Western Massachusetts Sugar Shack Review

Adam’s Sugar Shack Review

Here is my impartial sugar house review. I thought others would benefit from my years of Shackin' Up.  For many years now I have gone to a sugarhouse at least one weekend every week between Valentine’s day and the end of March. You can go to Massmaple.org for addresses and directions.

Going to a sugarhouse has traditionally been the beginning of the spring riding season for me. There is something so wonderfully beautiful about the fact that water is beginning to rise up out of the ground into the leaves of trees. Usually it’s my first two up motorcycle ride, and my first ride of consequence.  It really is difficult for me to express the degree to which we anticipate shack season. From about Christmas we keep an informal countdown of days till the first shacks open.

God Bless the People’s Republic of Western Massachusetts.

The Red Bucket: Worthington, MA At the end of dirt Kinney Brook Road in in the first real hilltown going east. This is Priscilla and my favorite sugar house. There is an amazing view down the valley it's in with tap lines running this way and that. There is a huge assembled topographical map on one wall and a giant plexi window makes up the other. There is some preposterous effect in the boiling room where you wait whereby the steam seems to stratify in the air. I cannot explain this property, but it's amazing.  The coffee is lousy but everything else is good.

High Hopes: Worthington, MA Folksy and fun, it's a real Hilltown favorite, just up off RT112 it's easy to find. Some tables overlook the creek out back. If you're hungry it's an all you can eat bargain.  100% of the income at High Hopes goes into the owner’s kids college fund. It’s a nice place with plenty of decomposing snowmobiles for local color.

Strawbale Cafe AKA Hanging Mountian: Fun little place in Westhampton. It has a super nice boiling room with lots and lots of steam. It's in a very old building that's partly sunk in the ground. The restaurant itself is straw bale construction. If the weather is just right they have a fire pit and serve cider doughnuts outside.  Maybe the best coffee of any sugarhouse. It’s the place most likely to have gluten free pancakes.

Davenports: Shelburn, MA The 900 pound gorilla of sugar shacks. So authentic it pains the heart. My favorite thing, besides the old man that sometimes wears traditional Finnish costume, is the old barn window filled with maple syrups samples of years past. It makes a lovely stain glass window of amber hues you never knew existed. Beautiful views, appropriately hard to find.

Ikoa: Way out in Hancock MA. They have cows and stuff and a petting zoo. There is something nice about this place but I cannot recall what it is.

Goulds: The one everyone knows about. Gould's has a lot of history, the food is good and they make fritters. It's a bit too accessible to tour buses to be truly awesome.  This is the Official Sugar House of the Yankee Beemers.   This place has sugar and snow, which is worth a lot.

Maple Corner: Blandfield MA. It really is on a corner and they do have maple. it's really a cross country ski place that's also does maple. You can kill two birds with one stone and go skiing and have pancakes. As just a sugar shack it's not too shacky.

North Hadley Sugar Shack: Hadley, MA  Concert floors. Generic feeling, very unshacky. Plenty of parking. With petting zoo, it's where people with kids need to go and stay away from the Red Bucket so I can get a table.

Pomeroy’s: Westfield, MA  This sugar shack can be good bad or indifferent depending mainly on my mood. It’s a working dairy farm but the area around it has grown into a kind of appalling suburbia. It scores OK on shackieness by virtue of it’s unpaved and muddy parking and the general squalor that most working farms not owned by Robert Redford (or the equivalent) have. IIRC breakfast is served in a barn with a cement floor.

Windy Hill: Worthington, MA If this place is open again then you may proceed to the shackiest sugar shack of all times. Welcome back to the 1930s, the depression is back on, interior plumbing is limited. There isn't much parking; best to go early in the season before the outhouse hole fills up. You won't forget your trip to Windy Hill, but that's a good thing.  This is the polar opposite from the Olive Garden.

South Face Farm: Ashfield, MA  If you want to run into the who's who of Northampton proceed no further than South Face. In beautiful Ashfield, MA with lovely Routes 112 and 116 nearby it's a riding paradise. Frankly their corn fritters rock when compared to Gould's. Housed in a hundred plus year old barn it's really what Gould's could be were it more obscure and better.

Gray’s Sugarhouse: Ashfield, MA Gray’s has been closed about 10 years now, but it was the best. I tear up thinking about it. Frankly, I am angry that Gray’s shut down and want David Brooks to write an op ed piece in The Atlantic about the injustice of its closing down.

Steve's Sugar Shack:  Westhampton, MA Get ready to eat with the after church crowd. From what I can make if it they must be some sort of Protestant because they don't seem ethnic enough to be Catholics. At any rate a strange feature of this Westhampton shack is the boiling room inside the restaurant! Though most sugar shacks kind of remind me of a 4H project gone out of control and taken over by the adults I would have to say this one may have that effect even more.        

These are all the Sugar Shacks worth mentioning. If it’s not on this list, it’s crap.

Stephan

Stephan Gregor was better known as “The Jew” in his youth. His father, Adin Gregor was a military defense attorney who’d joined up in the Vietnam era to defend conscientious objectors from within the system, in later years he specialized in cases where servicemen and women were accused of being homosexuals. As a military brat Stephan lived in many places but mostly at Subic Military Base in the Philippines.

Stephan’s mother had left the family soon after his birth and returned to New York unable to bear the sidelong glances of the mostly southern, overwhelmingly Christian and endlessly disapproving neighbors, since they had no friends. As an attorney Adin saw he kept Stephan.

Officer housing in the sprawling base looked enough like an American suburb but to Stephan, better known as the Jew or early on as Stephanie, it was never home. He took to the world outside the gates where he slipped into the universe of prostitutes and con men that ring all United States Military bases in poor lands. In the barrio, a wall away from ersatz Americana of baseball diamonds and hedges that Stephan escaped an identity beyond his control.

