City on Wheels Art Car


City on Wheels Art Car with New York city in the background

Gary Siebel is the mastermind behind seven arts cars starting in 1985 with his first one called vanishing perspective. Since then his has created and amazing collection of art cars that seem to have a common tread, land scapes. Gary started out as a taxi driver in Seattle and after years of driving around town he came to appreciate the city's buildings. He also studied architecture in school and even though he never applied his knowledge commercially he did by making seven art cars over the past 28 years. On his first city scape car he spray painted a checkerboard landscape of a city as seen from above. Then he added the buildings on the roof, even ones that we were in the process of construction, just like in a real city. One the biggest problems he faced was vandalism and had hundreds of buildings stolen and damaged. This car was also featured in Harrod Blanks "Wild Wheels" book and movie.

Garry now resides in the SF Bay Area and has recently built the City Scape Van Art Car, that enables him to travel around the country more comfortably. In his latest creation he added lights to some of the buildings and the river is a picture of Salvador Dali. I have wanted to write about Gary and all of his art cars for a long time now and felt that his was work needed to be seen by many more people. Wow!!!

5:43 pm I just got an email from Garry with a more complete and accurate story regarding his cars. I was wrong about Garry having studied architecture he was more of a History guy, anyways here is the complete story. Thanks Gary:)

1st art car, 1987, the vanishing perspectivemobile. Totaled by a friend after I sold it.
I lost all respect for autos after pushing a hack for about ten years (hence, 1987), so I just started painting an ex-taxi. A friend suggested dead cat skins, but I rejected that idea.

Next art car also short lived, but I acquired a van (from the dead cat guy), and it went through many changes, from broken window paint job to more perspective to a pretty good brick wall rendition. Plus other schemes, so many I forget, and didn't care enough to record all the changes.

Vanishing Perspective Art Car


The City Car was the result of several factors: the urge to impress a particular babe, an artistic solution to a painting problem, a satire, a flight of fancy... and the fact I traded my semi-functional VCR for the car that had sat in front of my neighbors house for many months.. The artistic solution was the result of the vinyl top, upon which I could not continue to paint the map theme I had started, and the fact I had in hand 64 cut wooden blocks that were supposed to become a chess table, but instead looked rather like Main St when I started fooling around with them. The map led to the 1st City, which has never been any particular place --- but all my cities are grounded in castle Neuschwanstein, Disneyland, Las Vegas, New York, Shanghai, London, etc.-- all the major cities have a certain similarity of skyline.

City Car Art Car


The satire was simply a jab in they eye of consumerism and the cult of the automobile. They are merely transport, yet they are considered to be virtually another form of clothing, and what we wear in public is important. Taxis are trash, however, and by extension, all vehicles are trash because all vehicles are potential taxis.

A flight of fancy -- I always thought M C Escher ideas were rather clever, and his drawings worked because we can only focus on one limited area at a time, so my cities are impossible too, but plausibly arranged so as to work from various points of view.

After appearing in People Magazine, I found there were other art car people, including Harrod making his movie, so I wrote him a letter, and he came up to Seattle soon after because, as it turned out, he was wondering how to get in touch with me.. I sold the 1st City in Chicago not long after because I got tired of people ripping buildings off of it. Haven't heard of it since.(by then, I already had a stalker and I thought getting rid of the car would help get rid of her, too, to no avail.)

Next, and as result of a photo of the 1st Citycar appearing on the back page of Road and Track Magazine (plus the appearance in Harrod's movie, Wild Wheels) Hollywood paid me to create a "Seattle" car and appear in their Honda commercial. (It only appears to be the Seattle skyline view from the park on Queen Anne hill, on the passenger side. More futuristic from the driver side.) That was 1991... After the commercial was done filming in Seattle (filmed with Gene Pool with his Grass car, and some Chicken Car out of Louisiana), I insisted they take the car with them, so the last I heard it disappeared into LA -- probably crushed by now).


Seatle Art Car

After that I created the lunar surface on the Moon Car with the sawdust leftover from the buildings I had cut for the City. The Moon Car lasted for over ten years, and went through four phases: blue/gray, red, purple, and orange. It couldn't make it past smog so it was crushed by Ace in 2005.

Moonscape Art Car


Santana Row, San Jose, commissioned an extended golf-cart shopper transport thing in 2002, then they had the biggest fire in San Jose history, which I got to experience first hand because i had to save my City from the shower of tiny burning embers, but that piece also disappeared into history.


I built the current City on Wheels in five cities over three years: San Fran, Las Vegas, Seattle, Boulder, and Austin. the only help I received was in having a place to build (Hamman's Barn, S.F., Marston's Farm, Whidbey Island (where I also built the Moon Car), Albert's Enchanted forest, Austin, my sister's place in Boulder, and the streets and parking lots of Las Vegas). It is all cut wood, except for a few Monopoly houses driver side rear, and the plexiglas around the wood core of the two dark towers. Many bldgs have E-L wire lighting. No legos, and I pressure wash it to clean. Mileage is the same (the tower group, top front center, is actually set back to decrease drag, but the hood takes the brunt, i find).

I have always treated my wheels in the manner in which they deserve -- no precious art piece that I keep forever without making a new one, like a piece of 'art" mom put up on the family refrigerator from your first grade, that never gets taken down because, after all, YOU did it; no parades; keep it guerilla. I occasionally parked it in front of SFMOMA on a Sunday, ten paces from the front door, the only major art museum to have parking so close to it's front door, and left a comment book on it. I have been working a different side of the street, so to speak, than most art car people. I will delve into that aspect further at a later time.

Cars are vulnerable to the elements and the miles, and this one too, due to mechanical issues, is slated for imminent destruction. The wind is too harsh for the paint job on the front portion to retain it's luster for more than eight months. The glue, Lexel, has been impressive, and -- unlike the 1st City -- only a couple of bldgs have been stolen (bigger ones are screwed down) Registration expires Feb 2009. I designed it so I could strip the buildings off and reuse them. I cannot store it and refuse to dump more money into a pit. That's the risk of an art car -- indeed, of all cars -- sudden death syndrome, from any of a large number of potential reasons.
Gary Siebel more pics on my Srapwall

City On Wheels Art Van - Can you see Salvador Dali?

Seattle in the background

City on Wheels Art Van

City on Wheels Close, buildings with L-Wire


what a story, I think the best one so far.

