Work to Ride: Saturday’s Scoot
Weather: 33°F (0°C) Under sunny skies.
Road Conditions: Mostly dry, with sand and salt prevalent. Still wet and icy in shaded areas.
Scarlet starts off her Saturday with a bath, down at the Big Splash.
Look at that sunshine! January in Minnesota… I still can’t get over it.
As soon as I rolled out of bed this morning, I knew I would be riding most of the day. All the weather reports I could find agreed that this would be the best day of the weekend. Rain mixed with snow is forecasted for tomorrow.
First order of business was to give Scarlet a bath. All the road grime and salt spray picked up during our commutes last week had left her looking pretty humble. But as you can see in the photo, she cleaned up nicely.
Next, it was off to Motoprimo in South Minneapolis, to meet with Jonathan, the sales manager, and discuss one of the new features I have planned for Twenty Ought-Seven. His reaction was favorable, so I am going to go ahead and announce it here, right now. Can I get a drum-roll please?
Introducing “Ride to Work Road Tests”!
RTW Road Tests are going to be different than the typical magazine test rides in that I am going to evaluate dealer demo-bikes from the perspective of the daily motorbike commuter.
There will be no top-speed test runs or racetrack antics. These will be real-world evaluations in freeway traffic, and rambling home on the sidestreets. I will research whatever farkles* are available for each bike to enhance the commuting experience, and give a gut-level report on how it actually feels to ride each bike to work, including reactions and opinions from fellow riders. This is going to be Fun.
*In case you didn’t know, “farkle” is the current, multi-purpose synonym for “accessory”. The advantage is that it can be either a noun or a verb, depending on usage. For instance, “I’ve bought some new farkles for the KLR.” – might be something I would say to my friends at First Thursday. But more likely, I would tell them, “Frogwing is now fully farkled.” -which would mean that I have added all the accessories I need to enjoy the ultimate KLR experience.
So, that is one of the changes I alluded to in my New Year’s review. The other one I am still working on, and it is still in the Top Secret phase of development. This one will take awhile, but it is going to be a Beautiful Thing, if I can pull it off.
Leaving Motoprimo, I felt energized. Scarlet and I rambled down the residential sidestreets towards the Ford Bridge again, and headed in the general direction of home. I had no idea where I wanted to go, so I decided to just relax and see where the winds of whimsy blew us.
We ended up in front of this place…
Scarlet rests in front of the historic Hypolite Dupuis House.
Built in 1854 by a fur trader named Hypolite Dupuis, this house is on the southeast corner of the Sibley Historic Site in Mendota, Minnesota.
Nice place, I thought, to have been built by a French fur trader. Clearly there was more here than meets the eye, from the main road through town anyway. I decided to investigate further, if for no other reason than to figure out how to pronounce that ridiculous name…
Scarlet and I turned around and rolled down the access road into the property. It was heavily shaded back there, with patches of snow and ice to contend with. We took it slow and easy, looking around at what can only be described as a time warp. They certainly don’t build houses like this anymore, at least not for normal people.
The Big Bad Wolf wouldn’t stand a chance with this…
Here’s a short lesson on old-school home building from the “Friends of the Sibley House” website:
In 1836, Henry Hastings Sibley hired John Mueller who with the aid of many voyageurs, trappers and Indians, built Sibley a home overlooking the Minnesota River. The house was made of limestone cut in large blocks from a nearby quarry. The laths were willows and rushes cut from the banks of the river, woven together with reeds and grasses. The insulation was mud and clay from the river bank mixed with straw. The larger timbers which were used for braces, joists, beams, floors and window sills, were all hand hewn and joined together by wooden pegs. The roof was covered with clapboards split by hand. The house was plain, but substantial, two and one-half stories high with a portico in front.
General Henry Hastings Sibley was Minnesota’s first Governor. I’m betting he had his house built like a fortress because it was a few miles from the protection offered by Fort Snelling, and this was still somewhat of a frontier back in those days.
