The NoHo Ride – our 100th post!

We had a great ride on our California Scooters last night, and I’m going to tell you about it in this – our 100th post!

We saw on Facebook that NoHo Scooters, one of our dealers, was having a get together for a ride to Philippe’s (I mentioned it in one or two blog entries ago), and the guys thought it would be cool to ride along. 

You might remember that a week or two ago I bought a new Bell helmet from Mike at NoHo Scooters, and I thought I’d wear it for the first time last night.  I kind of thought my headgear would stand out…little did I know what kind of crowd we’d be riding with!

My not-quite-politically-correct new Bell helmet on my red Classic

On the ride to NoHo, we must have had a hundred cars give us the thumbs up, ask about our Scooters, or just look at our Scooters and smile.   One guy even produced a camera and took a bunch of photos from his car!  Steve was on the Sarge, and that bike always gets the stares.  Josh and Kyle were on custom Greasers (both had apehangers), and those bikes are cool.   TK was on a box-stock Greaser, and with its flat black paint, red wheels, and wide whitewalls, it’s one of the best-looking bikes I’ve ever seen.   We’re still a new company and there are still a lot of folks who haven’t heard of us, so five radically new bikes moving slowly through traffic sure got folks’ attention.

Josh, Kyle, Steve, TK, and I took surface streets all the way from La Verne to North Hollywood…right through rush hour traffic!  It took a bit longer to get there than I thought it would, but our Scooters held up well sitting in traffic as we crept through La Verne, Covina, Duarte, Monrovia, Pasadena, Eagle Rock, Glendale, Burbank, Toluca Lake, and finally, North Hollywood.

Mike had quite a turnout at NoHo Scooters, and it was a great crowd.

Scoots lined up in front of NoHo Scooters last night

Lots of folks came over to chat with us (Mike had about 40 riders show up for the ride), and the scooter crowd is definitely a different group than the folks we normally meet on motorcycle rides.  They were fun, and friendly…just nice people who don’t take themselves too seriously.  I could tell we were going to have a good time.

Ketty (pronounced Cat-T), a Vespa scooterista from Italy...check out her cool helmet!

Steve and others checking out an older Honda Elite

My new friend Sic rode all the way down from Sacramento (about 400 miles north of LA) for this ride on his Aprilia 500cc scooter, and he had a cool helmet, too…check this out…

Sic, an Aprilia rider, and his Viking headgear...he's a cool guy

Sic and Rowan on Steve's Sarge

It was starting to get dark, and I wanted to grab a few photos before the ride started.  Here’s one of a scooter parked in front of the NoHo Scooter showroom…I noticed the chrome stereo speakers on the handlebars (they matched the helmet).  Like I said earlier, these are interesting folks with interesting rides…

Check out the California Scooter sign in Mike's window

And here’s another interesting one…small displacement, but check out the carbon fiber exhaust canister on this scooter…

Carbon fiber, anodized aluminum, custom suspension, big bucks...

After socializing for a bit, Mike led our scooter platoon through LA to Philippe’s, and what a ride it was! 

I had never ridden with scooter people before, and I guess I thought it would be a pretty laid back (read: slow) slog through traffic.  Boy, was I ever wrong!   These folks were fast! 

Yep, that one...

Mike led us through parts of Los Angeles I’d never been through before.   It was dark, and I lost any concept of where I was.  We wound through tight twisties in very exclusive neighborhoods with no street lights, and I can only guess that either a water main had burst or those folks watered their lawns pretty aggressively.  The roads had lots of thin mud in different places, and it was slick.   I was concentrating on keeping the rubber side down, and scooters were flying by me.   These guys were used to the roads and I wasn’t.  It was as exciting as any sportsbike ride in the twisties I’d ever been on.  Climbing, twisting, descending, more twisting and climbing…I wondered where in the world we were.   I felt like I was in some small European town up in the mountains…it wasn’t the LA I thought I knew at all.   At one point (one of the very few times we stopped at a stop sign), I noticed Steve was right alongside me.   “Where are we?” I asked.   He told me to look to my left, and to my great surprise, we were high up in the hills, right alongside the famous Hollywood sign!  Wow!

Suddenly, after more of our scooter grand prix through the hills of LA, we were back in town, and I saw the sign for Philippe’s.  That was a good thing, as it was already 9:oo p.m. and I was hungry!

Philippe's...our pit stop in the Los Angeles Scooter Grand Prix

Philippe’s is super-well-known in Los Angeles, and from what folks tell me, the rest of the world, too.   It’s been there for almost 100 years, and it’s where Philippe (who else could it be?) invented the roast beef dip.  It was accidental…he dropped a sandwich into the beef juice, tried it, and the rest is history.  You know, I’d been there before, but the food tasted even better last night.   There’s a psychological phenomenon called pleasure transferrance that basically says if you’re doing something you enjoy, everything else becomes more pleasurable, too.   I think that was definitely in play last night.  I was having a great time on my California Scooter with these scooteristas, and that roast beef sandwich was the best sandwich I ever had in my life.  My new friend Justin (a scooterist, advertising consultant, and all-around cool guy) recommended trying it with bleu cheese and some of Philippe’s mustard.  It was beyond awesome.

The real deal...roast beef dips with bleu cheese at Philippes...it just doesn't get any better!

We hung around Philippe’s for about an hour, enjoying our sandwiches, chatting it up, and just feeling that all was right with the world.  I really had a lot of fun.  

Dinner at Philippes...what a great night!

I could have stayed longer, but I would have probably had another sandwich, and that probably wouldn’t have been a good idea.  We closed the place, though, and when we rolled out onto the LA streets at 10:00 p.m., we had a cool ride home.   What a night!

And there’s more to come…we’ll be at the Glendora Flashback show tonight (we have a booth), so please stop in to see us if you make it out there.  My bike’s going to be one of the ones on display, so I have to sign off now…gotta polish it up for the show!