Morgan Schwanke
The American Automobile
Professor Heitmann
2/1/11
An Accident to Remember
When I saw the car in front of us swerve and fly across the center divide I knew immediately the outcome would be ominous. The accident happened right off Mission Boulevard in Mission Beach last spring, and my friend and I were the unfortunate witnesses of the tragic event. It was a nice, sunny day and my buddy and I were driving back to school for our afternoon classes with music playing and the windows down. I heard the sharp shriek of a breaking car, a sound I had heard before and knew was followed by the horrible crunch of a collision. There was a pause…where things seemed to go silent and I attentively listened. But as we turned the bend in the road I saw two cars collide head on followed by a massive explosion of sound and aluminum shrapnel. I had a sinking feeling as I saw the fronts of the cars in slow motion push against each other and the back tires of the cars rise up in the air and then fall back to the ground. From there on out everything seemed to be a blur.
We pulled our car over and were the first people to run over to the accident. Adrenaline and fear kicked into my body; half of me knew I needed to help in anyway I could and half of me was so scared by the scene I saw. As I got to one of the cars, I clearly remember the engine still on sputtering with smoke coming out of it, fluid leaking onto the ground, and a man with blood all over his face having a seizure. I didn’t know what to do, so I put my hand inside the car and turned it off while in complete shock and fear of the driver convulsing. I opened the door of the car and my friend and I just looked at each other not knowing whether or not to leave him in his seat in case he had serious broken bones or move him out of the car. As my friend stood next to the man, I looked around to the other car as the other drive stumbled out of his car onto the grass next to the road. Flames on the ground caught my eye from what must have been gasoline on the ground and the immediate image of cars exploding in action movies I have seen engrossed my mind. I told my friend that we needed to get both drivers out of the cars and far away from the accident because one of the engines was about to catch on fire. By that time, the man who was having a seizure had gone unconscious and we together moved what we thought for sure was a dead body out onto the grass about 100 feet away.
I specifically remember looking around at that point and noticing that almost 15 people had circled around the accident, only one lady was attending to the other driver, everyone else was watching, unwilling or too afraid to get involved in the situation. I made the assumption that at least one of these bystanders had called the police at this point in time and took off sprinting to a Chinese restaurant 100 yards away where I grabbed a fire extinguisher and ran back. By the time I got back to the car that originally had flames under it, the fire had spread to the engine and the whole front of the car was smoking. I used the entire extinguisher to put the flames out in the engine and for a moment, I thought I had extinguished it. But within seconds, the flames caught back up. I had no idea that the metal of car could catch on fire so quick, but within three minutes the entire car was in flames as the interior burst into flames and the metal structuring blackened. Luckily, I found out that day that cars don’t explode but rather burn slowly, at least until the flame reached the gasoline tank in which there was a rather violent, but not deadly explosion.
The first officers on the scene were the Mission Beach lifeguards who began attending to the unconscious man, but did not have the appropriate supplies to do much. The next thing that happened I did not understand until I realized what the driver was going through several days later. The man who was unconscious came to and immediately became extremely frightened as he was in very bad shape and there was a great deal of blood everywhere. He could not talk but progressed to forcefully stand up despite us trying to keep him down and tried to escape or run away. It took my friend and I, along with two lifeguards, to hold him down on the grass as we reminded him he would be ok and to stop resisting. He was literally going into panic mode trying to bite us and escape in any way. It took nearly 15 minutes for the police to show up, which made the man even more frightened. The police were forced to put the man in a neck brace and tie him down to a stretcher. I later found out that he was most likely on some sort of drugs and had a seizure while he was driving causing him to swerve into oncoming traffic. Most likely, the last thing he remembered was he was driving normally down Mission Boulevard and the next thing is he woke up to was a horrible car accident, which would explain his adrenaline, confusion, and fear.
I learned many things about myself that day. Firstly, I am glad that I am not one of the ten to fifteen people that will stand around and watch a tragic situation like that and refuse to get involved. I also learned that I might have saved someone’s life that day and I that cars do not explode like in the movies but do burst into flames and burn completely. It was a once in a lifetime experience…and I hope to God it stays at ‘once’.

This garden art car is headed to The U.S. Supreme Court that will consider an appeal next month from the owner of Planet K stores over his long-running battle with the city of San Marcos about his right to display it. In 2007 Michael Kleinman paid two artists to transform this salvage special in front of his store into a painted cactus planter art car. City officials got themselves hot and bothered, claiming the Oldsmobile 88 was in violation of a city ordinance declaring such displays public nuisances. The car was removed and Kleinman is appealing a 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in February that found the car-planter to be “ultimately a junked vehicle.”  Good luck with that!! via Its funny I was going to do a garden art car post a while back and forgotten about it until my dad sent me this article two days ago. As you can see these are just a few of the garden cars I found from around the world. Most are intentional, some natural and the last one is purely accidental. If you like these you might also like the Grass Art Cars also on Art Car Central.

This Australian Aborginal Toyota Art Car Basket was created using Tjanpi Grass by the Tjanpi Weavers Group headed by Artis Kantjupayi Benson using a lesser-known Aboriginal weaving art practice.

The Grass Toyota art car ended up being 16ft long by 13 feet wide and 5m long, and 8.2 ft high and was was commissioned by the World Expo in Hanover Germany.

While Kantjupayi sat on a chair leaning on her long walking stick, she oversaw the younger women drawing the shape of the vehicle with chalk on the concrete floor of the Blackstone hall. Minyerri grass, a wiry grass found in the sandy country approximately 20kms from Blackstone, was used in the construction. The grass was fashioned into coils and attached with jute twine and wire to welded steel framed panels covered with chicken mesh. The steel frames were made by Perth sculptor Claire Bailey, adhering to the women’s designs. All in all there were twenty artists involved over a month long period to realise the work and there was much celebration, hilarity and joy on its completion.
via

Flower Art Car For Sale

Flower Art Car For Sale Waterfall Close Up

Flower Art Car For Sale Waterfall Close Up - via

Wow, this Flower Art Car definitely takes best of flower show, a Ford Torus that was for sale last August in North Hollywood. It has a running waterfall, real live grass, plants, flowers, tiki torches, and a interior fish tank. Apparently its a great rental for the movie industry, business promotions, and parties and has received some media attention in the local news. When buying an art car its always good to have had media attention and have built a good reputation around town. The more famous the car the more you can expect to pay.