As for the funny French name, “Hypolite”, I could only find out the etymology from a Google search on the web. This traces back to the Greek “Ippolito”, which roughly means to “release the horses”, or something like that.
But back at The House, there were a couple of lycra-clad athletes unloading mountain bikes from the roof of their Saab, to ride on trails through the woods in back of the property. College folks, no doubt…
I asked them how to pronounce Hypolite, and they both told me it is: (hip’-uh-lite).
If you ask me, that sounds too easy. I figure it for four syllables, with the accent in a weird place. It is French, after all.
January 6th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
Prolly more like: “eep-uh-leet”
January 6th, 2007 at 8:38 pm
Now that’s a good reason to ride; sampling local touristy flavors not favored by the palate of the Herd.
John
January 7th, 2007 at 10:58 am
Hippolyte, or Hippolyta, was a daughter of Ares and queen of the Amazons. Hercules’ ninth labor was to retrieve her leather girdle, which was coveted by Admete. By one account, Heracles had to rape and kill her in order to get the girdle; by another, she gave it up willingly to the hunky Heracles. She ran off with him and he eventually gave her to his running buddy, Theseus. (Wikipedia doesn’t say much about why the queen of the Amazons would consent to being passed around like a jailhouse punk). Theseus and Hippolyte , or by some accounts, her sister Antiope, had a son Hippolytus, giving rise to that very rare situation where one’s paternity is known, but the identity of the mother is in doubt.
January 7th, 2007 at 11:05 am
John: You can say that again. Buster has decided to take us on the guided tour…
Buster: Nice synopsis. However, I’m pretty sure none of this took place in Mendota… Thanks for doing the research, anyway.
Ride well,
=gc=
January 7th, 2007 at 8:09 pm
It might be a West Coast twist on the term, but around here, “farkle” is a clean alternative to a not-so clean “F” word. Had I just read “Frogwing is now fully farkled”, I would have thought that you did something really bad to it.
At least now I can share the correct definition with my cronies, and they can find a new substitute swear word to use.
Have fun,
Bill
January 7th, 2007 at 9:53 pm
Gettin’ pretty upscale, bro! Hope you don’t start charging a subscription fee to us “little people”. Seriously, good idea and good luck. You mean you’re going to do reviews that really mean something?
January 7th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
Farkle?!? Is this another term coined by you, Gary? LOL Glad you had a great day for riding. Too much yuck on our roads and another snow storm coming in Thursday, sigh. I hope they’re wrong. I look forward to your reviews with the other scoots. Scarlet”s looking great after her wash.
Say, has Bro Shagg put his engine back together so we here in Colorado can finally get some nice weather? LOL
January 8th, 2007 at 6:41 am
Bill: Look up “motorcycle farkle” in Wikipedia. Apparently it originated with the Sport Touring crowd, probably HSTA or something. If you just search “farkle”, it comes up with some kind of dice game.
irondad: Yes, the reviews aren’t going to be all about the numbers, as they are in the big glossies. After commuting by motorcycle for some twenty-five years, I would say I’m a pretty fair judge of what works, and what doesn’t, for those who ride to work.
Betty: Read my response to Bill, above. I wish I had coined that one, it’s brilliant. Sorry to hear that you are marooned without your motorbike. We’re supposed to get some wimpy snow today, but nothing more than an inch or so accumulation. As long as the roads don’t ice up again, we’ll be fine.
Ride well,
=gc=
January 8th, 2007 at 7:22 am
This is what I like about you Gary, you spare no expense. If you had went to the Big Splash on Tuesday, you could have washed Scarlet for 75 cents, but that would have enfringed on the rambling plan, so you opted to pay $1 on Saturday instead
Farkle has to be loosely connected to http://www.fark.com doesn’t it?
I’m guessing the bike shop agreeing to let you test ride/review hasn’t read your blog
Keep up the good work man. You write it, I’ll read it!
January 8th, 2007 at 7:56 am
Gary,
Major kudos on the motoprimo partnership looks like a good deal all around.
