Category Archives: Driving in the U.S.

Chrome Angelz at the Shelter

15 Sunday Sep 2019

Posted by in Driving in the U.S., Paws and Claws

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Image result for harley

(photo from Harley Davidson website)

I had no idea there was a difference between a Motorcycle Club and a Riding Club, but members of the Superstition Riderz chapter of the Chrome Angelz, set me straight Saturday at the Shelter.

Members of Motorcycle Clubs, chapter president Katrina Harvey explained, become part of an extended family when they join. They are members for life, and there are serious commitments of time and energy required from members.

People join Riding Clubs to enjoy motorcycle rides with friends. The Chrome Angelz is a women’s riding club with  over 190 chapters in the U.S., Canada, Europe, South Africa, Australia and India (India! Imagine!!) In addition to riding, the Angelz support various charities, often for veterans, women or  animals. You can see agencies supported by some of the chapters here.Image may contain: 5 people, people smiling, people standing, sky, cloud and outdoor(With staff member Trish and some of the swag they brought us, photo by… Lori?)

Our local chapter has decided to support Paws and Claws Care Center (the Shelter, to those of you who frequent these pages) and a nearby shelter for battered women. What they lack in numbers they make up for with enthusiasm and generosity. I suspect their numbers will grow, as there are many women who ride motorcycles in this neck of the woods. The Angelz brought a bunch of goodies in for the dogs and cats on Saturday. They generously let me photograph their back patches, and then posed for a group photo:

 

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You might notice that Gorg does not have either the Chrome Angelz patch or the motto patch. That is because she is a probationer. After being a tyro for six months she will have earned both patches.  I encouraged a can-can line for the group photo, with limited success, but what good-will and fun these ladies have! It was such a pleasure to meet them. Now if only we could have sent each of them home with a kitten!

 

 

Vanity, vanity

09 Thursday Dec 2010

Posted by in Driving in Italy, Driving in the U.S., Uncategorized

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Dear Mr. Berlusconi,

It has come to our attention that Italy, like the United States, is in dire financial straits.  Austerity budgets, tax increases, benefit reductions – these are the cures being tossed at this world-wide epidemic (except in the U.S., where we are extending tax cuts and increasing spending… but that’s a topic for another day).

Mr. Berlusconi, you are missing a grand opportunity for raising funds.  It is easy to do – in fact, it is already being done in the U.S., Canada and many other countries.  We can’t imagine why, in these troubled economic times, the EU has not embraced the Vanity Plate for automobiles.

What is it, you ask?  It is a personalized license plate for your vehicle.  Yours, for instance, might simply say BERLU – or perhaps PRM MIN, or maybe even LOTHRIO… anything that’s not already taken and is not obscene is up for grabs.

Here in North America we first issued license plates in 1903 (Massachusetts and Ontario).  They didn’t look anything like they do now – they were made of leather, rubber, iron and porcelain.  By 1920 the familiar embossed metal plates had arrived, and in 1956 the size of license plates was standardized.

The first personalized American plate was issued in Pennyslvania way back in 1931.  (I haven’t been able to find out what it said.)  For years and years each state had its own color scheme for license plates with raised numbers in a contrasting color – New York was orange, Vermont was green, Arizona was a sort of maroon brown.  All that changed over the years. Now there are any number of different types of plates available, depending on your State.

Mr. Berlusconi, did you know that in the U.S. and Canada there are 9.7 million vehicles with personalized plates?  3.87% of cars in America proudly carry a personalized message and each one of those plates cost money, money that went into the coffers of the issuing State!

And it’s not just the States that benefit.  Many States offer a personalized plate that supports a belief, a school, a sports team.  Here in Arizona we have a choice of 38 plates touting anything from cancer awareness, to the environment to Arizona State University.  Once you’ve chosen your type of plate, you can choose the letters and/or numbers you want on it.  Prices vary from state to state.  In Arizona it costs $25 to apply for a vanity plate, and $25 a year to keep it.  If you have chosen a plate that supports a charity, a hefty portion of the annual fee will go to the charity (here it’s typically $17 of each $25 renewal).