Stephan became ironically known as the Filipino. Stephan could buy women, or drugs or alcohol with the change off his father’s dresser and more than once he did. Stephan became an appreciable street fighter, which in the Philippines is no mean feat, and the boys on base called him Stephanie no more. He made way in both worlds as Jews amid Christians have always done, brokering what was at hand. Stephan made no friends, but made money.

One day he purchased a Honda CB160 from a Marine down on his luck with debts to the wrong people in the barrio. Almost from his first ride Stephan sensed he he finally found something that spoke to him essentially. Alone on the bike he was beyond the reach of either identity and simply showed up unannounced in far flung places where nobody knew any of his names. On beaches far from the base where fishermen hauled nets he small conversation with strangers who knew nothing of him.

Eventually, moving off base, Stephan made a place amid many, but with nobody. When his grandfather died in New York he sold his concrete bungalow shook fewer than a dozen hands and left the Philippines forever. He flew military transport as a last favor called in and landed in San Diego, took a taxi to motorcycle dealership and purchased a Kawasaki Conquers 14 with roughly half he cash he carried with him. In 72 hours, he arrived at his maternal grandfathers wake at 57-02 Northern Boulevard Woodside, Queens.

The ride was effortless, after a lifetime of 400cc motorcycles and primitive roads he was at last as anonymous as he ever wished to be and the Conquers flattened the highways. What he found when he arrived was stranger than any serviceman’s brothel request. Every building seemed a low warren, or borrow as indeed the cities withing the city of New York were called. Rooms filled with darkly clothed people, even in the heat of summer chanted obscure but strangely familiar words.

When accounts were finally settled three somber men presented Stephan with a check for slightly less than $24,000 purchasing his share of his grandfather’s sprawling empire of tailor shops. He walked down three flights of stairs to the Conquers and headed for Mexico.

My Arcadian

I outpaced the storm from nearly the Louisiana border, clear across Mississippi and then into the Ozarks. At times, as I ran before it, I could see the pavement darken in the rear view mirrors and feel the cool sweep of wind towards the low pressure at its center.

Staying ahead of it was easier on the highway; the GSX-R’s deficiencies as a touring bike are more than made up for by what I thought of as character. When I Ieft the highway for back roads its handeling essential. Now I raced towards my Arcadian as much as I ran before the storm.

She was smart, rich and beautiful; I met her in the aftermath of Mardi Gras in 1986 and chanced on her not four months on in Fargo. She had an accent both southern and French, being of old Arcadian stock. To tell, her family had a hand in the negotiation of the Louisiana purchase and their fortune stemmed from that.

At one point I passed seven cars and a motorhome with the front wheel a good six inches off the road for the whole half mile it took. I entered the next corner blind and hard on the brakes. It went on like that for half an hour.

I turned into her drive as the storm was on top of me. As the GSX-R came to a halt before the stables, the sky blackened, a great wind came up, and hail rained down hard enough to obscure the great house only a hundred or so meters away. I stepped out of my Aerostich in a manner so graceful it startled even me and raced towards the broad steps, taking them three and four at a time. Not thinking of manners and carried along by the thrill of arrival I plunged though the doors and nearly knocked over a maid carrying a tea set -- on though the foyer, the great room, and a dining room, knocking a table that sent a glass spiraling on its edge in a huge concentric ring. Lightning crackled outside and wind pulled long drapes out of tall windows.

I raced out the French doors and onto the broad patio where I saw her running toward the house in the storm and when she saw me she ran harder still and we clasped in a wet and embrace in hail and thunder.

Laughing we chased each from room to room, in and out of the house, tracking water and mud everywhere. Her parents, whom I’d never met, were passed two or three times in this crazy procession, and began laughing too, seeing their wet daughter laugh so hard. I chased her from the house and caught her on a bridal path that led to what she called the hermitage, a small cottage shingled all over and bermed into a knoll. We ran inside and without a word took off our wet clothes and made hungry love on the bed as the storm raged outside.

When it was over I stood and walked to a desk at the window. On it were an old but very well made draftsman's compass and many pages covered with mathematical formulas written long ago in fine script with a quill pen. A volume of Byron stood open to Would I Were a Careless Child.

She produced a cigarette from a side table and the smoke coiled above her. She enjoyed a smoke after sex and at no other time. After I first kissed her in North Dakota we’d carried on an intense relationship, meeting where her work took her and where I could get to. I knew, then, what passion is, but to say I loved her would have been a distortion of a word I didn’t fully understand.

Her family, rich for generations, married either the most beautiful or smartest from the peasants around them. The result was a slender woman, with delicate hands and a charming wit working toward her PhD. Her grandmother had past away over the winter, and now she would wear her hat to the Kentucky Derby, and someday her daughter or granddaughter would too. This was neither a right nor a privilege but something as simple as a swale drawing water after a summer storm.

I asked her about the meaning of the objects in the room. She said that long ago, the family had hired a tutor to come from the North to educate the family children. It was said the tutor had fallen in love with an aunt in the mid 1800s, but that a fire had killed the aunt when the manor had partially burned down. For reasons never understood the family had let the tutor stay on here, in the hermitage. He died not long after, the family said of a broken heart. “So you see,” she said, playing up the French part of her accent, “it ended very badly,” and tossed her cigarette our the window.

I believe that I knew it was over for us then, right then. Not a moment before or after. I met her parents more properly and we went through the motions of a visit. The food was wonderful and we rode horses around the estate, me clumsily and she like she was born to, because she was. I don’t think I saw her world before that, with its special hats and walnut tables. When I left I held her a long time and when we said goodbye we both knew it was for good.

