Like the retired guy I met in Washington State who travels around alone in a motor home, spending most of his time on-line recording the names, locations and pictures of graves. I ran into him again here in California, and we chatted at great length one night about his life before. Teaching elementary school, coaching softball, open-heart surgery, successfully beating prostate cancer with some kind of new therapy involving radioactive pellets; the guy likes to talk.
He also likes to zip around on a motor scooter he carries on the back of his rig, and his other mobility toy is a recumbent bike, on which he ran around the park several times while he was here. Always smiling. A real smiley kind of a guy. Is he really that happy? Yeah, I think he might be.
He no sooner left than people started showing up with motorized bicycles. First one, then three, and now it turns out there will be about forty of them tomorrow, setting out on a tour of the area, driving on the levees that hold back the Sacramento River on its way to the Pacific Ocean.
The bikes are called "Whizzer", a regular Schwinn bike with a one-cylinder engine tucked into the middle of the frame. They were invented in 1938, and apparently they were pretty big for a while in the 40s and 50s. Oddly, although I was around during that period, I don't remember seeing one. Naturally, I googled it and got the whole story. You can too. They don't make them any more, and a guy was telling me one I was looking at, which was one of the originals, was worth about 12 grand even though it looked kind of ratty. I think this is the one, but I could be mistaken.
As it turns out, there are three fan clubs in the USA, and one of them is in Sacramento, California. They come out here a few times a year to ride around, make noise and have fun. Here are bunch more:
I'm gonna go up to the bar on the levee later on. Live music and dancing, they say. More my speed.
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