New Year Begins In Frenetic Fashion

An early episode of the television series “Law & Order” had detectives Lennie Briscoe and Mike Logan tackling a heavy caseload that included five unrelated murders and a domestic quarrel in a 24-hour period. Appropriately, the episode was titled “Mayhem.” It came to mind earlier this week when contemplating today’s RIDE-CT. While there hasn’t been any mayhem, the past two-plus weeks have been unusually frenetic with unrelated motorcycle activities overlapping.

Let’s begin on New Year’s Day. Having written in Dec. 20’s column about a 1965 Honda C110 that was being restored for auction at the annual Possum Queen pageant in Litchfield that day, I went to see how much it fetched. The bidding far surpassed the $1,000 reserve and even topped the N.A.D.A. book value of $2,420 for a C110 in excellent shape. Denise Leclair of Goshen won the 50cc bike for $2,575 and gave it to friend Judy Finerghty.

Finerghty later checked in. “I fell in love with this bike the moment I saw it. Took it for a spin the next day. It fired right up and it was fun to ride. Lots of spunk and I couldn’t be happier with this vintage beauty,” she wrote.

Two days later, it was off to Suffield to see the private motorcycle collection of Paul Mancinone for a (still to be written) story for RIDE-CT.com. Mancinone works as a tax attorney/accountant in Springfield, Mass. He’d emailed an invite a while back and we’d finally arranged a time for a tour of the mini-museum in a former in-law apartment in his home.

To get there, we passed through his two-car garage in which sat a Ferrari and a Maserati. Mancinone‘s collection mixes old and new. There’s a 1967 BMW R60/2, a 2009 Ducati Hypermotard, a 1977 Aermacchi racer and a 1964 Honda Dream. “I had to buy a bike for the year I was born,” he said of the Honda.

Not all of his bikes are on the premises. In his office in downtown Springfield is a Sears-branded Gilera, which we stopped to see before moving on to the Lyman & Merrie Wood Museum of Springfield History to see a replica of a 1909 Harley-Davidson Model 5 that he’d donated. It took a little talking but the guard at the front desk let us in without paying.

After seeing the bike, we parted ways. I went searching for “Q,” a six-month-old barbeque restaurant at 890 State St. that’s across the street from the old Indian factory. Inside, there’s always a vintage Indian on display. My order of a pulled pork sandwich, which came with three tangy sauces, and a side of macaroni and cheese was tasty. “Our goal is to do everything fresh. Frozen is not an option,” said co-owner Chris Spagnoli, who restaurant promises “Smokin’ Good Food.”

Three days later, an email arrived from reader Bjorn Bagn of Torrington. He wrote, “Little by little, ‘galloping geriatrics’ has caught up with me. With two metal knees, and at 84 years, I think my days of dirt bike riding are over.” He explained that he had two Spanish-made, 1970 Montesa Scorpio basket cases that he wanted to give a new home.

I immediately thought of friend and Ossa rider Tim Sparks of Goshen.  If he didn’t want them, he’d certainly know someone in the Spanish Motorcycle Owners Group (S.M.O.G.) who’d want to rescue them. I checked with Sparks, reconnected with Bagn, and set up at 1 p.m. appointment for last Sunday.

Before the weekend arrived, though, it was off to the Department of Motor Vehicles in Waterbury to register the 1994 Moto Guzzi California that I recently bought (and mentioned in Jan. 3’s column). I picked a cold day figuring that the office wouldn’t be as crowded, and was rewarded by being in and out with a new “Classic Motorcycle” plate in less than 15 minutes.

After that, it was a quick stop at The Republican-American to get a back copy of the Oct. 25 column on the under-construction New England Motorcycle Museum in Rockville. Owner Ken Kaplan had requested the column so that it could can be framed and displayed. The column isn’t old, but I’m certainly old enough to be considered a museum piece.

Sunday arrived and the phone rang mid-morning. It was Bagn calling to say that he’d have to postpone. He’d gone to get the Montesas ready for viewing, had an accident and had possibly broken his hip. He said he was headed to the hospital in Hartford.

Content to stay at my laptop, I visited the state’s Judicial Branch website to see if there was any progress in the case involving my riding mate and friend Gary Randall, who died from head injuries sustained in an August 2013 crash when an unobservant driver pulled into his path as we rode to dinner on Route 202 in Litchfield.

To my initial confusion, Ken Nolan’s name was no longer listed among the pending cases. Further checking revealed that he pleaded “guilty” on Jan. 7 to a charge of negligent homicide involving a motor vehicle. He was sentenced to six months in jail and given 18 months of probation. The jail time was suspended.

Was this justice? As a friend, I was outraged. As a rider, I thought that a more severe punishment than probation was probably warranted.  But, as a dispassionate reporter and, hopefully, compassionate human being, I also understood that Gary had been largely invisible to Nolan at the time of the accident. His bike didn’t have an illuminated headlight, he was dressed in black, and there was dark background of maple trees with the setting sun behind them. He was, unfortunately, easily overlooked by Nolan.

At the end of the “Law & Order” episode, detectives Briscoe and Logan were worn out. I’m not. I’m laughing. The phone just rang and the caller, who said he had just come across my business card with “RIDE-CT” on it, wanted to know how much it would cost for a ride to Newington. I explained that RIDE-CT wasn’t a taxi service. Seriously, who would want to ride on the back of a motorcycle in the deep freeze that we’ve been experiencing lately?

(Originally published in “The Republican-American” on Jan. 17, 2015)