'Go play in traffic' is wrong for kids

 The kid was maybe a high school freshman, but probably even younger. He was riding what is usually called an "electric bicycle" on a two-lane road heavily used by commuters cutting through our neighborhood to get to work. 

The commuters are in a hurry, always, so traffic moves fast here. The city has installed "speed platforms" to slow things down, and they work, but 30 mph is still possible and seems very fast on this narrow, winding road. 

The kid was keeping up with the cars, his electric bike emitting a distressed whine at what probably was its top speed. 

He was using the "bicycle lane" on the edge of the road as if it was another full traffic lane. I saw him glance at the car running directly alongside him, only inches away. Was he worried? 

Trouble is, the bicycle lane is very narrow, not physically separated from the cars, and is not continuous. He'd have to negotiate those challenges — and at considerable speed.

He was dressed for school, in shoes, long pants and a back pack, and he was wearing a helmet. But his relatively high speed for conditions was working against his safety.

What would his parents — the people who likely purchased the machine for him — think if they saw him on the road?

Riding himself to school no doubt saves his parents the time and bother of dropping him off. Is that worth the risk? Probably he could take the school bus for free, in absolute safety.

Riding is, no doubt, more fun than the bus, and would enable him to stay after school if he wanted to participate in some school activity.

The electric bike is cheap to run, demands no registration or insurance, and no one enforces how fast it goes.

He is too young to even have a license to drive a car. No permit requires him to take a safety course and a test before hitting the road. 

Literally, hitting the road.

As a parent myself, and a licensed motorcyclist, I found the sight of this kid terrifying.

The child can not know the potential high cost of the risk he is taking with his life. He is the wrong person to be weighing how valuable those years hopefully to come can be.

Now, it's true that getting hit on an ordinary bicycle would be dangerous as well, and plenty of kids bicycle to school. I did.

I'll argue, though, that it is a different equation when speeds rise.

His electric "bicycle" is not automatically slower than the automobile traffic, on this residential street. That makes him unpredictable. At his speed, the kid I saw is dicing with traffic, not staying out of its way.

It's an unequal contest, and there is no doubt, in case of accident, who has everything to lose.

Now we're cooking with gas; finally

Plastic casing of gas line regulator mimics original metal version.

 I wrote here recently that one thing keeping me from riding my Royal Enfield was, of all things, the barbecue grill. 

"That's no excuse," you think. 

And I'd have agreed — a week ago. 

The issue first arose when the grill failed to light to cook dinner. It was very evidently out of gas. 

My wife retired to the kitchen, to use her stove, and I made plans to go exchange the used propane tank for a new one in the morning. 

So I did.

To my horror, opening the valve of the new tank to light the grill resulted in a rush of smelly gas from the tank. This occurred no matter how tightly I screwed on the regulator and hose assembly.

Evidently, my 10-year-old regulator-hose must be faulty, I thought. Perhaps the threads of the screw-on regulator had worn out.

I ordered a new assembly directly from the brand-name grill company, so as to be certain to get the correct replacement. Delivery took a week.

The new regulator appeared likely to fit, but I was disappointed to see that the regulator was now made of plastic, instead of the heavy metal of the original.

Incredibly, the name-brand grill company has fashioned the new plastic part to mimic the original metal part in appearance! I wasn't fooled.

But the new assembly did fit on my new tank. Ready for results, I opened the valve to light the grill.

Nothing happened. No matter what I did, no gas emerged from the tank.

What the...? As an experiment, I refit the old regulator. Still no gas. The problem must be the new tank!

So I took it back to the store. The clerks at this point weren't sure I knew what I was doing, but the tank was once again exchanged.

This time the grill did light.

Now wait a minute, you think: the guy says it took a week for the part to arrive, during which he did nothing. Couldn't he have ridden the motorcycle during that week?

Don't make me tell you about the refrigerator going on the blink...

Riding an Enfield with Henry Manney III

Garbed for colonial duty —in America.
(Cycle World Photo)

 Henry N. Manney III was a legendary automotive columnist whose writing invariably was salted with humorous wisecracks. 

I was delighted, recently, when I came across Manney's appreciation of the Royal Enfield Bullet of 1977, published that year in Cycle World magazine. 

Keep reading and I will submit for your appreciation some of what he wrote about the Royal Enfield 350. 

Or, you can read the whole article here. 

Somehow I had vaguely assumed Manney the Third was British. He did put on a faux Colonel Blimp accent ("...they may well larf...") for the Royal Enfield article. 

But no, he was an American, born in Virginia, the son of a decorated Marine colonel and grandson of an admiral. 

A World War II veteran himself, he used his G.I. Bill educational benefits to take ballet lessons. He'd have seen the humor in that.

He raced cars (including the tiny Crosley Hotshot), and became a motorsports journalists in 1955, when invited to submit an article for Motorcycling magazine.

Discovering that, as a journalist, he could get into races for free, "I have never looked back," he wrote.