Motoprimo get’s exposure and feedback on what works as a commuter — this stuff does help sales and knowledge of “What to sell to a commuter.” Plus customers can find reviews beyond the ‘owner feedback’ posted on their site.
Ridetowork get’s good content for those looking to start commuting on 2 (or 3) wheels.
Gary get’s to ride / commute / *play* / review / write.
Sounds good to me.
Of course the rest of us get something as well. We get to learn what rides to consider. Plus we get to pick Gary’s brain about what worked and what didn’t. For example, I’m very curious what will happen IF he get’s to review the Piaggio MP3, since Motoprimo is a Piaggio dealer.
If this is Part I for the new year, I’m very cuirous what Part II of the master plan will be.
Keep up the good work.
Mat
January 8th, 2007 at 11:20 am
Hypolite is a fairly common first and surname here. In south Louisiana it’s usually pronounced ip-o-lite or in Texan Hip-o-lite
the last name is pronounced Du pwee accent on the first syllable.
I’m looking forward to the tests. I thought farkes was a common duel sport term for accessories as in “My DR650 is nicely farkled with an IMS tank and Corbin seat”….
January 8th, 2007 at 11:29 am
Excuse the spelling it should be dual sport farkles rhough I have had Duel sports with idiots in 4X4 pickups :-0
January 8th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
Allen: Not affiliated with fark.com, no farking way. If Motoprimo hasn’t read my blog yet, they will. I sent them the link yesterday.
MatL: I love those arrangements that yield positive results for everyone. According to your astute analysis, this is a win-win-win-win. There really is no downside to the RTW Roadtests. Part II, as you put it, is truly a long-shot, but if I pull it off, it will be a real coup.
fred: Thanks for your local accent on the whole Hypolite Dupuis thing. It reminds me of the South Dakota version of their state capital, Pierre, which they pronounce “peer”.
Looks like your typing fingers are tripping over each other there. It happens to all of us, but some of us proofread before we hit “send”.
Ride well,
=gc=
January 8th, 2007 at 7:36 pm
Good luck on your real world reviews! Years ago Bob Anderson did a similar style review for Motorcycle Consumer News. Covered how to change the oil, how much the filter cost, ease of accessing the battery and what not. Really fun to read. Their new reviews aren’t that style, but they still have a standard maintenance cost chart with their reviews and they are the only ones doing that. Can’t wait to see some info and have fun.
January 9th, 2007 at 6:37 am
Margo: Thanks for writing in. I have some solid ideas about what I want for content, but I’ll be meeting with the Ride To Work staff and various dealerships before finalizing the format. I do plan to address owner maintenance issues, and other less glamorous aspects of ownership. I’ve got the next three months to fine-tune everything, as I plan to kick this off in April.
The only limiting factor seems to be length. I know a lot of folks surf my site on their lunch breaks at work. This means that I have to keep each post down to something they can read in about ten or fifteen minutes, max. I know of some other bloggers out there who might benefit from that idea…
Ride well,
=gc=
January 9th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
ouch!
January 9th, 2007 at 6:08 pm
Only if the shoe fitteth, shouldst thou wear it.
Ride well,
=gc=
January 9th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
Does riding in the cold give you a lisp?
January 10th, 2007 at 11:00 am
No, it causes us to break into Shakespearian quotes. Hypothermia, don’tcha know…
Ride well,
=gc=
January 10th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
Excellent for you. Looking forward to reading your reviews. Keep up the good work.
Bob
January 10th, 2007 at 5:22 pm
Gary-
Yeah, see if you can get that Piaggio thingy to review. I may be able to convince the holder-of-the-purse-strings that it would be an acceptable “most-weather” substitute for our 2nd car…
Betty- Sorry about the storms and avalanches, but I’m not ready to give up the good weather yet!
Shagg
January 12th, 2007 at 1:50 am
Gary, Can’t wait to read what you come up with in three months. Sounds like lots of consider, but I know you will have lots of fun with it.
Hi Shagg, I totally understand, but we have yet another snow front coming in and it’s started to snow even as I type this. Have some pitty, lol.
Betty