The heat is the great equalizer. As I learn from “Captain Kirk” (a retired librarian and the unofficial leader of the Bare-as-You-Dare Scooter Club ), the high is the catalyst.
By J. Sinclair
“You wear leathers on a Harley when it’s 100 degrees, you’ll pass out before you hit second gear,” he explains, adjusting his helmet. “But a scooter? A scooter is slow. It’s casual. At 25 miles an hour, the breeze is just a kiss. And when it’s this hot, a kiss is all you want. Clothes just get in the way of the wind.” Scooters Sunflowers Nudists Temp
It’s not a protest. It’s not a fetish. It’s just a simple equation: The heat is the great equalizer
I’m standing at the edge of a gravel parking lot in rural Wisconsin, watching a man in his sixties zip past on a lime-green Vespa. He is wearing nothing but a pair of Tevas and a smile. Behind him, a sea of sunflowers stretches toward a hazy horizon, their massive heads tracking the sun like loyal disciples. Sinclair “You wear leathers on a Harley when
The connection to the sunflowers is more than just scenic. The farm, run by a patient family named Gruber, plants these towering yellow giants specifically as a privacy screen for the nudist section of the trail. “We’re not trying to shock the neighbors,” says Marta Gruber, wiping sweat from her forehead with a sunflower-print towel. “We’re trying to remind people that a body in the sun is just a body. The sunflowers don’t care. The bees don’t care. Only the thermostat cares.”
And the heat does care. It dictates the rules. By 11:00 AM, the pavement is too hot for bare feet, hence the Tevas. By noon, the plastic seats of the Vespas become miniature frying pans. I watch a woman named Diane drape a damp chamois cloth over her seat. “Secret trick,” she winks. “Evaporative cooling. Also keeps you from sticking to the vinyl.”