonstrates the hand signals that our instructors will use to communicate with us tomorrow morning. And all this in 90 degree heat and no air.

The Range

And then it’s the cool dark fog of the next morning. Sunday at 06:00 for an 06:30 start. The first thing that happens is they put you on sport bike and have you traverse a canyon at 100MPH. No really, after an inspection of your clothing to make sure you listened in class the day before, each student is assigned to a motorcycle according to size. The tallest guys got the dual-purpose trail bikes and the tiny Asian and Latina girls get the mini-cruisers with the low seats. I got a plain vanilla extra boring Honda 250. This was okay for my nervous reintroduction to riding after a 24-year gap since my last experimental attempt but I have to say that the handlebars were a bit low and it was later going to prove difficult to maintain the knuckles higher than wrist position that prevents the over-use of throttle. But then I’ve always had wrists that don’t bend up very far; I have to do push-ups with my fists because I can’t put my palms flat on the floor.

Now it is plain to see at this point of the course why the graduating students are able to reduce their chance of an accident by 90%. We are gradually introduced to safe control of a basic motorcycle, one slow step at a time.

We go from finding the controls to walking the bike forwards and backwards to mounting and dismounting and then straddle walking the bike. The latter technique definitely puts the pressure on the men in the class and there is quite a lot of standing and adjusting of pants following each extended straddle walk. Next, each half of the class pushes the other half and releases them so that they coast across the range and brake to a stop.

Almost riding now, we are taught to find the friction zone, that place in the release of the clutch where the engine begins to engage the drive train. Everything is introduced to us a step at a time and under full supervision for our own protection.

Gradually, as the morning progresses, we get to ride the course in first gear and we get to stop many, many times. It’s repetition that we need and better here than out on the street. It slowly begins to be second nature to start, shut down, mount, dismount, take off, stop and corner. Then we swerve through cones and ride in progressively smaller ovals, both clockwise and counter-clockwise, all accompanied by full explanations.

Now I have to be honest, I run into some problems. It takes me a while to learn to apply my brakes smoothly. My Phat Flyer Electric Scooter is to blame for this. Braking on the Flyer requires a very hard and fast squeeze to have any effect. That’s not a good idea on a motorcycle! But the hardest thing for me is to get my right arm low enough to get it below the level of my knuckles. Consequently I tend to have a little too much throttle from time to time. Other than that, I am able to control my little bike very well. My biggest screw up is during an exercise towards the end of the day that involves stopping with the rear brake only and shifting down to first at the same time. My stopping distance is triple the expected and my revs are embarrassingly high. I get it right on the second attempt though.

Some of my classmates are not doing so well. One of the charming tiny Asian girls falls off the bike a couple of times and eventually leaves the course to return for a second attempt at a future date. Another gentleman who is rather portly keeps stalling his bike. This is a guy who has already purchased a new Harley Davidson and is just dying to be able to ride the thing.

On a slow tight turn that involves downshifting, braking, turning tightly with the clutch in, and then easing out the clutch and applying throttle to power out of the curve, I actually get a “perfect” comment from the strict military style instructor called John. This pleases me immensely.

After four hours we have gone from being unable to hold up a machine to being in fairly good control of the same machine. The sun is out, it is beginning to get very hot, and we are all physically drained. The afternoon class is about to do what we had just done, in sweltering heat. Driving home in the insane flow of the busy freeway at 80MPH in my car I try to imagine myself being in the same spot on a motorcycle. No way man, I am not ready for that yet!

Back to the Classroom

A week later and we are back in the classroom. The air conditioning works today and there is yet another different instructor. Throughout the classroom portion of this course we follow the same format as the previous week but deal with more advanced topics in order to prepare us for the second day of riding. The videos seem a little less corny and the written test at the end seems very easy. I didn’t stick around for the results but I’m sure I scored close to 100%.

Riding the Range

The following morning we are back on the range for our second and last riding class, with our fifth and sixth new teachers. Today’s class is very challenging. We stop straight with locked rear wheels, we weave through cones, and weave and steer through widely split cones. We straighten up and come to a short stop from a banked curve, and we swerve past an imaginary truck and stop alongside on command. We even ride a figure eight, calculating the gap in the traffic that is our fellow students. I had been allowed to ride a different bike on this day, thereby solving the too-low handlebars problem.

Linda, the girl who arrived late for the first class, expressed trepidation at every stage, but then succeeded in executing each stage without a problem. Towards the end of the session, we are involved in exercises, which require us to go one at a time through the range. So here we are in traffic, in a long stationary line of bikes in the increasing valley heat, with our engines running and sickly exhaust gas filling our lungs and clothing. I am getting a headache.

We take a break to fill out a customer satisfaction questionnaire. We rate our six instructors on various aspects of the job they have done and fill in suggestion boxes. I suggest repainting the lines and cleaning the cones for better contrast. I can barely see either.

And then it’s test time. The instructors take off their nice friendly hats and put on their DMV strict hats. They tell us not to be nervous because we have to completely screw up and lose more than 20 points to fail the test. Linda says she is nervous and I feel nervous myself, even though at this point in the game, I have already made the decision that motorcycling is just not for me. There are just too many outside risks. We may have been taught control of the machine, we may have been taught how to scan, interpret, predict, decide and execute, and we may have increased our odds by being here for sixteen hours, but I have made this decision without even realizing it, until now.

Test time. We line up in a line of eleven bikes. For the test we repeat a handful of the exercises we have done in the class. We have been told to relax. We know it will take a royal screw up to lose enough points to fail the test. Here we go.

Weaving through cones. I did this before without a problem but now I’m off course. I can’t possibly turn enough to get to the left of the next cone so I slow. Too much! My foot goes down – automatic points loss. I still can’t get back on the right line through so I just pass the cones and head for the corner. Exiting the corner, still bewildered, I cross the outside yellow line. I make a complete screw up of the test. There are two more tests, but it’s too late. We return our bikes to the grid for the second class to use and power off for the last time.

The instructor calls me over. “Jeffrey”, he says. “Twenty-one points deducted.” I tell him I know. I completely messed up the first part. “You can take the test again.” He says. “Just call the office and come down at the end of a four hour class and see if you can get in to retake the test”.

At this stage I really wish I had lost a couple less points so I could be done with it all, but I decide to wait for Monday morning to make a decision. I follow him over to the rest of the group. He tells them they all passed. I realize I’m the only one who failed. Linda runs over and hugs the instructor and we all laugh at her display of exuberance.

Two weeks later, my ten classmates will receive their certificates. They are to go and get their full licenses and practice what they have learned in as little traffic as possible until their confidence rises.

I drive my car home and then go for a short ride on my electric scooter. Standing up in the breeze at 15MPH in the back alley it actually feels pretty fast, and quiet, and it doesn’t smell. I shower, take a nap, go to my dance class and six hours after the rider course, my nostrils are still giving me carbon monoxide. No wonder I couldn’t find those cones!

The Week After

Do I rebook the final test and get a letter M on my license or just walk away with sixteen hours of life’s experience under my belt? I still can’t decide. I don’t want to become a CC Rider, but it seems a shame to waste those sixteen hours.

Jeffrey the Barak is the publisher, editor and designer of the-vu. He’s very good at driving a car.

The Electric Auto Show

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The Electric Auto Show – The Greater LA AutoShow 2002
By Jeffrey the Barak

Approaching the Greater LA Auto Show in January 2002 makes one’s motorhead pulse race. Here are acres and acres of new, concept and even vintage cars of every marque sold in the United States. It’s time for self control however because I know you can go to any newsstand or browse many equally glossy web sites and read about Ferraris and Porsches, or look at pictures of family minivans and sedans. In true the-vu tradition, my focus here is to be on the new alternative car culture, the formerly experimental world of electrics, hybrids and fuel-cell powered vehicles.

