A new spin on Dad's day gifts

Like good airline service, Father's Day only comes around once a year.

Fasten your seat belts.

Here's my last-minute guide to some great gifts for dad.

I love the idea of Harry Appleman's "Bag Bike." Flying is a hassle and driving is too expensive. Why not use the Bag Bike, a portable, full-size 18-speed mountain bike? The savvy traveler can carry the bike in two red bags. You can bring the Bag Bike on a bus or a train without storing it on a rack. The Bag Bike weighs 34 pounds and, according to Appleman, can be assembled in two minutes without any tools.

"I ride bikes off and on and I know handlebars and the pedals are the two big things when you put a bike in a car," said Appleman, 70, an inventor from Pewaukee, Wis. "So I designed one. I was going to manufacture them here [in the U.S.] myself but I couldn't get parts and wheels made. A friend of mine imports from China and he told me to get them made over there. That's when I applied for a patent and proceeded from there."

I was skeptical about the Bag Bike being easy to assemble.

"I have a 13-year-old granddaughter who puts it together," Appleman said with Frank Sinatra's "Wives and Lovers" spinning in the background. "She has a hard time with the clamps because they're tight for a kid to push down. Other than that, there's nothing to it."

Bag Bikes sell for $500, including shipping (www.thebagbike.com). Appleman has sold out his first order of 400.

What's the best destination for Bag Bikers? The Old Bag Factory, 1100 Chicago Ave., in Goshen, Ind., (574) 534-2502, www.oldbag factory.com. It was built in 1896 and is now a haven for artists, crafts people, antique dealers and cafes. About 3,000 begonias, marigolds and other flowers form a quilt garden outside the brick building.

The 80,000-square-foot, four-story factory was built as the Cosmo Buttermilk Soap Company and in 1910 became the Chase Bag Factory. Among the many items produced were mesh bags for onions and potatoes and those tiny strips of sheer paper in Hershey's Kisses. So my idea of a cost-cutting Father's Day excursion would be to ride our Bag Bikes to the Old Bag Factory.

This is why I don't have children.

I just returned from romantic Naples, Italy, and got quite a load of all the hot couples riding around the city on their Vespas. Why haven't I thought of that? A Vespa gets up to 100 miles per gallon (depending on speed and riding conditions). This Italian line of scooters dates back to 1946. When inventor Enrico Piaggio heard the buzzing sound of the engine he said, "Sembra una vespa!" ("It reminds me of a wasp!")

There's only one Vespa dealer in Chicago: Motoworks, 1901 S. Western Ave., (312) 738-4269, www.chitownvespa.com. Deep-pocketed children can score Dad a Vespa for $2,500 to $7,000, depending on scooter size. "We've absolutely seen a huge increase in sales because of gas prices," said Motoworks service person Holly Huff.

You can get away with a regular driver's license to ride a standard 50 cc (engine size) scooter ($3,000 ballpark). The 50 cc goes between 40 and 45 mph. "Between 50 cc and 150 cc you need an L class license, for 150 cc and up you need a motorcycle license."

Huff, 22, rides a Vespa scooter but owns a Honda motorcycle. "You don't have to shift gears on a scooter," she said. "Just hop on 'em, twist throttle and go."

You can drive back in time as Audrey Hepburn and "journalist" Gregory Peck did on their Vespa in the 1953 classic film "Roman Holiday" with the newspaper Historical Fishwrap. There are few travel accessories as affordable as a good newspaper. I'm a traveler who will pick up a local newspaper whether I am in Litchfield, Ill., or San Francisco. Historical Fishwrap (www.historicalfishwrap.com) is my latest road mission.

Each Historical Fishwrap newspaper is a full-size reproduction of a set of original front pages and advertisements. It's a cheap and memorable road trip. I'm looking at the WWII Air War European issue of Historical Fishwrap. I am revisiting Naples on the July 17, 1943, front page of the Philadelphia Record. The headline reads: "BOMBERS SET NAPLES ABLAZE" and the story points out that as a port for Rome, the bulk of reinforcements and supplies for defenders of Sicily had to be moved after the hit by American bombers.

The same Philadelphia Record has a story about a feud between a U.S. price administrator and petroleum administrator about lifting the "pleasure-driving restrictions in the Eastern states." Price Administrator Prentiss M. Brown said, "'Pleasure driving' is a poor phrase anyway. You can't do much pleasure driving on 1½ gallons a week." Sound familiar? That Italian Vespa was just three years away.

Each version of Historical Fishwrap (former Sun-Timesman Mike Royko would have loved that name) is $6. It will be fun for me to drive around this summer finding fishwrap retail outlets such as Westmont Magazine & Books, 13 W. Quincy St., in west suburban Westmont, (630) 968-8591, and Horizon Books, 243 E. Front St., in Traverse City, Mich., (231) 946-7290. There's nothing like checking into your Motel 6 and catching up on some reading about the 1898 Spanish-American War.

Finally, while trying to stay with the times I recently picked up a DXG digital camcorder that retails for only $149.99 (www.dxgusa.com). I have used this camcorder on trips to Mississippi and Italy, but I still need to edit my material. This thing is great if Dad likes to tinker. The 5 megapixel camcorder is lightweight and can also snag photos with a resolution of up to 8 megapixels. There's a digital zoom and a 3-inch camcorder style flip-out LCD screen.

My only complaint was while in Naples I tried to interview people while recording them. The microphone had difficulty picking up everything they said. A DXG tech told me that the volume on the playback is less than one-half a watt. Stay within two to three feet of the subject and ask them to speak up. But as a beginner this camcorder worked for me and it is perfect for YouTube raconteurs.

Stay tuned. Soon on the Sun-Times Web site you might see me riding my Bag Bike to Coal Fire on West Grand Avenue for the best Neapolitan pizza in Chicago. I'll be the guy reading Historical Fishwrap.