Two years ago I was checking into a hotel for a conference and she saw me walk across the lobby. A while later she knocked on my door. I was surprised to see her. “I saw you in your suit,” she said, meaning my Aerostich. “To think you’d still have the same one after all these years.”

“No,” I replied, “I crashed the one I had when I knew you, and wore out another too.” That was nearly 30 years ago. I looked into her brown eyes and she was beautiful. When I smelled her I fancied I could still feel her breath on my neck as I had so long ago.

She looked up to see that the hand I held the door open with had a wedding ring on it. “It’s been a long ride for me, I mean, today... on the motorcycle.” There was an awkward silence. “Look,” I went on, “are you here at the hotel?” “Yes” she said, “we can talk later.”

We chanced on each other in lobby and we sat on the large impersonal sofa there. She’d taken a PhD in linguistics and taught at UC Berkeley. Academics, she said, left little time for anything else. She’d never married, and kept a small house in the hills, nothing like the manor, she said, more like the hermitage.

When I left the next day I fancied I could see a thunderhead rising the the west but another part of me knew there was nothing of the sort. I stood in the parking lot for a time and began to weep, watching cars pass on the highway. I hoped nobody I knew from the conference would see me. I did not try and hide myself, but finally stood looking down at my gloves laid across the ignition as the drone of passing cars sang in my ears.

I did not weep for chances missed or days gone by. I climbed on my motorcycle, a man, and headed home.

Beasts

Our world is filled with threats. For my purposes I will divide them into two categories:

Specific or immediate threats: a hornet nest has just fallen in front of you, your wife throws a flower pot at you.

Generic or abstract threats: the national debt, the Casey Anthony verdict.

The human animal evolved with the specific threats as a major factor and with general threats as a minor factor. In the six or so million years that humans first walked upright we’ve dealt, from a survival perspective, almost exclusively with highly specific threats such as Lion Attack!! Threats such as Lion Attack!! have a number of common factors: they are apparent, they are apparent to everyone, and they are actionable. That last part is important. You can do something about Lion Attack!! Your choices are basically run away or defend.

The first permanent settlements to include groups larger than a single family clan happened about 10,000 year ago. For most of the world, though, settlement would come much later. With settlement came the generalized threat. This would include fitting into society, loss of control over individual destiny, worry about what the gods wanted and the like. These threats are the inverse of specific: they are not apparent, they do not appear the same to everyone and they are not actionable directly.

Over the years we’ve seen the rise of general threats in tandem with the decline of specific threats. In the news media we see a world of mayhem and murder, filled with wars and verdicts even as we go about our lives very safely with air bags and the consumer product safety commission to protect us. Still, we feel the same stress hormones due to these general threats such as government programs we disagree with, terrorism, and violence in society, but we have no direct way of reliving this stress.

Some folks institute a “general defense.” I would argue that gun ownership is often just such a coping mechanism. There is no specific threat that gun owners are defending against, yet the idea that they would be able to cope should a specific threat arise is comforting. It is a dissociated defense for a dissociated threat.

I think most “food allergies” are also mostly a psychosomatic attempt to link an obtuse general threat to some specific causal agent. Some recent studies have shown that environmental allergies are, simply, panic disorder. It’s been shown that in double blind tests “allergic” people exhibit reaction at random to stimulus. That is, they are just as likely to freak out if the cookie contains wheat or not because the cookie is a proxy for everything from China to the decline of American oil.

I think there’s one more coping response. Motorcycling. Motorcycling presents us with real specific threats every time we ride. We face oncoming turns, sand in the road, ill-mannered road users and every other manner of mayhem. All the accumulated stress hormones from long exposure to general threats we face can be washed away because here, finally, is a threat we can do something about. Our brain stems and bodies don’t know we’re not fixing the national debt or resolving the debate about gay marriage, it just recognizes a real peak and valley in tension, the kind of peak and valley you get from overcoming a specific threat. That’s the signal to relax and let it go, until you watch the news again.

In the end I am brother to all those who ride not because of political affiliation or social clan, but because we are all animals. We are simple beasts living in a system too complex for ourselves and we’ve found a way to cope.

Because It's Beautiful Part 2

Once I looked out over the mouth of San Francisco Bay with the eyes of a surfer. As the tide fell millions of gallons of water drained into the sea at the narrows below the Golden Gate. Yet, against this tide huge ocean waves rolled in from the deep against the flow of water.

My wife spreads the white top sheet over our bed. Standing at the foot she grasps end and with a deft snap sends a wave of motion down the length of fabric. The uncooperative end of the sheet whips itself into alignment and together we spread the coverlet.

There are moments on a motorcycle when an engine seems to come alive. It acts with an uncanny precision and willingness, it seems to almost sing. There is, of course, a reason for this. We speak of tuning an engine and imagine that this speak is figurative, but it often isn't. It's often literal. It turns out that calaculators used to design pipe organs work very well for creating good working four stroke exhaust systems.

Connected to an engine there is an exhaust and an intake. These are not just tubes routing fuel and gasses to and from the engine, they can perform useful work.A four stroke engine turning 5000 RPM opens its exhaust valve 41 times per second. Every time this happens a "slug" of air moves out of the engine and into the exhaust header. Once the valve is closed the "slug" of exhaust gasses keeps moving but since it's in a sealed pipe, the exhaust header, it creates a partial vacuum behind it.

In addition to the physical movement of gas described above pressure waves move up and down the exhaust pipe much, much faster than the physical flow of gasses in the header. When we lit firecrackers as children we felt that pressure wave. It wasn't wind, like the flow of gasses. Never the less, it could do "work" like remove a finger.

In my original example of waves traveling into San Fransisco bay against the tide I attempted to demonstrate that waves of energy can flow against current in the media that carries them. In the case of San Francisco bay both forces are powerful and move in opposite directions largely irrespective of one another. In the case of Priscilla spreading out fresh linen I wanted to show that a wave can move though media and release it's energy (flipping the end of the sheet into the desired location) once it "crashes" on the shore.