Definitions:

* Electric: Propelled by an electric motor, powered by rechargeable batteries.
* Hybrid: Propelled by an electric motor and also by a gasoline engine, with batteries that are charged by the vehicle’s own engine.
* Fuel-Cell: Propelled by an electric motor which derives its electricity from hydrogen gas and ordinary air combined in a fuel cell to create electricity.

Honda

The first car to hit us in the face is the Honda FCX-V4 fuel cell vehicle. In this ultra-modern looking vehicle, the hydrogen tanks are in front of the rear wheels, allowing the user to use the trunk as a trunk instead of the typical hydrogen tank display case. This idea also removes the chance of a Hindenburg style explosion when that cell phone wielding soccer mom slams her Ford Excursion into the back of your car. This really is an exciting new car and should be available in 2003. It should run for about 185 miles on a tank of hydrogen.

The official Honda line on fuel cell cars is: it will be at least ten or twenty years before the internal combustion engine loses it’s dominance. Honda expects to begin limited commercial distribution of fuel cell vehicles in 2003.

For now, Honda has higher hopes for the gasoline and electric hybrid cars such as the 1999 Insight and the brand new Civic IMA Hybrid. Unlike Toyota who left their top selling Corolla alone and introduced their hybrid with a fantastic new model called a Prius, Honda are putting out a hybrid version of America’s best selling small car, the Civic.

IMA stands for Integrated Motor Assist. The performance and practicality of this 2002 model is way ahead of the original hybrid, the 1999 Honda Insight. Apart from the slightly compromised trunk area, this Civic is as roomy as any other four door Civic, but it will deliver 50 mpg in the city or on the highway. This little hybrid should sell for around $20,000, and the fuel savings should make approximately 2,000 people per month decide to get one.

Daimler-Chrysler

Daimler-Chrysler’s GEM line of tiny trucks are really electric golf carts taken to the next level. Big enough and useful enough to be used as primary transportation in tiny old towns or large private residential communities, their motto seems to be “We don’t need no steenking doors.” Typical of today’s Daimler-Chrysler, the GEM e825’s are beautifully designed and they really are the Rolls-Royces of the indoor driving scene.

Ford

Ford’s competition to Daimler-Chrysler’s GEM line is the Think line. Not quite as pretty as the aforementioned GEMs, the Thinks are probably just as good and display nicely alongside the Think electronically assisted bicycles. Even though it wasn’t at the show, Ford is going to be introducing a research Ford Focus which runs on a mixture of diesel and a substance known as Urea. Urea is ammonia based, (just like urine is ammonia based) and its purpose here will be to remove that awful black diesel soot from the exhaust emissions. It’s difficult to resist the temptation to picture a future driver peeing into his gas tank to get Urea, but I’ll try.

General Motors

GM decided to bypass the Greater LA Auto Show and wait for Monday 7th January at the Detroit show to announce their own fuel cell project. The GM guys came out and publicly announced that we’ll all probably end up running hydrogen fueled, fuel cell powered electric cars eventually. When that day comes, GM will finally have to stop accurately reproducing the driving experience of the 1976 Chevette in cars such as the 2002 Sunbird and Cavalier. Oh well, that’s progress I suppose.

Nissan

If you want a tiny electric car with a 40 to 60 mile range and a top speed of 62MPH between 4 hour recharges, there’s nothing quite like the extremely cute Nissan Hypermini. Amongst all the American cars it looks dangerously small, but put one in say Japan or Europe and it’s not much sillier looking than the standard compact cars in those places. The first time I saw a Hypermini it was barreling past me at top speed on a freeway in Los Angeles, which was an impressive demonstration of its capabilities. Up close and inside, it really is very attractive and much more interesting than the BMW Mini that even on media day drew a large crowd at the Greater LA Auto Show.

EVAA

While the young lady upstairs at the main Nissan display stand stated with conviction that Nissan has been too busy to develop any alternative fuel technology or electric cars, the aforementioned Nissan Hypermini is on display at the stand of the Electric Vehicle Association of the Americas. This stand is not up with the big displays of the major manufacturers such as Nissan; it’s down in Kentia Hall with all the chrome rims, polishes and accessories.

Beside the gleaming paint of the Hypermini is a big car, which in comparison to the waxed perfection of everything else at this show looks decidedly grubby. There has been little effort to clean this one up after its 7,000 miles in the real world. Powered by Think, it’s the Ford P2000 Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle. The platform for this car is a “Stretched Aluminum Ford Contour” which accounts for its monstrously boring appearance. What the car represents, however, is far from boring.

This four-door sedan will run for 100 miles on a tank of hydrogen and reach speeds of 80+MPH. Last October, this car ran for 24 hours on Ford’s high speed track in Dearborn. It maintained an average speed of 58MPH including stops for hydrogen and driver changes. The average speed on track was 65MPH. Crawling on the ground beneath the back end I am amused to see the soft white polyurethane exhaust tips. The exhaust emissions of a hydrogen fuel cell powered car are of course nothing but clean plain water!

So how does a fuel cell car work? Very basically, Oxygen from the air compressor and hydrogen from the fuel tank combine in the fuel cells to create electricity. This is the sequence:

* Hydrogen fuel flows into the fuel cells.
* An air compressor supplies air to the fuel cells.
* Oxygen from the air combines with the hydrogen in the fuel cell to generate electricity, which is sent to the “traction inverter module”.
* The traction converter module converts the electricity for use by the motor/transaxle, which converts the electric energy into the mechanical energy, which turns the wheels.
* Water vapor and droplets are the only byproduct of the process and the exhaust is even drinkable.

Kateri Callahan, executive director of the EVAA tells the-vu that in routine demonstrations, this exhaust is actually collected into a cup and drunk. In this particular Ford the hydrogen tank is situated in the trunk, but it’s really an experimental car for demonstration purposes, hence the internationally acquired road dust covering everything under the hood. This ugly Contour is simply just a “mule” for the fuel cell process.

How does it drive? Like an electric car! The electricity is coming from the fuel cell process as opposed to storage batteries, but it’s like driving any electric car, except that you can fill the hydrogen tank in a couple of minutes which is quicker than charging batteries for hours and hours.

Parked around the EVAA stand, we also see a Honda Insight, an all-electric Toyota RAV4, a beautiful, traditionally styled, 40 mile range Scooter by Rad-2-Go, A Prima electric bicycle, an enclosed 2001 model Ford Think, Zapworld’s Power Ski electric pull-along device for skaters, a sea scooter for scuba divers and even a plug-in hybrid electric Suburban and an electric US Post Office van. The post office has around 500 of these in use today, mostly in California. Mail carriers either have to keep their trucks idling or shut them off and re-start them repeatedly, so electric is ideal for their average 30 mile routes.

Kateri predicts that we will be using electric drive systems in the future and there will be room for all of the systems. She says it may be a decade before we see a viable commercial fuel cell vehicle, but even then there should be a market for lower speed battery powered vehicles also.

Whereas the Ford P2000 gets all of its energy from the hydrogen in the tank, Daimler-Chrysler are experimenting with the onboard production of hydrogen using methanol as a fuel source. Methanol can be a renewable fuel source if it is produced from grain, but currently it’s often made from coal, granddaddy of the fossil fuels.

So who are the EVAA? They are an industry association working to advance electric vehicle transportation technologies in the United States and they represent the US in the World Electric Vehicle Association (WEVA). They are quite a political force, defending the planet Earth from the forces of carelessly burned fossil fuel. For a more serious definition I recommend their website at http://www.evaa.org

Little Charge, Much Burn

Electric, hybrid and fuel cell powered vehicles are of course in the tiny minority at this vast international car show, and the proportion of giant trucks to normal cars is still alarmingly high, but it is at least reassuring to note that the popular full size SUV’s of today are clean. While they may use as much fuel per mile as your 1969 Olds 98, their annual emissions are about the same as those put out by a dash around the block in the old barge, so you’re not exactly choking the planet when you shine your headlights down through our rear windows and whack cyclists on the back of the head with your door mirrors.