For the longest time I have been fascinated by grass covered cars. Its a whole other world when people cover vehicles in astroturf or even better real grass. The later takes a bit more skill as you will see in the video of a guy who started doing that in the late eighties. I did a search on Google and Flikr and found a few more vehicles covered in this stuff, the effect is simply amazing. Talk about an eco friendly green car.

Brooklyn, New York artist Gene Pool is featured in this short video from the movie Wild Wheels by Harrod Blank

Gene Also did a Grass Bus

And here are some other Grass Cars I found on Flikr

Photo by temp13rec.

Photo by Cyrius

Photo by basheem

Photo by Daniel Mauermann

Photo by anab Jain

Photo by northreflections

Photo by europeanartphoto

Photo by Mulad

Photo bymeherenow

And a few others

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Hi folks -- I am convinced that I-75 between Dayton and Cincinnati is far more dangerous than anything you can run up against while traveling on I-5 or I-15 in Southern California. UD History colleague Juan Santamarina has had more than his share of adventures on I-75, including flying pieces of wood aimed at his windshield, hood, and grill. Here is a short account of his latest heart-rendering event:

Thought you would enjoy my latest I-75 adventures:
I was southbound on I-75, just north of I-275 late yesterday afternoon. There was a tow truck loading a car on the right shoulder and cars were slowing down on the right lane as a result. A Ford Fusion must have been distracted and didn't notice the slowing traffic then slammed the brakes and turned sharply to the right toward the shoulder. Somehow it missed the tow truck/car combo just in front of him and went flying through the grass beyond the shoulder into the ditch and up the other side of it stopping just short of the sound wall and not hitting anything (at that point he was perpendicular to the highway and only stuck in mud and water!). I was a few cars behind but pulled over to see if the driver needed help--so did 2 others. Turns out the driver was maybe 80, a little confused--either by what had just happened or perhaps before....someone else called police who arrived 3 minutes later. Excitement enough?
Nope!
I was standing on the shoulder telling the cop what had happened when a pickup truck passed us and proceeded to drop his 20+ foot extension ladder out the back, landing a couple of feet in front of us and sliding up the right lane 30 feet forward while cars swerved to avoid it---leaving me to direct cars off the right lane while the cop and tow truck driver fetched the ladder from the right lane and dumped safely in the grass beyond the shoulder. Let me tell you that a big ladder like that hitting the road at 65mph is a little startling!
At that point I told the cop I had enough for one day and if he didn't need me I was on my merry way. He smiled, said thanks and bye.....
First a 2x4 flying at my car, then what was essentially a hit and run, and now this...? I guess I'm free now if these things come in threes--hopefully anyway, even though neither I nor the Benz suffered any damage on this event.

Check out this link to see the article about Todd Blaeser's store and new slot track in Chippewa Falls!

From the article on the Volume1 website:
"Todd Blaeser, owner of 1st Place Apparel, located on 300 N. Bridge St. in Chippewa Falls, just finished putting together his own slot car racetrack in the main level of his store.

The cars and four-lane track is 1/32 scale to the real thing, said Blaeser. With fake grass surrounding the slot car track and a computer hooked up to record the number of laps and fastest laps, as well as add sound effects while racing, it is easy to see why slot car racing is become popular again.

Blaeser was inspired to put a slot car racetrack in his store because he used to race slot cars when he was a kid, and even used it to bond with his son years ago, said Blaeser."

Excellent article about Todd!

SEMINAR--HST 485P1 FALL, 2010
The Automobile and American Life
Class Meeting: Monday, 3:00-5:50 p.m.
HM 468

Instructor: Dr. John A. Heitmann
Office: HM 435
Telephone: x92803
E-mail: John.Heitmann@notes.udayton.edu
Office Hours:
MWF 10-10:50 a.m., or by appointment


It has been said that the automobile is the perfect technological symbol of American culture, a tangible expression of our quest to level space, time and class, and a reflection of our restless mobility, social and otherwise. In this seminar we will explore together the place of the automobile in American life, and how it transformed business, life on the farm and in the city, the nature and organization of work, leisure time, and the arts. This is a most complex transition that we will study, as the automobile transformed everyday life and the environment in which we operate. It influenced the foods we eat; music we listen to; risks we take; places we visit; errands we run; emotions we feel; movies we watch; stress we endure; and, the air we breathe.