Think of it!  If you could sell, say, 1,000,000 plates a year in Italy, and you charged E 50 a year, that would be 50,000,000 a year.  Granted, it won’t solve Italy’s financial crisis, but it would help.

There’s another benefit Mr. Berlusconi – it’s much easier to remember a plate that spells out a word, even in an abbreviated form.  This would be helpful for all those times you have to write your plate number on a form, which seems to be about once a week in Italy.  How much simpler to remember BERLU than, say 135 MIN.  Also helpful if you need to report a hit and run to the police.

Are you thinking it might be hard to come up with a good idea for a plate?  Well, there are a lot of ways to approach it.  Some people opt for the simple name or initials plate:

Others like to come up with clever sayings to tell other motorists something about themselves – a sort of highway tweet:

Born to fight? Tanned from outside battles?

Then there are the ones that mean something to the owners, but are, perhaps, a bit mystifying to readers:

Multiple personalities, perhaps?

Proud scholar?


Note that the one above is a special plate for a veteran.  Does it mean Corporal Tom?  Or perhaps it belongs to someone who did code work?

Many is the car owner who is proud of his car and wants you to know it:

This is on a Mini Cooper S… and perhaps it combines with another favorite vanity plate, the place name.

Plates are a pretty inexpensive way to advertise, and they reach a wide audience:

Is that advertising Zinfandel?  Or something else?

The University of Arizona has a vibrant music department – could this be a proud member of the orchestra?  Or simply someone who likes good seats at concerts?


Sports themes come up a lot on the back of cars:

Other people just want you to know where they fit in the family:

Mr. Prime Minister, you could make a great public relations gesture and give the Pope the Papa 1 plate, free of charge.

I hope, you’ll consider this fund-raising suggestion, Mr. Berlusconi; surely vanity plates would be a hit in Italy. And if none of the above gives you ideas for your own plate, you can check this link to find hundreds of suggestions.

Sincerely,
Farfalle1 (who will apply for the Farfal1 plate as soon as they’re available)

Take My Car – Please! or… Let’s Buy a Car, Part 2

19 Saturday Dec 2009

Posted by in Driving in Italy, Driving in the U.S., Uncategorized

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M needed a new car, and she needed one soon.  An unfortunate woman suffering from a diabetic induced moment of attention deficit had run into the side of M’s car, totaling it.  The woman had driven on, oblivious to the accident and the damage she had caused.  It sounds impossible, but that’s what happened.  Lucikily neither M nor the woman was hurt, and within an hour the police had found the ill woman and gotten her off the highway, but it was too late for M, or, more specifically, it was too late for M’s 15-year old Toyota.  The old girl was dead.

M depends upon an auto for her work; fortunately her insurance company paid for a rental car.  But they were growing restive; it had been a week or two… when was M going to buy a new car?  In a sort of twisted, modern Catch-22 M was too busy working to go car-shopping, but had to go car shopping if she wished to continue working.  What to do?

As it happened she was visiting another friend in Vermont for a rare mid-week holiday, and so was I.  The Vermont friend, H, and her husband had just bought a new Honda, the 4th or 5th they’d purchased from the same dealer, whom they hold in extremely high regard.  Nothing would do but that M should look for a new car at that dealer.

So she did.  The Honda dealer was a nice young chap, and he had a car that would suit M, and he was willing to deal.  He’d met his match in M, I think.

They wheeled and dealed (oh ha ha); M had the high ground because she has always driven Toyotas and was perfectly willing to go back where she lives and buy a Toyota there.  Poor Dealer!  He could see his sale slipping away, in spite of the fact that M had enjoyed her test drive (yes, she got to have a test drive, in the actual car and on real roads.  Lucky M).

“Take the car home for the rest of the day and tonight,” he said.  I couldn’t believe my ears.  What??  Take the car home??!  But that is what he really said.  This was on a Thursday. “Well, alright,” replied M, “but you understand, if I buy this car I have to be able to drive it out of here tomorrow all registered, insured and with a loan in place, a favorable loan.”  “No problem, no problem,” Dealer answered.

So she did.  She took the car and she and I drove the 15 or 20 miles back to H’s house.  M had said she’d return it the next morning, but we slept late and got busy doing other things.  Did the police come looking for us?  They did not.  Instead we were warmly welcomed when we returned to Dealer in the early afternoon (there was, perhaps, just a touch of relief in his eyes when he saw us stroll in).