The real challenge is two-fold. Not only to we need to develop alternative long-range propulsion, we also need to change our mindset so that tiny cars and scooters can be seriously considered for use on shorter trips.

After walking ten or fifteen miles across the carpet of the Los Angeles Convention Center, my legs were wishing I’d been mounted on one of Dean Kamen’s Segways!

Writer Jeffrey the Barak is also the publisher of the-vu

Malaguti USA

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Breaking into the Market: The New School Entrepreneurs
By Vert James


In a time when gas prices are driving the masses back to the days of carpooling and public transit, a name like Vespa is reforming itself to mean more of a transportation alternative than a piece of nostalgia. Scooters are just beginning to receive major attention right now in the US and for more reasons than our tradition of stealing anything that is cool and European. With gas prices and traffic through the roof, the scooter market is set to explode.

Many Americans have already heard about Vespa coming back into the market with a new corporate feel and slick boutiques featuring classic models and cappuccino machines at every location. However, the hot topic in the scooter scene is the name Malaguti. Unless you are a fan of elite motor engine and body models, or a connoisseur of sought after Italian quality, you are probably unfamiliar with this brand of scooters. This will soon change.

Malaguti is Italy’s third largest scooter brand and was recently introduced into the US market by a group of young, energetic college grads from the University of Florida. Apparently, college got boring after the first two years and it only seemed logical to these real-world newborns to start a business. Today, their communal attitude and youthful spirit continue to drive Malaguti USA forward at a mind-blowing rate. The company’s focus is to stick to the young, growing scooter crowd and offer Italian Scooters at American prices. While Vespa’s new US models start at $3,000, the Malaguti’s average $2700. They have also embraced the traditional scooter crowd, ensuring an incredible amount of street credibility, something the young executives noticed that Vespa lost when it sued small Vespa shop owners last year for name infringement. “Sure we want to make a buck,” said Ian Kirby, a Malaguti USA marketing executive, “but we’ve seen not only the scooter market, but most all of America, turn into a pathetic corporate wasteland.

At Malaguti USA we’ve embraced the extremely simple idea that if everyone is happy, from my coworkers to our customers, then we can’t go wrong.” This philosophy seems to be carrying Kirby and the rest of Malaguti USA to the top of their game faster than they realize.

How Malaguti Arrived In the States

Growing up in Miami, Joel Martin recognized scooters, a vehicle analogous with a European lifestyle, as part of his everyday being. Helping father Froilan and grandfather Manuel run a small scooter outlet in Miami, Martin became a natural expert in motor scooters and the related business. In college, he was approached by Malaguti and was asked to do American market research for the Italian firm. His college career was already highlighted by marketing internships at companies like Coke and Sony and so it came naturally to him to try to find a market for the Italian scooters. After consideration and the following realization of the huge potential for an American scooter market, Martin asked his friends Chris Esposito and Ian Kirby for help in looking for marketing opportunities for scooters in the US. Immediately, Esposito, Kirby and Martin turned their small DJ entertainment company that they ran for extra cash into a PR firm for the Malaguti scooter empire. In January they launched the Malaguti USA brand and have been hard under pressure to keep up with demand since they started.

When questioned about the birth and development Malaguti USA, Esposito said, “Most of our friends left college regretting the fact that they didn’t drink enough beer. I left regretting that I didn’t turn my DJ business into a PR firm that handles international accounts earlier. I couldn’t have asked for a better situation—my hobby has turned into my career.” Kirby added, “Everyday, we wake up and know that we are making our living doing exactly what we want to do. California is whining about the energy crisis but we’re loving it. It’s funny, people didn’t think scooters would sell, but now that gas prices are up everyone wants an Italian scooter.”

Since Graduation they have been turning down jobs left and right. The trio has omitted positions at marketing firms and youth-oriented websites. “The temptation’s always there—job security, company cars—that sort of thing, but that’s submitting to the rat race. Where’s the adventure?” Joel Martin, president of Malaguti USA asked. He continued, “We’re actually pretty lucky that we haven’t hopped on any of the corporate opportunities that have been offered to us. All my friends who left for the dot com field are now looking for jobs; we followed our hearts and were doing okay. It’s not about money.”

While the classically trained businessman would most likely frown upon the Malaguti USA marketing and promotional strategy, many established marketing experts are highly impressed by the innovative approach the young firm uses to promote itself. Their first event was the Indiana Motorcycle show at the RCA dome in February. While companies like Yamaha and Harley Davidson had expensive and flashy setups, the Malaguti team knew they would need something more if they were to attract the attention they were looking for. Using industry connections, their booth included a light show and a constant live performance by DJ Factor E who recently went on the road with the MTV Campus Invasion Tour. The Malaguti booth received national rave reviews and was voted one of the best booths at the event.

Their second event soon followed in March with Playboy Magazine’s Spring Break on South Padre Island, Texas. Playboy Playmates paraded around the island for the entire week on the hottest new scooter brand around. Esposito, Kirby and Martin personally escorted the Playboy limousine wherever the Playmates went on the island. The event received international headlines in the motorcycle and scooter press, on top of being featured on Playboy.com.

Malaguti USA opened its US headquarters in Miami, Florida where Martin’s family scooter shop was located. Malaguti SpA has been so impressed by Martin’s work, it extended Martin’s contract and asked him to set up all of North America to receive the giant scooter brand. His first mission was to send out Kirby and Esposito to open up the West Coast offices. Before this could happen, the Malaguti events reached the ear of Playboy’s president Cindy Rakowitz who offered to take on the Malaguti cause. She hired Chris Esposito as her Event and Program Coordinator for a new Marketing, PR company called RakNRoll (www.RakNRoll.com) Thanks to the new PR firm Malaguti is now making a name for itself outside of the scooter crowd. “With RakNRoll’s help we will be able to develop the brand to the point where it’s at in Europe in a shorter time. People know that Italian scooters are the best there is in style and quality, and it’s up to us to show them there’s more out there than just Vespa,” commented Esposito.

The next large event featuring Malaguti will be the Ducati World Weekend in Nevada this October. Hundreds of thousands of motorcycle fans will flock to the Vegas racetrack from all over the world to participate in the event. Malaguti USA just reached an exclusive licensing deal and promotional agreement with Ducati North America to be its official scooter. Malaguti will also be launching a line of limited edition US Ducati replica scooters for collectors this fall, all of which will have high exposure at the World Weekend.

In the meantime, Esposito, Kirby and Martin continue to run Malaguti USA in their own particular manner. Said Kirby, “It’s not an issue of Malaguti adjusting to the business and consumer here; it’s an issue of us retraining the American market to embrace the product we have and the way we do business. And it couldn’t be going better.” With that Kirby had to excuse himself. He said that he was on his way to the beach to meet Esposito—in the middle of the business day. “That’s what we do. We run our business on the precept that if we’re happy ourselves then everyone else will be happy with us.” Martin emphasized this in a separate interview saying, “At Malaguti we like to think that if it’s not getting better, you’re not doing it right.” After a laugh he said, “Well, it’s getting better.”

Not bad for a few kids who three months ago were looking for change to order a pizza.

All pictures courtesy of Malaguti USA

A novelist and scooter enthusiast, Vert James’ one goal in life is to be credited with inventing the bumper sticker slogan: I’d Rather Be…

The man who invented the two-stroke engine

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Forgotten Hero – The man who invented the two-stroke engine

By David Boothroyd

You would think that the man responsible for a world changing invention would at least have his name in the encyclopedia. In certain areas of motor sport, his invention is so widely used that he would have statues in his honor in every boat club, his picture in every bikers’ bar, and yet I’ll bet you have never heard of him.

