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New Strokes

Weekly Ride
Tuesday, 06 June 2006
beer
IPA, not PBR
Collin’s 70 cc, 65-mile per hour Vento Zip is both high strung and temperamental. Plus, the thing sounds like a yard trimmer fed nitroglycerine. When it’s working, it’s pretty impressive, and we imagine Collin even likes the lawn-boy from hell noise it makes. But this week’s ride was in-town and fairly short, due to Collin’s temperamental Vento.

Even from the start, Collin was having trouble. Apparently, the industrial-strength nuts connecting the Zip’s silencer to the stinger pipe vibrated their way out. Plus, the bracket holding the pipe to the sub-frame broke during the ride downtown, Collin said. Even the bolt where the bracket had snapped was gone. The engine ran, but sounded like it was chewing something metallic – the missing bolt, perhaps.

For Collin’s sake, it was time for an abbreviated ride. The group looped through downtown and up Monroe to the Five Mile area, where Collin veered away, Vento limping home. The rest rode up the prairie using the scenic North Five Mile access, across and back down on Cedar, Francis to Northwest Boulevard, George Wright to Government Way, then downtown to the Baby Bar, where beer helped make up for the day’s shortcomings.

Not a bad ride, really. And maybe the beer stop will become a regular thing. Detours, OK.

When Hell freezes over, they won’t need trimmers anymore, and Collin may finally get a Vespa. Until then, maybe we’ll just call him “Lawn Boy.” dingbat
 
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