The end of the story is that M drove away a few hours later in what was now her car, Dealer having also arranged for the return of her rental car at a nearby branch of the rental agency.  Well, okay, it turned out there were a few snags in the weeks that followed, having to do with buying a car in one state and living in another, but Dealer did what he had to do to fix them.

Maybe it has something to do with the economy, but it’s more than that: American car dealers seem much more eager to sell cars than their Italian counterparts, and will do, it would seem, just about anything to succeed.  Including letting someone test-borrow the car for 24 hours.  I just can’t imagine that happening in Liguria, where, if you are very good the dealer will do you an enormous favor and sell you a car.

GPL

22 Monday Jun 2009

Posted by in American habits and customs, Driving in Italy, Driving in the U.S., Italy, Liguria, Travel, Uncategorized

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GPL in Italy is what we call LPG in the U.S.: liquid propane gas, and cars fit to take it are widely available here (Chevrolet, Fiat, Mazda, Opel,  Peugeot, Renault).

Quick disclaimer:  I’m not a gear-head or an engineer.  My understanding of internal combustion engines is on a par with that of my sister, who once described the reason her car was in the shop as “a loose screw in an oil place.”

Unfortunately, a visit to fueleconomy.gov, a U.S. site, informs us that one of the disadvantages of LPG as an auto fuel in the U.S. is that no new passenger cars fitted for its use are commercially available (though kits to retrofit are).  It is more commonly used there for fleets, taxis, and forklifts (there are about 600,000 LPG vehicles in operation in the U.S. today out of 240,000,000 total vehicles (+/- 2.5%).  As a corollary to this, the fuel itself is not widely available at ordinary filling stations.  And I have to ask, why??

The U.S. is one of the largest producers of LPG, which is a petroleum product (learn all about it here).  It was first developed by Dr. Walter Snelling in 1910 (the first automobiles that ran on propane appeared in 1913).  Though it is a petroleum product, it burns up to 40% cleaner than gasoline, emitting far fewer hydrocarbons, and it is less costly than gas.

Look at this happy woman:

GPL

She is my friend Anita, and she is happy because she has just filled her bi-fuel Chevy Matis with GPL.  Bi-fuel?  It means her new car runs on either conventional gas or, with the flip of a switch, GPL.  She is happy because there is still money in her wallet after filling her car.  One reason is because her GPL costs about E .57 per liter instead of the E 1.39 for gasoline. (The man who pumped the GPL is smiling because he likes having his picture taken.)

Here are two more reasons she’s smiling.  When she took her old Volvo wagon off the road the Italian government said Thank You For Taking That Big Polluting Monster Off Our Roads by giving her E 1,500.  Then she was rewarded with about another E 3,500 when she chose to buy her bi-fuel Chevrolet Matis. (Other car manufacturers in Italy also offer ‘ecocentives’ to those who purchase bi-fuel cars.)

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The only trick is to find a station that sells GPL – it’s easier to do here, where there are at least 19 dealers in Liguria, than in the U.S., where you seldom see it sold.  But if you can’t find a station, no worries – you can still drive on conventional fuel.

There’s a special adaptor that couples with the GPL fuel receiver of the car – brass!  Very pretty.  And after the car has been fueled, very cold.  The smiling man simply took the adapter, screwed it in, and then attached the pump nozzle to the adapter.  It didn’t take any longer to fuel with GPL than with regular fuel.

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I’m surprised more is not done with this fuel in the U.S., where efforts seem to be going instead to ethanol blends and bio-diesel.  I learned here that if you purchase a hybrid, diesel or dedicated alternative fuel vehicle (what a mouthful), you may be eligible for a tax credit of up to $4,000, which is nothing to sneeze at.  There is no reward in the U.S. for purchasing a bi-fuel car.  Nor is there a reward that I could find for removing a heavily polluting, inefficient vehicle from American roads.  An alternative in the U.S. to LPG is compressed natural gas, or CNG, which burns even cleaner than LPG, but takes up much more room.  (Again, new cars are not available with CNG, but retro-fit kits are.)  Isn’t it odd that American auto manufacturers haven’t paid more attention to a  cleaner technology that’s been around since the beginning of car time?  Oh, wait a minute.  Thinking about those yo-yo’s, maybe it isn’t so surprising after all.

