Sure, Ewan and Charley famously filmed their ride around the globe. And some crazy guys from my area rode mopeds from San Francisco to the Tierra Del Fuego. But really, what is a rally that isn't held at 17,000 feet? This really seems like the sort of thing that begins with a dare after a long session at the local pub.
I can't wait to see if anyone takes them up on it.
This last Sunday was the annual LALO Rally in San Francisco. LALO - the "Loose Association of Lambretta Owners" - has a rally that is really low key and always a ton of fun. Last year, we hosted part of the LALO across the bay in Oakland, but this year was San Francisco only. It is always great to see old friends, since this is usually the first scooter rally of the year. The weather this year was typical for SF. Half of the city was sunny and wonderful, and the other half was foggy and cold.
The photo above (taken by Pelayo L.) was a shot of us riding over the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco into the Marin Headlands. You can see the fog totally covering the bridge... which is pretty normal. I'm the guy on the right side of the photo on the white Lambretta
Ford M., had a camera strapped to his helmet, and got a nice video of the ride across the bridge. I have it linked below. You can get a sense of what it was like to ride with the 40 or so of us die-hard Lambretta folks. It is hard to imagine how there can be such a huge amount of nice open space just 10 minutes outside of San Francisco. The video below gives you an idea. As we get over the bridge, we ride into the Marin Headlands, which used to be a military base, and is now open hiking trails and wonderful vistas.
Tons and tons of photos of the LALO below the jump
This winter has been really mild, even for the always nice San Francisco Bay Area where I live. I ride my scooter to work every day, except when it is raining hard. And this winter, there has been virtually no rain. So I ride a lot... but there are some times that a scooter just won't do.
My friend Andrew called me up and asked if my son and I would be up for a drive up the Sacramento Delta to a train museum. Well, my four year old is train crazy - as are most boys of his age. So I packed him up in the Alfa, and we headed up to the levies along the Sacramento river. It was a nice day out, and it was fun to drive around with another Alfa. (My car is the blue GTV on the right, and Andrew is standing by his red Giulietta Spider Veloce)
The January Auctions in Las Vegas are over. There were a few (probably) bad scooters that made it to the auction block, and brought way more than they should have. There was a really bad Vietnam restored Vespa, and a Series II Lambretta that looks like it was an A.P.I. Indian-made Lambretta that was "restored" there. Both buyers are likely to be very dissapointed. As expected, the TWN and the Salsbury brought big money. They looked like they were quite nice. Here are some of the notable results:
Red Bull did some sort of promotion in Italy where they allowed a bunch of Vespas and Lambrettas to ride on Fiat's strange test track in Lingotto, Italy. Motoblog.it was there, and got some great photos. This one is my favorite.
Last month was one of my favorite scooter rallies, the San Francisco Classic. This used to be the biggest scooter rally in the country. Around 2000, it was pulling over 300 scooters! It is not that big anymore. The Classic sprung out of a tradition of having a big scooter rally in San Francisco in August beginning at least in the early 90's. I know I've been going to them since then. In any case, this rally used to be called King's Classic when it was put on by the Rally Kings SC. Now that the Rally Kings are no longer, it has been taken over by the Black Sheep SC. They do a great job. Barry from the DNA Lounge always hosts a great party at his club for the custom show, and the crew from Black Sheep put on an amazing picnic for the Sunday event. Some of our Oakland club members participated in the now-traditional Sunday dodgeball tournament... but we got trounced. All in good fun! Here are some photos from the Sunday picnic.
