Scooter Rage XX

Scooter Rage XX was the weekend before Pride, and I came specially equipped with a new L series zoom lens (70-200). I bought the new lens because of feedback from Brian about my pictures at High Rollers (gallery): Brian wanted more pictures of scooterists, less of scooters, and he was dead-on. I am often too shy to ask people to take pictures, and I prefer unposed, candid shots to boot. At High Rollers, my longs lens locked up with grit and sand, so I couldn’t use the autofocus, and without that, I couldn’t take those surreptitious candid shots quickly enough. I only half-captured the scooter sub-culture that Brian, Kevin and Dennis find so fascinating (albeit vicariously through me) and exemplified by Patrick and Doug above right.

This rally, I planned to ignore the scooters entirely, and focus on the people. Oddly enough, this isn’t hard–very few people come up to bother me with conversation, because I don’t really interact with the scooter crowd. I don’t fit in, and I don’t want to try to fit in. In fact, I stay so aloof that very few people even notice me (April, to the left, being a notable exception), so I can just plop down in a corner and snap pics.

Patrick actually commented that I "lurk at the fringes" of scooter rallies, but that the end result were fantastic pictures like the ones I took at High Rollers.

But something I ate on Friday didn’t agree with me. My GI tract revolted Saturday morning. I thought everything was flushed out by the first Saturday ride, so I loaded up my gear and headed on out. By the end of the ride, I thought I was just a little dizzy from hunger. When I got off my scoot, though, something was wrong: I couldn’t stop burping despite the empty stomach, and I felt like I might sick-up.

I handed Patrick five bucks for a rally patch, and drove directly home. Well, almost directly. I ran into two lost scooterists on 3rd Street. There was no way they could find the brewery where everyone was meeting–the industrial bayshore southeast of Potrero Hill is my home territory, and it’s a maze. So I led them all the way back, then went directly home. By five pm, I had a fever of 102.7, and everything came up.

I missed the second Saturday ride, the Sunday rides, and all opportunities to take pics. But I shot half a roll on Friday, and added some of them to my SF Scooter Rallies gallery. They’re OK. No flash with a long lens, so a little dark. But I think they capture some of the human side of the scooter community.