Expatriate in California

28 Saturday Mar 2009

Posted by in American habits and customs, California, Driving in the U.S., Photographs, Travel, Uncategorized

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Years ago a friend offered me a plane ticket to California, but I had other Big Plans and turned him down.  What a mistake.  Recently we spent a week in and around San Francisco, and I fell in love – not in San Francisco, but with San Francisco.

Here’s what’s right about San Francisco: almost everything. It’s a big city without a huge population (+/- 808,000 in 2008, according to Wikipedia), conveniently contained in only 47 square miles (for comparison, Manhattan has a population of +/- 1,621,000 on 23 square miles; Chicagoland, 9.5 million, 81 square miles).

Ocean.  Bays.  There’s lots of water in and around San Francisco.img_9247

Where there is water there will be bridges, and San Francisco has two that are magnificent: the famous Golden Gate Bridge:

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and the graceful Bay Bridge (which is in the process of being rebuilt):

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Crossing the Bay Bridge from Berkeley to San Francisco gives one a lovely view of the latter:

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Most of San Francisco was destroyed by a post-earthquake fire in April, 1906.  Here’s what the downtown looked like in the aftermath of that catastrophe (photo taken by H.D. Chadwick and housed in the National Archives):

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Much of the city was rebuilt, obviously, but there are still some lovely juxtapositions of old and new:

san-francisco-old-and-new

San Francisco has a terrific public transportation system. The BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) trains run all over the place, and buses will take you wherever the Bart won’t. The most famous form of public transportation is the cable cars but we fell in love with the trolley buses – in addition to hundreds of modern trolleys, there are retired trolley cars from around the world. Our hearts leapt when we saw the familiar yellow of a Milano car. It made us wonder for a moment where we were.

milano-trolley-car-in-sf(photo by Paul Fisk)

Food is famously important to Californians, and especially to San Franciscans. We ate out three nights in a row, and each meal was prepared perfectly. The Slanted Door in the restored Ferry Building on the old pier serves fusion Vietnamese food. Our only complaint was that the noise level was so high we left with our ears ringing. If you enjoy shopping, the Ferry Building is worth a daytime visit as well. Dosa, on famous Filmore in San Francisco, serves South Indian cuisine that is out of this world. The Wood Tavern, in Berkeley, serves chops, steaks and so forth in a small building with an intimate feel. All three of these restaurants were packed; reservations are a good idea. It was hard to leave the area knowing we had sampled only three of the hundreds of wonderful restaurants available… guess we’ll have to go back some day.

Cultural activities abound in the Bay area – we were not there long enough to scratch the surface of what’s available, but both the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park and the Asian Art Museum were so engaging that a half-day visit to each lasted all day, and we did not see half of either (you do the math!).  For a guide to such things, click here. The Academy of Sciences, for instance, is one of at least three science museums in the area.  Music, theater, film, art – it’s all widely available.  Because of the diversity of the population there are countless cultural experiences to be discovered.

Visiting California itself is a bit like going to another country. We had to make a stop at an Agricultural Inspection station so our car could be examined for unwanted pests. We understood why when we drove through the vast San Joaquin Valley, 27,280 square miles of mostly agricultural land with a few cities here and there. That’s equal to about 20% of the whole of Italy (116,345 square miles). The area is sometimes justifiably referred to as “the salad bowl of America.”

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In the photo above, what looks like a carpet of wildflowers is actually a quilt of blooming fruit and nut trees. What looks like a river is the California Canal, part of a vast irrigation system that brings the water of California’s rivers and mountains  to the valley. In addition to fruit and nut trees there is vast acreage in cotton and vegetables (the J.G. Boswell cotton farm is the largest in the world at 150,000 acres).

In addition to agriculture, there is a thriving oil business in the San Joachin valley; there are six fields with reserves in excess of 100,000,000 barrels.

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We saw enormous herds of cattle and fewer, but equally large, flocks of sheep. The drive through the Valley was long and bucolic, if, perhaps, a bit dull.

