The GUNNY'S SACK

January 2003

Here we are in the second month of the new year and I'm still writing 2002 on my check dates. You too? Y'must be gettin' long in the tooth, or maybe the years are adding up faster than you can keep track of.

Looking back, this past year has been one of many victories and a few upsets for us in the motorcycle rights world. Our main problem, still, is finding people that ride or are rider-friendly who even care about what happens to their freedom to ride a motorcycle, let alone deal with all the restrictions we are fighting, to be able to ride machines with air cooled engines.

If Big Brother has his way, pretty soon, we'll be on bikes that don't even resemble the machines that so many of us learned to ride on. That is, if we're lucky enough to keep the right to ride at all. Right now, the life of the air cooled engine is on the way to extinction if we don't make ourselves heard and very clearly by our congress, our state legislatures, and in various ruling bodies in other parts of the world.

This last year has also been one of loss of dear friends for many of us, myself included. These people that meant so much to our lives will be remembered in the way we conduct ourselves in their absence. Many of these folks were fellow freedom fighters, others were fellow riders and they all need to be remembered as contributors to our well-being and footprints on our souls. None of them would want us to falter in our fight for the return of freedoms lost because we didn't think it could happen. 2003 needs to be the year of gettin' the job done!

 

NEWS BIT'S 'N' PIECES:

SAN DIEGO: Don Vesco, who set the wheel-driven land-speed record of 458 mph, died of prostate cancer at 63. Vesco set 18 motorcycle and six car-type vehicle records, going back to when he was just 16. And listen to this: In 1970, he rode a bike to a record 250 mph. Five years later, he broke the 300 mph barrier on his Silver Bird Yamaha, powered by twin Yamaha TZ750 engines. In 1978, he boosted that to 318 mph on a Kawasaki turbo, a record that stood for 12 years. He was inducted into the motorcycle hall of fame in 1999. Yet, this man is relatively unknown to the average street rider. This cat could really ride a scooter.

 

LAS VEGAS: The Guggenheim Las Vegas museum, the scene of the motorcycle history display, closes its doors Jan. 5 after a 15-month run. Our economy is stated to be the reason. T hey just can't afford to operate the way things are right now. It's a shame. And none of the riders in our Oregon AIM office -- me, Sam Hochberg or Jeanne -- WE didn't get to SEE it yet! Damn. Oh well. Y'snooze, y'lose.

 

DON'T LET YOUR LEATHERS GET TRASHED: Our AIM Attorneys hear it all the time; bikers complaining about their leathers being cut off by paramedics after an accident. So, from our field reporter, Oregon AIM Attorney Sam Hochberg, comes a solution for NOT gettin' your leathers cut: Wear zippers. Wear the type that have a zipper down the entire length of each side of the outside of your chaps or pants, or at the very least, along the outsides of each leg. If you don't wear that zipper-type, you run a higher risk that the paramedics at the scene will have to cut your leathers off you, right there!

The real reason? If you wanna live, you have to. You can BLEED TO DEATH in about 15 minutes from a pelvic fracture. That area holds up to 2 liters of blood, and THAT'S too much to lose to live very long. The ONLY way to evaluate your injury in a bike wreck is to inspecting the perineum (uh, it's that area between yer male or female part and your butt-hole, or your "t'ain't", like some folks useta call it). Gotta look in that general nether-region for blood pooling.

Paramedics DON'T WANT to cut off your leathers because it's WAY more complex than just unzipping. Pulling them off is out of the question because that could exacerbate any existing injury. Leathers are so thick, like they oughta be, that they can hide life-threatening injuries, so they HAVE to be cut off. Or unzipped. So get some zippers! Thanks and a tip o' the stethoscope to the Sack's source, a paramedic in training up at OHSU!

