Maritime's new GL - 2UP Distance eater
- Thread starter Maritime
- Start date
Tune-A-Fish
BOTM LOSER Proudly Deplorable
So... Hows it ride?
Tune-A-Fish
BOTM LOSER Proudly Deplorable
Izat J-Wilde's cane?
SoyBoySigh
Been Around the Block
Sorry but I've gotta disagree - that CANE is a piece of shit!
I've had a lot of different canes over the past 16yrs, since a failed back-surgery took things ... out of the frying pan, onto the floor - And well, I'm not a huge fan of the aluminum stuff, nor the adjustable types. It's not like you're gonna be all "hmm, fit good yesterday but today maybe I'll shorten it by 1.5 inches....." NO! You want a cane that fits right for YOU, suited to your EXACT dimensions. Cutting it to length takes about as much time & energy as it does to click that button just the right way, even if you get it right on the first try. Plus - a cut to length cane can't be tampered with by practical jokers, who might push the button and give it a half twist so you fall on your ass when you lean on it and it telescopes down all the way. Well, I suppose if you've ever read Roald Dahl's "THE TWITS" then you know that it can still be adjusted to mess with your head - to give you "The Dreaded Shrinks" ha-ha.
These Aluminum-Adjustable styles of canes used to be a short-term rental item from hospitals & pharmacies, just like the adjustable crutches - made this way so they could be returned and then used for a shorter person and then a taller person at some later date. Well they started mass producing the canes with the adjustments like that for the hospitals, cornered the market somehow, and seem to have taken over entirely. Though I might add, usually 'cause you go out to buy a cane and they don't HAVE any selection. Heck you're lucky if you can find one without a chintzy floral wall-paper print all over it, like an advert for 'Summer's Breeze potpourri scented vaginal douche" printed up and down the length of it, indeed you should be congratulated for digging around for a MANLY one (((And yet without the "Dr McGillicuty's prostate suppository & mustachio wax" emblazoned up & down the length....))) and they sell really well 'cause you can get it somewhat CLOSE to the correct dimensions, without having to pull out a hacksaw for like one damn minute. What really sucks about 'em though is the way they wiggle when you lean on 'em so it's not a solid support right away, but more than that it's that damn NOISE all of the time. The GRIP is actually pretty good, though I prefer a replaceable tip with studs in it, can be as simple as a couple of finishing nails stuck into the rubber! If you're worried about scratching up somebody's hardwood when you come indoors, it's just as easy to slip another tip over it or switch a tip from your pocket, as flip the store-bought thing up and down all of the time. When those things are a season or two old, they get fiddly and break on you. Usually when you're out on the ice.
The other one from the shops are the FOLDING canes, which are cool for packing around, good for a backpack on the bike, but then I like a full length wooden cane clipped along the side, along the frame rail next to the seat, far better than having to carry it anyhow. I got a really freaky look one time, from a COP - when I had the folding cane up under my arm-pit in a jacket inside-pocket. With the handle sticking out. Ha-ha. No shit - Just as I was about to pull it out all Detective Harry Callahan or Kojak style. To be on the safe side, I flipped my jacket out to the side and pulled on the cane with just the tips of my thumb & fore-finger.
They sell the wooden ones in SOME pharmacies, a thicker "Man Cane" (good marketing!) and "Lady Cane" - Bought the chick version at one point 'cause it's slimmer & lighter but otherwise identical. After a couple of years it began to bend a little bit. Used to walk my limpy gimpy dawg around, looking for a crooked sixpence.....
Hey - hopefully you're not stuck with the thing for too long. Years ago, I had a good day where my back felt a lot of improvement in the morning. Got so excited I snapped my old cane over my knee. Wound up hobbling around shopping for a new one a day or two later. Still worth it, that little reprieve felt fantastic. But it was money down the drain. Keep 'em, but tell yourself it's for donating & recycling etc. Ha-ha.
Best system was an entirely hand-made cane that a good friend of mine bought for me in CUBA - has a threaded Aluminum section in the middle. Solid for walking around, breaks down for riding on the bike. Problem was, all of the glued together tropical hardwood sections weakened it, and after a while it began to bend at the mid point. Still looking for the right hand-made one-off parts to fix the damn thing with! Ha-ha. My big complaint, was the crocodile head shaped carving atop the handle. VERY rough on the palms.
Which leads me to another point - avoid the "Candy-Cane" shapes at all costs, though it's fun to paint 'em red & white or wrap 'em with coloured vinyl electrical tape during the Kwanzaa season. The curve puts all of the weight right in the middle of the palm, right where the hand is built NOT to support it. It's like working a bolt-action rifle all day long. Gonna give you a blister at best, or a fucked up chronic inflammation much like the foot related parallel affliction known as ... plantar fascia-itis ... Or thereabouts.