Required Texts:
John Heitmann, The Automobile and American Life (McFarland, 2009).
Cotton Seiler, Republic of Drivers (Chicago, 2008).
Kevin Borg, Auto Mechanics: Technology and Expertise in Twentieth Century America (Johns Hopkins, 2007).

Grades: Course work will consist of seminar lectures, discussions, presentations, films, and optional field trips to the Dayton Concurs and the Kil-Kare Drag Strip near Xenia. Grades will be based on class discussion and 2 three page book review point papers (30%), an assigned book class presentation (25%) and a research paper (45%).

In this class we will define the seminar as a shared learning experience in which one of its purposes is to create new knowledge. Therefore, the research paper is the most significant assignment of this course. It should critically explore an area of knowledge related to the automobile and American life, and ideally should be 15 pages double spaced in length, with footnotes and bibliography, and furthermore draw on minimally 15 sources, primary and secondary. I plan to meet with you individually and collectively during the semester to ensure that your topic has a proper focus and that sources are readily available for your project. A late paper will be penalized one-half letter grade per day.




Among the term paper topics are the following suggestions:

A Reassessment of the Life of Henry Ford II
Edsel Ford and Design during the 1930s
Fast Women -- Women Race Drivers (The Bugatti Queen, Denise McCluggage, and others)
American Board Tracks, 1911-1930
The Vanderbilt Cup, 1936-1937
Eight Tack Tape Players and the Automobile
Sex and the Automobile – either in terms of culture and design, or in terms of sex in cars
Women as Depicted in Automobile Advertising, 1920 - 1980 (you should narrow down the decades)
Seat Belts (or the Airbag, or Crumple Zones) and the Coming of Automobile Safety
Auto Racing Safety, post-WWII -- helmets, roll bars, fire suppression
Automobile Toys -- Ray Cox and the Thimble Drone Racers, etc.
Anti-Auto Literature in America, 1950-1980 (or 1970-2000)
Auto Theft, Organized Crime, and Theft Deterrents
The Automobile and the Environment: California Air Quality after WWII
Automation and the Post-WWII American Auto Industry
Automobile Journalists and Writers – Floyd Clymer
The Automobile and American Literature: fiction written since 1980
The Automobile and Film – Narrow down by decade or genre
Music about the Automobile or about Highways – again, narrow down by period
Drinking and Driving in the 20th Century
Car Jackings and Drive-by Shootings during the 1990s
The Big Three at War: WWII and the American Auto Industry
Industry Pioneers: Hiram Maxim, Alexander Winton, Ransom Olds, or perhaps others
Poetry and the Automobile, narrowed down by period
Buckminster Fuller and his Dymaxion Car; or, aerodynamics, streamlining and culture during the 1930s
The Automobile and Unionism -- Pattern Bargaining
Speed Traps during the 1920s
African-Americans and the Automobile -- use of newspaper databases
Ascot Raceway and the journalists who fought to close it during the 1930s
Hip-Hop and Cars – themes and artists
George Romney and American Motors

You will be required to submit point paper reviews on the books authored by Cotton Seiler and Kevin Borg. These are three page typed short essays that concisely summarize the key theme of each book and discuss how successful each writer was in conveying his or her point. These papers will serve as the starting point of in class discussions.

My book The Automobile and American Life is our key common reading in this class and the touchstone for our discussions. While you will not be tested on this reading, you will be responsible for reading this book and critically commenting on it in class.

Additionally, you must select from the syllabus a book that you will report on to the class at the scheduled time. All books listed are in the Roesch Library or in my possession ; you are to prepare a 20-30 minute presentation in which you discuss the author’s main theme(s), the subject topic of the book and its central narrative, and finally your own assessment of this book and how it enhanced(or stultified) your knowledge and interest in the history of the automobile in America.