Perhaps you have never realized how all pervasive the two-stroke engine is, and what a clever and radical development it was. Here are a few examples. In the motorcycle world all three Grand Prix Classes have been won by two-strokes for as long as most people can remember. Motocross and Trials riders never consider anything else if they are serious about winning. Certainly throughout Europe most people’s first experience of motorcycling is powered by a two-stroke engine, In four wheeled racing, nearly all of our Formula One drivers learned their craft driving two-stroke Karts, and on the water the majority of outboard powered boats and personal water craft are still cruised or raced under two-stroke power.

The earliest internal combustion engine used a system that came to be known as the four-stroke cycle. In engineering circles it is called the Otto Cycle since it was invented by Karl Otto. A four-stroke engine needs to have valves, and a mechanism for opening and closing them at the correct time, and it produces power only once every two rotations of the crank. A well built two-stroke halves the number of components and doubles the power.

Some people reading this will have books on the history of bikes or boats and will be able to explain that the two-stroke engine was invented by Sir Dugald Clark in 1881. Sir Dugald was an interesting character in his own right, but the engine he designed was not the sort of two-stroke that became such a world-beater. An engine operating on the Clark cycle uses valves like a four stroke and requires a compressor to blow air, possibly mixed with fuel, into the cylinder. Some very fine Clark cycle engines were made, by the Detroit Diesel Company for example, but they were for ships or big trucks or locomotives. They never made an impact on the mass market.

The everyday two-stroke, which we find in everything from chainsaws to two hundred horsepower V8 outboards, is a much simpler and cleverer design. It uses the pressure in the crankcase below the piston to force fuel and air into the combustion chamber and simultaneously push out the spent gases. Using only three moving parts, the highest specific power output ever was recorded by a tiny two stroke Suzuki which produced an astonishing 395BHP per liter. Imagine if you had nearly eight hundred horsepower from your two-liter car engine

When I first started researching into the early development of two strokes, I was astounded to discover that not one of the standard works on the subject even gave the name of the inventor of “our” sort of two stroke. Then at last I found a book that stated that the crankcase compression two stroke was invented by “Day”. It was two more years before I found that his first name was Joseph. This is a brief outline of his story.

Joseph Day

Joseph Day

Joseph Day was born in London in 1855 and trained as an engineer at the School of Practical Engineering at Crystal Palace in London. On graduation he became a trainee at an engineering firm in Bath. In 1878 he started his own business, an iron foundry making cranes, mortar mills and compressors amongst other things. Interestingly he advertised a new design of “valveless air compressor” which he made on license from the patentee, Edmund Edwards. By 1889, he was working on an engine design that would not infringe the patents that Otto had on the four-stroke. This is what eventually came to be called Valve less Two-Stroke Engine.

In fact there were two flap valves in Joseph Day’s original design, one in the inlet port, where you would probably find a reed valve on a modern two stroke, and one in the crown of the piston, because he did not come up with the idea of the transfer ports until a couple of years later. He made about 250 of these first two-port motors, fitting them to small generating sets, which won a prize at the International Electrical Exhibition in 1892.

It was one of Joseph Day’s workmen, Frederick Cock, who made the modification which allowed the skirt of the piston to control the inlet port and do away with valves altogether, giving rise to the classic piston ported two stroke. Only two of these original engines have survived, one in the Deutsches Museum in Munich, the other in the Science Museum in London.

The first American patent was taken out in 1894, and by 1906, a dozen American companies had taken licenses. One of these, Palmers of Connecticut, had produced over 60000 two-stroke engines before 1912. Many of these early engines found their way into motorcycles, or onto the back of boats.

So what happened to Joseph Day?

His company in Bath was a general engineering one, and his engines were a sideline. Much of his money came from the manufacture of bread making machinery, and the prices of wheat were very turbulent around the turn of the 19th Century. The profitability of Day’s factory fluctuated just as wildly. These were early days for the idea of the limited company, and shareholders, then as now, could panic and bring down a company that they thought to be under threat. The problem is made worse, (also then as now) by the publication of rumours, or the deliberate orchestration of publicity campaigns in the press.

This happened to Joseph Day, with the result that his firm was driven into bankruptcy. A flurry of lawsuits followed, with Day as both plaintiff and defendant. The Treasury Solicitor even tried to have him extradited from the USA where he had gone to try to sell his US patents in order to raise money. The case was eventually settled when the jury found that Day had no case to answer, but it all came too late, and he went into virtual retirement by the seaside. The development of his engine then passed to his license holders in America, whose royalties restored his finances sufficiently to allow him to launch a spectacular new venture after the First World War.

This new enterprise was the exploration for oil. Unfortunately he was looking for it in Norfolk in the east of England. A second financial disaster was the last straw, and Joseph Day disappeared from public view between 1925 and his death in 1946. His obscurity was so complete that a mere five years after his death, the Science Museum made a public appeal for biographical information about him – with no apparent result.

I hope that everyone who has enjoyed two-stroke power will agree that this is a man who deserves to be famous. He should be in every engineering hall of fame alongside Otto, Diesel and Benz. It’s time to give Joseph Day his place in history.

I am deeply indebted in this article to the research of Hugh Torrens of Keele University, and for anyone wishing to read the full story there is a booklet by Hugh entitled “Joseph Day”  The book is published by and obtainable from the Bath Industrial Heritage Trust.

Dave Boothroyd is a College Lecturer, guitar player, and lifelong two-stroke enthusiast. He writes from the United Kingdom.

Italians invade U.S. – Scooters are back!

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By Jeffrey the Barak

In September 2000, in the United Kingdom, there was a nationwide fuel shortage. The roads fell silent as cars and trucks sat around with their engines in hibernation.

However, the British public were already used to gasoline which cost as much as wine, so thousands of them were able to continue upon their merry way astride their motor scooters. Every tree, parking meter and light pole in London seemed to have a scooter chained to it, and the lanes were abuzz with cute little designer items from not only Italy, but also Spain, Taiwan, China, Korea, France, Japan and India.

European Scooter Boys

European Scooter Boys

Motor scooters exist only in fiction for many Americans. Long distances, cheap fuel, and air pollution laws that preclude the use of two-stroke fuel mixtures have rendered them almost permanently into the history books. But now as the century begins in 2001, the scooters are back.

They never completely left. When the two-stroke ban kicked in, the cool scooters (the Vespas) went away and all that was left were the four-stroke, plastic Hondas and Yamahas. Short on style and rather un-cool, they didn’t sell in sufficient quantities to make their presence felt. The re-introduced Italian Vespa line up, however includes a 50cc two-stroke that actually passed the pollution test and is legal in California.

Thanks to Piaggio, the parent company of Vespa, Americans can again buy scooters that are cool and un-embarrassing to be seen upon. It’s a retro thing. The only stumbling block to a takeover of the streets is the difficulty of obtaining a motorcycle license. In the United Kingdom, a car license lets you ride a 50cc scooter. In the U.S. you have to go and take a test. And that’s a real hassle for Americans who are used to impulsively buying a vehicle such as a car, and legally driving it off the lot.
On the last Saturday of 2000, the-vu visited Vespa of California Inc., a brand new, beautifully designed showroom in Sherman Oaks (Los Angeles) and talked to helpful sales associate Eddie Alcazar, himself an owner of several scooters including a 1954 Model D Lambretta, a 1967 SX200 and an array of 1978-79 P200 Vespas. He’s owned Vespas from the 50s, 60s and 70s, and has ridden, restored and lived with scooters for eleven years. His first scooter was a light blue 1964 Vespa 90 which he bought at a garage sale for $40 in the late Eighties.