Exhausts are tuned by changing the length and diameter of exhaust systems and how they join together. The powerful pressure wave that escapes the exhaust port when it opens races down the pipe and is reflected back as a negative wave everywhere the pipe expands.

If things are timed right the negative pressure wave arrives just as the port is opening and sucks the spent gasses right out of the combustion chamber. If it's at the magical moment when the intake valves are open it can also suck clean charge in from the air box as well. Conversely there must always be a positive wave as well. That means that at some other RPM or throttle position the opposite is happening. A positive wave is arriving that is forcing dirty exhaust into the combustion chamber.

There are people that think that when you add an aftermarket exhaust to an engine that you are "uncorking" it. That, in some sense, is true. When we add a "slip on" exhaust or debaffle a stock muffler we are simply increasing the amplitude of the wave, making it more powerful. In a sense we are making the effect of exhaust tuning "more good" or "more bad". When the positive wave arrives forcing dirty air into the combustion chamber a slip on muffler this happen in a way that makes things much worse instead of simply worse. When the negative waves arrives pulling exhaust helpfully out of the combustion chamber we are making things much better instead of just better.

A well designed exhaust system works with an engine to so that its positive tuning effects happen in often used parts of the rev range or at places where the engine is weak and could use the help. Conversely it "hides" the negative effects behind engine strengths or in seldom used location.

I can describe the characteristics of exhaust tuning with some accuracy but so what? It can all seem quite clinical or logical or exploitable; like we can own it in some way. I feel a divide between knowing and wonder that I want to break down. I want joy and wonder to be part of the equation and support my world view with equal shoulders, even in reason's inner sanctum. It may be weird to understand exhaust scavenging as a wonder, but it is.

When I started to find the answers in bedsheets and ocean waves I began understand this: Something isn't beautiful because it works, it works because it's beautiful.

Because it's beautiful.

The engine has moved into the realm where airbox volume and exhaust pipe length conspire to create a perfect storm and revs build magically. I am not sure what sounds angrier, the motor or the wind around my helmet. I’m a little startled to see how close the sun dappled pavement is, hanging slightly off the bike and looking at onrushing Wilton Road between the clutch lever and the rearview mirror.

We’re well into, “please step to the front of my vehicle and place your hands on the hood” speeds. Perhaps closing on triple the speed limit, but I am unsure of how it’s posted here. The bike comes upright. I concentrate on keeping my breathing even and steady, to stave off any panic that might come. My mind is, blissfully, given over to my body.

High on the ridge the road opens onto a straight boarded by meadow. I back off the throttle because there’s no sense in carrying any more speed between corners. In the high summer the light it is bright enough to bleach everything. The tans and greens of early August fuse into muted pallet joined at the hip with cicadas and the smell of bar-b-q.

For no good reason except the bike is fully upright, I drop two downshifts and let the motor pile against itself. The rear wheel hops and chatters until I squeeze the front brake. When wheel and engine speeds match and the rear hooks back up. Its sloppy technique, but I allow myself the pleasure of it.

The left turn is now at hand. The rider in front of me blinks off the long straight on onto Damant Road, which follows a brook of the same name into the valley. He rides like Hailwood, bolt upright on the bike, all long graceful arcs. I have no idea how it works for him, but it must.

I can’t see much into the corner, as the road there is deeply overhung with trees. The bright light of the open makes it look black to my eyes; but the front end is compressed and I am already off the side of the bike holding it upright by pushing the grip forward. I snap it into the turn.

Damant falls sharply away from the ridge, and the transition is abrupt. The whole bike goes light, with the suspension topped out. Everything is weightless midcorner at the exact moment I am shifting my body to the other side for the right hander fast approaching. My eyes come into focus, adjusting to the deep shade under the canopy, the bike touches down and we are away, like sparrows.

Later, that evening I am more than a little drunk and riders are gathered by a fire. I hear some conjecture about why the moon looks so big on the horizon and listen to their explanations. To my addled brain, none sounds right and offer this: “It’s because when you look at the moon on the horizon it’s distorted by the curve of the atmosphere, which acts as a lens.” I am drunk enough to listen to myself talk as if I someone else were speaking and I think, “sounds pretty good!” To my surprise I hear myself add, “but my mother, who is Italian-God bless her, would tell you “because it’s beautiful.”” And, just then, I know which answer is right.

Olga's Story Part 1

We’re at a sidewalk table in front of Sam’s Café, the three of us, as usual. It’s warm, almost still hot. Our three black chairs, and a fourth vacant, surround the small metal table a little too crowded against the weekenders here that come to our main street on afternoons like these.

Luke is in fine fettle, and I shoot Barry a quick sly smile. Luke pantomimes the position of the motorcycles with his hands; held like knives in the air, leaning this way and that. He’s showing how earlier we had come against the chain of Harley riders just before approaching the best section of the mountain pass.

He’s becoming more excited now, the pressure of the whole situation: the potential for oncoming traffic to ruin things, how it all must go just right, judging their lean and hoping they would run wide so we could cut inside them and continue our morning unabated run by their rolling roadblock.

Having only two hands but explaining the location of many things in space Luke is pointing into the air all around him, recreating our run up the mountain in a small invisible world hovering above the empty fourth chair between us and the tourists on the street.

Luke and Barry and I have become older men than we once were, but somehow wear the role of middle aged men costumes. Luke has recently taken to waxed cotton gear and looking, somehow, “weathered”.

