Modern Vespa

So last night I was cruising back to my house after my coffee house down town closed. Seeing as it was some what nice out I took the long way through down town instead of hopping on the highway.

To my great pleaser I was riding past an Irish pub and I saw 3 nice looking scooters out front. I stopped pulled a u-turn and saw my buddy Chops sitting there with another kid who had just bought a 1966 Vespa VBC in almost perfect condition.

Needless to saw after months of BSing about it our unofficial club (The Little Brothers Club or as we are calling it the LBC*) did it's first ride through town.

It was nice to finally have a crew to ride with. In this town it is rare to see even 2 scooters on the road in one day let alone together. So it was really bad ass that there were 4 of cruising the avenues and alleyways. Who cares if it was 3 AM.

We already have a planned run for Thursday. I am thinking that we are going to have at least one more rider. It's nice to see that hours of drunkin' babbling about forming a club is starting to look like it just might happen.

~El Josh AKA Ruby

*our name is derived from a local MC club called The 13 Brothers. One night my friend and I were drinking with them and they kept calling us the little brothers since we rode scooters.

66 VBC, my vietbodge detectors are going off....

proceed with caution.

anyhoo,
as for a riding group, the only word of advice i can give is: make is very casual, and make it consistent. if you keep it going on the same night all the time and it's a casual affair then people can come and go as they please. they'll get as much out of it as they put in.

oh, and END the ride at a bar, don't start at one.

best,
-greasy

May the Little Brothers live long & prosper! Nice to have a local scooter scene emerging-- Enjoy.

--Deborah

I thought there was a whole bunch of KC scooterists. One guy on the BBS goes by "KC Asshole" ...

Dude, check your Google Earth. Wichita is on the other side of the state. It's an aviation, oil and pickup truck town--not a conducive social climate for scooter fans. It's good to hear there's some scootin' going down there.

KC is 3 hours away, kansas is flat and fully of wind. Highways are a bitch when the winds wanna have fun. A down burst last week blew 6 tractor trailers over and winds were estimated at over 100 MPH.

bah.. my bad. For some reason i thought "kansas city" when i saw his post.

Oh well. All the states out there are big rectangles anyways.

Arrg them fightin words ya motor city mad man!


FYI you are not The Nug!

I can't relate to geography unless the area is shaped like something i can understand.

Michigan is a mitten.

Italy is a boot.

Florida is America's wang.

And so forth....

colorado: america's box

Canada is America's Hat ...

and Mexico is america's beard ...

Wyoming: America's box on top of a box.

Haha. America's precariously perched stack of boxes.

haha box has a whole different meaning to me. A nice and dirty one.


Kansas:
America's Munched Box

you know why they call that area "The Heart Land of America"?

Because the brains are not there!



Just kidding!

Your wang is shaped like a rectangle? That must be uncomfortable.

Scenes almost always have drama - be sure to lie not be totally truthful, pit one friend against another, and gather up usernames on all the intertubes and post crazy stuff as someone else!

It can be fun - I wonder if there is a shining example out there who can be a mentor for starting your own scene?

When all that is happening, you'll have a scene!

And don't forget to charge a membership fee. It's a good way to pad your personal bank account.

Sounds like you had a good experience, Breturi...

Don't you know it.

And don't get me wrong, I've got nothing but love for those cats...just a little animosity towards a specific individual.

Ahh, well. That's another thread for a different forum.

[quote]America's Wang

I get asked all the time if there are other older vespa's in town. I dont think I have ever seen one.. I want Wichita to have a scooter scene

There are a couple around. There was a guy that was in a club called the little brothers that used to roll with us. I haven't seen him in awhile and the little brothers is not around any more.

WELL if you remember who they were let me know. or if they are on facebook

There's a girl in our scooter posse from one of those flat states out there. I happened to ask her how flat it was. What a straight line..

She said it was so flat she watched her dog run away for 3 days !

On the 4th of July you could stand on a tuna can and watch the fireworks in 6 different towns.

I always like the town of Liberal. Really nice place. R

Salinas, KS was the town for me... Neat place with a great place called 'Cozy Burger' that sold 'White Castle-esque' burgers to die for.

Did a lot of bicycle races in Kansas, Nebraska and other parts of the great plains. A good race promoter could find hills in really flat looking places!

Desi B.

Hey look who's back! Tour over? Welcome home!

As reported in the Journal of the American Physical Society, Kansas is, indeed, flatter than a pancake.

http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200310/pancake-kansas.cfm



Zero Gravity: The Lighter Side of Science
Scientists Prove Kansas Flatter than a Pancake
pancake


While driving across the American Midwest, it is common to hear travelers remark, "This state is as flat as a pancake." To scientists at Texas State University and Arizona State University, respectively, this adage seems to qualitatively capture some characteristic of a topographic geodetic survey.

The obvious question "How flat is a pancake" sparked their analytical interest, and they set out to find the "flatness" of both a pancake and one particular state: Kansas.

Their findings have been published in the Annals of Improbable Research (AIR) [See link at end.]

Kansans have always fondly claimed that their state, in the heart of America's Great Plains, is "as flat as a pancake." Using modern analytical techniques, geographers Mark Fonstad, William Pugatch, and Brandon Vogt measured the flatness of Kansas, and contrasted it with the flatness of a pancake.

Their results demonstrate that, of the two, Kansas is considerably flatter. [It may also be of significance that the town of Liberal, Kansas, hosts the annual "International Pancake Day" festival.]

Barring the acquisition of either a Kansas-sized pancake or a pancake-sized Kansas, mathematical techniques were needed to do a proper comparison.

The scientists compared the two surfaces?Kansas and the pancake?using special geographic information software. Topographic elevation data for Kansas was taken from a digital scale model prepared by the United States Geological Survey.

The pancake was purchased from an International House of Pancakes. "The importance of this research dictated that we not be daunted by the 'No Food or Drink' sign posted in the microscopy room," write the authors.

One common method of quantifying "flatness" in geodesy is the "flattening" ratio. The length of an ellipse's (or arc's) semimajor axis (a) is compared with its measured semiminor axis (b) using the formula for flattening. A perfectly flat surface will have a flattening of one, whereas an ellipsoid with equal axis lengths will have no flattening, and f will equal zero. For example, the earth is slightly flattened at the poles due to the earth 's rotation, making its semimajor axis slightly longer than its semiminor axis, giving a global f of 0.00335.

How flat is Kansas, compared to a pancake? Fonstad, Pugatch, and Vogt explain that:
Mathematically, a value of 1.000 would indicate perfect, platonic flatness. The calculated flatness of the pancake transect is approximately 0.957, which is pretty flat, but far from perfectly flat.

After many hours of programming work, we were able to estimate that Kansas's flatness is approximately 0.9997. That degree of flatness might be described, mathematically, as "damn flat."

For the complete online article, see http://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume9/v9i3/kansas.html

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©1995 - 2010, AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY
APS encourages the redistribution of the materials included in this newspaper provided that attribution to the source is noted and the materials are not truncated or changed.
Editor: Alan Chodos
Associate Editor: Jennifer Ouellette

Hey look who's back! Tour over? Welcome home![/quote]

Haha I just saw this! I wasn't back then, but I am now. Just got back in late spring and have spent most of that time getting the GTS and my house back in working order. Thanks anyways LQ!

RUBY glad your back. Scoots is back on as well. It's like a class reunion on here. 8)