I mean, yeah sure. It's an awesome cane like everybody's saying. That is, if you've never had one before. But it's a "Belly-Button" cane. Everybody got's one!
Get with the WOOD, Bubber. Not 'cause it goes better with the wardrobe. I'm saying wood, not brass knobs & crystal skull gear-shifter knobs on top. Just a simple wood cane with a PISTOL-GRIP handle. Painted it whatever the hell colour you like. If you LIKE how the Aluminum adjustable cane looks, spray-paint the cane with any left-over fake Aluminum coloured Aluminum-protector anti-corrosion engine-enamel spray-paint (or if you had half a brain when you bought the shit, that would be clear-coat - so you'd have to go out and BUY the shit being that the Aluminum shit on your bike was ALREADY Aluminum coloured) Maybe dip the top half into a can of liquid tool handle, drill a row of shallow counter-sink holes down one side & stick a wooden screw-hole plug into one of 'em , spin the lower half of it down to a smaller diameter & stick a rubber ring over the step - and then if you still miss the sound effects, when you walk around with it you could get your Monty Python knight's squire to follow behind & clink a couple of tin-cans together each time you touch it to the ground. 'Cause even when it's decked out as a pseudo-Aluminum cane, the wooden one's STILL better.
Oh, and speaking of the curved handles? Whatever you do, don't pull spontaneous cane-fights with other cane walking folks. I mean, there are sure to be enough Starwars or Pirates Of the Caribbean fans out there, sure THEY'LL get the joke. But the older dudes man, they're all ready to take shit seriously at the drop of a hat. They got's this martial ART all about canes, too. Truly a "Gentleman's Fighting Technique" indeed.
Hmm. Part of me wants to do a full pictorial BUILD THREAD on how to mount a full-length cane alongside the frame of one's motorcycle,. I'm sure there are a lot of folks who would love to learn about mounting a cane on a motorcycle - not only for the differently-ABLED, but....
... But then there are a good bunch of the fellas would wanna mount a cane on the bike so they can look stylish twirling it around like Charlie Chaplin at the next "Distinguished Gentleman's Ride" (if it does indeed become an annual event, like the next big hipster thing like a Zombie Walk or international beard growers' championship) But yeah, the "Distinguished Gentlemen" who might want a good hard-mount for a cane, be that a "Steam-Punk" thing OR a Retro-Sexual's wardrobe accessory - I'd say 10% but some of ya'll reading this might take that as a rude stereotype .... And I can't even say 1% 'cause that would sound like the Christo-Fascist counter-point argument to the "One In Ten" axiom. (Don't wanna be your Monkey Wrench!) - I dunno WHAT the demographics break down to, attempting to guess at an answer by tumblr-ing pics from the LAST Distinguished Gentleman's Ride just breaks down into a whole mess of Tom of Finland -esque "Honcho" magazine centerfolds.... Bah - it's hard to say just WHAT the hipsters are gonna be up to next year. Ha-ha. And then again it's hard to say whether it was a real motorcycle rally or a casting call for a cologne advert for GQ, Nick Wooster as presiding judge & Chief of the Fashion Police. I mean, they were raising funds for Prostate Cancer research. But you mention Prostate and some folks show up for the digital manipulation. ("Not that there's anything wrong with that!" -Jerry Seinfeld) Indeed, the words "Distinguished Gentleman's ____" was, IIRC, the title of the top-most cover-page of a huge stack of magazines I found, next to some leather chaps, spiked leather peaked officer's cap, and VILLAGE PEOPLE records, when I was a but a strapping young lad of 12 on my first hourly rate paid job: Helping my "Uncle" John renovate his old house. Taught me a lot about home repair. Supervised me intently through mirrored sunglasses like a scene straight out of "Cool Hand Luke", whilst sitting back in a fabulous-'50s collectible aluminum & plastic strap folding lawn-chair chaise lounger with a pitcher of Tom Collins in hand, barking out directions like Mr. Miagi from The Karate Kid, as I built and then painted a fence around the property. So thoughtful he even provided the too-tight full-of-holes painters' coveralls too, so I wouldn't get paint on my own too-tight ripped up '80s Levi's 501s, which apparently weren't quite tight enough.
As a result of which, finding those magazines and having NOT drank the Kool-Aide he was offering, well just the title alone, "Distinguished Gentleman's Ride", I dunno - I can't get past it.
Well I mean, MAINLY 'cause I don't go in for the POSH thing. Not the Gay thing. Isn't a gay bar within 500-miles of here that I didn't go out and "cut the rug" back in the mid-late '90s when I was in my early-mid '20s (to paraphrase HEDWIG) - Mostly accompanying my then-GF or first-"wife" or highschool sweet-heart or Queen of the Harpies or whatever, as she liked to go out cruising for under-aged asian girls. Not 'cause I wasn't by then already bored with being ridden like a see-saw, but mainly 'cause she needed somebody to keep her on the right side of the statutory-rape vs pedophilia divide. And I worked in "China-Town" at the time - there's a whole generation of women from Hong-Kong to Taipei who have polaroids of themselves hanging off of my then-huge biceps or pulling up the front of my shirt for a snap of the 12-pack abs I use to sport in those days, from when whole tour-buses full of Asian school-girls used to pull up at the Aquarium-building, discus-breeding, coral-importer, black-market smuggler warehouse that I apprenticed at for five years. Anyways, just sayin' - having been "immersed in the culture" such as I was, I knew how to gauge the age of an Asian gal between the ages of 12 and 25. Without me there to shut down some of her impulses, the Ex surely would've wound up on the Jerry Springer Show. Or if she were a man, locked up in prison for life.
No seriously though, I'm not a Homerphobe. I've read the Odyssey AND the Iliad. Rather, it's the SNOBBISH aspects of this particular dress-up-to-ride-your-motorcycle set which puts an unwelcome uninvited bug up my ass. It ain't just the way that we all can look back on the decades we didn't have to LIVE through, so we can thereby view the whole spectacle through the rosiest shade of lenses. It's what side of the class divide they always seem to fall on....
If I were forced to go to any type of "Society For Creative Anachronism" thing - say, a Medieval Fair? I'd show up as the starving leper with the plague "bubos" and the penitents' self-flagellation. You wanna reminisce about the early half of the 20th century? How about wearing a striped suit, of concentration camp pajamas? Or at least a conscripted cannon-fodder's uniform. Barber Shop Quartet, you say? Oh, but you're a person of colour? Perfect. Let's shackle your feet together and you can shovel hot asphalt over a road, sing us some o' them "Negro Spirituals". Ah, but you're talking about more of a "blue collar everyman" then. Okay - Let's get a classic bit of machine shop tech for your motorcycle shop. You could set up as a PUNCH PRESS OPERATOR and stand on your feet moving your arm up and down like a Vegas slot machine all day, with the best TAYLORISM efficient use of bodily movement that you can muster! You could be something of a craftsman artisan after say, 47 years practice on the machine - THEN you could add your retirement gift / pension-token "gold" (plated) pocket-watch with that steampunk trendy watch-chain to your outfit! Whaddya say?
Good GAWD I should've kept that bone-stock KZ440LTD, so a person could dress up as Ricky "Chinaski" Mourke in "Rumblefish", accompanied by a Matt Dillon (as Rusty "Trombone" James) look-a-like on a GPZ550 uni-track. But I'm sure that wouldn't fit in with the "Distinguished Gentlemen" OR the Rockabilly ("Rockabilly Bill, still Rockabilly after all these years and you've gotta respect that." -Tatiana Maslani, Orphan Black) Cafe Racer crowd, or even the aging '80s Hair-Banger crowd 'cause there's too much of an avantgaurde cinema wardrobe, New Wave, Stewart Copeland vibe for 'em to fit into EITHER of those pigeon-holes.....
It's not even that I'm so averse to playing Mr. Dressup, Finnegan. Heck, when it comes to looking cool on my '82 CB900F I'm growing out my full-on COP moustache (and not getting any quim thereof) looking all OVER the place for just the right orange-brown leather sport-jacket, cable-knit turtleneck dickey, tootightinthecrotch corduroy bell-bottom jordache jeans, '70s cock-rock arena-stage style pseudo-shitkicker "motorcycle" boots, knit-back driving gloves, Sylvester Stallone as COBRA Elvis-shades, Corey Hart and/or Loverboy Hair-Product, hair on my head to put the product in an a hair-brush to "feather" it with, and of course just the right LADYFRIEND with the wardrobe to match. (If you can pull off a good Farah Fawcette, Debbie Harry, Joan Jett or Cherie Curie, Twiggy, Kate Bush, Cindy Lauper, Siouxie Sioux, Valerie Bertinelli, or heck 'Weezie from the Jeffersons, ANY '70s-'80s TV icon I'm not picky just gimme a call....) I'm ALL OVER wearing the period-correct wardrobe with one's motorcycle. Hell, even WITH the "CB900K0 Bol Bomber" retro-fried Xtreme'-make-over for said Honda, I'm gonna blow them hipsters' ... MINDS, with my "through the looking-glass" dressups kills. If the bike comes off looking like a proper '60s streetbike version of an RC-181 Hailwood racer I'm gonna dress up just like Shoichiro Irimajiri in that famous pic of him next to his '78 CBX1000 complete with the houndstooth polyester shirt and long straight black hair full of greaserkidstuff. If it comes off looking like an early '70s Italian millionaire playboy's MV Agusta roadster, then I'm gonna be SAD AS HELL but I'm still gonna dust myself off & find a perfect replica of what Giacomo Agonstini was wearing in one of them MUSICAL FILMS he starred in and CROONED in.....
Hell yeah, I wanna play dressup-before-you-can-ride-your-motorcycle just as bad as the NEXT guy.
Ah, but no. Everybody wants to dress up as the Laird & M'Lady. Little Lord Fauntleroy and his "Rich Uncle Pennybags". Marie Antoinette (which wouldn't be so bad if I get to bring the guillotine) or Elizabeth A.M. Windsor. (*COUGH* ditto)The amateur inventor with the at-home profession set up (as a tax dodge, then even more-so than now) on the sprawling palatial English Manor Home, moved brick-by-brick to Conneticut by one's zillionaire philanthropist-industrialist (read: Monopolist WAR PROFITEER) forebears, chasing skirts slash brokering arranged marriages at the debutante's cotillion ball. Others like to dress up like Marlon Brando when they ride their skirt-fender Harley flat-head dresser, with a side-hack bucket (attached to the Harley's agricultural equipment PTO mount) with a Marilyn Monroe look-alike blowing her skirt up in the breeze, who get get pissy when you ride along behind 'em in the back seat / casting-couch of a chauffeured 6-wheeled Opel/Daimler/Horch/Auto-Union roadster dressed as Louie B. Mayer, with a line-up of Norma Jean Mortenson lookalikes waiting for a turn to kneel and take their head-shots, with an R.E.O. Speedwagon flat-bed farm truck trundling along behind 'em with another couple of dozen wannabe ingenues and maybe a vintage ambulance with a couple of young kids dressed up as the young Judy Garland & Mickey Rooney, a registered nurse at their side administering alternating doses of barbituates and crystal meth, looking at her watch the whole time..... Meanwhile there are the folks who just love dressing up in a W.W.I. officer's(*cough* aristocrat's) uniform, peaked-cap or pickelhaube while putt-putting along on their nineteen-teener khaki/olive-drab/feldgrau white-tired sidevalve-single board-trackers, but their mood sours when the pedestrians they ride past put one hand on the next guy's shoulder wrap a piss-soaked hankie over their eyes and trudge along in single-file. Everybody wants to dress up as T.E. Lawrence of Arabia, but somehow they just don't appreciate it when you & your most flamboyant pals follow them around dressed up like Sir Richard Francis Burton & John Hanning Speke, Oscar Wilde, William S. Burroughs - and the flock of turban-clad under-aged manservant painted golden-boys at T.E. Lawrence's welcome home party at the upper-crust British boarding-school Gentlemen's Only Club. Well okay, THAT'S a lie. The Distinguished Gentlemen's Ride folks wouldn't bat an eyelash 'cause it's just that type of uppercrusty posh ostentatious CASTE SYSTEM embodied in their whole sense of "style". CLASS, one might say?
Not to be confused with your run-of-the-mill Quadrophenia fan-club "Mods vs Rockers" pop-culture teenaged wasteland, this vibe comes from a whole OTHER side of Western-European retro-culture.
Well, whatever. My point however is that whether somebody's cane is a legit handrail-prosthesis, OR a fashion statement and affectation of gentility, it can ALSO be used as a WEAPON:
"BARTITSU" or as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle misspelled it & thereby it went into the colloquial lexicon as, "Baritsu"
https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwj3goHmisfMAhVR72MKHUjpDJMQtwIIIjAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DC3qX_BeTNUk&usg=AFQjCNGvi6cXfsZ942USYztbOFWHVFTkxg&sig2=L4bVpx5oWczH5o-N-h3eJw
https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwj3goHmisfMAhVR72MKHUjpDJMQtwIIHDAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DDdc5uslB2aE&usg=AFQjCNFGsQXa5TLPt2gGpnlOYKIs5nQxgQ&sig2=zPHZENxWk7wNVxNGLaZhtg
Hopefully, you won't NEED the damn thing in pretty short order though, hey?
-Sigh.
I've had a lot of different canes over the past 16yrs, since a failed back-surgery took things ... out of the frying pan, onto the floor - And well, I'm not a huge fan of the aluminum stuff, nor the adjustable types. It's not like you're gonna be all "hmm, fit good yesterday but today maybe I'll shorten it by 1.5 inches....." NO! You want a cane that fits right for YOU, suited to your EXACT dimensions. Cutting it to length takes about as much time & energy as it does to click that button just the right way, even if you get it right on the first try. Plus - a cut to length cane can't be tampered with by practical jokers, who might push the button and give it a half twist so you fall on your ass when you lean on it and it telescopes down all the way. Well, I suppose if you've ever read Roald Dahl's "THE TWITS" then you know that it can still be adjusted to mess with your head - to give you "The Dreaded Shrinks" ha-ha.
These Aluminum-Adjustable styles of canes used to be a short-term rental item from hospitals & pharmacies, just like the adjustable crutches - made this way so they could be returned and then used for a shorter person and then a taller person at some later date. Well they started mass producing the canes with the adjustments like that for the hospitals, cornered the market somehow, and seem to have taken over entirely. Though I might add, usually 'cause you go out to buy a cane and they don't HAVE any selection. Heck you're lucky if you can find one without a chintzy floral wall-paper print all over it, like an advert for 'Summer's Breeze potpourri scented vaginal douche" printed up and down the length of it, indeed you should be congratulated for digging around for a MANLY one (((And yet without the "Dr McGillicuty's prostate suppository & mustachio wax" emblazoned up & down the length....))) and they sell really well 'cause you can get it somewhat CLOSE to the correct dimensions, without having to pull out a hacksaw for like one damn minute. What really sucks about 'em though is the way they wiggle when you lean on 'em so it's not a solid support right away, but more than that it's that damn NOISE all of the time. The GRIP is actually pretty good, though I prefer a replaceable tip with studs in it, can be as simple as a couple of finishing nails stuck into the rubber! If you're worried about scratching up somebody's hardwood when you come indoors, it's just as easy to slip another tip over it or switch a tip from your pocket, as flip the store-bought thing up and down all of the time. When those things are a season or two old, they get fiddly and break on you. Usually when you're out on the ice.
The other one from the shops are the FOLDING canes, which are cool for packing around, good for a backpack on the bike, but then I like a full length wooden cane clipped along the side, along the frame rail next to the seat, far better than having to carry it anyhow. I got a really freaky look one time, from a COP - when I had the folding cane up under my arm-pit in a jacket inside-pocket. With the handle sticking out. Ha-ha. No shit - Just as I was about to pull it out all Detective Harry Callahan or Kojak style. To be on the safe side, I flipped my jacket out to the side and pulled on the cane with just the tips of my thumb & fore-finger.
They sell the wooden ones in SOME pharmacies, a thicker "Man Cane" (good marketing!) and "Lady Cane" - Bought the chick version at one point 'cause it's slimmer & lighter but otherwise identical. After a couple of years it began to bend a little bit. Used to walk my limpy gimpy dawg around, looking for a crooked sixpence.....
Hey - hopefully you're not stuck with the thing for too long. Years ago, I had a good day where my back felt a lot of improvement in the morning. Got so excited I snapped my old cane over my knee. Wound up hobbling around shopping for a new one a day or two later. Still worth it, that little reprieve felt fantastic. But it was money down the drain. Keep 'em, but tell yourself it's for donating & recycling etc. Ha-ha.
Best system was an entirely hand-made cane that a good friend of mine bought for me in CUBA - has a threaded Aluminum section in the middle. Solid for walking around, breaks down for riding on the bike. Problem was, all of the glued together tropical hardwood sections weakened it, and after a while it began to bend at the mid point. Still looking for the right hand-made one-off parts to fix the damn thing with! Ha-ha. My big complaint, was the crocodile head shaped carving atop the handle. VERY rough on the palms.
Which leads me to another point - avoid the "Candy-Cane" shapes at all costs, though it's fun to paint 'em red & white or wrap 'em with coloured vinyl electrical tape during the Kwanzaa season. The curve puts all of the weight right in the middle of the palm, right where the hand is built NOT to support it. It's like working a bolt-action rifle all day long. Gonna give you a blister at best, or a fucked up chronic inflammation much like the foot related parallel affliction known as ... plantar fascia-itis ... Or thereabouts.
I mean, yeah sure. It's an awesome cane like everybody's saying. That is, if you've never had one before. But it's a "Belly-Button" cane. Everybody got's one!
Get with the WOOD, Bubber. Not 'cause it goes better with the wardrobe. I'm saying wood, not brass knobs & crystal skull gear-shifter knobs on top. Just a simple wood cane with a PISTOL-GRIP handle. Painted it whatever the hell colour you like. If you LIKE how the Aluminum adjustable cane looks, spray-paint the cane with any left-over fake Aluminum coloured Aluminum-protector anti-corrosion engine-enamel spray-paint (or if you had half a brain when you bought the shit, that would be clear-coat - so you'd have to go out and BUY the shit being that the Aluminum shit on your bike was ALREADY Aluminum coloured) Maybe dip the top half into a can of liquid tool handle, drill a row of shallow counter-sink holes down one side & stick a wooden screw-hole plug into one of 'em , spin the lower half of it down to a smaller diameter & stick a rubber ring over the step - and then if you still miss the sound effects, when you walk around with it you could get your Monty Python knight's squire to follow behind & clink a couple of tin-cans together each time you touch it to the ground. 'Cause even when it's decked out as a pseudo-Aluminum cane, the wooden one's STILL better.