And lest you think Californians are not serious about the environment:
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How this might be enforced I’m not quite sure…

California is also really serious about alternative energy. Near Palm Springs we drove through a huge wind farm. I couldn’t stop taking pictures, so please bear with me if I show you three of them instead of just one:

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In 1995 California’s three main wind farms produced 30% of the world’s wind-generated energy.

Here’s what’s bad about California: the roads and the drivers.
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A lot of the roads looked like the one above, with broken or uneven pavement. It made for a noisy and bumpy ride. The drivers, though, are worse than the roads. It seems to be a matter of pride never to drive less than 20 miles over the speed limit. The fellow driving the truck below passed us on the right, cut in front of us about 2 car lengths ahead, and jammed on his brakes. We hit him, but fortunately damage to our car was minimal (nil to his truck) and no one was hurt.
red-truck
The advice on the rear window (‘Inhale’) might perfect for a party, but maybe not for the highway. Curious about that bumper sticker? It says, ‘Caution, driver no longer gives a shit.’ Evidently.

Not everyone on California roads is irritating though.  This Gladiator cyclist gave us a cheerful wave when he saw my camera:

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We had two unusual wildlife sightings as we drove along, one reptilian and one ursine:
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This has been a long post, and I apologize for the large number of photos. It was hard to choose which of the 300+ I took to share with you. As you can tell, we had a terrific trip to California; I now understand why it is always one of three destinations on the itinerary of visiting Italians. It will be on mine again.

Apache Trail in the Snow

21 Saturday Feb 2009

Posted by in Arizona, Driving in the U.S., Photographs, Travel, Uncategorized

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apachemap

(Map courtesy of http://www.americansouthwest.net/arizona)

Last week it snowed here in Arizona.  No, not down here in the ‘Valley of the Sun,’ but in the Superstition Mountains and the peaks of the Tonto National Park.  The radio instructed us not to drive north for several days as many roads were impassable.  Exciting!

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We waited, as instructed, and then set out on the Apache Trail. What is it and how did it get that name? Briefly, according to Tom Kollenborn’s article on the Trail, the general path of the trail was used back in 900 AD by the Salado Indians.  Later the Apache Indians used it in raids against the peaceful Pima Indians who lived in the valley.

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Theodore Roosevelt Dam at the top of the trail was built from 1905-1911, and there was a need to connect the dam site at Roosevelt with the Valley towns of Mesa and Apache Junction.  The road was built from 1903-1905, but access was restricted until completion of the dam.  Ironically, the laborers for the road-building project were also Apache Indians.  Today the Apache Trail, also known as Arizona Route 88, is one of the loveliest roads in the state, but it is narrow and rugged. One end is in Apache Junction, and the other in Globe.

My pal Mary Ann and I set out at about 9 a.m., and got home sometime after 5 p.m., having covered only 150 miles.  We stopped briefly in Tortilla Flat, which is completely touristic and hilarious. (Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat was in California.) It is full of visitors who have enjoyed the scenic ride past Canyon Lake; not many venture farther, especially when the road is under water. (!) Here’s a photo of the dollar-bill papered dining room of the small restaurant there.

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We especially wanted to visit Tonto National Monument on the other side of Roosevelt Dam, but didn’t get there until 2 p.m., and we were starving, having not seen a building since leaving Tortilla Flat.  Did I mention it’s a really isolated part of the world?  So we took a quick peek at the ancient cliff dwelling visible from the Visitors’ Center and motored on in search of a sandwich.

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After The Best Pre-Packaged Sandwich I Ever Ate we continued on to Globe where we visited the Besh-ba-Gowah ruins.  They are the remnants of a Salado settlement, dating from about 1200 AD. They have been well reconstructed, and one is able to walk through the settlement and imagine what it might have been like to live there 700 years ago. The visitor’s center is extremely interesting and there’s an excellent video and a museum stuffed with archaeological finds from the site.  Here’s a model of the ruins:

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Evidently they liked ladders.  The dark hole labled ‘central corridor’ was a long, dark hall that gave access to the areas within.  The ‘tree’ seems all out of proportion to me – it must have been huge.

