broken-record
And so begins the long and tiresome broken-record about what motorbike I should be riding, that I should conform to his exceeding great wisdom by getting an 89-bazilyun pound glitzy antique-wannabe GeezerGlide like his, and sink my state-of-the-art Honda CBR600RR deep into Canandaigua Lake.
This despite my noting on numerous prior occasions that I didn’t like the seating-position on GeezerGlides, and seating-position was the main reason I rode so-called “rice-rockets,” not a desire to appear young and virile.
Whatever; starting this here boring litany 1-2 months before riding-season seems to signal reversals-of-position on other topics.
Namely..........
We were indeed the designers of our house, and the bluster-boy cannot display undeniable-proof my father designed the house in Erlton — which he didn’t.
The handicap-access at the Newark railroad-station is not the concrete platform in front of the station, which (ah-duh) has a blocking railing, and secondly is about 5-6 feet back from the tracks.
Indeed, 44 had the awful temerity and unmitigated gall and horrific audacity to point out that the handicap-access was a wooden ramp built next to the track farthest from the station (where I said it was); and not only that, you could see it under the bridge next to the NS-freight.
All the blustering stopped when I suggested he post pictures he had had nationally published (there weren’t any), which a co-authored book ain’t.
Examples of his superior photography have been posted on this here site: pictures of people with water-towers/phonepoles growing outta their heads, wires, pictures that are two-thirds sky and cut-off bodies, and above-all blue snow.
He takes my picture of the Amtrak MetroLiner and crops out my foreground and framing that gave it a sense of scale; calling it better that way (oh, how the mighty have fallen).
But of course an uneducated Instamatic-eye is far superior to one with experience; so much for culture.
Um, sure; a magazine is far more likely to use a photo that is two-thirds sky and cut-off bodies, because that’s what most people take. (For years we had to endure video-cams whipped all over, to mimic the frenzied movements of plain folks wiggling their video-cams all over.)
I tried to get the bluster-boy to re-aim to offset this, but the bluster-boy ain’t about to take no advice; especially not from no older sibling and so-called “Godless Liberial.”
So now I’ve been riding motorbike almost 30 years.
I began driving bus at Transit in May of 1977 at age-33, and took up motorcycling within a year.
A number if factors played a part: first, the encouragement of fellow bus-driver Murray Schroeder (“Morley Schwartz”), who rode a Triumph; second, my immediate neighbor’s boyfriend, who had a gorgeous Triumph “Hurricane;” and third, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” the best book I ever read (not the Bible), wherein the author Robert Pirsig recounts a motorcycle camping-trip he and his son took on a clapped-out motorbike in the Pacific Northwest to Californy.
My involvement with motorcycling moved far beyond all three factors (I’ve never camped out on motorbike); but my first motorcycle, my 1975 Norton 850 Roadster, was most like a GeezerGlide.
It was a large motorcycle, bought that size on the advice of a bike shop owner I had interviewed earlier for City/East Newspaper.
His advice was to start with the largest motorbike you’d ever buy, to avoid trading up.
It probably weighed over 500 pounds, but I learned how to ride on it, including figure-eights on narrow city streets.
But it sat you in the “sit-up-and-beg” position; fine until about 40 mph, and after that it was “hang-on-for-dear-life.”
I modified that poor thing 89 bazilyun ways to correct that; first a lower BMW-bar, and then Clubmans.
The Clubmans were better, although they felt out-of-place on a streetbike. But your feet were still too far forward.
So I bought rearsets, but never got around to mounting them. They were a contorted mass of chromed tubing and bracketry — rearsets meant putting the brake-pedal behind the kicker, even though the brake-control was still in front.
For some reason I patronized an indoor foreign junk-car parts shop in Rochester, and aside from seeing the old trunk lid from my TR250, I also saw a gorgeous Ducati 900 SuperSport (“SupperSport?”) inside on its center-stand.
So that when the infamous “Strohmier-bike,” a black-and-gold 1980 Ducati 900SS, appeared for sale in the newspaper, I decided to go look at it on my Norton.
As soon as I sat on the Ducati, the Norton was for sale.
Here, at last, was the seating-position I had been trying to get on my Norton, the dreaded “racing-crouch,” very much like riding a 10-speed racing bicycle.
Meanwhile, my brother Jack had begun riding surreptitiously at LeTourneau, on a ratty puke-gold 500-four Honda.
