1 post tagged “monkey run”

This weekend (actually, late last week) I headed down to Seattle for Monkey Run IX, which is my old scooter club's yearly camping rally. I had an awesome time, saw some friends that I was missing, and got me some good scooter times.

Thursday night, I flew out of Oakland to Seattle, meeting up with Otis (aka O'Tits, aka Scrotus, aka Old Tits). We grabbed scooters and headed up to the U District for some Mongolian BBQ. I insisted on this, as Mongolian doesn't exist anywhere within 50 miles of where I live. We stuffed ourselves silly and then headed over to the bar where a meeting was taking place to plan Amerivespa, which is the Vespa Club of America's annual rally, and will be taking place next year in Seattle. When we arrived, I said hello to some people, but also realized that half the people in the room were douchebags I didn't care to deal with, so Marc (who'd joined us at Otis' house) and I rode over to Capitol Hill to meet a couple of friends for drinks at the Roanoke. We drank and drank until the wee hours, but I finally sobered enough to ride back down to Otis' house, where I crashed hard on his couch.

Friday we had a big day. We started off with a round of disc golf at our usual course. I played so well! I think I got the best score I've ever had at that course. For most of the game, I was even ahead of Otis, which almost never happens. It was a great game, considering I haven't played in a long time. That reminds me, if any San Francisco peeps are in to disc golf, or want to get in to it, I know a couple of good courses in San Francisco and Oakland.

After disc golf, we ate us a quick lunch and headed over to the Cinerama for Snakes on a Muthafuckin' Plane! We made the 1:30 showing on opening day and got in early enough to get some great seats. I'd forgotten how nice the Cinerama is. It's beautifully restored, without making it feel too modern or sucking all the soul out of it. The movie itself was HILARIOUS. That plane was FULL of snakes! They seemed to enjoy biting genitals a lot. Also, Samuel L. Jackson appears to be snake-proof, which worked out well for everyone. If you're looking for a serious action movie, this isn't it. If you want to laugh at a hysterical spoof of a serious action movie, then Snakes on a Plane is a damn fine choice, muthafucka! It probably helped that Otis and I were significantly impaired for the screening of said film.

When we got out of the movie, I had a bunch of voice messages from Simon and his girlfriend. I'd agreed to pick up Simon's girl at the airport, but had missed her message, causing her to wait on the curb for a couple of hours (oops). Simon, in the meantime, was driving up from Portland, so he swung by and picked her up and was close to Otis' house, so we all met up there.

By the time we got all cleaned up and got the situation with the scooters settled, it was time to begin the rally proper. We rode up to the best barbecue place in the ENTIRE KNOWN UNIVERSE and met up with a shit-ton of rally attendees. The OK Corral did a great job of stuffing everyone full of food, and I was psyched to see how many people turned up for the rally.

After OK Corral, we skipped the ride (I was riding Mike's mini-chopper, which is a death trap) and went straight to the bar/bowling alley/karaoke bar that was the evening's entertainment destination. We didn't stay long as it was pretty crowded and the karaoke guy was a dick. Instead, we headed back to Otis' house, got fucked up, and watched silly videos from my Vox library and YouTube.

Saturday, we got up early, got all our camping shit in the car, and then hopped on scooters and headed out. The first stop was Joe's scooter shop so we could pick up our newest monkey, a dude named Euan who has a cool accent and a weird scooter. We grabbed a couple of other people and went over to breakfast. The breakfast spot is a restaurant that's owned by the guy who played the Howard Cosell guy in Better Off Dead, so that's awesome.

We grubbed on a delicious breakfast buffet that included fried rice with Spam in it (it's a Hawaiian restaurant) and I got caught up with all my homies. Lots of scooterists are cranking out babies, and they're all lookin' pretty good. People continued to arrive for quite a while, and at one point there were over 40 bikes ready to make the trip! That's definitely the biggest turnout we've had for Monkey Run. I was quite pleased.

At noon, we hit the road. Marc was leading, Otis had the rear, and I was floating from the front of the pack to the back, and then back up, and blocking traffic as necessary. This was a huge pack and it was a bit of a chore to get them all out of town without breaking it up. We managed to keep things under control for a quite a while until a kickstart lever fell off Mike's bike and he turned back for it. He didn't realize that someone else had picked it up, and he rode way back in to Seattle before Otis caught him. Shortly after, and after the first ferry crossing, Euan's bike conked out as I was riding up to the front of the pack at a light, so I caught the support truck (which was ahead of us for some reason) and pulled him over. The rest of the pack went on while Jesse, the truck, and I went back for Euan.

Euan's scooter was having some problems with the connections to the CDI box getting knocked off when the shock would compress on bumps. He fixed it an got the bike running, but in the meantime, I got a call from Otis. He and Mike were on the other side of the water and about to cross on the ferry, but Mike had had to turn off his bike and was afraid he couldn't start it again without the kickstart lever. He didn't believe he'd be able to bump start it. Since Euan's bike was now running, I sent the truck back to the ferry dock. Mike would have to push his bike on and off the ferry and truck it from there.

Meanwhile, Euan's bike proceeded to die four more times from the same issue. We didn't have the truck with us now, so we had to make it work. Looking at how the frame was crashing in to the CDI box and killing the connections, we decided to relocate the CDI. The only logical place we could find was the hole on the side of the seat where the strap is attached. It was a perfect spot, out of harm's way, where the wires wouldn't be stretched or jeopardized. It worked great, except whenever Euan opened his seat to pull or push his choke, it pulled all the wires out of the box and he'd have to re-wire it. Still, it was good enough to get us the rest of the way.

We were just about to leave and head the last few miles to the ferry when Otis and Mike rolled up with Andy, who'd been sent back by the main group to bring Mike his kickstart lever. We all pressed on to the ferry, crossed, hit the grocery store, and then got over to the campsite. When we arrived, I found that Simon and Erica had set up my tent for me, which RULED SO MUCH. I was so grateful that I didn't have to set up my tent after that long and trying day. I was ready to settle in and party.

I immediately drank a PBR, and then another, and then a huge Jack and Coke, which was mostly Jack on account of me spilling most of the coke, and then ate part of a um... special... brownie, and then drank everything else in the world. Tons of food was cooked, most of which I consumed until I could barely speak. There were the usual rally shenanigans, like Jesse's dirty jokes ("How do you get a white trash girl to suck your dick? Put ranch dressing on it!"), Monkey Bingo, an illicit campfire, the traditional sculpting of Andy's head in the medium of ground beef (in honor of his birthday, I do this pretty much every year...), various dudes applying tiger balm to their nuts, and the activity of several drunk guys climbing up in to the campsite's 60 year old x-ray tower left over from WWII and hanging out the windows and somehow not falling to their deaths. There was also a pinata filled with little bottles of booze, which was quickly destroyed/drank. I love our camping rally so much. There's nothing like spending the day riding across part of a beautiful state, and then hunkering down for a night of hard drinking, eating, and bullshitting. I'd do it every weekend if they'd come with me.

The ride home was uneventful. I took Simon and Erica back the fast way, as they had flights to catch. I then had some time to shower and catch a quick nap before Otis and everyone got home. We lollygagged around for a while, and then it was time to head to the airport. I flew home with about 90 sick and angry babies, thinking about how much I miss my Seattle friends. The Oakland airport was a nightmarish zoo, but thankfully Susie was there with Rudy ready to cart me home. Unfortunately, the bridge was under construction, so it took two hours. Mental note: the savings of flying out of Oakland is NOT WORTH IT.

I wish Simon would move here.

More pictures are in the Monkey Run 2006 collection: