Recently in Event Report Category

One of the things I've been busy doing in August was moving my scooters. I had stored most of them in the same rented garage for at least the last five years. The person I had rented from needed the space back, and so, sadly, it was time to move on. As luck would have it, Scooterlounge team member Dano had space in his garage. As the saying goes, as one door closes, another one opens. The big move took a good part of a day, with mutliple truck-loads like the one above.

This is what it looked like in Dano's space as I started filling it up. Scooters and motorcycles aplenty. Suffice to say that the pile 'o bikes that I dropped off took up much less space than the car that Dano used to have stored down there. My Rally is also coming in handy as a reference while he works on his Vespa GS restoration (more on that to come).

Last month I got a chance to join up with other Lambrettisti on the annual LALO rally in San Francisco.  LALO is the "Loose Association of Lambretta Owners," which really isn't an actual group, but just a few guys that organize this ride every year.  It is Lambretta only.  I think I've been on every one they have hosted.  Usually I truck over from Oakland, but this year I rode over the Bay Bridge with my pal Pelayo.

The San Francisco area has a high concentration of classic scooters, and a ton of Lambrettas are among them.  I guess that there were about 40 scooters on the ride this year.  Some years have seen huge turnouts. 

This weekend I went to my favorite car/motorcycle show. It is the All-Italian Day show on Alameda Island, across the bay from San Francisco. I really like the show because it brings out some really amazing vehicles in an environment that minimizes the pretension that some of these types of events can sometimes have.

This year, I eschewed my normal scooter steed, and rode my 1957 Gilera 150 motorcycle. The ride there from my house didn't really make up for missing the California Moto Giro this year, but at least I got the bike out of the garage!

As usual, there were some truly fantastic cars and motorcycles out for the show. On the motorcycle side, the highlights for me were the collection of 50's MV Augustas, and the treat of seeing more than one "round case" Ducati 750SS at the same spot. The cars were just as stunning as they always were. You know you are in someplace great when the 60's Ferraris are so plentiful that they sort of blur into one beautiful unobtainable blob. My favorite car was slightly more pedestrian (if just as unobtainable for me), a 60's Alfa Romeo Sprint Veloce in blue. It was a very tidy and very wonderful car. I doubt I'll ever be able to afford one... Oh well, I guess I get to see some of the best every year at this show!

I took quite a few photos. If you would like to check them out, click here.

In honor of last weekend's inaugural Distinguished Gentlemen's Ride, I give you a snappy-dressed guy on a fast Lambretta. Yeah, I know the ride was really for cafe racers, but hey, what's a bunch of posh rockers without some mods to mess with?!

I was able to take some time this weekend and join the fun at this year's San Francisco Classic. The custom show was at my favorite club, the DNA Lounge. It was great to see old friends and catch up with people that I have not seen in awhile. It was hard to take photos of the scooters inside the dark club, but I got some nice shots of the bikes outside.

Click below the jump for more photos!

Apologizes for the light posting the last few days.  I just finished riding the Moto Melee.  The Melee is an annual three-day motorcycle rally through around 900 miles of the best back roads that Northern California has to offer.  The ride is open to pre-1971 motorcycles (and scooters).  I've done this ride many times, and it really is one of the highlights of the year for me.  Though Vespas and Lambrettas have been known to make the rally, I was astride my '62 BMW R50/2 motorcycle.  Friday night, I finished checking over the bike, adjusting the valves and torquing the heads, and generally just making sure everything was tightened down for the abuse I was about to heap on it.  I set off on Saturday morning from home, pointed the bike toward the meeting spot in San Francisco's Presido, and didn't look back.  The ride was specatular.  The BMW performed fine, and got me home in one piece.  I have a lot to say, but have been so busy getting back into life at work and home, that I have not had time to put it down.  I'll do another post in the next few days with photos for you to see. 

This video has two of my favorite things in it... scooters ('natch), and Big Lebowski references. I don't know the members of the Lebowski Scooter Gang, but I know I would like them already. I want to go to Italy and ride with these guys! This video is really well done.

www.lebowskisg.org

Sure, Ewan and Charley famously filmed their ride around the globe.  And some crazy guys from my area rode mopeds from San Francisco to the Tierra Del Fuego.  But really, what is a rally that isn't held at 17,000 feet?  This really seems like the sort of thing that begins with a dare after a long session at the local pub. 

unreasonablejourneys.com

I can't wait to see if anyone takes them up on it.

This last Sunday was the annual LALO Rally in San Francisco. LALO - the "Loose Association of Lambretta Owners" - has a rally that is really low key and always a ton of fun. Last year, we hosted part of the LALO across the bay in Oakland, but this year was San Francisco only. It is always great to see old friends, since this is usually the first scooter rally of the year. The weather this year was typical for SF. Half of the city was sunny and wonderful, and the other half was foggy and cold.

The photo above (taken by Pelayo L.) was a shot of us riding over the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco into the Marin Headlands. You can see the fog totally covering the bridge... which is pretty normal. I'm the guy on the right side of the photo on the white Lambretta

Ford M., had a camera strapped to his helmet, and got a nice video of the ride across the bridge. I have it linked below. You can get a sense of what it was like to ride with the 40 or so of us die-hard Lambretta folks. It is hard to imagine how there can be such a huge amount of nice open space just 10 minutes outside of San Francisco. The video below gives you an idea. As we get over the bridge, we ride into the Marin Headlands, which used to be a military base, and is now open hiking trails and wonderful vistas.

Tons and tons of photos of the LALO below the jump

This winter has been really mild, even for the always nice San Francisco Bay Area where I live. I ride my scooter to work every day, except when it is raining hard. And this winter, there has been virtually no rain. So I ride a lot... but there are some times that a scooter just won't do.

My friend Andrew called me up and asked if my son and I would be up for a drive up the Sacramento Delta to a train museum. Well, my four year old is train crazy - as are most boys of his age. So I packed him up in the Alfa, and we headed up to the levies along the Sacramento river. It was a nice day out, and it was fun to drive around with another Alfa. (My car is the blue GTV on the right, and Andrew is standing by his red Giulietta Spider Veloce)

The January Auctions in Las Vegas are over.  There were a few (probably) bad scooters that made it to the auction block, and brought way more than they should have.  There was a really bad Vietnam restored Vespa, and a Series II Lambretta that looks like it was an A.P.I. Indian-made Lambretta that was "restored" there.  Both buyers are likely to be very dissapointed.  As expected, the TWN and the Salsbury brought big money.  They looked like they were quite nice.  Here are some of the notable results:

• Vietnam "restored" Vespa VBB in horrible pink- somebody got snookered!: $3800
• Lambretta LI125 Series III, refreshed in good shape, someone got a good deal: $2000
• Cushman 52A Pacemaker, restored: $2100
• Lambretta LI150 Series II, looks to be from India: $3400
• Cushman Series 60, older restoration: $3900
• Cushman Super Eagle, restored: $3900
• Misubishi Pigeon/Wards Riverside Nassau, unrestored excellent: $4250
• Harley Davidson Topper, restored: $4250
• Mustang Thoroughbred, restored: $5750
• Mustang Thoroughbred, restored: $7250
• TWN Tessy, restored: $7500
• Salsbury 85, restored: $11,750

Red Bull did some sort of promotion in Italy where they allowed a bunch of Vespas and Lambrettas to ride on Fiat's strange test track in Lingotto, Italy. Motoblog.it was there, and got some great photos. This one is my favorite.

Last month was one of my favorite scooter rallies, the San Francisco Classic. This used to be the biggest scooter rally in the country. Around 2000, it was pulling over 300 scooters! It is not that big anymore. The Classic sprung out of a tradition of having a big scooter rally in San Francisco in August beginning at least in the early 90's. I know I've been going to them since then. In any case, this rally used to be called King's Classic when it was put on by the Rally Kings SC. Now that the Rally Kings are no longer, it has been taken over by the Black Sheep SC. They do a great job. Barry from the DNA Lounge always hosts a great party at his club for the custom show, and the crew from Black Sheep put on an amazing picnic for the Sunday event. Some of our Oakland club members participated in the now-traditional Sunday dodgeball tournament... but we got trounced. All in good fun! Here are some photos from the Sunday picnic.