 

HONG KONG, CHINA: There are some of us in the USA who think there are too many of the WRONG KINDS of lawsuits, and I know Sam Hochberg and I agree on that. Sure, there are weird, stupid cases. Some shouldn't be allowed to be filed. But HERE'S a topper Sam ran into at NewsMax.com. According to the South China Morning Post, it seems this Hong Kong woman, Chu-leu, got a bad haircut, so she SUED her beauty parlor! Jeez, lady, the hair WILL grow back! She said she wanted to look like Julia Roberts, but instead "It looked like a broom. Every hair stuck out like an open umbrella which could not be shut. It was horrible. I looked like Osama bin Laden," she told an unsympathetic judge. The Small Claims Tribunal tossed the case, then had to toss her out too when she refused to leave the courtroom. Hey, if you showed up looking like Osama in a LOT of places here in America, you might be given a good reason to sue somebody!

 

LITTLE EGG HARBOR TOWNSHIP: I have no idea where it is, but it seems the librarian in this town is quite a celebrity. Maggie Penk isn't used to being Miss September yet, but it appears the fire marshal believes so, 'cuz he needed her autograph...

She is one of the dozen Ocean County librarians in leather featured on a new calendar. It's made up of various Ocean County librarians sitting on a white Harley-Davidson, clad head to toe in leather, some even ... reading.

They wanna use the dough they raise towards an $11.6 million expansion to their library, and to bring public attention to it. This one lady, Ms. Penk, useta ride dirt bikes as a kid in Wyoming, so at least for her, scooters aren't totally unfamiliar. The whole thing was done tongue in cheek, kinda glamorizing the so-called "stuffy" librarians.

The idea worked: $20,000 has been raised so far from these calendars. The county and the state will spend 11.3 million dollars on the project, so their celebrity gig is almost done. Good deal!! Sounds like that bunch of women in England who made TONS of dough doing something similar: Posing nude for a calendar. Most were just ordinary women with ordinary bodies, so it was different!

 

A QUOTE, for a change: "Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag." By Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Russian novelist. He's best known for his books describing forced labor camps, namely "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich," in 1962.

 

RIDERS ED IS for YOU, Bub: Time really flies when yur hav'n fun and we often forget that we are a minority on our roads and highways. Sometime during the off-season for riding, do yourself a favor: Take a riding course. They're available in most states through nearby colleges. Check with your state Motor Vehicles Department or the bikers rights group in your state for more. Most courses are less than $100.00. Just one thing you learn there can save your life. All of us lose people close to us during every year and it's heartbreaking. Even if you're an experienced rider, there's always something else to learn. We spend much more than the cost of a course on chrome stuff for our ride.

The good news is that motorcycle accidents that have alcohol involvement are down nearly 10%. Maybe the word is getting out that scooters and booze DON'T MIX.

 

ONE FINAL THOUGHT: Our Aid to Injured Motorcyclists (AIM) attorneys across the country are working daily for our benefit and not just on accidents we have had. They provide pro bono or free legal services on numerous issues that affect motorcycling. AIM attorneys serve as legal counsel at all the Confederations of Clubs meetings throughout the U.S.A. and Canada. Not to mention all the time they spend talking to various groups, and dispensing free advice to folks at rallies nationwide. Do yourself a favor and call your nearest AIM attorney if you have an accident, or if you just need some advice on other legal matters; especially anything about motorcycle law. They can even represent you in criminal matters through Aid to Incarcerated Motorcyclists, the "other" AIM.

Nationally, call AIM at 1-800-ON-A-BIKE (or 1-800-531-2424). Remember, these people all ride the same as we do, so they know what our world is all about on the road and in the courts. Sam Hochberg, our Oregon AIM attorney can be reached at 503-224-1106 or toll free at 1-800-347-1106. Sam's e-mail handle is SamBikeLaw@aol.com, and I'm AIMGunny@aol.com. Give me a shout. I'd love to hear from you.

 

Keep the round side on the bottom.
Gunny, Oregon A.I.M. Chief of Staff