Oh, and speaking of the curved handles? Whatever you do, don't pull spontaneous cane-fights with other cane walking folks. I mean, there are sure to be enough Starwars or Pirates Of the Caribbean fans out there, sure THEY'LL get the joke. But the older dudes man, they're all ready to take shit seriously at the drop of a hat. They got's this martial ART all about canes, too. Truly a "Gentleman's Fighting Technique" indeed.
Hmm. Part of me wants to do a full pictorial BUILD THREAD on how to mount a full-length cane alongside the frame of one's motorcycle,. I'm sure there are a lot of folks who would love to learn about mounting a cane on a motorcycle - not only for the differently-ABLED, but....
... But then there are a good bunch of the fellas would wanna mount a cane on the bike so they can look stylish twirling it around like Charlie Chaplin at the next "Distinguished Gentleman's Ride" (if it does indeed become an annual event, like the next big hipster thing like a Zombie Walk or international beard growers' championship) But yeah, the "Distinguished Gentlemen" who might want a good hard-mount for a cane, be that a "Steam-Punk" thing OR a Retro-Sexual's wardrobe accessory - I'd say 10% but some of ya'll reading this might take that as a rude stereotype .... And I can't even say 1% 'cause that would sound like the Christo-Fascist counter-point argument to the "One In Ten" axiom. (Don't wanna be your Monkey Wrench!) - I dunno WHAT the demographics break down to, attempting to guess at an answer by tumblr-ing pics from the LAST Distinguished Gentleman's Ride just breaks down into a whole mess of Tom of Finland -esque "Honcho" magazine centerfolds.... Bah - it's hard to say just WHAT the hipsters are gonna be up to next year. Ha-ha. And then again it's hard to say whether it was a real motorcycle rally or a casting call for a cologne advert for GQ, Nick Wooster as presiding judge & Chief of the Fashion Police. I mean, they were raising funds for Prostate Cancer research. But you mention Prostate and some folks show up for the digital manipulation. ("Not that there's anything wrong with that!" -Jerry Seinfeld) Indeed, the words "Distinguished Gentleman's ____" was, IIRC, the title of the top-most cover-page of a huge stack of magazines I found, next to some leather chaps, spiked leather peaked officer's cap, and VILLAGE PEOPLE records, when I was a but a strapping young lad of 12 on my first hourly rate paid job: Helping my "Uncle" John renovate his old house. Taught me a lot about home repair. Supervised me intently through mirrored sunglasses like a scene straight out of "Cool Hand Luke", whilst sitting back in a fabulous-'50s collectible aluminum & plastic strap folding lawn-chair chaise lounger with a pitcher of Tom Collins in hand, barking out directions like Mr. Miagi from The Karate Kid, as I built and then painted a fence around the property. So thoughtful he even provided the too-tight full-of-holes painters' coveralls too, so I wouldn't get paint on my own too-tight ripped up '80s Levi's 501s, which apparently weren't quite tight enough.
As a result of which, finding those magazines and having NOT drank the Kool-Aide he was offering, well just the title alone, "Distinguished Gentleman's Ride", I dunno - I can't get past it.
Well I mean, MAINLY 'cause I don't go in for the POSH thing. Not the Gay thing. Isn't a gay bar within 500-miles of here that I didn't go out and "cut the rug" back in the mid-late '90s when I was in my early-mid '20s (to paraphrase HEDWIG) - Mostly accompanying my then-GF or first-"wife" or highschool sweet-heart or Queen of the Harpies or whatever, as she liked to go out cruising for under-aged asian girls. Not 'cause I wasn't by then already bored with being ridden like a see-saw, but mainly 'cause she needed somebody to keep her on the right side of the statutory-rape vs pedophilia divide. And I worked in "China-Town" at the time - there's a whole generation of women from Hong-Kong to Taipei who have polaroids of themselves hanging off of my then-huge biceps or pulling up the front of my shirt for a snap of the 12-pack abs I use to sport in those days, from when whole tour-buses full of Asian school-girls used to pull up at the Aquarium-building, discus-breeding, coral-importer, black-market smuggler warehouse that I apprenticed at for five years. Anyways, just sayin' - having been "immersed in the culture" such as I was, I knew how to gauge the age of an Asian gal between the ages of 12 and 25. Without me there to shut down some of her impulses, the Ex surely would've wound up on the Jerry Springer Show. Or if she were a man, locked up in prison for life.
No seriously though, I'm not a Homerphobe. I've read the Odyssey AND the Iliad. Rather, it's the SNOBBISH aspects of this particular dress-up-to-ride-your-motorcycle set which puts an unwelcome uninvited bug up my ass. It ain't just the way that we all can look back on the decades we didn't have to LIVE through, so we can thereby view the whole spectacle through the rosiest shade of lenses. It's what side of the class divide they always seem to fall on....