Eddie at Vespa of California

Regarding that two-stroke issue, Eddie explained that California Emission Laws banned the selling of new two-stroke vehicles in the early eighties, and since all the Vespas were two-strokes, Vespa withdrew from U.S. soil. Around 1997 the off-road bikes that burned two-stroke were also banned, outside of racing on a track.

In the new Vespa model line up, the ET4 has a 150cc four-stroke motor, and the ET2 has a 50cc two-stroke motor, which has been retrofitted for the American market to meet American emission standards. Today the scooter, tomorrow the leaf blower?

The two Vespa scooters look identical. Only the badges look different. They are displayed in a showroom that has some serious design behind it. Feeling more like a clothing store than a vehicle dealership, Vespa of California displays and sells Vespas in all colors, clothing, retro-helmets and bags, purses and accessories that would not look out of place on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. The showroom has green glass displays that would look respectable in a museum of art and they make espresso and cappuccino for the customers.

2001 Vespa facia

The owner of the Vespa boutique has a collection of bubble-cars and micro-cars and there is a service facility behind the showroom. The new Vespas sell at just under $3,000 for the ET2 and just under $4,000 for the ET4.

In the corner of the showroom is a 1961 Vespa. How do the new Vespas compare to the old? Eddie explains that the main difference is the twist-and-go automatic transmission on the new scooters. While these are easier to ride, only the old models with the clutches allow you to pop a wheelie, and some riders miss that. Wheelie poppers now have to purchase motorcycles. The disk brakes on the new scooters make stopping a much more efficient enterprise, however, so riders can pop a stoppie.


1961 Vespa at home with the 2001 models
What about fuel economy? The 150cc ET4 gets around 55MPG on 92 octane and the 50cc ET2 gets around 80MPG on a mix of 92 octane and two-stroke oil. The frame and the body are stainless steel, not plastic. Steel frames give stability. Eddie says certain colors; such as light blue sell so fast they can’t keep them on the sales floor. He wouldn’t quote an actual figure, but apparently scooter starved Americans are attempting to make up for the temporary absence of scooters on the streets. These things are flying out the door and into the San Fernando Valley.
Outside of Harley Davidsons and Indians, the Vespas are set to become the most accessorized two-wheelers in the U.S. The boutique is full of desirable Vespa accessories. Most impressive are the rigid backpacks, which also provide protection for the spine in the event of an accident. As Eddie shows us the range of body contoured shoulder bags, Vespa mechanic Robert with logo emblazoned overalls emerges from the back of the store. He is not oily, but infuses the essence of racing team into the boutique.

As the photographs for this article are taken a teenage couple scoot onto the sidewalk outside on a seventies Vespa. They look like they’re right out of an Italian movie. Inside the store we meet Jim Cavanaugh and his wife Ronnie, who are looking to buy a pair of Vespas to ride around the Valley on. They are replacing two ugly old Honda 50s. Yesterday they looked at new Hondas and today they are buying two Vespas. It’s the quality and the general beauty that persuaded them. They are lingering over the decision of color. Two red ones or one red and one ivory?

Readers hold on to your wallets however. There are a few things you need to know before you decide to be a motor scooter rider. Firstly, are you prepared to abandon the freeway system and take surface streets everywhere? The 150cc Vespa is freeway legal, but do you really want to be at full throttle with a Ford Excursion as big as an elephant five feet from the back of your head on the interstate?

If you want to be safe on the freeways, you need a real motorcycle capable of 90MPH with a twist of the wrist. It’s the speed and acceleration that can save you in an emergency. Scooters are for surface streets. Designed originally for the narrow and ancient roads in Italian towns, they are safe and comfortable on the boulevards of America, zooming from one red light or stop sign to the next and weaving through the rush hour traffic. The only other safety consideration is wheel diameter. Motorcycles have bigger wheels that can take the occasional pothole without too much trauma, but you have to aim your small-wheeled Vespa for the smoother parts of the street to avoid any explosive losses of control.

We pose retro sales associate Amy for one last shot and then leave in our car, considering if we can get away with buying some Vespas for fun. If a million Brits can do it in their lousy weather, what are we Southern Californians waiting for?

More Vespa boutiques are planned in San Francisco, Miami, Chicago and Houston.

The Vespa web site is at: http://www.piaggiousa.com/

The Need for Speed

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The Need for Speed: A Nation of Drivers at Risk
By Richard Mann

We are nation of people at risk; we have a national passion for speed. We drive way too fast. Has it always been this way, or is has this almost universal disregard for speed limits, for common-sense safety, developed in recent years?

Before the oil crisis in the 70s, highway speed limits were set at 60 or 65 miles per hour, with 70 mph limits on freeways only. Because we drove on all kinds of roads at these speeds, because we’d never been free to go faster, and because we had tight enforcement of speed limits, we had a healthy respect for high speeds. When we went 70 mph on the freeway, we knew we were flying low.

The Double-Nickel Speed Limit

When the 55 mph limit hit, did we slow down? Yes, somewhat. As we became familiar with the double-nickel limit, however, we sped faster and faster over the limit. Where 5 mph over the limit in the old days was an informal enforcement leeway, plus-10 (or plus-9) became the new standard–at least, it did here in Utah. We drove 10 over because we all knew that 55 was too slow. We knew it was an artificial limit with no basis in driving safety-related reality.

So our speeders would travel at 64 to 65 mph, knowing that they were safe at that speed. We became accustomed to driving 10 mph over the limit.

Freeway Limits Go to 65 MPH

Then reform came. First, we got 55/65 mph splits on the freeway. We could drive 65 mph in rural areas on the freeway. On the 65-mph sections, accustomed driving 9 or 10 mph over the limit, we almost automatically started to drive at 75 mph on the freeway. Now, we were moving pretty fast. Faster, in fact, than drivers who learned to drive in the 70s and 80s were accustomed to. Faster than they were trained to drive. Faster than they realized they were going. Faster than they understood. They knew that plus-9 or plus-10 was OK–it always had been, hadn’t it?

We forgot that 75 mph was faster than the Interstate highways were designed and built for. When we built the Interstate system, we planned them for 70 mph travel. Now, many years later, those highways are not in the same condition they were when they were new. Many are in poor condition–bad enough that their designers would shudder at the thought of going over the original limit of 70 mph. And the designers never anticipated the incredibly busy load of traffic these highways carry today.

The speed limits stayed at 65 for many years, long enough to become desensitized to our speed. On the 55 mph sections, few slowed down. The normal speed became 65 to 75 mph.

The 75 MPH Limit

Now, in recent years, the limit has come up to 75 mph, where the states choose to allow that speed. A limit of 75 mph! We are now speeding–even at the speed limit–down these less-than-optimal-condition roads at speeds in excess of their original design intention. And we’re doing it in crowds of vehicles much more closely packed than any highway designer ever dreamed.

But, of course, that’s not the worst of it yet. We have a whole generation of new drivers who have always known that speed limits–enforcement-wise–are always plus-9 or plus-10. How fast are they driving? Yes, 84 to 85 mph.

We are driving at 85 mph on old, decrepit highways in close-packed crowds of cars without any real knowledge of or respect for the incredible speed at which things happen when we are flying low.

Do we allow the requisite stopping distance between cars? No. On a recent trip up I-15 from St. George, Utah, at 85 mph, I counted–on a three-lane section–14 cars in the 3 lanes ahead of me within ten car lengths of me. Aside and behind me were another 10 cars.

And people–in cars and trucks–were regularly passing me!

Conditions Today

We are driving too fast on roads not designed for these speeds. We believe that we can drive up to 10 mph over the speed limit without danger. Even young Highway Patrol officers don’t question the wisdom of this. We’re driving 85 mph with the same safety precautions we used at 65 mph in the double-nickel era. We use the same following distances. We use the same proportionate speeds on wet roads. We have the same disregard for warning signs. (There is bad bump on I-15 south of Nephi, Utah, on a bumpy stretch of construction-material-experiment highway. A sign warns motorists to slow to 50 mph. Does anyone slow down? No.)