It was a breath-takingly beautiful drive, especially the old road from Apache Junction to Roosevelt Dam.  If you’d like to see more photos, click here, or over on the right under Photographs – Apache Trail in the Snow. As always, I recommend the slide show. You will see there a rare shot that captures both the male AND female jackalope.

Freeway Shock and Highway Art

27 Tuesday Jan 2009

Posted by in Arizona, Driving in the U.S., Uncategorized

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At the risk of stating the obvious, there is much, much, MUCH more open space here in Arizona than there is in our beloved Liguria, or in Italy as a whole, for that matter.  One of the luxuries all this space provides is the continued ability of the State to build huge new highways.  We are as great fans of the Italian Autostrada system as anyone else (and especially fans of the highway rest stops, the Autogrills particularly – yum!).  But if you find an autostrada with more than four lanes in one direction you have found a rarity.  Two lanes in each direction, sometimes with no emergency lane, are common in Italy (as they were on the dreadful old Pennsylvania Turnpike near Philly).

The Loop 202 was recently completed around Phoenix, making it a much shorter trip to get from our part of the Valley to Phoenix or to Sky Harbor Airport on the east side of the city.  For whatever reason extra care was taken to make the bridge abutments and the gravel banks on the sides of the highway beautiful.  The themes are, unsurprisingly, southwestern, and are all different.  It makes the drive much more interesting and fun, as do the lovely shrubs and trees that have been planted on some of the banks.

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But for all the space given to the new road, it is still choked with rush-hour traffic before 9 a.m. and between 3 and 7 p.m.  It’s hard to imagine where all the traffic went before this road was opened.  Driving around Phoenix at rush hour is about like trying to drive around Venice at any time.

And no matter what you may have heard about driving and drivers in Italy, both are a whole lot worse here.  The captain opines that the most dangerous instrument in the world is a woman in an SUV talking on her cell phone.  While I don’t necessarily agree with him (harumph!), I do think that drivers here exhibit an aggressiveness and a carelessness that is, well, not Italian.

Good or bad, the drivers here have a beautiful new highway. If you’d like to see some more photographs of the Loop’s bridge art, click on ‘bridge art’ under photographs over on the right, or click right here.  As usual, a slide show is recommended.

Expatriate in a Cold Climate

20 Tuesday Jan 2009

Posted by in Driving in the U.S., Travel, Uncategorized, Weather

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cold-winter-sun

No, this is not a black and white photo… see that brush of brown on the shed, bottom right?  a hint of red in the barn?  This is New England winter, just as I remember it:  life lived many days in black, white and shades of gray.  That little faint ball in the sky?  Yeah, that’s the sun.  Sort of.

We lived in New England for decades and loved it, but having been away for several years it is a shock to place oneself in Vermont in January.  -20 F (-29 C) is very, very cold.  So cold that when you go out to feed the shivering birds your hands become numb almost immediately.  The good thing about -20 F is that it is accompanied by cloudless blue skies – the sort of frigid blue that makes the phrase ‘blue is a cool color’ seem completely inadequate.

Here are some of the superficial differences between winter life in New England and winter life in Rapallo or Arizona:  1) It takes 5-10 minutes to bundle up to go outside, even for a few minutes work or fun; another 5-10 to unbundle when back indoors.  2)  One’s appetite increases geometrically as the temperature plunges – the colder it is, the hungrier we are and the more we eat.  3) Exercise – you can take a crunchy walk in the snow on the verge of the road, but you won’t stay out long.  Or you can ski, skate, or winter hike, each of which may well involve a drive somewhere.  4) And if you decide to take that drive… well, I’ll let the photos below from our trip back to the airport tell the tale:

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and-another-accident

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In all we saw a total of 10 cars off the road on a 30-mile stretch of  Interstate 89 in New Hampshire.  Fortunately we did not suffer this fate and I reached my plane, thanks to daring driving by M.,  with 15 minutes to spare.

Stepping into the 70 F night air at Sky Harbor Airport was a  shock of another sort, as was smelling the perfume of the blooming  tree off the deck and standing outside, uncoated, to admire the wash of stars in the dark, moonless sky.

Would I go back to New England in the winter?  In a heartbeat.