If I were forced to go to any type of "Society For Creative Anachronism" thing - say, a Medieval Fair? I'd show up as the starving leper with the plague "bubos" and the penitents' self-flagellation. You wanna reminisce about the early half of the 20th century? How about wearing a striped suit, of concentration camp pajamas? Or at least a conscripted cannon-fodder's uniform. Barber Shop Quartet, you say? Oh, but you're a person of colour? Perfect. Let's shackle your feet together and you can shovel hot asphalt over a road, sing us some o' them "Negro Spirituals". Ah, but you're talking about more of a "blue collar everyman" then. Okay - Let's get a classic bit of machine shop tech for your motorcycle shop. You could set up as a PUNCH PRESS OPERATOR and stand on your feet moving your arm up and down like a Vegas slot machine all day, with the best TAYLORISM efficient use of bodily movement that you can muster! You could be something of a craftsman artisan after say, 47 years practice on the machine - THEN you could add your retirement gift / pension-token "gold" (plated) pocket-watch with that steampunk trendy watch-chain to your outfit! Whaddya say?
Good GAWD I should've kept that bone-stock KZ440LTD, so a person could dress up as Ricky "Chinaski" Mourke in "Rumblefish", accompanied by a Matt Dillon (as Rusty "Trombone" James) look-a-like on a GPZ550 uni-track. But I'm sure that wouldn't fit in with the "Distinguished Gentlemen" OR the Rockabilly ("Rockabilly Bill, still Rockabilly after all these years and you've gotta respect that." -Tatiana Maslani, Orphan Black) Cafe Racer crowd, or even the aging '80s Hair-Banger crowd 'cause there's too much of an avantgaurde cinema wardrobe, New Wave, Stewart Copeland vibe for 'em to fit into EITHER of those pigeon-holes.....
It's not even that I'm so averse to playing Mr. Dressup, Finnegan. Heck, when it comes to looking cool on my '82 CB900F I'm growing out my full-on COP moustache (and not getting any quim thereof) looking all OVER the place for just the right orange-brown leather sport-jacket, cable-knit turtleneck dickey, tootightinthecrotch corduroy bell-bottom jordache jeans, '70s cock-rock arena-stage style pseudo-shitkicker "motorcycle" boots, knit-back driving gloves, Sylvester Stallone as COBRA Elvis-shades, Corey Hart and/or Loverboy Hair-Product, hair on my head to put the product in an a hair-brush to "feather" it with, and of course just the right LADYFRIEND with the wardrobe to match. (If you can pull off a good Farah Fawcette, Debbie Harry, Joan Jett or Cherie Curie, Twiggy, Kate Bush, Cindy Lauper, Siouxie Sioux, Valerie Bertinelli, or heck 'Weezie from the Jeffersons, ANY '70s-'80s TV icon I'm not picky just gimme a call....) I'm ALL OVER wearing the period-correct wardrobe with one's motorcycle. Hell, even WITH the "CB900K0 Bol Bomber" retro-fried Xtreme'-make-over for said Honda, I'm gonna blow them hipsters' ... MINDS, with my "through the looking-glass" dressups kills. If the bike comes off looking like a proper '60s streetbike version of an RC-181 Hailwood racer I'm gonna dress up just like Shoichiro Irimajiri in that famous pic of him next to his '78 CBX1000 complete with the houndstooth polyester shirt and long straight black hair full of greaserkidstuff. If it comes off looking like an early '70s Italian millionaire playboy's MV Agusta roadster, then I'm gonna be SAD AS HELL but I'm still gonna dust myself off & find a perfect replica of what Giacomo Agonstini was wearing in one of them MUSICAL FILMS he starred in and CROONED in.....
Hell yeah, I wanna play dressup-before-you-can-ride-your-motorcycle just as bad as the NEXT guy.
