Friday, June 10, 2011

Harley Week... end

I checked the fine print, she is wearing a thong. You didn't think
that I would post anything indecent, did you???
Photo from Google images.
There is The Harley Run this weekend. I’m not really sure how big that it will be, or how organized it is. It is being held at Keith Bowman’s county line ranch. It seems like there is a lot of motorcycles in town. Not as many as usual, but a steady flow of them. All of the bars and restaurants are full, so I guess that if they are full, it can’t get much better for the Townies. Full is full.

The Kiwanis is running it this year. Doug Macaulay is taking a break. So it’s kinda’ gone full circle, Kiwanis started it and it slowly moved into private hands, now it’s back to the Kiwanis. They are still calling it “The Redwood Run” I’m not sure who owns the name. But I hope everything works out well for everybody.

It’s cold and windy here this year, pretty typical weather for the run actually. I bet it’s miserable at night if you don’t have good accommodations. Myself, I have a nice warm bed, in a nice warm house, far far away from Harley motors.

I saw my favorite bumper sticker that I’ve seen lately, on a nice super-quiet Harley dresser. It said “Good horns save lives, loud pipes make you deaf”. I had a friend that ran chainsaws all his life. He talked so loud that you tell if he was in town, because you could hear him talking from just about anywhere. I had breakfast at the Eel River CafĂ© this morning. Myself and the person that I was there with were the only people in there that wasn’t a Harley rider.  The voices were a small din, you couldn’t hear yourself think. Everybody was yelling at the top of their lungs. It occurred to me that most of them were probably deaf.

I haven’t heard of any accidents this year, but they just changed most of the frequencies that we use for Fire/Rescue and ambulance, so I’m not sure if there has been any and I haven’t picked up on them.

I’ve seen a few of those “Boss Hogs” that have the Chevy v-8’s in them. They sound strange going by. They sound like a truck. I keep looking for the truck and all that I see is a motorcycle. It’s very incongruous. I can’t believe that they are very much fun to ride. They look too heavy and too powerful to do anything but draw attention. I can’t believe that a biker might be seeking attention, can you?

Anyway it looks like fun. A few of the booths that I saw in town showed up late and unprepared. Mostly the booths didn’t work and they had to start from scratch. My friends “Twango Macallen” were invited to set up a band down town. The town group, Chamber of Commerce(?) provided a nice flat bed trailer as a stage, at a good location on the North end of town. But, their electrical plug-in didn’t work because everybody had already plugged into it, and it blew the fuse, so nobody had electricity. But of course, the guy that owned the breaker that was tripped had gone home for the weekend. The food booths wisely got a generator. Poor Twango was left with-out electricity. I walked by as they were lamented their ill fate. We spied an electrical box that used to go to a phone booth. I took the cover off and Gee-Wizz there was electricity in it. I put an electrical outlet on it and the band played on… I hope the guy paying for the electricity doesn't mind, they are playing real good music.

More as time and circumstance permit

8 comments:

Ben said...

Working "hot" I assume... zzzzzzzzzzzzt...

Ernie Branscomb said...

Ha, You figured it out! It's amazing what a person can figure out if you just think a little bit.

When I took the cover off of the box, I pulled the black and the white wire out, untwisted the wire nuts and touched them with my fingers. I said "yep it's hot".
Chis asked: "Do you think that it's 115 or 230?"
I said: "I think that it's 115, 230 usually hurts worse than that".
Which reminds me... DON"T TRY THIS AT HOME FOLKS, I'M TRAINED AT TOTALLY STUPID STUFF!

Dave Kirby said...

Talked to the wife of a long time Kiwanian Fri. She said they sold right at 1000 tickets this year. She felt that would pay the bills. As for Mr. Macaulay coming back... that's not likely. The Redwood Run name is the property of Kiwanis. Doug basically rented the name. It seems there are some unsettled financial issues around Mr. Macaulay's tenure that I will not get into as they are here say at this point. Let's just say that as of now Kiwanis has no intention of returning the reins to Doug. That does not mean that he will not be able to stage his own run in the future. It just wont be the Redwood Run

Ernie Branscomb said...

Well Kirby, I was skirting all of the scandal. As you know Garberville already gets it's share. It seems that public events all end up in scandal and "ownership" issues sooner or later, from Burning Man to the Easter Egg Hunt.

Ernie Branscomb said...

I don't have much of an update on the Harley Run. The town seems to be crowded for a saturday. Usually the town clears out on saturday for the entertainment at the run.

They have a pretty good party going on the north end of town. Twango Macallen played last night, and they are playing off and on all day today. They have a beer booth set up and a hot-dog and hamberger booth. So something is happening.

I saw a bunch of Hell's Angels wearing their colors downtown. I haven't seen any cops in town, I'm sure that they are there, and I just missed them.

I've heard of at least two motorcycle accidents, I'm not sure how serious.

Soooo... What have you seen???

Dave Kirby said...

Had some interesting conversations with some of the riders who came in the store. One guy from Sonoma County who has been coming since the very first run at French's said the economy has had a huge effect on the number of riders who attend "runs" in general. He used to come with a group of 20+ riders...he came with 4 others. He used to spend a week here but couldn't afford to take the time off work this year. He said that a lot of folks with newer bikes have sold them because they couldn't justify the payments on a $20,000 recreational vehicle in a down economy.

Ernie Branscomb said...

I know a person that just bought a brand new Harley on e-bay. Full dress with every gadget known to bikerdom, including 2 Harley helmets. He said that it was a $38,000.00 bike with 9 miles on it. He won the bid at $18,000 dollars cash with NO warranty.

It's real fancy, he didn't offer to let me drive it....

Anonymous said...

A Dish Network technician in Santa Rosa who attended the run told me they were disappointed with how few booths there were this year.
Attendance was lower, but other then that it was good.

Cousin