Finally he came out of the closet and told my parents to “Deal With It;” which always seems to be the equivalent of “shove it.”
Years later he moved up to a Honda NightHawk, a 700 inline-four, but it was the right color, black with blue trim. The 500 languished in his garage until disposed of: sold, junked, whatever.
Jack brought the NightHawk along when in Fulton to supervise (suppervise?) the building of the Nine-Mile Point nuclear power generating facility, and he rode it to Rochester once so that we could ride together.
I was riding the RZ350 by then, and was absolutely terrified.
I admit I’m overly cautious, but Jack was riding like there was no tomorrow; no heed whatsoever to his own safety (or mine). I had to lay back to avoid getting hit.
Well, I admit he’s mellowed some, but I wasn’t surprised he dropped his GeezerGlide in the Daze Inn parking-lot, or dumping it in front of that Jetta.
A few years ago he bought his Harley-Davidson Road King (his GeezerGlide), and the strident litany began. Obviously he had bought into the whole macho Harley schtick, and anything not a Harley was a wuss-bike.
Meanwhile I had been through two different bikes since Jack came to Rochester on his NightHawk, the FZR400 and the mighty Cow. I had the mighty Cow when he bought his Harley.
Every one of those bikes was the racing-crouch, except the RZ350, which at first was “sit-up-and-beg.” (That RZ350 was a passel of mistakes, the worst of which was trying the convert it into the racing-crouch. I put clip-ons and rearsets on it, but all they were doing was making you bend over from “sit-up-and-beg.” Legs and arms akimbo; it wasn’t the racing-crouch.
So now he noisily blathers something about my current motorbike, which also has the racing-crouch, being “impractical.”
As if I didn’t ride a so-called “rice-rocket” (the mighty Cow) almost seven years, and over 7,000 miles, including numerous long-haul trips — like to New Hampshire and Bill and the mighty Curve) — and the mighty Cow is after the stroke.
The dreaded LHMB, my most recent trade (and all my bikes were trades — I think the NightHawk got disposed of on eBay, despite being royally pranged from rearending a car), is another racing-crouch motorbike.
The LHMB is #6. Everything but #1 (and #3 originally) was racing-crouch. A GeezerGlide would be going back to “sit-up-and-beg;” which I want no part of. Furthermore a GeezerGlide, or its metric equivalent (which I’m sure I’d hear about), would be too big and unwieldy. —When it comes to motorbikes, the smaller (and lighter) the better; yet still powerful enough to not be a wuss-bike; i.e. a 600.
This despite my noting on numerous prior occasions that I didn’t like the seating-position on GeezerGlides, and seating-position was the main reason I rode so-called “rice-rockets,” not a desire to appear young and virile.
Whatever; starting this here boring litany 1-2 months before riding-season seems to signal reversals-of-position on other topics.
Namely..........
Indeed, 44 had the awful temerity and unmitigated gall and horrific audacity to point out that the handicap-access was a wooden ramp built next to the track farthest from the station (where I said it was); and not only that, you could see it under the bridge next to the NS-freight.
Examples of his superior photography have been posted on this here site: pictures of people with water-towers/phonepoles growing outta their heads, wires, pictures that are two-thirds sky and cut-off bodies, and above-all blue snow.
He takes my picture of the Amtrak MetroLiner and crops out my foreground and framing that gave it a sense of scale; calling it better that way (oh, how the mighty have fallen).
But of course an uneducated Instamatic-eye is far superior to one with experience; so much for culture.
Um, sure; a magazine is far more likely to use a photo that is two-thirds sky and cut-off bodies, because that’s what most people take. (For years we had to endure video-cams whipped all over, to mimic the frenzied movements of plain folks wiggling their video-cams all over.)
I tried to get the bluster-boy to re-aim to offset this, but the bluster-boy ain’t about to take no advice; especially not from no older sibling and so-called “Godless Liberial.”
So now I’ve been riding motorbike almost 30 years.
I began driving bus at Transit in May of 1977 at age-33, and took up motorcycling within a year.
A number if factors played a part: first, the encouragement of fellow bus-driver Murray Schroeder (“Morley Schwartz”), who rode a Triumph; second, my immediate neighbor’s boyfriend, who had a gorgeous Triumph “Hurricane;” and third, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” the best book I ever read (not the Bible), wherein the author Robert Pirsig recounts a motorcycle camping-trip he and his son took on a clapped-out motorbike in the Pacific Northwest to Californy.