I look beyond them, not really hearing the story anymore, now watching he broad pink light reflect off the stained glass of the cathedral. Still, Luke is good at this physical story telling. I can see the whole road this morning as he has painted it in the air. I can feel the tension in his body, setting up the long chain of bikers for the pass. His hands whirr becoming the knife edged leaning motorcycles, then his hands are on the throttle and clutch, then pointing out obstacles or drawing curves for these ephemeral bikes to motor though.

He rubs his fingers together to show us sand, or covers the back of his palm his other hand for leaves. We are mesmerized. Even though both Barry and I were there this morning here we are there again, heroes nostalgic for a recent past and reliving it now.

At last, Luke gets to the pass, he pantomimes the three bikers lining up and running impossibly wide in the right hand sweeping turn. Barry and I both smile as he show us by creating a broad blocking arc with his left arm, as if to hug a round friend, he traces a quick arc inside this with his right hand. Us, streaking by heroically!

He rises from his chair, lips sputtering lips in pantomime motorcycle sound and hands on the bar, his left showing the upshifts as we shoot past. Now we’re running hot into the next corners, things are falling apart. Luke continues to point it objects in the air his hands and us as motorcycles knifing though the imagined landscape.

He hooks of foot around the empty chair he has risen from and, either in a moment of brilliance or clumsiness hurls it into the stream of sidewalk tourists before him. It clatters creating space for him to continue his story unabated and now frantic.

We had been frustrated, trapped behind the bikers, and now rushed headlong into the pass. Luke reaches out with cupped hands into the arc of tourists the chair has created and says quietly to them “a rabbit, you see, a little bunny, in the road” the tourists are immediately taken in. He’s now got a fake British accent, “my mates and I were going too fast on our motorbikes this morning, when at rabbit should appear on the road” and explains the pile up. Barry running a great distance on his front wheel, me into the woods, him slewing wildly and the silence thereafter.

The Harley riders, dispatched with great pomp moments before now parade past us serenely. The police await, fruitlessly, around the next bend

Luke, satisfied with his story rights his chair and sits down. The tourist, so taken in moments ago are a bit slow to leave. Nobody says anything for a moment or two. Barry lights a cigarette, the gap created by Luke’s antic closes up and the tourist continue in their stream to where ever they go. We look at out bikes parked at the curb.

After a time I say, “let me tell you boys a story as unlikely as it is true, of an old woman, a great love and a motorcycle” I close my eyes and again find myself in Olga Sleutin’s world. For a moment I just sit eyes closed there on the street with my friends, but in her cold room this springtime, on the third floor, above the garden.

Street Fighting Man

In the late 1990s I lived in California, in San Francisco. For a few weeks when I first arrived I became a bicycle messenger. I did my time on the Sansome wall, I worked for Aero, the biggest company that had the lowest rung in the social pecking order of San Francisco couriers.

During the years that I lived in SF and traveled in Latin America, I didn’t own motorcycles, but I never stopped thinking about them. Along side us bike couriers were the motorcycle couriers. We eyed each other suspiciously, but shared space. We were athletic; they were, well, different.

We all charged. Everyone made all their money between the hours of 9:30 -11:30 with another rush between 1 and 3:30. During these hours there were packages to deliver and we all made haste. What this amounted to was a loosely controlled race within the city every single day. Do well today, and your dispatcher, the person that assigns you packages will give you choice runs tomorrow. Every day, every day, the momentum builds. Have a bad week? It shows up in your paycheck next week and you get fewer packages. Living at the poverty line this has real meaning. Eat to ride, ride to eat is not a slogan but a life for couriers.

All this meant that I rode crazy. We all did, but so did the motorcyclists. There have been plenty of times and places in my life where I have realized I was in over my head, involved with people whom I had no business rubbing shoulders with, involved in a dangerous and sometimes illegal activity. I once became so enraged I kicked the rear view mirror off a car in traffic. I was satisfied to see it hang from it's control wires.

I've heard it said that San Francisco has more emergency room admissions for per motorcycle registration than any other major metropolitan area in the United State. I can believe this.

Maybe you've hear of Ziegiest, the famous motorcycle bar in San Francisco. Ziegiest of the flower of motorcycle courier "style". The reason for the quotation marks is that like so much of motorcycling many people ape the lives of few. Harley guys dress in motorcycle gang "style", BMW guys dress as if they were leaving for Africa at any moment, ricers dress up as Valentino Rossie. It's a fantasy world unrivaled even by little girls combing the manes of their plastic ponies.

To me there is something beautiful about a 7 year old CBR with damaged body work that a Triumph Speed Triple just isn't going to capture. At some point, out of necessity or weariness or due to lack of funds most couriers just gave up. They stopped perpetuating the fiction that motorcycles don't fall over. "Street Fighter" motorcycles, like the Speed Triple, are supposedly derived from this world.

Crashing is a real thing, I did it myself at the track recently. Even in that controlled environment it was pretty frightening. I can't imagine it on a crowded street with buses and curbing and pedestrians. I wanted to erase the memory of it quickly and removed every mark left on the bike, replacing levers with scuffs that in no way impaired function.

In another time and place I realized the beauty of marks. There were times when I would drink in the sight of knackered CX500s and rolled FZRs. There were as loved as working dogs, or as despised by them. Either way, they were tools.

As someone that considers himself an aficionado of motorcycles I am aware that I was observing a rare species. Like a botanist clinging to the side of a waterfall in South America viewing, for a few moments, a rare bromeliad I was witness to a rolling concourse of inelegance that spontaneously assembled every day.

I was close enough to these guys to bum cigarettes off of them. They were not friends but not strangers either. So, I look at this derived "style" and think of the price paid by willing and unwilling participants that threw CBRs down crowded San Fransisco streets. So when you see a Speed Triple, close your eyes and know what cool is.