Schedule of Assignments and Class Meetings

Week 1 — August 30
Introduction. What our cars tell us about ourselves. The automobile and its inherent contradictions. The automobile in art and as art.
Reading: Heitmann, Introduction.
Film: “Wild Wheels”

Week 2 -- Labor Day, No Class

Week 3 — September 13
Pioneers
Reading: Heitmann, Chapters 1.
Film: “Horatio’s Drive”
Report(s): Michael Berger, The Devil Wagon on God’s Country: The Automobile and Social Change in Rural America, 1893-1929 --; Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Ambersons (1918)--;

Week 4 — September 20
Henry Ford, Fordism, and the Model T.
Reading: Heitmann, Chapter 2
Films: Mack Sennet, “Gussle’s Day of Rest( 1915).”
“California Straight Ahead,” (1925); “The Crowd Roars” (1932); “Burn ‘Em Up Barnes’”(1934)
Music: Virginia Liston, Bertha Chippie Hill, Robert Johnson
Report(s): Reynold M. Wik, Henry Ford and Grass-Roots America (Ann Arbor, 1972);
Greg Grandin, Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City (Metropolitan, 2009).


Week 5 — September 27
The Rise of General Motors and Sloanism
Reading: Heitmann, Chapter 3.
Film: “Roger and Me”
Report(s): Sally H. Clarke, Trust and Power: Consumers, the Modern Corporation, and the Making of the United States Automobile Market (Cambridge, 2007)--; Stuart W. Leslie, Boss Kettering: Wizard of General Motors (Columbia, 1983)--;
Stephen Bayley, Harley Earl (New York, 1990)--.

Short Review of Auto Mechanics is due.









Week 6 — October 4
America on the Road: The Highway and the City;
Reading: Heitmann, Chapter 4
Film: “Taken for a Ride”
Reports: Jack Keroauc, On the Road; Warren James Belasco, Americans on the Road: From Autocamp to Motel, 1910-1945 (Johns Hopkins, 1997) – ; William Least Heat Moon, Blue Highways (Boston, 1982);
Report(s): Ashleigh Brilliant, The Great Car Craze: How Southern California Collided with the Automobile in the 1920s (Santa Barbara, 1989) – .
Scott Bottles, Los Angeles and the Automobile (Berkeley, 1987) – .

Week 7 — October 11 Women Behind the Wheel; Religion, Sex, and the Automobile

Readings: Heitmann, Chapter 5
Reports: Virginia Scharff, Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age(New Mexico, 1992) –; Elinor Nauen, Ladies Start your Engines: Women Writers and the Road (Boston, 1996).
Films: “Thelma and Louise;”

Week 8 — October 18
Library and Consultation Day – no class

Week 9 — October 25
The Interwar Years; The Great Depression
Reading: Heitmann, Chapter 6.
Reports: David Blanke, Hell on Wheels: The Promise and Peril of America’s Car Culture, 1900-1940 (Kansas, 2007)--; Peter D. Norton, Fighting Traffic: the Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City (MIT, 2008)--;


Week 10 — November 1 WWII and the Reconversion Economy

Reading: Heitmann, Chapter 7.
Report: David Gartman, Auto Opium (New York, 1994);
Film: “Tucker”
Term Paper Proposal Due; The Completion of a Working Bibliography of no less than 15 Sources, 5 of which are articles.




Week 11 — November 8
Chrome Dreams of the 1950s
Readings: Heitmann, Chapter 8

Report(s): John Keats, The Insolent Chariots (Philadelphia, 1958) – ; Katie Mills, The Road Story and the Rebel: Moving Through Film, Fiction, and Television (Carbondale, IL, 2006) – .
Film: “Rebel Without a Cause;” “Thunder Road.”
Music: Jackie Berenson, Howlin’ Wolf, and Chuck Berry.