Ah, but no. Everybody wants to dress up as the Laird & M'Lady. Little Lord Fauntleroy and his "Rich Uncle Pennybags". Marie Antoinette (which wouldn't be so bad if I get to bring the guillotine) or Elizabeth A.M. Windsor. (*COUGH* ditto)The amateur inventor with the at-home profession set up (as a tax dodge, then even more-so than now) on the sprawling palatial English Manor Home, moved brick-by-brick to Conneticut by one's zillionaire philanthropist-industrialist (read: Monopolist WAR PROFITEER) forebears, chasing skirts slash brokering arranged marriages at the debutante's cotillion ball. Others like to dress up like Marlon Brando when they ride their skirt-fender Harley flat-head dresser, with a side-hack bucket (attached to the Harley's agricultural equipment PTO mount) with a Marilyn Monroe look-alike blowing her skirt up in the breeze, who get get pissy when you ride along behind 'em in the back seat / casting-couch of a chauffeured 6-wheeled Opel/Daimler/Horch/Auto-Union roadster dressed as Louie B. Mayer, with a line-up of Norma Jean Mortenson lookalikes waiting for a turn to kneel and take their head-shots, with an R.E.O. Speedwagon flat-bed farm truck trundling along behind 'em with another couple of dozen wannabe ingenues and maybe a vintage ambulance with a couple of young kids dressed up as the young Judy Garland & Mickey Rooney, a registered nurse at their side administering alternating doses of barbituates and crystal meth, looking at her watch the whole time..... Meanwhile there are the folks who just love dressing up in a W.W.I. officer's(*cough* aristocrat's) uniform, peaked-cap or pickelhaube while putt-putting along on their nineteen-teener khaki/olive-drab/feldgrau white-tired sidevalve-single board-trackers, but their mood sours when the pedestrians they ride past put one hand on the next guy's shoulder wrap a piss-soaked hankie over their eyes and trudge along in single-file. Everybody wants to dress up as T.E. Lawrence of Arabia, but somehow they just don't appreciate it when you & your most flamboyant pals follow them around dressed up like Sir Richard Francis Burton & John Hanning Speke, Oscar Wilde, William S. Burroughs - and the flock of turban-clad under-aged manservant painted golden-boys at T.E. Lawrence's welcome home party at the upper-crust British boarding-school Gentlemen's Only Club. Well okay, THAT'S a lie. The Distinguished Gentlemen's Ride folks wouldn't bat an eyelash 'cause it's just that type of uppercrusty posh ostentatious CASTE SYSTEM embodied in their whole sense of "style". CLASS, one might say?
Not to be confused with your run-of-the-mill Quadrophenia fan-club "Mods vs Rockers" pop-culture teenaged wasteland, this vibe comes from a whole OTHER side of Western-European retro-culture.
Well, whatever. My point however is that whether somebody's cane is a legit handrail-prosthesis, OR a fashion statement and affectation of gentility, it can ALSO be used as a WEAPON:
"BARTITSU" or as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle misspelled it & thereby it went into the colloquial lexicon as, "Baritsu"
https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwj3goHmisfMAhVR72MKHUjpDJMQtwIIIjAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DC3qX_BeTNUk&usg=AFQjCNGvi6cXfsZ942USYztbOFWHVFTkxg&sig2=L4bVpx5oWczH5o-N-h3eJw
https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwj3goHmisfMAhVR72MKHUjpDJMQtwIIHDAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DDdc5uslB2aE&usg=AFQjCNFGsQXa5TLPt2gGpnlOYKIs5nQxgQ&sig2=zPHZENxWk7wNVxNGLaZhtg
Hopefully, you won't NEED the damn thing in pretty short order though, hey?
-Sigh.
Tune-A-Fish
BOTM LOSER Proudly Deplorable
I got through "16 years" :-\
Maritime
Over 10,000 Posts
Ok so I am testing the Sparck Moto FB11 I think Matt calls it. Basically a poor man's M Unit. I hope it helps to make the Ness pictured below a lot more streamlined and cleaner. So plan is to get a few more small bits sorted like which switches I am using and then find the best place to mount the unit, then start one system at a time rewiring. I'll post up as I go.
Attachments
Maritime
Over 10,000 Posts
Going to post this here for reference to myself. There is a ride in 13 days I want to try and have the GL ready for, not finished, but safe and ridable. if she is ugly, oh well.
TO DO:
Wiring - all systems, new gauge, required lights to be legal.
Brakes - Front bled, rear checked, new rear line can wait.
Cables - New throttle cables installed, clutch checked and lubed, choke mounted and lubed.
Seat - GL1100 pan modded to fit 1000, foam carved, some kind of cover
rear fender - mounted
Rear lights - tail and turns mounted, may need to use leftovers temp for now.
Mount exhaust.
Make bracket for heal toe and mount.
Other:
Fix broken sparkplug wire, clean drain holes in Head, change oil, re-fill coolant. check clamps for leaks
Wow, let's see if that can get done in 13 days with the gimp leg.
TO DO:
Wiring - all systems, new gauge, required lights to be legal.
Brakes - Front bled, rear checked, new rear line can wait.
Cables - New throttle cables installed, clutch checked and lubed, choke mounted and lubed.
Seat - GL1100 pan modded to fit 1000, foam carved, some kind of cover
rear fender - mounted
Rear lights - tail and turns mounted, may need to use leftovers temp for now.
Mount exhaust.
Make bracket for heal toe and mount.
Other:
Fix broken sparkplug wire, clean drain holes in Head, change oil, re-fill coolant. check clamps for leaks
Wow, let's see if that can get done in 13 days with the gimp leg.
JustinLonghorn
No Purple Hearts, No Blue Ribbons
I've got faith in you, man.
