Motorcycle Bingo

Here's the card, in case you want to play.

Some of these statements are really interesting; to me. The "Have more than 200,000 lifetime miles" question, for example. Several times in the last 20 years I've tried to add up my lifetime miles and mostly I come away baffled that someone would keep track of that. Fifty years ago, I worked with a salesman who quit his job and bought a Chevy dealership. He was probably 45-50 at the time (really old) and said he'd just past 200,000 lifetime driving miles and since the average American in the 70's drove ab out 100,000 miles between fatal accidents (according to him) he figured his days were numbered. So, he bought a car dealership and quit pounding the miles. About 5 years later, I passed 600.000 miles just from that job. 

Six years of 100,000 miles per year and I still wasn't dead. Pure luck, I know. 

Around that same time, I guestimated that I had somewhere around 10,000-25,000 off-road miles and I had tested my luck severely and it hadn't been all that great: a dozen  busted ribs, five broken toes, both clavicles broke, both shoulders separated, broken thumb and index finger, and enough other stuff to entertain every x-ray tech who has ever scanned my body. About then, I bought my first street bike and the rest has been mostly uneventful, but I really haven't kept track of the miles I've ridden, ever. Mostly, my count comes from recollections of the miles the bikes had on the odometer when I bought and sold them. With some bikes, that wasn't particularly accurate because the odometers either failed and were replaced or never existed.  

Here's my score, keeping in mind that some of these points came from a while ago, some a long while ago. The IBA stuff and the intercom system boxed me out of a couple lines. The IBA has always just seemed like conspicuous consumption to me and everything about an intercom system would ruin motorcycling for me.

 I have at least half of a million miles in the saddle, maybe closer to 2/3. I racked up 130,000 miles on my poor Honda CX500 before selling it to a friend. My 1st TDM also had 100k on the odometer when I sold it. I put 30k in a year on 3 bikes between '83 and '95: the CX500 in 1983, a Yamaha 550 Vision in 1988 and '89, and my '92 Vision in 1993. I will be sorry for as long as I live that I didn't put that many miles on my V-Strom, my all time favorite road bike. Every bike I've owned since my first Yamaha Vision has had a custom seat, including my WR250X. 

It's cheating, I suspect, to have ridden 12 months a year in California, but I did for 10 years. I also rode 12 months a year in Denver for 5 years, and 3 or 4 times when I lived in the Twin Cities. I could almost claim "Don't own a car," because the car I did own was my wife's for 5 of the 10 years I lived in southern California. I all but forgot how to drive until I bought a 1973 Toyota Hilux for hauling my kayak. The other spaces are just boring "doesn't everybody do that?" stuff.

I'd hoped to tag all 50 states before I quit riding, but that may turn out to be a pipedream. There are just a few southeastern states in which I have not burned fuel: 6 plus Hawaii.

It Ran Through A River - 2005 World Championship Trials, Wagner Cup, Duluth, Minnesota

All Rights Reserved © 2005 Thomas W. Day

[Once again, into the Duluth/Spirit Mountain breech.  2005 was the best year yet for the world trialers.  The sections were incredible, the weather was British, and the riders were serious.  The spectators were few and far-between.  It was probably the last world event to be held in Duluth. This article never made it to print. Still, it's one of my favorite events and I'm still happy with the article.]

On Saturday, June 5, 2005, the first round of the two-day event could also have been called “Trials in the Mist.”  For that matter, the second day also began in a heavy fog.  Real observed trials happens in inclement weather and, because of that, Duluth in June provides the world’s best trials riders with a real test.  The last two years this incredible event has provided some of the best riding in the world.  Last year, we were rained on all day Saturday.  This year, Saturday, again, provided a purist trialer environment: heavy mist and light rain to outright downpour, limited visibility, deep rushing creeks, walls of mud, and huge moss-lubricated rocks.  For mortal humans, nothing about the sections in Duluth would indicate ideal riding conditions.  For the class of motorcyclists who compete at the world championship level, the weather and the terrain was nearly perfect.

At the end of Saturday, Dougie Lampkin described the exact opposite conditions with more than a little distain.  An earlier 2005 round in Japan was so easy that the top riders were separated by a handful of points at the end of the day.  Even worse, the top riders barely collected a handful of points, with the fifth place rider, Antonio Bou, scoring only eight points.  Like golf, observed trials competitors collect points for screwing up.  A perfect score is zero, the worst possible score in a section is a five.  A World Championship trials round consists of 15 sections that each competitor attempts two times (in two laps around the course).  Scoring eight points in 30 sections is equivalent to shooting a hole in one in 15 of 18 holes on a golf course.  If pro golfers played your local three-par rural course, they’d be as disgusted with the experience as Lampkin was with the Japanese event. 

The Duluth organizers did not make that mistake.  Saturday’s scores ranged from Lampkin’s 72[1] points to fifth place, Graham Jarvis, with 93 points.  Any event that makes the world’s best drop that many points is seriously difficult. 

With the above background, comparing the world event to a US national event is like comparing a McDuck’s burger to . . . food.  In 1998, semi-retired, ex-World Champ Tommy Ahvala rode with the US national competitors at Duluth, in exhibition.  While screwing around for the local press, showing off in the sections (often riding them several times to provide photo ops for camera hounds), Ahvala scored nine points in 27 sections, and finished nearly a half-hour ahead of the best US competitor.  In the same event, the top US rider, Geoff Aaron, picked up 22 points and the fourth place US rider collected 53 points. 

Fast forward to 2005, where the best riders in the world are seriously working at keeping their feet on the pegs and the best they can do is 72 points and you have some idea how incredibly difficult this event was.  On Saturday, the only US rider with the motivation to compete in Duluth this year, Chris Florin (the #3 US rider), came in 14^th of the 15 finishing competitors with 147 points.  South African, Bruce le Riche (#5 US rider, riding for the US Trials Training Center), finished 15^th of 15 riders with 148 points.   The rest of the US trials champ riders were absent that weekend.  I suspect lawns needed mowing, cars needed washing, video games needed playing, and other equally pressing tasks were accomplished. 

The unhappy fact is, after watching a world event, you can’t go back to a US national without experiencing some kind of letdown.  The quality of riding and the level of difficulty of a US event is drastically downgraded from the world competition.  For example, the most points Chris Florin collected in the 2004 US Pro AMA series was 94.5 in Cotopaxi, CO for 45 sections.  He placed 3^rd in that event.  His easiest 2004 event was in Sequatchie, TN, where he picked up 25 points in 45 sections and finished 2^nd.  In two sets of 30 Duluth sections, he collected 148 points on Saturday and 131 points on Sunday (several Sunday sections were eliminated due to flooding).  Currently, after eight 2005 US AMA rounds, Chris is in 3^rd place and Bruce is in 2^nd, so they are clearly among the top US riders.  The two US riders took up the last two places in Duluth, a few points behind 13^th place Spanish rider Jose-Maria Juan on both days.

Sherco has a new 220cc 4-stroke, but no one was riding that bike in this year’s event.  Sherco was still fielding their solid 2-stroke with the hope that another year of development and seasoning will bring the 4-stroke to competitive status.  The downside to the 4-bangers is “spitback” (what happens when the throttle is applied between firing cycles), weight, complexity, and overheating at low speeds.  Honda, obviously, has overcome those handicaps since they snagged the top spot for the weekend with Takahisa Fuginami and two of the top three spots on both days.  Honda-Montesa is the only company running 4-strokes this year.  The rumor was that the FIM was “encouraging” bike companies to phase out 2-strokes and would be following that with an outright rule.  The rumor is a suburban legend.  Martin Belair, the US importer, said Honda-Montesa is going 4-stroke voluntarily. 