Review of Cotton Seiler's Book is Due

Week 12 — November 15
Muscle Cars of the 1960s; Jan & Dean and the Beach Boys
Readings: Heitmann, Chapter 9
Music: Dead Man’s Curve — Jan and Dean; Little Duce Coupe — The Beach Boys; GTO – Ronny and the Daytonas;
Reports: David Lucsko, The Business of Speed : the Hot Rod Industry in America, 1915-1990 (Johns Hopkins, 2008)--; Tom Wolfe, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (New York, 1965) – Tom Lewis, Divided Highways (Viking, 1997) – ; Lee Iacocca, with William Novak, Iacocca: An Autobiography (Bantam, 1984) --;
Film: “Bullitt;” “American Graffiti”



Week 13 — November 22
Safety and the Environment;

Reports: Ralph Nader, Unsafe at Any Speed (New York, 1965); Emma Rothchild, Paradise Lost: The Decline of the Auto-Industrial Age (New York, 1973) – ; Jane Holtz Kay, Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take it Back(Crown, 1997); Brock Yates, The Critical Path (Little, Brown, 1996);
Readings: Flink, pp. 295-345.
Film: “The Vanishing”



Term Paper Progress Reports — Entire Class

It was one more for the road in Oak Brook on Saturday. Summer, as it is to bike racing, at least, is nearly over.

It seems like it was just weeks ago that I came back from California, full of piss and vinegar and braggadocio…and naïveté. That we finally had a warm enough day to shed the winter shell, leave the booties at home, and sprint into Glencoe without being wary of ice patches.

Getting dropped from the sprint in Hillsboro was of no consequence – it was still only March. Cracking at the top of the hill in Whitnall Park on the last lap didn’t matter. I was still recovering from Ashville. A 5th overall in West Lafayette and a top ten the next week at Snake Alley tantalized and lured me on. Crashing myself out of Bensonville in Superweek actually encouraged me – I’d finally learned how to end a race on my own terms. Surely, the next six weeks had glory and points in store.

And then, as Phil Liggett likes to say, “I lost my bottle.”

Until yesterday, those next 6 weeks passed by ignominiously, as I watched each race weekend approach as would a deer lost in the blinding glare of headlights. Talking myself up to the line, only to talk myself down when it came to time to bumping elbows and sticking on wheels in a crowd at 30mph, all for a $50 check.

And while I looked back through all that, California seemed like eons ago.

So I sat out Downers. It would’ve done me no good, with where my head was at, right then. And instead of preparing for the race I rebuilt my psyche. A Monday night path ride with a teammate I’d rode all last fall with, while I was laid off. It was pure magic, an elixir. The training plan out the window for just one day, and south we rode, huge efforts alternated with jokes, pushing one another to physical exhaustion and laughter at the same time. That morning I woke up not wanting to look at my bike. That night I fell asleep in love with it.

That Saturday’s team ride was the first day I’d gone long since before Proctor. Not many were there, but some of the fast boys did show up. Throwing down with 3s and 2s on sprint points seemingly every 10 miles, just for the fun of it, made me see that I did belong. And while I still have a lot to learn, I certainly don’t need to put the kind of pressure on myself as I were doing this for a living.

And that was what I brought to the line on Saturday morning at the Tour of Oak Brook, the Road Race Championship of Illinois.

The hour plus wait for registration negated what remaining pressure I’d brought on myself that morning – all I worried about as I heard them calling us to stage was pinning my numbers on straight. Even then, our group was still starting over an hour late.

What ever else I had to worry about was killed off by seeing Katy drive by in the Zipcar with my parents. It didn’t even dawn on me that they were nearly 45 minutes late themselves until I yelled, “Hello!” from the 50 meters line – behind the Elite 4s – and was answered with a middle finger left behind by squealing tires like an empty bag of fast food. I just stared, jaw hanging open, at the car turning into the grass field. Somebody uttered, “Oh no, she didn’t…” while Newt handed me a shot block as if it were a piece of consoling candy. Bob gently rubbed my shoulder and said, “focus, man…just focus.”

They weren’t my directions. I was the victim, here. Rolling.

8 laps on a 3.2 mile course, and we started at quite an easy pace for a road race that was essentially a long crit. It was a triangle with two 90 degree turns and then of course a sharp, obtuse angle at turn three right before a home stretch just under a mile…with a monster tail wind. I started to the middle of the back through turn 3 and then, and on every lap it was a crazed scrambled to be the first again through turn one.

Newt was the XXX anchor at the front, never back more than five wheels at any time. A swarm would predictably come before and after each turn, and compounded by the fact that the last climb was right before turn three. Not much else to say, it was pretty much just eight laps of that. Greg and Kyle went off on hard flyers to try and get something, anything going, but nobody was chasing, and neither stayed off for long.