Today, speed is even more dangerous than it once was. Now we have cell phones and soothing stereo music (or booming-bass cacophonies) to distract us. In the old days, the wind through open windows helped keep us awake. Today, we glide along in air-conditioned comfort, totally unaware of the power and force of our hurtling vehicles.

The potential for horrendous multiple-car pile-ups is frighteningly large and unfortunately real. We are in mortal danger.

People say the new 75 mph limit just legalizes or blesses what we were doing anyway. True. But the assumption that we would continue as before is false–we are now driving fully 20 mph faster than when the limit was 55 not too many years ago–and we’re doing it along with a generation of drivers who determine following distances and take precautions as if they were still driving 55 mph.

Heaven help us.

About the Author:
Richard Mann is the author of over 500 articles published in national and regional print magazines, as well as a prolific and popular author of material all over the Web. He writes columns on professional writing advice and taxes for writers.  His print writing has been mostly in computer magazines and publications for writers, but his Web work covers the whole gamut of topics from relationships to beans.  He edits the Bean Lover’s site on Suite 101 and has worked as a content editor for a commercial Web site.  Rich lives in Roy, Utah, with his wife, two kids, and his grandson.  He’s been a CPA with a large international firm, a CFO with several businesses, and is now an instructor at a tech school in Ogden, Utah.

The voice in my head made me do it!

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By Dave Boothroyd

Have you ever seen one of those films where one of the characters remembers something that has been said to them earlier, and you hear the voice, with lots of added reverb so you know it is happening in the character’s head?

Has it ever happened to you? It happened to me and I have the scars to prove it!

I took up Motorcycle Road Racing at a relatively mature age. The chance to get hold of an interesting machine at a bargain price came up, and after years working on other people’s bikes, I decided to have a go myself. Realising that I would need every advantage I could get, I decided that before my first race I would go along to one of the Race Schools to learn a bit of racecraft. The session took place at a very hilly and twisty track in Lincolnshire called Cadwell Park. There are some very tricky corners there but one of the trickiest is a tight downhill right-left combination called “The Gooseneck”. After half a day’s tuition I was pleased with the way that I was getting through the Gooseneck, and so was my instructor and as he congratulated my on my style, he added, “Of course the really fast men can do it flat out in fifth gear”. I was impressed, but thought no more about it.

Picture the pages flying off the calendar. It was several years later, three bikes had come, and gone, I was on a beautiful little Yamaha. Everything was coming together with my riding, and I was taking part in a Match Race between English and Irish riders, back at Cadwell Park. There were a lot of bikes on the grid and when the flag went down I had a rotten start and was near the back of the pack. However, the bike was running well and I got my head down and started to work my way up the field. After three laps I was up to something like sixth place, and the leading bunch were in sight. Most of them were Irish- the English team was not doing well! That was it! My country called for a supreme effort. I could not catch up at all on the long uphill back straight, but the 180-degree bend at the end allowed me to close up and the next corner was the Gooseneck, I’d got them!

That was when I heard it, complete with reverb, the voice. It was saying ” the really fast men can do it flat out in fifth”. I suppose I must have thought about it for maybe a quarter of a second. It was time to give it a try! The braking point came and went. I passed a couple of riders as if they were standing still. Stay left, stay left. The first apex of the corner came into sight. Hard right! The concrete on the apex flashed under my right knee. Left! Left! Turn left as hard as you can, and keep that throttle nailed!

I could tell that we were well over. I’d had to pull my knee in. There was no room for it between the fairing and the tarmac. The bars were shaking. Something was scraping on the ground, and the bike was starting to run a little wide. No!- we were running badly wide, the bars were on the track and we were sliding- I’d lost it!

In a flash we were at the edge of the track and bouncing over the stones on the outside. Up to this point I was still in the saddle holding the handlebars, but I decided that the bike could look after itself from here on. I kicked myself clear of it just as we reached the grass. I found myself in a near sitting position, sliding down the steep grassy slope at something over 80 mph. It went on for what seemed like an age. I should have brought a book to read! After thirty yards or so I seemed to have slowed down, and anyway it felt as if the crash had happened two weeks ago and I was getting bored by then, so I decided to stand up. I put my feet down on the grass and stood up.

Big mistake! You can’t run at 40 mph; well not for long you can’t. I must have taken four or five strides, each one covering about twelve feet, before I gave up and fell over again. I did the last few yards to the bottom of the hill on my face. A first-aid man came running up. “Are you alright?” I was laughing too much to answer. I suppose he thought I was winded or hysterical or something and he got out his shears to cut the strap of my helmet. – I became a bit more serious then and was able to reassure him. I went back to the bike, which appeared perfect- on one side! There were a few bits and a lot of paint missing on the other. With the race now over I began the long push back to the paddock.

We are a friendly bunch in Racing and as I got back to my van a friend came up and asked if I had crashed, I said “Yes” and he asked if I was OK.

“No”, I said, “I was killed instantly”.

“Oh. Right” he replied, “Can I have your Bike?”

Copyright Dave Boothroyd.

Dave Boothroyd is a College Lecturer, guitar player, and lifelong two-stroke enthusiast. He writes from the United Kingdom.

Scoot Electric

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The electric scooter could one day become as common a sight as the bicycle, if only there were better batteries.

By Jeffrey the Barak in Los Angeles.
Originally published in the-vu in July 2000
Revised December 2000 and again in August 2003


2000 Phat Flyer by Currie Technologies

Bad gas

We live in a world where it is perfectly acceptable for a free adult to go wherever he or she wants to go, at any time that suits them. That’s a good thing! Unfortunately, more often than not, an individual will do this in a large passenger vehicle such as a car.

In the seventies, Americans drove big American cars that used gallons of fuel, just to drive a few miles. When the fuel crisis began the evolution to smaller cars, there began a latent urge to get back into the giant beasts of yore. The same people who said terrible things about the land yachts of the seventies are now driving solo to the local coffee house in giant fuel-thirsty Sport Utility Vehicles. So what’s the difference Suburban Drivers? Enjoy it while you can, planet killers, because the human race is reproducing at an ever-increasing rate, and the elderly are living, and driving longer.

In the not too distant future, there will have to be restrictions on car driving in order to avoid total gridlock and air toxicity. Enter the concept of the small electric car. In the early days of automobiles, electric cars outnumbered gasoline powered cars. Sure, they were terrible, but so were the fuel cars! When battery development hit the technological wall that it’s still pressed against today, the internal combustion engine became the champion of the highways, the railroads, the oceans and later the skies.

General Motors, Honda, Toyota and other manufacturers have brought electric power back into focus, but the fact remains, it’s impossible to equal the convenience and range of the fuel car. With gasoline, you can drive hundreds of miles in one direction; refuel in three minutes, and then keep on going without delay. Electric cars go a little way, and then they’re useless until re-charged.

But where are you going? Are you going from Saint Louis to New Orleans, or are you going from the beach in Los Angeles to your apartment near the beach? Do you really need four tires, four doors, six seats, a roof, a trunk, a windshield and an engine? Or are you just trying to avoid that slow process known as walking?

You might not know it yet, but in the future you are going to be one of the millions of people in the world who rides an electric scooter on a daily basis!

Why a scooter?

If you have ever tried using a bicycle as your means of conveyance, you know what the main problem is. What do you do with it when you get to your destination. It requires parking. Making matters worse, you arrive tired and sweaty and with a sore or numb butt. I’m all for exercise and fitness, but a man in a suit and tie, or a lady in make-up and hose is better off without that bicycle ride. They can always work up a sweat later at the gym. Lets maintain the separation of transportation and exercise here!

