It’s a rare day at MCSA when something amazing doesn’t happen.
For me, however, today will be more memorable than most days. Ray Verbraak of Verbraak Welding in Bettendorf arrived to install the four custom-made bike racks he built for MCSA. The wracks were purchased with a generous donation from the Melon City Bike Club and other private donations. But as is sometimes the case, once Verbraak started to hang them up on the Fourth Street side of the MCSA building, we discovered the fourth one wouldn’t fit where we had planned to put all of them. After a couple of quick huddles and conversations with Pam Collins, the director at Musser Public Library, we agreed to put the fourth rack there.
Ray Verbraak
A number of residents in the MCSA Men’s Dorms use bikes in nice weather as their primary mode of transportation. Because of that, we anticipate they will use most of the nine hooks now installed on the MCSA building. But all four of the racks are meant to be used by anyone who bikes downtown and needs a place to park. Combined, the four racks have spaces for 12 bikes. The bikes can be securely locked on to each rack. For what it’s worth, I would expect Greg Harper of Harper’s Cycling & Fitness to sometimes ride to church on Sunday and park his bike on one of these racks. And I won’t be surprised if the rack installed at the library is used more than the other three combined.
For this afternoon, I parked one of my bikes at the library so people could see how the new racks are used. Getting them today is exciting news, if you ask me.
For several years, several of my biking friends and I have been making an annual trip each fall on the Great River Trail from Rock Island, Ill., to Savanna. On these trips, we usually stop at It’s On The River in Port Byron, Ill., which is where we first saw and used Verbraak’s bike racks. It’s exciting to finally have something like them in Muscatine. And just in time for biking season.
You and your iPhone might need to enter a 12-step program if, during one of the rare occasions in which you are listening to FM radio, you hear Rock ‘N Roll All Night by KISS.
That’s not really a problem until your first thought is to “share” the song on Facebook. And then you remember you can’t because you are listening to the radio instead of listening to Spotify on your phone.
When asked why he rides a bicycle, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer is reported to have said: The advantages? Exercise, no parking problems, gas prices, it’s fun. An automobile is expensive. You have to find a place to park and it’s not fun. So why not ride a bicycle? I recommend it.
Stephen Breyer
Breyer, 74, was appointed in 1994 by President Bill Clinton and is generally regarded as one of the High Court’s liberals. So maybe that’s why he is an advocate for bicycling.
But I’m not into politics today. I only point out Breyer’s position on bicycling to raise awareness for 30 Days of Biking. Now in its fourth year, the organizers say the only rule for 30 Days of Biking is to bike somewhere every day for 30 days — around the block, 20 miles to work, whatever suits you — and then share your adventures online.
To be honest, I wimped out and didn’t ride Monday night because it was kinda cold. And I don’t know if I’ll make it today. But I am planning to ride Wednesday.
This mid-1970s Ford Gran Torino was spotted Sunday in downtown Muscatine.
Some things will always catch my eye. And one of the things on that list is the mid 1970s-era Ford Gran Torino — the car made famous by the TV show, “Starsky & Hutch.”
Replica of the Gran Torino driven by TV cops Starsky and Hutch.
This partially explains why the Gran Torino pictured above caught my eye when I saw it parked Sunday afternoon in downtown Muscatine. It’s not that I was a huge fan of the TV show, which was broadcast from 1975-79 on ABC. It starred Paul Michael Glaser and David Soul as David Michael Starsky and Kenneth ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson, respectively.
Nope. The real story is that the second car I ever owned — with my younger brothers, Scott and Doug — was a 1976 red Ford Torino. (Note: I had to share this car with my brothers because my parents were somewhat stingy and also really smart; they knew better than to let us each have a car. The first car Scott and I owned, for those of you keeping score, was a really ugly 1972 Ford Galaxy 500 that we bought from a neighbor for $300. He had kept it in his barn, but hey, it was a car.)
This was not my car, but it looked a little like this.
Sadly, I don’t have any photos of the Torino. If either of my brothers have one and share it with me, I’ll post it here later. But it looked sort of like this one when we bought it. This would have been in 1983 or ’84. We bought the car from a couple in Des Moines. They were about to have a baby and wanted to sell the Torino before getting the new minivan they had ordered. We paid them $1,800 for the car, which had about 50,000 miles.
It also had the quarter vinyl top like the one on the car shown here. But the vinyl was ripped and shredded. It looked like someone had dragged a tomcat across it. We wanted a hardtop anyway, so the first thing we did, once we got the money, was take the car to an auto-body shop in our hometown and BEG the owner to take off the vinyl, fill in hundreds of tiny holes and repaint the roof. It looked great when he was done.
He was a good guy and he made us a good deal on four used aluminum wheels. As I recall, we paid him $100 for the four of them. We took those wheels home, polished ‘em up and saved some more money until we could buy four new Kelly Springfield tires. We topped it all off with one of the better car stereo systems you could buy in 1984 and a dual straight-pipe exhaust with Cherry Bomb/Glass Pack mufflers. Aw, now there’s a sound. When I hear it, I’m instantly 17 again. (You have to click on the link to give it a listen. I insist. We’ll wait for you to come back.)
The Bronco
Some of my friends had newer — and, I suppose, — nicer cars. And there were faster cars. Our Torino had a Ford 351 V8 Cleveland motor that Scott built and an automatic transmission. But you could easily top 100 mph in it and we all did. More than once.
But none of my friends’ cars were any cooler than that Torino. I wish I still had it, which is one of the reasons for this blog post. On my Facebook page Sunday, I posted the photo above of the car I spotted in Muscatine. A friend asked if I was planning to trade in my old Ford Bronco.
All I could say is: I wish.
The problem is, I don’t know whatever happened to the Torino. It’s probably in a junkyard somewhere. When I left for college, my brothers got to keep the Torino, and they more or less ran the wheels off of it. None of us were old enough to know better even though we all thought we knew everything.
And I bought a 1974 AMC Matador for $600 from a widow in my hometown. It was actually a faster car than the Ford even though it looked funny. Sadly, I didn’t keep it either. Nor do I have any photos of it. But the Matador is a story for another day.
This was not my Matador, but it looked kind of like this — on a good day.
For me, however, today will be more memorable than most days. Ray Verbraak of Verbraak Welding in Bettendorf arrived to install the four custom-made bike racks he built for MCSA. The wracks were purchased with a generous donation from the Melon City Bike Club and other private donations. But as is sometimes the case, once Verbraak started to hang them up on the Fourth Street side of the MCSA building, we discovered the fourth one wouldn’t fit where we had planned to put all of them. After a couple of quick huddles and conversations with Pam Collins, the director at Musser Public Library, we agreed to put the fourth rack there.