Saturday’s sections were wet and incredibly difficult.  At some times, they were even difficult to see and practically impossible to approach without getting wet and muddy.  Saturday ended wet and with Honda-Montesa holding the first (Dougie Lampkin) and second (Takahisa Fujinami) places.  Spanish rider, Antonio Bou, on a Beta, snagged third place with 88 points and Adam Raga, another Spaniard, took fourth with the same score but three fewer cleans.[2]

Saturday evening, I made it back to the room wet, muddy, and tired.  Apparently, the night before the MMM crowd drank themselves silly and enjoyed a night of unrivaled debauchery.  The night I spent with those folks was . . . uneventful.  Probably it was because the living room couch was also my bed and I ruined the decadent mood by falling asleep on the floor, curled up at the foot of the couch.  Old and in the way.

Sunday morning, after a day of the most incredible motorsports action ever witnessed in the US, the local Duluth newspaper had a single picture of the event with a caption.  That’s it.  The rest of the sports section was devoted to AP articles describing the NBA playoffs, pro baseball, and even stadium football.  If the event had taken place in Detroit, the Duluth paper wouldn’t have said much less about it.  Are Duluth citizens that much more concerned with what’s going on in other cities’ backyards than their own?   Maybe I don’t watch enough television to know what’s really important. 

Sunday’s round was a completely different event.  The start was reset from 10AM to 11AM to give the sun a chance to burn off dense fog.  The strategy worked and by noon we were all enjoying a warm, clear spring day on Spirit Mountain.  The terrain was still world class because it was saturated with water from the previous day’s constant precipitation.  That only made it easier for spectators to see the riders attempt impossible sections. 

Sections 3 through 11 were all part water ride.  The Knowlton Creek ran through the middle of each of these sections and it was running high after a night of non-stop rain.  At the start of the day, Sunday’s section 5 was running 4-6” deeper than Saturday.  That turned out to be the low water mark for the day.

On the first lap, Dougie Lampkin was only a few feet from the top of section 12 when he lost his balance and toppled over backwards, tumbling nearly twenty feet to the base of the section.  He took a trip to the medical tent, came back with a brace on his hand, and returned to race for the finish.  Last year, Dougie suffered a nearly identical fall in an equally dramatic section, breaking his bike and himself.  To catch up, Lampkin had to race to the finish.  The medical-treatment time he’d spent put him in a position where he might not have been able to stay within the time limit allowed for the event.  In that case, every section he didn’t finish would add five points to his score. 

Nature must love the Brits. 

After a foggy, late start and five hours of beautiful Minnesota spring weather, the temperature fell and the fog returned at 4PM, an hour before the last rider, Dougie Lampkin, ran out of time.  The fog dropped on us like a curtain and was followed by a strong wind, driving rain, and the thermometer lost at least 15^oF.  The wind picked up, thunder boomed, and the familiar feel of winter came back to Duluth.  As if we had received an unearned blessing, the sky fell.  From warm, sunny spring day to Noah’s flood in less than 15 minutes.  I was perfectly positioned to follow the leaders from section 12 through 15 and the end, but to protect my camera and video gear I ran a 500 yard dash to the Chalet, where about half of the press corps was sheltered and wringing itself dry.  My notebook had barely begun to dry before it returned to wash rag status.  Two days of clever insights turned into a huge blue smear across a dozen pages.  In the press room we were entertained by reports of tornado sightings a few miles south of Spirit Mountain. 

Fujinami dropped his Montesa in the raging waters of section 8 and his bike was totally submerged.  The minders had to rescue both rider and bike and “a team of bike doctors did CPR and brought it back to life.”  (I’m quoting Jim Winterer, who provided this story.)  By 4:30PM, the report was that the creek was “waist deep and rising” at section 10, the next-to-last water section.  It was, by all reports, a flash flood on the course.  Sections 3 to 11 all had some sections of water to deal with, so a short discussion between the riders and the FIM authorities determined that four of the water crossing sections would be abandoned and the scores of riders who had finished those sections would be dismissed.  This decision was fortunate for Lampkin as it allowed him to skip several sections and rush to section 12, where he’d crashed on the first loop.  Lampkin cleaned 12 and made short work of the next three sections. 

In the end, Fujinami won the day, with 44 points, Albert Cabestany took 2^nd with 49 points, and Lampkin took 3^rd and the last spot on the winner’s stage with 53 points.  This created an international incident as Adam Raga’s folks protested that Lampkin had intentionally ridden slowly enough to allow the water sections to flood, saving himself the time and points that those sections would have cost.  The judges thought that was pretty devious, even for a Brit, and ruled against Raga’s protest.  The sections were clearly unride-able, since the observers had abandoned their posts for higher ground and the section markers were either underwater or had washed away. 

For some reason, this best-of-world-class event was grossly under-attended.  Maybe it was the weather, but that would only explain local attendance.  Maybe it is the location, Duluth isn’t exactly nationally known as a vacation hot-spot.  Maybe it’s the sport.  Only 1,500 spectators were on site to see the best motorcyclists in the world challenge impossible terrain on the world’s most maneuverable vehicles.  That resulted in a $15,000 loss for the Duluth organization and that would seem like an insurmountable problem for the local supporters.  After sponsoring three world class events in four years, the Duluth folks are solidly in the red.  In comparison, the 1^st round, in Portugal drew about 2,000 spectators, the 2^nd round, in Spain, drew 5,500, the 3^rd round, in Japan, drew 17,000, and the 5^th round, in Andora two weeks after Duluth, drew 7,000.  This year, the U.S. World Round will be in Tennessee.  I hope they have better luck than the Duluth folks experienced.  Observed trials is, obviously, not an up-and-coming Monday night on NBC sport.  I can’t figure out why.

For those who left Duluth on Sunday night, the city provided us with a dense blanket of fog that didn’t dissipate until about Hinkley.  Visibility was about 20’ for most of the first 20 miles south.  I hadn’t biked to Duluth because I’d brought along a couple of large video cameras and my wife.  I felt fortunate to be enclosed in a cage, listening to an Elmore Leonard novel on CD, and dozing while my wife drove us home.  Like last year, I rented a Jackie Chan movie when we made it home and was bored, once again, that Chan was still doing his stunts on foot.  Once you’ve seen martial arts performed on a motorcycle flying up a muddy cliff, you can’t go back to Hollywood.

---

[1] Trials scoring is a little like golf.  The better you do, the fewer points you “score.”  Each rider starts a section with zero points (clean) and picks up a point every time a foot touches the ground up to three points.  If the rider stops moving forward, crashes, rides or puts a foot outside of the section boundaries, five points are charged to the section.  So, in two loops and fifteen sections, the worst score a rider could earn in a World Round would be 150 points by either failing to attempt all sections or by crashing in all of them.

[2] A “clean” means the rider managed to ride the section end-to-end without stopping or touching the ground with a foot or other body part, scored as a “zero.”  If the point totals are tied, the rider with the most cleans wins. 

Another Incredible Weekend in Duluth - 2004 World Championship Trials, Wagner Cup, Duluth, Minnesota

All Rights Reserved © 2004 Thomas W. Day

[Due to a website snafu of entirely my own making, this beautifully written, totally professional article (Geeze, I'm joking.) didn't see the light of day until nearly a year after it was written.  However, I still like it and proudly present it here, in its original glory for your consideration.]

Last year, Takahisa Fujinami told us that he likes the United States “very much.” He says it’s because he likes American food, especially breakfast (“ham, eggs, and toast”), but I think it’s because he can beat World Trials Champion Doug Lampkin here and has done it three out of four times in the last two events in Duluth. Victory adds a positive aftertaste to just about any meal, even, or specially, breakfast in Duluth.

Due to the success of the 2002 and 2004 events, the Duluth trials organizers were awarded with a third FIM World Trials event, that will be held early this June. The Spirit Mountain course went through dozens of tweaks during the weeks before last year’s event. Steve Alhers and his team combined natural terrain and two “stadium sections” to reduce the hiking spectators would have to suffer. Friday, the FIM inspectors made a lap around the course and did some tweaking of their own. I was amazed that anyone would think this course needed to be more difficult, but they did. Later in the day, the riders made the same lap and there were comments on how the course was “too easy.”