Picture this, you unfold your scooter, step on, push off once and hold the switch and steer. You say good morning to the people and dogs as you glide almost silently past them at a reasonable speed. You arrive, step off and fold it down.

Electric scooters are clean, quiet, small, light and fun. They’re a lot of fun. Like the electric car, the range is disappointing to some, but it’s getting better. Oddly enough, the acceptance of electric scooters got a boost from the phenomenal success of the toy known as an in-line scooter in 1999. The original was the Razor, but there are as many knock-offs as there are bumps in the sidewalk. The main advantage of the in-line scooter is it’s ultra light weight and portability. You can stuff it in your shoulder bag and forget it’s there when you finish your ride. These vehicles are made of aluminum and the wheels are like the wheels on your in-line skates. You can steer with the handlebars and the skill required is minimal. Unlike skateboards, they are not difficult to master.

Human Power

Riding any human powered scooter might seem at first glance to require a large input of energy, and compared to bicycle riding, this is true. But if you pass a pedestrian at the start of your journey, you will shortly glance back and see that pedestrian as a mere dot in the distance. That is the key to human-powered scooting, 4X walking speed and zero input on the downhill sections.

I have known about this for years. I’ve ridden a human powered scooter in England, Hawaii and Los Angeles. Scooting at low speed is effortless enough to make walking seem like an exhausting chore. But electric scooting is heaven. On a hot day you don’t get any hotter when you ride, because you are not using your own energy to propel yourself.

Electric power

Our disabled friends sit upon a subset of electric scooters. These are basically electric wheelchairs and they cost up to $3,000. The principle is the same though; batteries, a motor, a switch or potentiometer to go, and brakes to stop. With the modern explosion of electric scooters, the variety has been astounding. Just as in the early days of cars and airplanes, individual manufacturers have launched wildly different designs, and the consumers have steered the evolution of the class with their buying choices. The undisputed winner in the electric scooter in the early days was the Zappy. A similar design is still a popular seller today in the guise of the Tomb Raider.

My first electric scooter was a blue Zappy which I rode for over one year. I loved it. Bicycles passed me and I didn’t care because I wasn’t in a hurry. I just stood there and held the switch as I silently got where I wanted to go. I went fast enough to feel the wind in my face on a windless day, and slow enough to notice every little thing on my route. At first I wore a bicycle helmet, but soon abandoned it. At 7MPH I could step off and run if I ever had to. It was safer than a bicycle. I got to my destination and plugged it in to top up the charge.

I only ran out of charge once, even though my range was less than four miles. It was always enough. However battery technology has endured one of the slowest rates of development in the industrial age. Our batteries today aren’t much more efficient than the batteries which powered the electric cars before the gasoline era!

For a long time I never saw anyone else riding an electric scooter, then actor Kevin Spacey rode a Zappy to the 2000 Academy Award Nominations, and then they began popping up all over the place.

Then in November 2000 I upgraded to a Phat Flyer. Made by Currie Technologies in California, this was a truly practical electric scooter. Based on inaccurate specifications at the time, I imagined I was going 15MPH with a range of 15 miles.

The larger wheels meant you didn’t have to scan the road ahead for every stick, stone and crack. The wide handlebars, low center of gravity and general strength of the tube frame provided a ride that felt stable, safe and completely controllable. It was wobble-fee.

I got one of the first Phat Flyers released, courtesy of Scott at EVdeals.com. Following some bicycle-style safety checks with a wrench set and a delay of 40 hours owing to work and darkness, I finally planted the yellow monster on the pavement at daybreak and pushed down my right thumb.

My first generation Phat Flyer photographed in 2000

This is what electric scooters were meant to be! Okay, so the chain drive was a little noisy in all of that silence, but believe me, all you can hear after a second or two is wind blasting against your helmet. (At these speeds, you’d better get out your old helmet again!)

Motorcycles have hydraulic brakes, as do cars, so you have to remember that the Phat Flyer has bicycle style brakes, because those stop signs loom up pretty fast. When it comes to lower speeds, this type of scooter beats the Zappy simply because it can free-wheel. Okay, it doesn’t have the minimal resistance of a Xootr kick scooter or even a Razor, but there are times when you don’t want to be blasting past everything at 10MPH and it’s nice to put your foot down and scoot now and again. As with a kick scooter, downhill gradients are a free ride on the Flyer.

The Law

Laws pertaining to electric scooters vary from city to state to country. In some places in the world you are free to do anything you like on your electric scooter. Usually however, the electric scooter rider is subject to the same laws as the bicycle rider. This means keeping off the sidewalk, dismounting on a crosswalk, and obeying the rules of the road, including stop signs. Almost every policeman in the world has no idea what is legal for an electric scooter, so most will leave you alone unless you are naked and covered in strawberry ice cream.

However, some law enforcement officials will stop you and attempt to think of ways to punish you for having so much fun. The punishments do not include ice-cream and nudity, and some e-scoot riders have wound up arguing over tickets in the courtroom. Insight and advice pertaining to such legal situations can be found on-line at the Zappy eGroup.

The Future?

It’s still another three days until my permit to drive my old gasoline car is active again. I only get one day every two weeks now. Telecommuting from my home office in my bedroom has made me stir crazy, so I’m off to the local café for some good coffee. I smile and wave at a hundred or so fellow electric scooter riders as I glide over the cracks in the boulevard. Plugging in at the café, I remember with amusement how it used to require a seven-seater four-wheel-drive sport-utility-vehicle with air conditioning and mud tires for my ninety pound girlfriend to acquire a cappuccino from the café three blocks from her house. A young mother on skates glides by behind her self-propelled electric baby carriage. The restaurant next door receives a delivery from an electric road barge. The streets are so quiet, you would have been able to hear chirping and birdsong, if only the birds had survived the gasoline era.

Buy one

Links to electric scooter related web-sites have been removed from this article because they keep changing! I suggest a Google search for the latest choices.

Truth in Advertising

EVdeals.com is just about the only scooter-dealer website that has been honest enough to conduct performance tests and publish the results. Every scooter you see for sale in the stores, or online seems to have the range and speed of an imaginary twin, but EVdeals has published the truth. The following figures are from EVdeals in August 2003.

Taking a dozen of the most widely available electric scooters, they have revealed that average speed on level asphalt is between 9.8MPH and 12.7MPH. Duration or run time, in my view the most important figure, is between 28.6 minutes and 37.5 minutes. Hardly enough for an afternoon out and about!

Maximum speed is between 13.3MPH and 22MPH, the latter being attained by a heavier class of vehicle similar to a road-going moped, and range is between 5.7 and 8.6 miles. How many of us have bought scooters and then imagined we had ridden for 15 miles because the box said we could?

True, there are other scooters out there that look like Vespas and claim to go for 35 miles, but these have not been tested in the same honest and true fashion, so buyer beware. Let’s face it, those electric cars of the early 20th century had the same battery technology that we are using a century later. Is there anything else so important in our technological world that has evolved as little as the battery in over 100 years? No wonder there are so many conspiracy theories about various oil companies suppressing battery breakthroughs.

Jeffrey the Barak is the publisher of the-vu

The Wonders of Southern California’s Historic Ridge Route.

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It’s still there!
The Wonders of Southern California’s Historic Ridge Route.

By Jeffrey the Barak

Horseshoe bend

Horseshoe bend

It began with an intriguing map tumbling out of the Los Angeles Times in October 1997. Like a map to hidden pirate treasure, it showed the way to an adventure that would become one of my most memorable days.

It took until April 2000 for me to finally set my wheels upon the route, but after two and a half years of procrastination and planning, I can finally say, “I drove the Ridge Route.” But it’s more than that, I drove it sixty seven-years after it was effectively abandoned.

So what’s so special about a narrow road tracing the mountain ridges between Castaic in the South, and Gorman in the North? The Interstate 5 can cover the distance in a matter of minutes, why would anyone want to average eight miles-per-hour and twist around in circles for half a day, just to cover the same distance?