Sojourn at Midcoast

ex carcer a dictate (from prison, a lesson)

Priscilla and I recently had occasion to visit the Maine State Prison Showroom in Thomaston. The Showroom houses various handicrafts made by Maine State Prison inmates and has been in existence nearly as long as the Prison itself. The handicrafts in question are predominantly woodworks varying from a “Round Tuit” to an “improved” version of the Shaker ladder back chair that folds cleverly into a step stool. 

 

I have been visiting Maine on vacation since I was a mere lad myself. My family always stopped at the Showroom to impress upon myself and siblings that was I not diligent in school and law abiding it could come to pass that I would be forced to make chunky furniture or thumb wrestling rings sized for giants. I would do this, I was told, under the tutelage of men who had never read an issue of Harper’s, the sort of men who might wear white as late as Columbus Day. Needless to say I was scared, mostly, straight. 

 

On this most recent visit I was troubled to see a great deal of Harley Davidson themed art within the Showroom. Most striking was a life sized depiction of David Mann’s “Neptune”. For those not in the know this painting, and the subsequent rendering in basswood and maple, depicts a triumphant Neptune astride a shovelhead Harley chopper. His pillion is an amply busted mermaid, Neptune clutches trident. 

 

In spite of his Greco-Roman origins Nepture is apparently a Nordic giant with a gym membership. Given the number of clues (mermaid, trident, and title of the work) Mann still decided to depict Neptune with a gangland style tattoo, his own name in gothic font arching over his navel. One simply recalls Magritte, sighs, and recites “Ceci n’est pas un pipe”. 

 

apparatus nomen est meus nomen (The Machine’s name is my name)

There were several other pieces of motorcycle “art” scattered throughout the display. Most of these depicted are various pre-Evolution Harlys. Many of the displays were either identified as pan, shovel, or knucklehead engines. These engines are considered “righteous.” Their lack of oil-tight seals presupposes mechanical aptitude. Images of skinned knuckles and dirt-encrusted nails spring to mind. These are “greaser” bikes, whose ownership precludes professional employ. These motors are emblematic of the loser, the persons at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. In choosing these motors one stands against “success.” 

 

Most brainwashing and hazing rituals begin by inducing a person to commit a terrible act, such as a crime. Said inductee is then given a series of coping mechanisms that allow the eventual rationalization of the act as being “worth it” because it allows inclusion into a select group. These coping mechanisms are the ritual behaviors of the “faithful” the Harley rider. 

 

  Typically, the faithful have a rich panoply of insignia and symbols to remind themselves of inclusion. These bikes represent “outlaw” values. They include such hypermasculine traits as domination of women, use of violence to solve problems, or the general disregard for any form of social norms or cultural values. 

 

In my estimation the “heritage” and “tradition” they refer to is a time before the repeal of Jim Crowe laws and before the women’s liberation movement. It is a period where white men ruled, at least in the limited canon of Harley literature.

 

Harley Davidson tacitly embraces motorcycle gang culture with its HOG chapters and their gang-like three panel patches. It’s convenient for Harley to commodify regressive values when their customer base, white men, is under siege. A shifting work and value system no longer values “traditional” male roles of domination (e.g., males as heads of households) or work (the exportation of skilled physical labor). 

 

Nazi symbols have always been associated with 1% gangs. Culturally, highly visible racism is most prevalent at the bottom of the social stratum. Current HD culture turns racism minimally socially palatable with the Prussian Cross. I suggest the Prussian Cross, (the West Coast Choppers logo) is a substitute swastika for those lacking the gall to display the true artifact.

 

The cross itself is derived from a family of encircled or rotating cross icons that are widely used to identify white racists within the US prison systems. As an example, the Klu Klux Clan is a clumsy translation of “circle cross family.” In essence, the cross becomes a secret language that tacitly communicates racism and every cruiser catalog is filled with items recast as Prussian Crosses.

 

For purposes of disclosure, I am of Prussian descent. My grandfather, Vadislaw, immigrated to the United State from what was then Prussia. I am aware of the complex nature of symbols, and this symbol in particular. I am referencing this symbol within, only, the criminal subculture and the larger use of the symbol by the Harley community at large to communicate select values. 

 

a typicus prosperitas parumper frater (A symbol of prosperity for our brothers)

It’s impossible to imagine that the inmate is unaware, even if not liminally, of the array of values communicated by the pre Evolution, should we say creationist or intelligently designed (HA!) Harley. 

 

Another piece of art at the Thomaston Showroom was a wood burning of a bear riding a chopper under pennant bearing the motto “Maine.” Choppers are difficult to ride and bears are poorly suited to controlling motorcycles. How like the inmate, then, is this Maine bear, his life out of control as Ursus americanus astride a stretched panhead? This, my brothers, is a cry for help. To aid, we must come. 

 

How much better to direct the inmates of the Maine State Prisons to create modern BMW motorcycle themed art? The stolid BMW motorcycle is invocative of reliability, financial security and upward social mobility. How much better to invoke the tidy shaft drive (when properly shimmed) of the non-Rotex BMW in comparison to the poorly machined cases of the “intelligently designed” Harley. 

 

What better service could we extend to the wayward than to offer our own mounts (except I own a Suzuki) as paragons of reliability? They might, then, turn to lives of incremental advance where after several decades they could apply for a credit application which might allow them to purchase a quality pre-owned BMW. 

 

Moreover we could swell our own ranks, in some distant future, with newly minted converts to the cause of European motorcycling (excluding English and Italian motorcycles). Consider my personal appeal to take these rapscallions to heart and consider the misspent lives, the impoverished and kitschy woodwork and mayhem and appeal to the Maine State Prison showroom when next you traverse Thomaston aboard your mighty K or R bike. 

 

Beemers, lend me your ears, and your motorcycle.