My involvement with motorcycling moved far beyond all three factors (I’ve never camped out on motorbike); but my first motorcycle, my 1975 Norton 850 Roadster, was most like a GeezerGlide.
It was a large motorcycle, bought that size on the advice of a bike shop owner I had interviewed earlier for City/East Newspaper.
His advice was to start with the largest motorbike you’d ever buy, to avoid trading up.
It probably weighed over 500 pounds, but I learned how to ride on it, including figure-eights on narrow city streets.
But it sat you in the “sit-up-and-beg” position; fine until about 40 mph, and after that it was “hang-on-for-dear-life.”
I modified that poor thing 89 bazilyun ways to correct that; first a lower BMW-bar, and then Clubmans.
The Clubmans were better, although they felt out-of-place on a streetbike. But your feet were still too far forward.
So I bought rearsets, but never got around to mounting them. They were a contorted mass of chromed tubing and bracketry — rearsets meant putting the brake-pedal behind the kicker, even though the brake-control was still in front.
For some reason I patronized an indoor foreign junk-car parts shop in Rochester, and aside from seeing the old trunk lid from my TR250, I also saw a gorgeous Ducati 900 SuperSport (“SupperSport?”) inside on its center-stand.
So that when the infamous “Strohmier-bike,” a black-and-gold 1980 Ducati 900SS, appeared for sale in the newspaper, I decided to go look at it on my Norton.
As soon as I sat on the Ducati, the Norton was for sale.
Here, at last, was the seating-position I had been trying to get on my Norton, the dreaded “racing-crouch,” very much like riding a 10-speed racing bicycle.
Meanwhile, my brother Jack had begun riding surreptitiously at LeTourneau, on a ratty puke-gold 500-four Honda.
Finally he came out of the closet and told my parents to “Deal With It;” which always seems to be the equivalent of “shove it.”
Years later he moved up to a Honda NightHawk, a 700 inline-four, but it was the right color, black with blue trim. The 500 languished in his garage until disposed of: sold, junked, whatever.
Jack brought the NightHawk along when in Fulton to supervise (suppervise?) the building of the Nine-Mile Point nuclear power generating facility, and he rode it to Rochester once so that we could ride together.
I was riding the RZ350 by then, and was absolutely terrified.
I admit I’m overly cautious, but Jack was riding like there was no tomorrow; no heed whatsoever to his own safety (or mine). I had to lay back to avoid getting hit.
Well, I admit he’s mellowed some, but I wasn’t surprised he dropped his GeezerGlide in the Daze Inn parking-lot, or dumping it in front of that Jetta.
A few years ago he bought his Harley-Davidson Road King (his GeezerGlide), and the strident litany began. Obviously he had bought into the whole macho Harley schtick, and anything not a Harley was a wuss-bike.
Meanwhile I had been through two different bikes since Jack came to Rochester on his NightHawk, the FZR400 and the mighty Cow. I had the mighty Cow when he bought his Harley.
Every one of those bikes was the racing-crouch, except the RZ350, which at first was “sit-up-and-beg.” (That RZ350 was a passel of mistakes, the worst of which was trying the convert it into the racing-crouch. I put clip-ons and rearsets on it, but all they were doing was making you bend over from “sit-up-and-beg.” Legs and arms akimbo; it wasn’t the racing-crouch.
So now he noisily blathers something about my current motorbike, which also has the racing-crouch, being “impractical.”
As if I didn’t ride a so-called “rice-rocket” (the mighty Cow) almost seven years, and over 7,000 miles, including numerous long-haul trips — like to New Hampshire and Bill and the mighty Curve) — and the mighty Cow is after the stroke.
The dreaded LHMB, my most recent trade (and all my bikes were trades — I think the NightHawk got disposed of on eBay, despite being royally pranged from rearending a car), is another racing-crouch motorbike.
The LHMB is #6. Everything but #1 (and #3 originally) was racing-crouch. A GeezerGlide would be going back to “sit-up-and-beg;” which I want no part of. Furthermore a GeezerGlide, or its metric equivalent (which I’m sure I’d hear about), would be too big and unwieldy. —When it comes to motorbikes, the smaller (and lighter) the better; yet still powerful enough to not be a wuss-bike; i.e. a 600.
posted by BobbaLew at 10:41 AM
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