The Iron Range accommodated the riders by providing ten hours of hard rain from early Saturday morning until a little before the last rider struggled through section fifteen late Saturday afternoon. Lampkin’s press release called it a “torrential rain,” but it just seemed like a normal Minnesota drizzle to me. One section was so hard core (submerged in 4’ of fast moving water) that the FIM closed it after the first rider practically drowned. By the second loop, all of the top riders were “taking fives” on at least one other section because it was impassable, even for the world’s best.

One section that they did ride, section three, was so complicated that Doug Lampkin, the world champ, crashed into a wall, broke his forks, and injured his right leg. That crash cost him a dozen points as he recovered, five’ing the next section and following it up with a five on ten and a pair of threes on six and eight. When the day was finished, Lampkin was still only eight points back of Fujinami (45 points to 53), but he was off the podium and the championship race tie was broken with a Fujinami lead of seven points. England’s Graham Jarvis (49 points) finished in second and Spanish “rock star” Adam Raga (52 points) finished third. The only North American competitor, Chris Florin, finished with 158 points).

The wet weather was especially hard on spectators slogging through intermittently marked trails, sliding and stumbling from section to section, often arriving at the section in time to see the last champ rider vanish into the mist. However, Martin Lampkin, the ex-champ and father of the current champ, said this was “real trials” weather and commented that spectators were privileged to see the world’s top riders struggling with the weather and terrain. He wasn’t being politically correct or condescending to the even. I heard the same sentiment repeated by Spanish, Japanese, and other international trials experts.

Lampkin was still limping as he walked the early Sunday sections. But he was back into his game quickly and Sunday was a totally different day, weather-wise. Sunday’s fog and rain were replaced with bright sunshine and considerably more heat than I’d expected for early June in Duluth. That did a lot to reduce the problems for the riders, too. Fujinami’s 45 Saturday score earned Marc Freixa a seventh place finish on Sunday. A little change in surface conditions goes a long ways in world class trials.

Saturday’s section-by-section battle between Fujinami, Lampkin, and Raga was unbelievable from the first section to the end. The lead changed several times and spectators were running from section to section to see the action. Scores of the top three riders, through two laps around fifteen sections, were 15 and 17 points. Lampkin misread a section and crossed the tape, thinking the section was the same as the previous day. In the press conference, Fujinami admitted he would have made the same mistake if Lampkin hadn’t gone first through the section. That mistake cost Lampkin 5 points, which more than gave Fujinami the points he needed to win the day and the Wagner Cup for the total event win. Saturday ended with Fujinami in first (15 points), Lampkin in second (with 17 points and 23 clean rides), and Raga in third (with 17 points and 21 cleans). Fourth place was Albert Cabestani with 33 points, to give you an idea of how tight the top three positions throughout the day. Chris Florin, again the only North American rider, finished 16th of 16 champ riders with 133 points.

I was told, repeatedly, that US riders don’t participate in world events because they don’t want to be embarrassed or jeopardize their endorsements. Florin is the #4 US Champ rider and if his finish was an embarrassment, you’d think those who didn’t find the time/motivation/guts to take a shot at competing with the world’s best would be even more embarrassed by their absence. Last year’s standing US champ, Geoff Aaron, was in Duluth, putting on a stunt demo at Grandma’s Sports Bar and trying to obtain a press pass to the event. If the other top US riders were in town, I missed seeing them, but they were missed in more ways than they know. Chris was cheered every time he rode, regardless of how he finished the sections. He wrestled with terrain that was impossibly more difficult than typical US champ sections and never gave up. By the end of Sunday, he was more angry than defeated when he failed to complete a section and was riding with more confidence and purpose at the end of Sunday than at the beginning of Saturday. The only way to be the best is to compete with the best.

For the spectators who braved Saturday’s rain and fog and Sunday’s mud and heat, this was the most incredible Spirit Mountain trials event yet. When I got home, I shagged out in front of the idiot box and saw an ad for a new Jackie Chan movie; and was bored. After a moment, I realized I’d seen all those moves, live and on a motorcycle, dozens of times through the weekend. Real life tops Hollywood special effects every time the world’s best trials riders are in Duluth.

Trials in the World Court - 2002 World Championship Trials, Wagner Cup, Duluth, Minnesota

[Originally published in Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly, July 2002 about the FIM Observed Trials World Championship rounds held in Duluth, MN. ]

Right here in Duluth, Minnesotans hosted a World Championship Observed Trials. Twice in the last five years, I've written up my experiences at national trials championships in Duluth. This event was my fourth professional trials event in the last eight years. After twenty years of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, it's been more than a bonus to have these events practically in my backyard. If this year's world round hadn't messed up my perspective on what I'd seen in the previous three trials, I'd be happy as a politician in a pork barrel.

The fact is there's not much comparison to be made between the world-class riders and the US-class guys. As good as our riders are, they don't come close to riding at the level that 6500 of us witnessed in Duluth, June 1^st and 2^nd. If you missed it, don't worry, we'll probably have another one in 10 or 20 years. Maybe. The last time a world round came near Minnesota was in 1979, when the event was held in Michigan. Around that same time, the United States' only world champion, Bernie Schrieber, was finishing up his career. I hope there isn't a connection between having a world champ rider in the country and having a world round in the Midwest. It doesn't look like there are any US champions on the near horizon for some time to come.

USA World Round Committee Chair Steve Ahlers designed the course and sections, with help from a lot of folks from the Upper Midwest Trials Association and the Wisconsin Observed Trials Association. Last summer, Steve visited the FIM technical people in California and attended world rounds in Washington and Europe for his training in world class trials course layout. He must have got it right because the FIM crowd visited the Spirit Mountain site a week before the event and approved nearly every section as Steve planned them.

Two days before the event, the riders began arriving for practice. On Friday they were given an opportunity to suggest course modifications. At the riders’ request, section 3, which was considered to be impossible for anyone except, possibly Adam Raga, was slightly modified. The FIM officials added some crash-protection hay bales to the bottom of section 12's monster jump. That modification was tested by some of the earlier riders and they found it to be useful. The riders were also allowed to position some "kickers," rock launch-ramps at the base of specially difficult steps.

4500 people attended the first US round, a pretty good turnout considering the couple hundred who usually spectate at US national events here. I heard several people comment on how few "locals" were at the event, Twin Citizens are not considered local. But even with non-Duluth Minnesotans counted, I think locals were pretty significantly outnumbered by visitors from as far away as our right and left coasts, Europe, Japan, South America, and, of course, Canada. I met reporters from Great Britain, El Salvador, Brazil, Spain, Portugal, France, and Germany in the pressroom and on the course. Thanks to MMM, Martin Belair, Steve and Sarah Ahlers, I got to hang out with those folks and step inside the tape for pictures and interviews.

One big difference between national and world events is the manufacturer participation. Every bike manufacturer was not only there; but there in force. Instead of a rider and his minder/mechanic and a U-Haul trailer, the manufacturers brought a significant portion of their engineering staff, a fully equipped 40' trailer, extra bikes, marketing and sales people, and one team brought their own chef. Honda-Montesa had a larger staff in Duluth than all of the 2000 US national teams, put together.

Saturday was a hot, dusty day in Duluth. The sky was slightly overcast, the sun bore down on the ski trails as if there was no ozone layer or atmosphere to protect bare skin, of which there was more than usual for this part of the frozen north. Even with the ski lifts running (taking passengers uphill only), walking a trials course is a workout. It was pretty easy to tell experienced trials fans from first-timers; the people hustling from section to section were the ones who knew how much there was to miss if you didn't get to see the leaders at each section on the first lap. The riders carefully walk the sections, the first time around, inspecting their routes and rearranging pebbles and dirt to hone their planned path. The second time around, they cook. You have to pick one or two sections to watch to see the best riders even once.