Please forgive my temerity in the broach of such a broad topic within a necessarily narrow framework. Indeed I have swung open many doors merely to gesture down the hallway. I am remiss by means of omission. In my meager defense I invoke the oft repeated aphorism “illic es tantum tot centipedes vos can duco sicco obvius silva” or “there are only so many centipedes you can count out in the woods.”

Roadcrafter v. Darien Review

Vance had always been a post-apocalyptic kind of guy. His favorite movies were Escape From New York and Logan's Run. He didn't like his neighbors and they didn't like him. The unmown lawn, the jury rigged solar panels and propane tanks just didn't sit well in Northampton. Vance wasn't surprised to find his neighbor Sally dead on her doorstep or her husband Teddy slumped behind the wheel of his car. In fact, up and down the street he noticed several cars that appeared to be crashed into telephone poles, trees, and houses. It looked like the inevitable had happened. He was, at last, a post-apocalyptic guy in a post-apocalyptic world. Naturally, Vance hopped on his bike slipped into his Aerostich Roadcrafter and headed towards the supermarket.

Vance was surprised to see Barry at the supermarket when he arrived. Everywhere along the way it'd been the same - bodies, crashed cars just like he'd always imagined. "Why'd you set the Stop and Shop on fire, Barry?" Vance intoned. "I didn't, it was burning when I got here. Anyhow, there's a Shaw's supermarket over the mountain in Pittsfield," Barry said as he leaned against his bike in his Aerostich Darien.

The morning was starting to heat up now, and the fire wasn't helping things. Barry slipped off his jacket (the Darien is a two piece) while they considered the route to Pittsfield. Vance, still astride his mount, unzipped the Roadcrafter, and even though it slipped on and off easily it was still a bit too much to take off for this short amount of time.

Barry's jacket and pants were both thinner and better ventilated than the Roadcrafter, so he felt cooler. This didn't really bother Vance, since he could wear very light street clothing under his Roadcrafter. Just then Vance noticed a group of bikers, The Mean Monsters, a local 1% gang. Shots rang out.

Vance pulled his Smith and Wesson .40 and returned fire. The Roadcrafter had ample pockets for an even larger piece than his giant S&W. The close fit of the Roadcrafter allowed the heavy gun to be carried comfortably, close to the body. Vance was surprised to see Barry pull out a Walther .22 caliber handgun. He didn't think Barry was the sort to carry, but he was glad he did.

After the Monsters went off looking for easier prey he asked Barry what gave. "Well, I stopped by Valley Sporting Goods this morning and threw a rock through their window. I looked at the guns and didn't know what to take. The lighter .22 just felt better in the Darien." Vance smiled thinking of his big gun but Barry knew that he'd deployed the lighter Walther faster and had gotten off more accurate shots due to less recoil. "In the end, it's not the size of the load, it's all about placement," thought Barry.

Both Barry and Vance wanted to get out of town. They motored fast through the wrecked cars. Vance was able to pull ahead since he felt confident in the more protective Roadcrafter. The Roadcrafter's overall shape is better suited to an aggressive street riding position than the Darien.

As they got onto the mountain the going got slower and the Darien began to shine. Barry enjoyed standing and hunting through the rocky terrain. The main road had been totally cut off by a huge pile up and Vance and Barry had to pick their way along forest roads and sometimes even trails. The Darien was better suited to standing and trail riding.

They decided to camp for the night; it was late and it was cool. Overall Barry was more comfortable in his suit making camp than Vance in his 'crafter. The two piece Darien was just easier to move around in and the padding was easily removed. Barry was pleased with the Darien for this application. He even managed to shoot a rabbit for dinner with his Walther, which Vance's .40 would have obliterated.

When it came time to sleep, there was no contest. The Roadcrafter has long been known as the Aerostich Motel. Vance awoke well rested. Barry had even zipped in the optional jacket liner, but the Darien was just less comfortable to sleep in.

In the morning they decided to find some gas. When the dirt roads became pavement again near Dalton they stopped at a trailer home that had two ATVs, a Suburban, a riding mower and three cars out front.

It was then that they were set upon by the Road Rashers, a Mean Monsters satellite club. Unfortunately they'd locked their guns in saddlebags, so it was fisticuffs. The Road Rashers attacked with their trademark sandpaper-covered hockey sticks. The Roadcrafter with it's superior padding definitely held up better and Vance was pleased. Barry's two piece Darien also allowed the rashers to get purchase on Barry and drag him around, potentially getting under the coat and hurting him. Still, overall, they were much better protected than the Rashers in their vests and chaps.

Barry and Vance had both had dated the same Aikido instructor, Linda, whose class they'd both taken. They used that knowledge, and some garden implements, to fight their way back to their bikes. Barry was a bit more beaten up, but OK. Vance hardly noticed it.

When they finally got to the Shaw's supermarket Barry and and Vance went in and filled up with Ramen Noodles and other awesome foodstuff. They drove their bikes right into the store, but Vance was able to pack a bit more into his Roadcrafter than Barry's Darien. That's when Shelly and Brenda appeared. Shelly said, "Wow, we have the same bikes as you guys. It looks like whatever happened just people with dual-purpose bikes and 1% gang members survived." "Thank god, that means no more K bikes at the Yankee Beemers breakfasts" Brenda stated simply.

Shelly was wearing Darien Light and had a .223 carbine rifle slung over her shoulder, and Brenda an Aerostich Transit with a crossbow. The blue Darien Light set off Shelly's fair hair that trailed below her HJC Symax II. The Transit accentuated Brenda's graceful form and dark locks. Both looked fetching and imposing.

So, pick your poison. The Roadcrafter is better at high speeds, better for carrying dense weight close to your body, makes a better sleeping bag and offers more protection. The Darien looks and acts more like a normal jacket and pants, is better for dual sport riding and fits looser and offers more freedom of action.