His description of racing in the 1957 Mille Miglia in his Alfa Romeo Giulietta Veloce was a true classic of his style. He was the passenger (navigator), but his main role was "extruding the floorboards with my legs" as the car approached turns.

Today, Manney's many jibes at India, Indians and the Royal Enfield of that day could raise an eyebrow. Or two. But some context is necessary.

In the day, it was clear to readers that Manney was joshing. His digs were meant to be read as endearments. Obviously exaggerated and outdated, even when they were written, his criticisms typically brought a rueful smile, even from victims.

Among those victims would be the readers, whom Manney playfully demanded know what he meant by dubbing the Bullet a "coelacanth." That's a fish thought extinct for 66 million years, but found alive in 1938. You couldn't just Google that definition in 1977.

Nothing and no one was immune to his deliberate slander, which always seem to be made more in passing than in anger. How could you take it seriously?

It helped that Manney posed for goofy pictures of himself in costume, to accompany some articles. This one shows him dressed like a Victorian colonial gentleman. He once posed for an article dressed in a suit of armor.

I think it's fair to say that Manney wrote for an audience that would understand his asides.

An example here is his repeated insistence that the Royal Enfield Bullet did not need its neutral finder lever because neutral was "child's play to find" on an Enfield!

Later he would add "you could find neutral with your eyes closed."

Though he never explained, I assume, by this, he was making the point that a "false neutral" lurks between every gear on those old Albion gearboxes.

So, it's easy to find a neutral, wanted or not, right?

The neutral finder lever is often the only way to find the intended neutral. It's not useless; it's indispensable. But never mind.

Manney certainly would have believed that, if you recognized his distinctive byline, you were looking for entertainment.

And I like to think that he also believed that if you were interested in an article on the Royal Enfield Bullet you probably already were sold on liking it, flaws and all.

He died in 1988. I miss him still.

Quotes:

"Just getting on the bike shoots one backward 30 years in time — a time with clean teenagers, cheap gas and about 1/100th of the stoplights we now have."

"What we have here is a motorcycle for people

who

like

motorcycles

to look like motorcycles and act like them, preferably English motorcycles of the early Fifties."

"The whole picture may seem a bit dumpy in these days of streamlined cylinder head nuts, and the Madras Enfield budget apparently doesn't extend to buying quite enough spaghetti to cover the electrical wiring completely, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

"He rode it straight through the shop to the accompaniment of the clatter of downed tools and remarks like why would anybody want to restore an Enfield? followed by you don't mean that's NEW?"

"Gracious me, how the twilight of the British Raz has lingered on in Madras as, for old time's sake, the Enfield even showed the statutory float bowl drip and occasional oil leak."

"About the only complaints I can think of, as I really like the bike, are a too-stiff throttle return spring, miniscule grips, and a front brake too tiny and inefficient to ever stop before nailing your ever present sacred cow."

"Long stroke is not dead, good shifting is not dead: long live a 350 overhead that feels like a fussless 500 flathead! join us as we putt off into the distance on our Instant Classic..."

One final swipe, although possibly an honest error: the "Specification" box attached to the article lists the Enfield lubrication system as "wet sump."

Yeah; but it's supposed to be a dry sump system (I say, as I wave away clouds of oil smoke on start-up).

Here's what it looks like when a Royal Enfield Bullet "wet sumps."

Just let me ride my Royal Enfield!

 I am miserable. I haven't ridden my Royal Enfield motorcycle in weeks. 

Life, as they say, has intervened. 

Only in small ways, fortunately. I am healthy, for my age. My immediate family is not in crisis, although there are some health challenges ahead. 

Officially I don't even "work." I am "retired." 

Some retirement. The list of duties is laughably small, but it's enough to be distracting.

It's summer; the yard needs tending. The barbecue grill is out of gas. My wife thinks the air conditioner is failing. Friends came over for lunch (a welcome diversion). 

My mailbox is crammed with pleas for help from organizations that aid people facing starvation, or death from disease or missile attack. What right have I to complain?

And yet, I do.

I know that it is me who is making me miserable. I'm focusing on the wrong stuff.

My key problem is the struggle with technology and modern "conveniences." In the process I  have virtually managed to derange my entire digital life as I flounder with online apps, sign-on protections, and general paranoia.

Today I had to admit to myself that I am no longer really a motorcyclist. I am a motorcycle blogger who spends time he should be riding instead wrestling with the internet.

Yesterday's hassle, with my "domain provider," left me unsure whether I still have a domain (although I paid for it), how safe it is, and what its password might be?

Last night I dreamed I was back in college, with an essay due at a 10 a.m. class. All I could do was bash out a plea for more time on the back of a menu from a Chinese restaurant, using a broken typewriter. I began running, barefoot, across campus to deliver it, knowing I would be late and the teacher would refuse.

For some reason the path I was running on was ankle deep in water. I never got to class.

That's what it's like, for me, dealing with the internet!

Luckily I know the cure. All I have to do is ride my motorcycle.