My favorite day one sections, on day one, were the wet and rocky sections, 4 through 8 (Winterer's Wonderland) and 9, 10, & 11 (Deck's Landing). I didn't make it to 12 or 13 before the leaders had past those sections, so I saved them for Sunday. I specially liked the wet sections when the temperature sailed past 90 Saturday afternoon. The bugs liked those areas, too, and I lost a bottle of Gatorade that two mosquitoes mistook for a full vein. No kidding, Duluth blood suckers are that big. Really!

Watching the world champs climb, leap, bounce, fly, and slide over and through water, rocks, and boulders the size of a living room is my idea of a perfect way to spend a spring weekend. The most common phrase heard on section 8 was "no way!" or "impossible!" After watching the first ten riders (the lower ranked riders go first), fumble, fall, and end up drenched to the neck, the first guy to clean the section left the crowd speechless. He was checked, scored, and heading to the next section before we all snapped-to and started cheering. From then on, the section seemed as tame as a highway. The top ten riders barely slowed from start to finish in a section that was impossible, even for them, to walk.

The whole afternoon went that way, the lower ranked riders made sections look as impossible as they were and the top ranked guys rode over them like they were paved. Since the top ranked US guy is Chris Florin, at #40, that didn't give the home crowd much to cheer. Most of the uncomfortable-with-prime-time US riders didn't even show up. The general feeling was that they're getting old and intolerant of losing badly. Geoff Aaron had a conflicting Team Extreme event, but no one I talked to said they believed Geoff wished he was here, instead of hopping minivans and portapotties at a mall. The 2001 US champ, Fred Crossett of Belgium, is a privateer and, being unsponsored, he's ineligible for FIM competition. The US riders who were in Duluth represented the youngest, hungriest riders who were willing to risk their reputations to be schooled by the world's best. And schooled they were. Our best showing, for the two day event was Chris Florin, who finished 25th of 26 on Saturday and 21st of 25 on day two. As a quick reference of the level of riding we saw in Duluth, Chris collected 120 points on Sunday while Takahisa Fujinami and Dougie Lampkin touched rock for 11 and 15 points. Fujinami put a stabilizing foot to the ground 11 times in two rounds of 15 sections, including 5'ing section 4 in the first round! In-freakin'-human!

At the end of day one, the winners were Dougie Lampkin, Takahisa Fujinami and Adam Raga. Points-wise, Lampkin and Fujinami tied, with 21 points. They tied on the number of cleans. Lampkin had six "ones" vs. Fuhinami’s four, so Lampkin won the day's trophy with a technical knockout. It took a little while to be decided, too. There were rumors that political games were being played, that the Lampkin family were haranguing the judges. The issue was less vicious and messier. A section was contested and the original scoring stuck. Since both of these guys ride for Montesa, I‘d guess that serious protests are reserved for the competition.

Riders, dealers, observers, and organizers do this sport for love, in the US. There is practically no money in it. In Europe, it's another story. This is a real pro sport, there, with millions of Euros at stake on the outcome of every event. So the level of gamesmanship is increased proportionally. Riders, minders, and mechanics whine and moan about every lost point. They'll do anything to get an inch on the competition. You know that people this involved know the rules of the game, but if they think there's a chance of intimidating an observer into giving pack a point or five, they pretend they're completely unfamiliar with how points are scored.

In years past, I've been a little discouraged with and disappointed in at the consistency of our observers in national rounds. In my opinion, they've been a lot too Minnesota Nice. Not this trip. Every observer I observed was downright testy when their opinions were contested. They called points quickly and, apparently, knew the rules better than the minders or some of the corporate guys who were trying to squeeze a few points out for their riders. Still, the mushy quality of some of the rules trips up the casual fan. When is a stop a stop? A stop gets either a point or five points, depending on the . . . stoppiness? (Jim Winterer says: "Actually, a very, very brief stop gets zero points, but a total, undeniable stop gets just one point. Going backwards is a five, but it has to be a pretty clear backwards.") Ok, the horse is dead. It was fairly clear that most observers ruled rolling backwards as "cessation of forward motion." Newton and, maybe, Einstein would be happy to see that. I was happy to see the cranky Europeans didn't take advantage of the nice Minnesotans.

While it's always true that trialers are the most meditative of motorcyclists, it's less true at the world level. These guys take their time walking and surveying the sections, but they flat out cook on the second lap. Riding the press truck, we couldn't catch the leaders simply driving from the end of one section to the end of the next group of sections. We rolled in about the time the last riders rolled out.

The Duluth organization could have changed up to five sections for Sunday. They picked two for slight modification. They made the top of section 12 a little more difficult and the top of section 15 a little easier.

The second day was completely different from the first. Sunday was cold and sunny, but quickly turned colder and overcast. It must have been a die-hard day, because about half of the Saturday-sized crowd turned up. It was a perfect day to be hiking Spirit Mountain, though. About 1/2 way to my first section and I was unzipping my jacket. I, mostly, hung out at sections 12-15 for the first lap. Twelve was nicknamed "up, up, and away (to the hospital)" for its 15' first step, terminating in another wall about 20' from the first step with another 10' step. Again, the US riders appeared, looked at the section, and moved on without making an attempt. The first few world riders took at shot at it, all made the big jump, but most failed to clear the 2nd ledge. The first rider to clean 12 was Spain's Marc Colomer. He ripped up the mountain like he was riding a rail. After Colomer, we saw 12 cleans in a row from the world's best.

Being the predictable sort I am, I headed back to my favorite sections at the bottom of Spirit Mountain and watched the water rides. I still consider section seven to be impossible, even though I saw it cleaned a dozen times and, on Sunday alone, riders took 22 zeroes on the section. I don't care; it's still impossible. After wandering around in the rocks and water, I hustled back to the last four sections to watch the leaders roll through to the finish. In the end, #2 plate Takahisa Fujinami beat World Champ Dougie Lampkin by 4 points for the day's win and for the Wagner Cup. His expression as he cleaned and cleared the top of section 15 will be stuck in my mind for a long time. I have probably never seen a happier person.

I stayed for the trophy girl kissing and the Champagne-squirting, took some more pictures of beautiful motorcycles, and came home. For those of you who made it to Duluth, I know you're still trying to comprehend what you saw there. For those of you who didn't, I think I heard this quote almost as often as "no way," "(insert friend's name here) is going to be so pissed that he didn't come." And so he should be.

Duluth on the Rocks

[Originally published as "Trials Action" in Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly, October/November 2000 about the AMA/NATC Observed Trials Championship rounds (9 & #10) held in Duluth, MN.]

Once again, Minnesota hosted two rounds of the AMA/NATC National Observed Trials Series at the Spirit Mountain Ski Area. This year, the Duluth event turned out to be the climatic moment in the championship. The Duluth organization managed to snag the last two rounds of the 2000 national series and the title was down to the wire. Geoff Aaron, on a Gas Gas this year and attempting to win a sixth US National Championship, needed one third place or better finish in this event to hold off Ryon Bell (Montesa).

Aaron had won both rounds (7 & 8) in Sequatchie, Tennessee and seemed to have it wrapped up. However, in the kind of move that makes spectators love watching Aaron and must drive the factory guys crazy, Aaron was not riding his factory bike for the Minnesota event. He was riding a new, bone-stock Gas Gas that was probably no better prepared than the bikes ridden 90% in the Support classes. On Saturday morning, one of the factory reps just shook his head as he told me, "He didn't even move his shock or his motor over to the new bike. It takes at least two months to break in a shock and he's only had the bike a couple of days."  Obviously, some folks thought Aaron was tossing his 6th championship into the wind.

Add to all this motorcycle stuff, we have Duluth in the summer.

I get the feeling that Twin City'ers think of Duluth as a "little sister city." Sort of the attitude that LA has toward San Francisco. That's, actually, a fair comparison. Without knocking the Cities, because I love this place, Duluth has The Lake and The Hills and all the incredible vistas that come with those two assets. The same weekend as the trials, Duluth had the Bay Front Blues Festival going. What to do and where to go? So many choices and so little time. On August 12, 2000, there was no place on earth I'd have rather been than Duluth, Minnesota.

