The Long Way Around

Now, as you may have noticed, there have been a lot of posts by Yours Truly with respects to Knighting members of the scooter community into the Royal Bastard Scooter Club. There may be a variety of reasons for that - perhaps some of those may involve the fact that many of my good friends in the Northern California scooter community were the subjects of these knightings. Perhaps other reasons involve the fact that I myself was asked to be a member of the Royal Bastards Scooter Club.

My own Knighting took place during the weekend of Scootouring in Sacramento, a very well respected rally hosted by the Burgandy Topz boys and girls. It's a camping rally, generally on the Saturday night, with a meet & greet on Friday.

Immediately after work, Lesli and I headed out East to Sacramento, in the notoriously disdainful Friday afternoon traffic. The ride seemed much shorter than the car drives I had been used to heading out to Sacto - perhaps a result of my immediate attentiveness to the road. Once we made it past the Richmond / Pinole area, the road opened up from the 580/80's regular bumper to bumper congestion. Two reasonably short hours later, we arrived at Lucky's driveway to a mass of folks - representatives from the Bastards, SF Scooter Girls, Modern Vespa, and other unaffiliated riders looking to have fun at Scootouring.

Refreshments were had, new hands were shook, familiar faces were hugged and the evening started up. First item of business - the Knighting.

The exact location of the Knighting was a complete black-box coming in. I suggested a Sacramento Knighting in order to ensure that more of the Bastards would be able to attend (since many members are in the Sacramento area), but I myself am not particularly familiar with the area. Lucky, unbeknownst to me, had thought of the Capital building, and was smart enough to ask ahead if they had any potential issues with having a bunch of rambunctious scooterists with a giant replica Excalibur "playing" on their doorstep. Apparently they do in fact have issues with that, so a new location was selected: Fort Sutter.

By the time we arrived, it was pitch black. We approached the fort, probably 10 or 13 strong, and stood beside one of the parapets. Lesli pulled out her camera, and Lucky spoke, prompting me to get on one knee. Ryan unsheathed the replica Excalibur and paused, with a moderately puzzled look on his face. Lucky prompts him with the first line of the initiation:

"Take one knee and repeat after me," he said. Ryan repeated the line, and I stared blankly at their faces, both very dimly lit in the Sacramento twilight.

Again, Lucky prompted. "I, Smug Bastard," to which Ryan parroted back, and I then repeated myself.

Remembering his prompt, Ryan spoke, "Declare my allegiance to the Royal Bastards..." which I yet again recited back. It was at this point that Ryan and Lucky looked at each other and it became clear that no one remembered to bring the actual knighting script.

I pulled out my Treo, complete with the power of the Intartubes, and found the Charters & Bylaws pamphlet on my email account then opened the document and passed it to Ryan for the remainder of the reading.


As always, click the pic for more pictures

The rest of the Knighting went mostly without incident, with the exclusion of the fact that the flash on the camera was caught by the reflective tape on Ryan's jacket, flooding the image in a deep white.

Immediately following, we found our way to the Friday night Meet & Greet area at a pub whose name I don't quite recall, and met up with various members of the Topz, Vespa Club of Sacramento, and locals who did not expect a group of people with a 3+ foot sword to walk into a pub. I kindly checked the sword to avoid any accidental pokings, and the socializing began. It was at the bar that I actually had an opportunity to speak to Sonia, a potential member of the Royal Bastards sponsored by Lucky.

After conferring with Lucky it was clear she would be Knighted soon - the question was - how would we do it, and when? Given her relative newness to scootering, and the displacement of her bike (a 150cc), a trip to San Francisco to be knighted would likely not be too realistic. Instead, the plan was to Knight her before Scootouring XXI began.

After the bar, we all made our way back to Lucky's place and piled into various spots on his house. At some point early in the morning, I heard a few screams coming from the living room, and went to investigate what was going on. It turns out a fairly large rat had made its way into Lucky's house, and in between Jo and Val's aero beds. Jo and Val's screams alerted Lucky, who ran in and found a bowl to trap the rat in. The rat snuck its head out of the bowl for just a moment - just enough time to be clocked over the head with a mallet. The brained rat was thrown away, and as the sunlight strained into Lucky's livingroom we noted that it was beginning to rain.

The problems began, of course, was that the rain didn't seem to be letting up. We called Sonia to make sure she was comfortable riding in the rain, then made our way out to the dock at Old Sacramento to Knight Sonia as Sassy Bastard.

At the river, we met up with Sonia and her beau, Conrad, and the Knighting took place. The script was read appropriately (from a piece of paper, no less), and Sonia was duly excited. I had never seen Old Sacramento so vacant and barren, but the cold breeze and light drizzle provided the perfect backdrop for the entry of Sassy Bastard. Within no time, the sword was passed, and we rode our separate ways.

The group reconvened and laid low until the official meeting time for Scootouring, though the rain kept increasing in strength. It seemed less and less likely that those of us with poor wet weather gear would be interested in staying, but we all decided as a group (sans Sassy - she was otherwise occupied with prior commitments) to ride to the meeting place and call an audible.

For the first five or so minutes of the ride to the cafe meeting place, the same mist that hovered around Sonia's Knighting hovered about, but as we neared the locale the mist gave way to sheets of rain, soaking all of us who had no wet weather gear.  Les and Julie got hit among the worst, and almost immediately after reaching the parking lot we sought shelter from the downpour.  Les and I shared my raingear while the rest of the group readied their own.

After a few minutes of chatting up the Topz, it became clear that for a few of us, this rally was not in the cards.  Ryan, Les, Julie, Lucky and I hitched back towards Lucky's for an impromptu trip to Lake Tahoe, for some gambling and scouting for our future rally.

Now, I could elucidate on those shenanigans.  Normally I would, but I think in many ways, I've prolonged this entry by quite a lot, and plus, the length of this is becoming unwieldy.  I have limited patience, after all, as I'm sure most who are reading this have as well.  The point is, pretty pictures that you can click on and get a chuckle from.

Thusly, it's happened.

...now, I knew this was of concern before I bought it, but I have to say I'm a bit frustrated:

My new jacket, the Coaster series II by Tourmaster, is made of leather, which is not exactly the best to wear in wet conditions (and San Francisco has a habit of being relatively wet). I thought ot myself, "oh, my rain shell will fit just fine over this, no problem."

Er, no. Problem. The jacket doesn't play well with my gloves as is, and apparently the sleeves don't really play well with the rain shell either, and to make a long story short, it can take some 8-10 minutes to manage to half-assedly get the shell over the jacket, and then the gloves on. To make the situation more ironic and/or frustrating - the shell is made by Tourmaster as well, so you'd assume it'd just fit with the rest of their other gear.

Not so much with the fitting.

I was originally thinking of scrapping my fairly mediocre Speedrag jacket as well but it might actually need to stick around for wet weather. Quite disappointing.

Anyway, if anyone has experience with either jacket or any Tourmaster rain shell and knows of any magic tricks to getting the damned thing on without looking like a jackass or being a contortionist, feel free to let me know. In the mean time, grr.