Arrival

The San Francisco Bay Area is more bike-aware than any other place I've ridden. Bikers can ride in the special lanes reserved for commuters who share cars: motorcycles are seen as a viable way of reducing commuter traffic and pollution, so they get to share the benefits of a slightly more empty lane. There are lots more motorcycles on the road. Lane-sharing is permissible and even preferred from a safety point of view (it's harder to cut up two bikes when overtaking; they have to be treated like a car). Also, I particularly appreciated the way that filtered traffic lights kept the traffic sane in towns, avoiding most of the risks of people pulling out on top of a motorcyclist though, in cold weather, the sensors don't work particularly well and the bike may not even trigger them.

My first experience of Californian riding was in July 1996. I was based in Mountain View with my Internet friend, Don, who had invited me over after several months of entertaining correspondence. I'd felt the urge to have an adventure, and an adventure is what I had!

A way of life

I rode as a pillion passenger for the most part, and in ten days did around 1000 miles with a numb rear. Don rides Max (see picture) , a Honda Magna V65 (1100cc) which is black, and goes like stink, but its pillion seat is rock hard. A particularly manic talk session involving tape measures, seat heights and inside legs had revealed that, though nothing like a leggy blonde, my legs were nearly as long as Don's (for perspective, I am 5'4" and he is 6'1"!). This meant that, technically speaking, I was able to safely ride and flatfoot the bike. However, I had passed my test less than a month earlier and, after a particularly wobbly turn around a local car park, I decided that I was not ready for 1100cc's worth of bike, let alone a pillion passenger. Even so, it gave me something to gloat about in my postcard to work: I rode an 1100cc bike! Hee Hee!

The impression I got out there was that motorcycling was more than a hobby - it was a way of life: a free and easy mindset. Nobody rides half-heartedly, and one's bikes are fondly remembered. On several occasions people would come up and chat or say Howdy, nice bike; and the way I learnt that a helmet on the ground signals a biker in need was when an elderly man wandered down from his truck to check I was okay whilst we were parked at a burger place somewhere. We then chatted about biking and how he'd once been a biker, too.

Taco Bell

Within a couple of days I had fulfilled two minor but long-term ambitions. The day after I arrived, still with jetlag, we went to Road Rider and I was furnished with a shiny new Shoei helmet which fitted, unlike the one Don had borrowed from his friend J.C. It was signficicantly cheaper than a similar item in the U.K., as was the cost of bikes (sickening so, in fact). I then had my second taste of American nonsense as we went to rent When Harry Met Sally from a big chainstore video shop, only to be told that if we did not provide a phone number, then the computer could not possibly accept our application: and this to Don, a professional programmer who knew otherwise! After a certain amount of arguing, and the giving of the phone number 123456 ("Can we reach you on that number, Sir?") we went and found a very local and small video shop which would not only process the application without a phone number, it would do just what the customer wished. The first bit of nonsense, incidentally, was on actually leaveing the airport the first day: the bike had not triggered the sensors so, as we left, it showed up as a stolen parking ticket - easily solved, but irritating.

Ambition number one, then: to eat at Taco Bell. Ever since seeing that wonderfully satirical film, Demolition Man, I had wanted to eat there. It wasn't exactly the classy restaurant which survived the Franchise Wars, but they did a wicked taco and I have a photograph somewhere with me and a very smug grin. I also learnt that food, particularly good unhealthy tasty food, is dirt cheap out West...

We stopped by a N.A.S.A. exhibition which had a Real Rocket and information about the wind tunnel used in Shuttle experiments. On the way back to the apartment we bumped into Linda and Bill. Bill is one of the maintenance guys at the apartment complex and Linda is his girlfriend. They insisted that we should accompany them to San Francisco in their New Truck and I didn't take much persuading!

1 ... Note added April 1998: This isn't true at all. California and the Bay Area have large amounts of crazy and badly trained drivers. I was a tourist at the time I wrote this, not a resident!