"The Incredible Invisible Sport," that's what they ought to call it. Observed Trials (OT) is just not descriptive enough. Maybe paying slight attention to my griping about the lack of visibility from the 1998 Duluth event, this year, the Duluth event's promoters advertised in MMM. I saw at least one event poster at a Twin Cities motorcycle shop. Still, when I rode into the Spirit Mountain Ski Area, it was impossible to tell something significant was going on. I rode well into the park before I spotted a single sign. Since I was operating on my usual level of preparation and forethought, I had almost made the assumption that I was here on the wrong weekend or that the event was happening somewhere else. For some odd reason, I hadn't seen a single trailered trials bike in a motel parking lot, so it looked like I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

That's incredible for a whole collection of reasons. First, in a state where there appear to be as many motorcycles as snowmobiles and jet skis, you'd think anyone who loves motorcycling would be in Duluth for the final rounds of the National Observed Trials Championship. Second, lots of us can argue that trials is the best motorcycling spectator sport. Third, you can't believe what these guys do on motorcycles until you've seen it in person. Fourth, where else will you see huge numbers of $6,000, 150 lb., 250cc motorcycles?

Somewhere I read that Minnesota motorcyclists put on more miles per capita per year than any other state's riders. If you look at the warm weather event schedule, there's something on two wheels going on all the time here. If you take a Saturday afternoon cruise into Minnesota or Wisconsin's back roads, it's a two-wheeled world out there. In March, we fill the Convention Center to look at any damn two-wheeled-associated thing the manufacturers want to sell us. A week later, we packed the Dome to go deaf watching Supercrossers. We're a biking kind of place.

OT is made for spectating. Look at the pictures and notice where the spectators are, relative to the riders. We're practically part of the sections. You can line up, inches from where a world class rider will pass or fail. You can even make smartass comments about how they cheated on a section and get a reaction. How can you beat that?

We all know that Tom Cruise can't do a stoppie or spin a bike on its front wheel or launch himself into a fight from a moving crotch rocket, but we all saw it a zillion times when MI2 was being previewed on the tube. Some of us don't believe that Cruise can ride a Harley through an empty parking lot, let alone do stunts on a Triumph. With that cynical background, you won't believe what Geoff Aaron or Ryon Bell or any of these top riders can do on a motorcycle, even after you've seen it with your own eyes. If Aaron was taking bets on his being able to leap a tall building with a couple of suspension bounces and a brick for a launch pad, I'd put my money on him.

OT is not only a well kept secret, but also the bikes appear to be vanishing. My old 1974 RL250cc Suzuki weighed about 300 lbs. My 1986 TY350 sports about 225 lbs of pork. A 2000 Bultaco weighs 154 lbs! At this rate, in another decade riders will be strapping trials "bikes" to their feet, like rollerblades.

Ah, the motorcycles. My how much difference two years makes. Last time I was here, I spotted one proto-Montesa-Honda (labeled Montesa everywhere but in Honda's homeland, where Honda calls a Honda "a Honda") in the crowd of Gas Gas, Beta, Fantic, and ancient Yamaha's. This year, they're back! Practically everyone is back.

Montesa, a Spanish motorcycle company that died in 1978, has "partnered" with Honda (Honda bought Montesa's body and casket in the 1980's) to produce frames and motors. Since motorcycle frames and motors are pretty much the heart and guts of a motorcycle, I think it's pretty safe to assume Honda designed the bike. The Montesa Cota 315R is assembled and boxed for shipment in Spain. Whoever made the bikes, there were Cota 315R's everywhere. Some of the 1998 bikes even looked old. If this event was any kind of indication of their success, Honda must be pretty satisfied with its backdoor adventure into OT. Especially after the financial mess that trials turned out to be for Japan in the 1970's.

Two years ago, the Montesa-Honda was barely out of prototyping. This year, Dougie Lampkin won his 4th World Championship in a row on a Montesa-Honda and everybody seems to have jumped on that bandwagon. Next year, Montesa will field a Dougie Lampkin Signature Model. Buy one and I will guarantee that you'll have the coolest, weirdest bike in your block. It will be a $6,000, 150 lb. 250cc motorcycle with a 45mph top speed and more first gears than you can handle (at least 4 of 'em). The Montesa 315R is a 249cc bike. Go figure.

Bultaco, has become yet another reincarnated Spanish motorcycle logo that died near the end of  1979. The dead shell of the company was propped up by the Spanish government until the mid-80's, when the logo was about all that was left of that great company. The thumb's up (Bultaco logo) appears to be live and well in Y2K.

This time, two years ago, the Bultaco Sherco looked like fantastic vaporware. If you were a diligent Yahoo hacker, you could find pictures of the proposed bike on the web. The manufacturer's story seemed so vague that only a true believer would have expected a real motorcycle to come out of that fantasy. This year, if the bike that just dusted you along the spectator trail wasn't a Montesa it was a Bultaco. While the first year bike was a success and a decent bike, the 2000 model is the lightest trialer on the market and the importer is making a serious dent in the established trials manufacturer's sales. Ryan Young, the pre-Aaron five-times National Champion, is behind Bultaco's PR and marketing success and the company has serious financial backing. A couple of manufacturer's reps complained that Bultaco had absorbed almost all of the available advertisement space in the trials press.

This year, Scorpa-Yamaha had a new trialer at Duluth, but no Champ rider. Yamaha appears to be replicating the act that Honda has staked out. That tactic seems to be to do the engineering and let someone else deal with the distribution. Honda, for example, did all of the engineering for the Montesa, but is letting the Montesa brand name take the risk and the credit for the bike. Yamaha is doing the same thing with the French "assembled" Y2K Scorpa. The Scorpa has a Yamaha motor and frame. The price is $5780. The bike has an actual tank, which is properly artistically sculpted. Since the Big Four grossly overestimated the trials market, back in the 1970's, this may be how they are protecting their faces from another of OT's vanishing acts. At any rate, I saw a couple of the Yamaha-Scorpa Y2K's and it's a very flashy looking bike.

Two years ago, when it seemed that everyone was riding for Gas Gas, the National Champion, Geoff Aaron, was on a Beta. In Y2K, the majority of pros and experts are on Montesas and Bultacos and Aaron has moved over to a Gas Gas. (The Beta booth was still showing Aaron posters and the reps looked pretty lonely and dejected. In a "leading user" sport like OT, when you're out, you're out.)

In a number of ways, Geoff Aaron is smoothly contrary. He don't find him riding the "bike of the year" and he's known for taking hard lines through sections, just to show that he doesn’t have to follow the pack. Or because he is seeing something nobody else can see. Knowledgeable spectators keep an eye out for when Aaron is going to be at a section because you can always count on something specially cool happening when he rides.

While trudging around the 15-mile course, I heard a half-dozen mildly masked criticisms about Aaron's ability to "market himself." He's also reputed to be the only guy on the circuit who's actually making a "good living" riding trials. Could some of the sour grapes be jealousy? Somebody has to break that ground for everyone else to follow. I suppose that guy always has to live with the nitpicking from his contemporaries, though.

I'm not going to argue that I might have a bias, though. I do. My favorite sort of athlete has always been the guys who make really hard stuff seem simple and impossible stuff look just a bit harder. After watching a gaggle of Champs struggle with a section, Aaron can sometimes make it look like someone applied an invisible layer of pavement over the section. Sometimes, he can glide through a pile of rubble so effortlessly that you'd think anyone could do it. Then, someone follows his route through the same section and goes wheels up for his trouble. I love to watch Geoff Aaron ride a motorcycle.