I just sat in, keyed off of Newt, and waited until the end – trying to stay up front, ahead of the cursing and yelling.

With one to go I held fast to the top five, but at the back on Spring Road, a few riders jumped the yellow line, inviting indignant shouts, and then a hard charging pack up the second climb pushed me out of the top twenty. I stayed calm, riding safe and smart, knowing I still had around a mile and a long ramp-up awaiting me.

We came out of turn three and I watched the front riders already jockeying around for position as the accordion effect brought us back together. My indecision nearly kept me behind them as I could see the wall forming before I realized there was huge gap remaining on the right hand side of the two lane home stretch. Nobody at the front wanted to leave a wheel, even three or four deep. Anybody who was in the thick it seemed to miss the opening to the right.

I then woke up with a start and began screaming at Nathan, in front and to the right, to move his ass…he wasn’t exactly going too slow, but with the entire pack now stretching the width of the road and about 300 meters to go, things were about to get awfully tight. It was all he needed to hear. Before I could grab his wheel for a leadout though, I had to loudly alert the rightward sliding Flatlandia rider to my presence, and then stood up to shift and give it my last…and realized I was out of gears.

I spun out to the line, hitting 40mph while never getting out of the saddle, and getting pipped at the last moment by a 40+ rider from Tower, the host team.

It took some sorting out, combining the camera, the time chips, and good old fashioned “detective work”, but about 20 minutes later, I was standing on the podium for the second time this year with a 3rd place finish in the Master’s 3- + Cat 4/5 (say that 3 times, fast) – 6th overall.

I felt happy and, yes, lucky. It was not a Hollywood ending to 2008 by any stretch of imagination. I had certainly not been in the best position in most races out of turn 3, but today it was actually as ideal as it could get. Being keyed up at the front, and reticent to go off with 20 twitchy riders right behind you would of course blind any racer to the particular situation. It was only the riders coming up from the back that could steadily ramp up their speed with conviction and determination who had the advantage yesterday. And sure enough, other than the overall winner who did attack from the last turn, at least 7 of the top ten did indeed come up from the back right.

Luck and patience – and just maybe a bit of tactics – finally came up in my favor.

It’s hard and sad to realize it’s all done, nearly finished. How could the season have gone by so fast? And how, as I relive it tonight in such vivid detail, could its beginnings seem so long ago?

Whichever. Sunday, as I sped into shade, chasing dust clouds on the single track, the sense of time was lost altogether. Perhaps the seasons will blend together more and more as I experience more, race more, into the illusion of greater length. Or maybe not. Maybe as I get older and the chances for victory get more fleeting, the seasons will seem shorter still.

But as long as I have her at my side, to joke and cheer, even through getting lost with shoddy directions and baking in the hot sun for me to wait on a $30 check, it will seem just right.

Hi folks -- another rainy and gloomy morning in Ohioland, but that didn't keep VW and Porsche owners from coming out with their cars to Mark Schlacter's annual VW/Porsche reunion, held at GE Park. The morning started out dark, cold (for September) and drizzly. It seems we have had this weather almost non-stop for a week, with just enough breaks to cut the grass before the next rain event comes. How I ever decided to come to Ohio 25 years ago is now beyond my comprehension, although I can explain it away as a thought disorder.

There were plenty of VWs of all kinds, although I did not see many Karmann-Ghias. And these shows brings out all kinds of nuts, like the Kuebelwagen guy with his guns mounted on the vehicle and ready to go. Actually, I took great offense at his SS sticker on the car, and should have told him so. Only now as I think back to it and that sticker have I concluded that I was morally weak. I wonder if this owner ever was shot at or killed someone in combat. Some historical artifacts need not be brought back to us so faithfully. And indeed, I don't know if Kuebelwagens were actually marked with SS designations. Third Reich nuts!

The Porsches shown -- there were about 27 or so -- were uneven in terms of quality and historical merit. I wonder about these folks who want a concours prize for their 2008 vehicles. It seems to me to be a lame attempt at some sort of psychological gratification. And I have to say that Porsche owners are a strange breed. Some are so self-centered I certainly don't want to be around them. They have missed the point.