While the .22 lacks stopping power, it's easier and faster to use and potentially more versatile. The big Smith and Wesson may be slower, but one shot is all it ever takes when on target.

Barry thought Brenda's crossbow would be quiet and self contained - no looking for more ammo, just reuse the bolts. Vance thought Shelly and her carbine quite the pretty picture. The gun would still be useful in close quarters, due to it's short length, but deliver incredible stopping power.

Somehow, everyone knew, there amidst the spoiling milk and rotting meat (the power grid gave out that morning) that everything would be OK. Everyone had chosen their gear well; all of these were good choices and it spoke to the intelligence of the group. Though the electrics that ran the store may have been dead there was electricity enough between Barry and Brenda and also between Vance and Shelly. Their loaded bikes awaited, and they rolled out of the supermarket to a life that everyone knew would contain not only adventure riding, but romance as well.

Actually Riding

It's been a little while since I have posted, mainly because I have been riding. I've not been thinking so much about riding, this year I am actually doing it. Riding to work has been fun. At about a 25 mile round trip it's not a huge distance but it's a nice break in the day.

Most days I work at two libraries, one in the morning and another in the afternoon. The nicest thing about jumping on the bike is that it's something fun around lunch time. There's another advantage too.

Where the motorcycle really shines isn't on the open road but, rather, around town. I've found that I can slip in and out of parking areas and filtering through traffic.

There has been a down side too. Without air conditioning the few hot days we've had have been well, hot. People don't really think about that but it's true. There's no place more lousy to be then at a light over black pavement surrounded by hot engines while in a lot of protective gear.

I've mostly mitigated this by choosing a different route. I think it's actually about the same in time.

I've also added Aerostich tank panniers. These are pretty great. I like the load up front and I like being able to peek in the bags quickly without getting off the bike.

Priscilla and I also bought a scooter, a two stroke, and kept it about a week. We sold it because we were offered triple what we paid for it but it was really good. I fail to see, from many viewpoints, what a "proper" motorcycle can do that the scooter couldn't. I'm trying to get an old Puch moped running (125 mpg!) to pull a lot of the short haul stuff taken care of.

More on scooter thinking later.

Your Turn

I'm pretty excited to be taking Lee Parks Total Control ARC class this spring. Priscilla and I will be going out on May 10 & 11 to Troy, NY and I'll be taking two days of classes, with Priscilla, hopefully, joining me. for a little two up instruction.

The class appealed to me as I am a pretty competent street rider but not particularly interested in track days. Track days seem great, but the nearest track is a good distance away and the days are expensive. The basic entry for a track day in these parts is around $200.

I guess the idea is good. I can haul ass around the track and just worry about my line and testing my limits. There's no Aramco or trees and no SUVs drifting over the line. Track days, seem to me, to be the province of guys with two year old Aprillias. don''t get me wrong here. I think they're great and I'll get there eventually but I am not in going fast.

Well, I am interested in going "fast" but not as a measure of outright speed. There's a fast feeling that comes from doing things well.

I rode this past weekend with the Yankee Beemers and had a great time with them. I rode in the slow group, but near the front and on wet roads. There's a lovely feeling on group rides. The Beemers are a nice club and good riders, from what I saw. We never grossly exceeded the speed limit, but, to quote Crosby Stills and Nash we were "nicely making way".

I'd like to have that feeling more often. That's why I signed up for Lee's course. It's seems to be about riding well. Riding well is something I am interested in.

Being a librarian I picked up Lee Park's book, Total Control. I read through it pretty quickly. I have to say it suites me better than the standard, Keith Code's A Twist of the Wrist.

This is a funny thing though. Parks suggests that you choose your corner entry position in advance on turn in. So, like, I am coming down the straight, and decide I am going to turn IN at the mailbox, or just after the mailbox.

All my motorcycling life I have been choosing the corner exit point and just sort of tuning in when I thought I could see far enough through the corner that I felt like "now".

I tried this somewhat on the Yankee Beemers ride. I worked sometimes and sometimes didn't.

After about 10 years of thinking about riding I had gotten to the point of refining known facts. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. It seems like a track day thing, but of it winds up being useful and improves my street riding, great!

Mondo Enduro

This Afternoon: Mostly sunny, with a high near 39. North wind around 18 mph, with gusts as high as 29 mph.

That's pretty typical. Yesterday, or the day before, I can't really recall, it was snowing, hailing and raining. The interesting thing was it was doing it all at the same time. Yeah, it's pretty freaky. It's new England, it's frustrating. I can ride in 39 degree weather. It's not fun really, 'cept sometimes it is. But tires are cold and that's the high, and it's near 39.

In reading over my writing I find it has a lot of wistful quality to it. I'm afraid that it's really true, I am feeling sort of that way. Back in December when a the lion's share of winter dimness was rolled out before me I kept saying to myself, "three months to March". I was thinking by March I can ride half the time.

I'm making up for it by puttering around with my beehive stuff. The bees know spring is coming too. They're making plans for it. The queen is laying again. The workers are starting to squirrel away pollen substitute. After a winter of reading motorcycle stuff I have to switch my focus or go crazy.

To that end, and because I am a librarian I would like to note that Mondo Enuro has to be the funniest book about motorcycling ever. Seven English guys set off on DR350's to ride a 44,000 mile route around the world.

I've long been a fan of British travelogues and I have to say this is non parell. There is something in the English attitude to adversity that just isn't found anyplace else. Things that would be a huge deal if Americans we're writing the book are footnotes.

If you've seen Long Way Round this is the exact opposite, though Long Way Round is great too. It's as hodge podge as it gets. It's a beautiful example of what's possible with some desire and a single cylinder motorcycle. We often get caught up in optimizing things, these guys just go. It's hilarious. If I were King I would give them all medals.