Two years ago, spectators were treated with a world class riding performance from Tommi Ahvala, in exhibition (not in competition) with the US National tour. This year, Ahvala is touring with the "Team Extreme Trials Showcase" and his overpowering presence probably wasn't missed by the American competitors. (Aaron, Kempkes, and Bell also ride the Showcase circuit, when it doesn't compete with the National series.) Two years ago at this same event, he put on a world class show of riding that had to have been humbling to the rest of that year's American riders. I expect jumping Volkswagens and climbing over-sized stairs pays a lot better than getting dirty with the peasants. It looks like the closest Ahvala's going to get to Minnesota is at the Septemberfest in Omaha this . . . September.

Saturday morning started off with a short burst of rain that cut the dust, disturbed the bugs, and made walking the loop so muggy that I had to stop and defog my glasses every 100 yards. But, until about 2:00PM, the rain and cloud cover kept the hiking tolerable and the intermittent showers provided a bit of entertainment and air conditioning. The down side was that walking to the sections was the hardest, slickest hiking I've done in years. By the time I finished my 1st loop, I'd fallen a half dozen times, lost two very nice pens, and protected my camera with my head, twice.

The first seven sections made for decent spectating and I wandered along with the Support and Expert riders, waiting for the Champs to get started. Saturday's #8 section must have been the designated "I'll pass for five points, Monty" bail-out. I watched a train of Support riders line up to get their tickets punched, without attempting the rocks, after one rider did a 3/4 reverse gainer back down the first ten feet of this section. I heard the phrase, "I got one question for you. How you getting' back down that rock?" so many times that I decided Paul Newman's character in Hombre must be the OT rider's movie hero. Bike after bike ended up with its wheels pointed to the sky and its rider scrambling, sliding, or falling back down this rock. Then, one guy cleaned it and the trail was staked for almost everyone who followed; almost everyone.

Checker joke: "How do you tell a Champ from an Expert from a Support rider? The Champs' number plate has a 'champ' decal and the Champs have a real serious look on their faces." There were nine Champs at the Duluth rounds. Most of them looked like they were having a lot of fun, since the championship series was going to be determined more by a complete Geoff Aaron breakdown, rather than a magical great ride from Ryon Bell.

But at least one of the Champs had something different on his face. Native Midwesterner (Nebraska), Jess Kempkes, often looked pained and disappointed. It might be that he was wincing from all the earrings. He's probably working on his Trials des Nations look for Spain, later this year. Jess is one of the most adventurous and entertaining riders on the trials circuit and his look is probably just part of the persona he's building. Whatever, Kempkes rode for a 3rd and a 4th this weekend and picked some spectacular routes through the rocks.

On Saturday, I was despairing for the sport. At 9:30AM, there were only a couple bikes in the parking lot and just a few more at the end of the day. Saturday, the parking lot wasn't even close to full and it wasn't hard to find a spot, on most of the sections, to spectate alone. Sunday, however, was a different deal. There were, easily, as many bikes as cars in the lot and every section had a good turnout of spectators. I guess "On Any Sunday" applies to spectators, too. Some of the Champs-only sections were impossible to get near, if you didn't stake out a spot before the riders got to the section.

Maybe the crowd was a perception thing. The organizers, Upper Midwest Trials Association (UMTA), said they had about 300 paid spectators, both days. They suspected at least 100 more snuck in each day. I must have been following the crowd on Sunday. UMTA was satisfied with the turnout and they may try to turn the Duluth round into an annual event. They're petitioning for a World Round in 2003. If those of you who didn't go to the Nationals miss out on the World competition, I think you should be condemned to a life on four wheels.

Like racing everywhere, the pits were swarming with little rich kids on expensive bikes. I mean "little" kids, like 6-8 year olds. If that doesn't chap your shorts in jealousy, you're a better man than me. At the previous event, in Kentucky, a 6-year old boy was killed, when he collided head-on with another rider. I saw a good number of kids pressing their luck on the practice grounds and in the pits, during this event. Trials isn't any worse at managing marginal parents and their kids than any other sport, but I sure wish it was.

If you still think that OT just isn't a Minnesota sort of motorcycling thing, US Montesa is the national distributor and they're located right here in Glen Prairie. Write 'em at usmontesa@cs.com or call 612-937-8720. Don't forget to tell them that I sent you and they should drop off my 315R Cota sample/payola in Little Canada.

Minnesota Results

^{Round 9, Aug. 12th Champ class.
Round 10, Aug. 13th Champ class.}

^{1. Raymond Peters (Bultaco)}

^{2. Ryon Bell (Montesa)}

^{3. Jess Kempkes (Gas Gas)}

^{4. Geoff Aaron (Gas Gas)}

^{5. Travis J.Fox (Bultaco)}

^{6. Wilson Craig (Montesa)}

^{7. Dan Johnson (Bultaco)}

^{8. Andy Johnson (Montesa)}

1. Ryon Bell (Montesa)

^{2. Geoff Aaron (Gas Gas)}

^{3. Ray Peters (Bultaco)}

^{4. Jess Kempkes (Gas Gas)}

^{5. Travis J. Fox (Bultaco)}

^{6. Wilson Craig (Montesa)}

^{7. Dan Johnson (Bultaco)}

^{8. Andy Johnson (Montesa)}

Along with the Champ class, there were 11 other classes for trialers from Expert to kids to over-60 riders. I heard the oldest rider was around 70 and the youngest was 8.

So, Geoff Aaron finished 4th on Saturday and 2nd on Sunday and he's is the 2000 US National Champion, for the 6th time in that many years. The Trials des Nations competition in Spain is his next big event. I hope he and the other US riders (Kempkes, Raymond Peters, and Cory Pincock are also on the team) kick some butt this year. Don't count on it, though. It's a big time sport in the rest of the world, especially Europe, and their guys have been doing this at a world-class level for a long, long time.

Guilty Pleasure

I'm not wearing my AD1 pants in this picture because this
was my 3rd attempt at a self-portrait and I was tired of putting
on gear just for a damn picture. I ride AGAT everywhere.

Last April, I loaded up my V-Strom with all three hard cases and rode up to Duluth to check out the Aerostich-Riderwearhouse garage sale. I don't need much motivation to go to Duluth, since I love the city, Aerostich is one of the few examples of incorporation that I believe justifies any societal consideration, and the chance to spend even a few moments with Andy Goldfine is worth four hours on the motorcycle. An Aerostich Garage Sale was just icing on an already over-sweetened cake.

The brilliant folks at Aerostich go through a gauntlet of procedures before something finds its way into the Aerostich Catalog. Lots of cool stuff never makes it to the printer because Andy or someone at Aerostich decides the product isn't right for the Aerostich community. And "community" we are. Those of us who own Aerostich gear are committed to sticking with this stuff that works so well and with the company that has us in mind when they develop new gear or find something they think we "need." That means a lot of almost-good-enough stuff ended up on the garage sale shelves. I came home with all three cases stuffed with stuff that I either bought or had worn to the sale and would be toting back because I would be wearing my new stuff on the ride home.

The buy of the day was a prototype Darien HiVz AD1 jacket (I'm wearing it in this picture.) This incredible jacket, which has still not seen the light-of-production-day, has absolutely replaced my 5 year-old Darien for no reason other than comfort, the HiViz bit, and all-around coolness. The extra-tight nylon outer shell works so well that the Goretex has yet to be tested, even though I've ridden in awesome downpours and a couple of spring snow storms. Water just beads on the surface of this stuff and wind blows it away before the nylon gets damp enough to allow the Goretex to go to work. My old Darien is totally broken in and plenty flexible, after 80,000 miles of use, but something about this jacket is just more comfortable. If I could manage to lose another 20 pounds, it would be even more comfortable.

Andy gearing up for a ride to the Cities in 2009. Definitely,
my favorite picture of one of my favorite people.

Andy tests all of the company's prototype designs, so they are his more svelte size than my more rotund shape. In fact, the chances are good that anytime you see Andy he's testing something for Aerostich. Still, I'd lost about 20 pounds before the garage sale and that was enough to make this a practical jacket for me.