The fact that it’s a road that’s hardly been used since the days of wooden wheels and solid tires is enough. But the unexpected solitude and beauty to be found up there in the twenty-first century, as history unravels beneath your tires makes the route really magic.

I will refer to reference sources later in this article, which contain expertise that I cannot hope to rival. But it is my own experience up on the ridges that will always stay in my memory.

A Very Brief History.

In the early part of the twentieth century, there was a lot of talk about dividing California into two states. The division would have been North of Los Angeles. It was extremely time consuming to travel from the Antelope Valley in the North, to Newhall and then to San Fernando in the South. Detours had to be made way out to the East. Western California was essentially two worlds.

Because of the swift rise of the numbers of cars and trucks, it was decided that a shorter vehicle route between the North and South should be built. Technology at the time really wasn’t up to blasting and tunneling too much earth away, so roads had to do what horses and wagons did, they followed the contour of the land in order to avoid extreme gradients. This meant twists and turns and narrow ridges atop steep cliffs.

What finally resulted was a wild low-speed ride as thrilling as any roller coaster of the day. Oiled and graded in 1915, and later surfaced with reinforced concrete in 1919, a narrow strip of concrete twisting across the mountaintops. And, mostly because of the existence of this new road, California remained as one State, from Oregon to Mexico.

I cannot do justice to the fascinating history of this road, but I will provide links at the end of this article that, if followed, will haunt your imagination until you finally get yourself up there and experience this magical road.

The Expedition.

Only one of my friends shared my interest in tackling the route, and after a couple of years we finally did it. We wanted to wait until after a long dry spell, because we knew that rain could make the road extremely dangerous, and that any kind of car problem could lead to a life-threatening situation. My friend Michael (seen in my pictures) called the Ridge Route Museum in early April 2000, and a helpful ‘Ridgerouter’ explained that the recent rain had deposited snow up on the route, but within a few days, the high temperatures had melted it all away. This un-named man re-assured us that he drove the route often, in a Saturn sedan, so we wouldn’t have to go and rent that four-wheel-drive truck after all. I drove my 1995 Neon.

A Neon, an Englishman and a New Yorker. With temperatures in the nineties, we pulled off the 5 North, armed with print outs from Mike Ballard’s web-site and Ridgeroute.com (links to follow.) Passing through Castaic, the road signs proclaimed that we were on Ridge Route Road, our pathway to Avalon. We crossed Lake Hughes Road and wound through the brand new houses, aware that those very houses had diverted us from the authentic alignment of the old road. The detour took us up a hill so steep that the front drive wheels of the Neon began to slip, and we were barely out of town! Straight away, though, the views began to present themselves. This was Southern California, wild and beautiful. So far, the old concrete we had longed to see for so long was well buried beneath the asphalt, and there was not a sign in sight to re-assure us we were actually on the Ridge Route.

And then suddenly we passed the boundary of County road maintenance. Here, just an inch underneath the crumbling asphalt was the winding strip of narrow concrete we had so longed to see, with the insides of the curves filled in for safer views around the bends. Up we climbed with Castaic Lake making an appearance far below off the right side of the road. It was hot and silent. When I turned off the engine for a photo stop, there was no sound in my ears except for my own bloodstream and the occasional flying insect. And then the concrete reappeared. A surface poured by roadway pioneers. The Neon bounced along admirably in low gear at speeds ranging from three to ten miles per hour.

Crossing Templin Highway, the signs ahead proclaimed ‘No Through Road.’ We considered that we might not be able to complete the mission. We might get almost all the way through and have to turn around and come all the way back! Onward stout Neon.

We knew we were passing the foundations of places that no longer existed without a hope of noticing them, but it was easy not to miss the steps to an old gas station called the National Forest Inn. How excited we were so see these steps. Ordinary concrete steps in the middle of nowhere! But we could feel something, they were significant because we had seen them in the pictures from the web sites, and now we could climb up them. Man made historical features in the wilderness. If not for the Ridge Route, humans might never have placed a foot on this spot, but thousands did between 1915 and 1933. They bought gasoline and coffee here. They even spent the night in clapboard cabins on this spot.

We failed to identify any more foundations for miles, but we did spot a few we could not attach names to. There were a handful of people around in trucks, working on gas pipelines and power cables and transmission towers, but for the most part we were just driving alone through ancient postcard vistas. The only ugliness in all of this beauty was due to gas and power. Pipes stretch over and under the twisting road with no consideration for their appearance. Colored painted symbols desecrated the very historic concrete, pointing technicians to various piles and wires. But the sheer natural beauty of the place and the sculpture of the road itself easily overwhelmed this ugliness.

I had to swerve in slow motion past boulders that traveled 2 miles per hour slower than my car, (they weren’t moving, and I drove at 2MPH.) At one stage a huge landslide had almost completely blocked the road and I had to put my right wheels up it and crawl past at snail speed and a thirty-degree list. Forces of nature are powerful, especially the force of water over long period of time. In places where water naturally crossed the road, the original concrete and the subsequent repairs had succumbed and the Neon had to gingerly stumble over the resulting gaps. It brought to mind the clichéd rope bridge over the Amazon gorge. Fedora wearing explorers falling through the planks and almost slipping away into thin air.

When we reached the section nicknamed Serpentine Drive we found the smoothest remaining concrete on the route. The concrete was banked into the curves, which meant that it had better drainage, which in turn meant that water had less chance to erode it. Here I allowed the car to speed up to 15MPH for a moment, and felt what it must have been like to use the road when it was in its prime. Climbing up to the next section and looking back down to Serpentine Drive, we were able to match the view with the image from one of the ancient postcards.


Photo Courtesy Mike Ballard.


Serpentine Postcard image from ridgeroute.com

The next treat was Swede’s Cut, a cutting through soft rock, which has always produced rockslides. Michael was a little nervous as we drove slowly through the debris field and stopped for photographs. At any moment, another man-sized rock could decide to join us down on the roadway.

In many places on the Ridge Route, I observed that the bumpiness, which makes it so difficult to drive on, is caused not by the state of the original 1919 concrete, but by the eroded softer asphalt, which had been used to improve it. Wherever it was visible, the original concrete surface was in better shape than the sections that had been re-surfaced.

We stopped at the easily recognizable foundations of the Tumble Inn and re-read the history of the establishment from our notes. Shotgun cartridges littered the foundation. The cartridges were in every color of the plastic rainbow. Winding down to Sandberg’s, we squinted to imagine the fine structure, which had once stood there.


Tumble Inn in April 2000


Sandberg’s Postcard image from ridgeroute.com

And then the concrete slid below smooth blacktop again as we re-entered the county maintained section of road. Spectacular views of the Antelope Valley lay ahead. Jumping west to the 5, we covered the same distance southbound in a few minutes that had taken hours northbound on the Ridge Route. We shot down the hill at eighty-five miles an hour and were passed by a giant cat doing a hundred. It was the Meow-Mix truck. We had done it. Thirty months and a few hours were all it took to change our outlook on Southern California.

Michael is seeking original postcards of the Ridge Route for his collection.

More about the Ridge Route:

The Admirable Historian.
Historian Mike Ballard created a web site that really is a virtual tour of the Ridge Route. If you are not able to experience the Ridge Route in person, this site is the next best thing.

Must-see Postcards.
The official site is equally excellent, and contains a stories link with three must-read articles. The article from The California Historian is particularly interesting. Pictures of many old postcards can be seen on the various pages on this site, and it is these postcards which offer us a glimpse of what it must have looked like when this road was the only direct way to get from North to South. http://www.ridgeroute.com/ Surf to every page!

Jeffrey the Barak is the founder and publisher of the-vu. This is the oldest article.