I do feel a little guilty, though, when other riders say they'd love to own some Aerostich gear but can't afford it. This incredible jacket cost me less than I ended up paying for the armor I added to it (new hardshell pads and a back protector). I shouldn't brag about this great buy and this isn't really about that. But just yesterday I was out playing on a favorite dirt road (that's giving this path way more credit than it deserves) north of the cities and went down pretty hard pretending to be a real motorcyclist in a tight sweeper with a bit of a berm. This was my third pass at the corner, so I thought I had it down. The first two times, I got sideways before the apex, so I didn't need the berm to get through the corner. It's been a while since I busted a berm, though, and I wanted to push the corner hard enough to need more than just speedway tactics to get around it.

The berm turned out to be less bermish than I hoped and it caved on me right at the apex, sending me, the WR, and a lot of dirt and gravel into a ditch. Once again, I busted the right side rear turn signal and gouged up the plastic exhaust pipe cover a little more. The signal is easy to fix. The exhaust cover was cheap. I hit my new Aerostich hip pads first, got on to my back in time to slide into the ditch feet first. My beater HJC took a little whack and scooped up enough goo to soak the collar of the Darien. It was a bit chilly and I had the Darien's collar pulled tight, which kept my neck and back dry. Overall, I ended up with my boots wet (about 4" of muck in the bottom of the ditch), pissed off, and slightly less aggressive for the rest of the ride home. My gear protected me from everything but a little soreness this morning. Could have been a whole lot worse. Thanks, once again, to the folks at Aerostich.

PS: Don't tell my wife about this. She's already convinced I'm retarded after dropping the bike yesterday morning when the cold engine stalled on me in the driveway.

Looping Superior

Last week, my brother and I made the loop around Lake Superior.We hadn't done a motorcycle trip together since I lived in Colorado in the 90's and he hadn't been on a bike since he mashed his foot into a deer.We started slow, down two lanes and dirt roads, and took a really convoluted path to south Duluth where we turned east into Wisconsin. We toured the south side of Lake Superior through Michigan's UP and crossed the boarder at Sault Ste. Marie into Ontario. From there, to Thunder Bay in two days and two days back to the Cities.

Our big day was about 375 miles and our short day was a little under 250. That's kind of an ass-pounding on the WR250X, I'm sorry to admit. The only disappointment on the trip was that the V-Strom got exactly the same mileage as the 250. That's good for the V-Strom, since it knocked down 55mpg consistently. That sucks for the WR since it has a 3 gallon tank and a 150 mile range, when I'd hoped it would get better efficiency and at least 200 miles out of a tank.

Consumer Repellants

All Rights Reserved © 2009 Thomas W. Day

Every once in a while, I check out ClusterFox New’s website to find out who is advertising there to be sure I don’t buy anything from their sponsors. It doesn’t mean much to anyone but me, but I’m the only guy I have to satisfy at this late point in life. Likewise, this afternoon--when it turned out that I’d managed to escape my class and arrived early for my wife’s birthday party at my daughter’s home—I found myself with a rare couple of unoccupied hours and an appetite. I’m near downtown Minneapolis, a place with a plethora of great restaurants in nearly every area of the city, and I’m not on a budget or in a hurry. Where do I go?

Dinkytown has great burger joints and designer beer. It also has parking meters and a boatload of underemployed metermaids. Downtown restaurants are practically abandoned buildings at 2PM, but they are surrounded by those damn meters. Riverfront? Nope, brand new meters as of last fall. So, I ended up in a neighborhood bar with “famous” hamburgers and I’m set for the next couple of hours.

The ‘burbs live off of consumers’ rejection of “urban planning” stupidity customer hostility. If I were an owner of a suburban business, I think I’d try to get myself elected to a major city's City Council so that I could increase the number of parking meters and metermaids. I think repelling consumers from the city would be at least as effective as an advertising campaign. I wouldn’t have to pay for the parking meters and metermaids, so on a cost-basis the political campaign might be a lot more effective use of my time and money than advertising. That might explain why so many city council members live outside of the urban centers.

At the least, I think urban business people ought to use accurate terminology when they are describing these meter plagues. I’d call them “consumer repellants.” Parking meters are probably the most effective way to reduce downtown congestion, over-stimulated downtown business activity, and all of the complications that come with customers and money-changing in a living city. Far better to force all of that nasty commerce on to the suburbs where they are better situated to deal with business.

St. Paul, for example, has shed the shackles of capitalism and opted for a purely government-based economy. Every significant downtown building is jammed with city and state offices and workers and that has saved the city from having to mess with sales taxes, traffic, and inflating property taxes. The City of St. Paul is an abandoned ghost town the moment all those city and state employees head back to the suburban homes. So much volume vanishes from the downtown area it almost feels like you’ve entered a low pressure zone if you stick around past 4:30PM in downtown St. Paul.

Minneapolis, on the other hand, has extended metering hours to 10:30PM, so that city’s metermaids prowl the streets looking for stragglers to punish and the rare visitor to downtown restaurants and bars. Duluth just began a major campaign to rid itself of tourists and Canal Park visitors. It will take a few years, but that brilliant strategy will soon solve both city's’ nasty downtown business problems.

For her birthday, this September, my wife wanted a trip to Duluth. Because she was feeling guilty about making me drive our cage through Wisconsin on our anniversary, she pretended she wanted to take the bike. We've done this trip a few dozen times in the last decade and it has always been one of our favorite things to do in Minnesota. The weather report for Duluth was for a 60% chance of rain. She wanted to hang out in Canal Park. Duluth downtown parking is motorcycle hostile and I couldn't think of a good reason to deal with the hassle. I suggested we take the cage so she'd be comfortable. She drove. I read a book.

A couple of years ago, I was forced to travel through downtown Cincinnati and I was amazed at how effective that city’s parking meter solution had been. That large, once-booming downtown was absolutely abandoned on a perfect Saturday afternoon. I think you could walk naked through Cincinnati’s streets and nobody would notice. It was amazing! Cincinnati had such an effective parking meter program that the Amtrak station’s parking lot was teeming with metermaids, like sharks who’d sniffed blood in the water but who’d arrived too late to sample the kill. As I loaded my gear on to my bike in front of the station, two Cincinnati metermaids stopped to warn me that I had ten minutes to move or they’d “have to” ticket me for illegal parking. As I pulled out of the loading zone, they looked absolutely lonely with the station lot back to its natural empty status.

When I toured North Dakota, I was sort of impressed with that state’s attitude toward ghost towns and empty business buildings. It seemed to me that a year or two of abandonment was justification for bulldozing a building or town. I wonder how long it will take for the major cities to take this approach? St. Paul has a “World Trade Center,” but if al Qaeda had blown up that collection of empty office spaces nobody in the state, let alone the nation, would have noticed. The city could save itself a lot of energy by knocking down at least half of the downtown buildings and making something useful out of the space; like more empty parking lots. At least you don’t have to heat a parking lot. It’s not like the city’s metermaids are so busy that adding a couple thousand more spaces to their route would cause an inconvenience.

Getting Parked and My Opinion

A while back, Andy Goldfine asked me to write a Geezer column about motorcycle parking laws and other irrational human activities. I took a first shot at it and sent it to Andy for his opinion. His opinion was "you get more flies with honey than with . . . " whatever the opposite of honey is. He thought I should tone it down so I might have a chance at changing some official opinions rather than hardening their opinions even further. He might be right. At any rate, I toned it down and the column is sitting out there in the temporary ether waiting for my editor, Victor, to decide the time is right for publication.

My personal opinion is that, at least in the United States, things do not get better. About 40 years ago, a Canadian politician came up with a fable that pretty much sums up the way politics works here. He called it Mouseland. The idea, to put it briefly, is the mice keep electing cats to run their country and the cats (surprise!) keep passing laws that make life easier for cats and much worse for the mice. That's the system we've built and we're #1 at it. Nobody has more cats governing the mice than the US. Something to be proud of.

My grandson , Wolf, and I took a short the-week-before-school-starts motorcycle camping trip to Duluth this week. We wandered from the Cities to Duluth through backroads and had a great 270 mile trip to a place that is only 130 miles from home, by freeway. We spend the afternoon and that night at Jay Cooke State Park, one of Minnesota's great unknown natural wonders and a terrific motorcycle road. We hiked a half-dozen miles of the park's trails and camped there Wednesday evening.

The next morning, I headed us to Duluth for breakfast. My goal was a coffee shop/bakery in Canal Park. My wife and I stumbled on to that place on our 40th wedding aniversary two years ago and I thought Wolf would enjoy the atmosphere and great food. When we rolled into Canal Park, I was surprised to discover the place had been decorated with parking meters. Obviously, Duluth is continuing its recessive decline into oblivion and the City Douchebags are doing everything they can to hurry the city's demise. Big sections of this ghost town are littered with parking meters and downtown is about as close to dead as a once-lively city contaminated by braindead officials can be. All of downtown is now metered and the city's parking mafia has turned the city's empty spaces into empty parking lots manned by politically-connected deadbeats. It has the feel of Chicago without any of the rebellious attitude or the architecture.

I didn't have a pocket full of quarters (also known as "metermaid foodstamps") and the new electronic metering system Duluth is using for much of Canal Park is extremely biker-hostile. Instead of plugging a meter in front of your bike, you have to buy a parking pass at a kiosk and find a place on your bike to put the pass. Obviously, cagers will be inclined to rip off the bike pass and put it on their cages. It's also impossible to bag up your bike with your gear under the cover and leave the bike and gear so that Lovely Richard the Metermaid would see the biker had paid his welfare-tariff. I gave up on the Canal Park restaurant and cruised the downtown area looking for a meter-less place for us to eat. Every restaurant was open, but empty. The meters had done their job. Finally, we ended up at a Perkins on the north end of town that had a parking lot. The place was jammed, unlike all of the metered businesses.

I had a brief conversation with an assistant manager when we paid for our meal. He said the downtown meters had caused a boom in their morning business.

Figures.

While we were waiting for our food, I snagged a Duluth paper and read a really funny-sick article about a dude (check out the Duluth Faux News video, it's hilarious) who got into an argument while partying with another dude. To sum it up, the first dude shot and killed the second dude. Within an hour or so, 60 of Duluth's finest had the neighborhood surrounded with So-Where-Are-They'ers dressed in full Iraq invasion outfits. They looked fierce, just like they do in the movies. However, the guy they were surrounding looked like he'd be about as likely to sneak out and run away as Michael Moore. Look at him. He couldn't hide behind a mountain.

After cutting the phone lines, the Duluth cops hid behind armored cars, barricaded the streets into the neighborhood, posed with their automatic weapons for news camera crews, and had a bunch of huddled meetings with each other for five hours. Apparently, messing with a guy and his gun is a lot cooler than their usual metermaiding duties and they wanted to try out all of their gear before they outgrew it. Finally, the guy came out and they loaded him up and went back to patrolling all those parking meters. Now that I know how much firepower is behind a parking violation, I'm going to be even more inclined to spend my money in the burbs.

After breakfast, we gave up on Duluth and headed for Two Harbors. We stumbled on to a great tour of an old steampowered tugboat and a short history lesson from the curator of the lighthouse and museum. We kept going north for a few miles and had lunch on the way back at Betty's Pies. Yeah, we ate a lot for such a short trip. Get over it. It's a guy thing.

On the way back, I decided to put up with the meter crap and parked in front of Duluth Pack. I used my credit card to buy a $0.75 hour and discovered the meter gouges you for an extra quarter if you use a card. Something not advertised on the &^%$# meter kiosk. Since we couldn't close up the gear, we carried it around with us, which finished off any good feelings I had about Canal Park, since it got hot and carrying all our crap limited what we could do and wanted to do. I guess the good side, if you like parking meters, was that the park area was pretty much empty for a perfect last summer week afternoon before school started the next week. I've never seen that before in 12 years of hanging out in Duluth. The meters were doing their job of draining the city of downtown tourists and locals.

We gave up after 1/2 hour and went back to the bike to get the hell out of Duluth. Another biker was parked in our space, which looked like a bad idea, based on what I know of metermaids and city meter laws. As we were packing up, the other bike owner came over to ask about my luggage badges and the V-Strom. Turned out, he was from northern Minnesota and was making his once-a-year trip to Duluth. He hadn't noticed the new parking meter system and was surprised to learn he was parking illegally. I gave him the last 1/2 hour of our pass and left him looking at the damn thing, wondering where to put it so it wouldn't get stolen if he left the bike to get lunch. I recommended the Perkins north of downtown.

It would be cool to believe that the simple stuff, like parking for motorcycles, is fixable. Obviously, there are logical solutions and all of those solutions provide economic and social benefits to a wide range of citizens. However, we're a mousy "conservative nation," which means we're afraid of our shadows and we're even more afraid of pissing off the cats. Political correctness is just another form of mousy-ness. Burying ourselves in make-work jobs like metermaids and stuffing millions of citizens behind bars and hiring another few million to convict and guard them and all of the useless crap government does instead of providing useful services to working citizens is exactly the tactic every other failed dynasty has taken in the history of humanity. I would freakin' love to believe we're going to be different. But I don't.

It's all part of that fear of change and risk avoidance thing we're growing so proud of. One thing we used to know out of our manufacturing experience is that "change happens." You don't have to do a thing and change will happen. Hoping that it won't is stupid. One of the concepts I'd hope people would get from riding motorcycles is that you have to constantly adapt to change; changes in the road, in yourself and your abilities, traffic, weather, and even laws and cops. The cool thing about getting young people into motorcycling is that they might learn this lesson from riding, since they won't learn it in school, from their parents, or from video games. The not-so-cool thing about the Boomers getting into motorcycling is that they are too inflexible to learn anything new. They are constantly surprised when the universe doesn't notice their existence and fails to adapt to their all-important-selves. When they crash and burn, as they will, their reaction is to sue and pass more brainless laws to try to force the world to accommodate them. Like my home state, Kansas, passing laws to require pi to be a nice round 3.

I don't see this getting better. As much as I'd like to believe gentle argument and logical persuasion will convince the cats to allow us mice the right to lane splitting, filtering, multi-bike parking space access, and all of the cool things that motorcycles and motorcycling could bring to culture, I don't believe any of it will happen. Honestly, I think the best I will get is the right (for a while) to be pissed off about the incompetence of city, state, and federal officials and to say something about it. The problem with using sugar to catch flies is . . . who wants to catch a fly? When I see a fly, I always reach for a flyswatter.

I am pissed off. You're right. I used to love visiting Duluth, especially for hanging out around Canal Park. I've spent a small fortune on chocolate penances at Grandma's for my wife, since she often didn't get to go to Duluth with me. The Canal Park Famous Dave's is my 2nd favorite place in that chain. The lift bridge and ship harbor entry are pretty near San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge on my "favorite places" list. But I hate parking meters. I don't care much for metermaids, either (unless they look like these three, Australia knows how to do everything better). From now on, until Duluth meters-up 18th Avenue West in front of Aerostich, I'll probably limit my Duluth sight-seeing to the RiderWearHouse, Jay Cooke Park, and points north of town.

It's a weakness, I know, but human-waste like toll booth operators and metermaids bug me so much that I can't get past that irritation to enjoy the good stuff that's left of the city. There are too many places to be to have to put up with that kind of drivel. If Duluth doesn't want my money, Elie, International Falls, Redwing, and more mid-sized towns than I can count do. (Even some Duluth residents have a clue about what the city's tourist gouging is costing.) Like most Americans, I do as little business as possible in my own downtown, St. Paul, because of the transportation hassle. Between the near total lack of useful public transportation and the miserable parking experience, I'd rather skip downtown and miss out on everything that happens there than risk a $40 parking ticket for some obscure unpublished rule or from being beaten to my car by a metermaid.