A Wave to The Promised Land
Of all the personal entertainment activities I could have during a pandemic, I suspect that motorcycling is one of the best under the circumstances. Yes I like riding with my pals of the AFMC and I like it when Kim chooses to ride pillion with me, but I have always been content with riding solo and just enjoying the road and the ride. I imagine that comes from my early years of biking around Italy and Europe. My solo trip to London’s Elite Motors to buy my first big bike, the Triumph Tiger TR6R 650, was in November 1970, so exactly fifty years ago, and it was a portend of many riding miles to come. I had zero concerns at age sixteen getting on a charter flight to London from Rome’s Ciampino Airport out by Castel Gandolfo, the Pope’s summer residence on Lake Albano. Finding my own lodging near Paddington Station in one of the many small guest houses where bathrooms were still generally a hallway shared affair was easy. Taking care of payment for the bike was easy thanks to the ubiquitous nature of American Express Traveller’s Checks. And driving to Dover and onto the continent for a 1,200 km journey to Rome through France, Switzerland and down half of Italy was a breeze as only an adolescent on a serotonin and adrenaline high might find it. Riding a “Super Bike”, as a British Twin was considered in those heady pre-college, pre-stagflation, pre-Watergate days of bliss, was the closest thing I could consider the promised land of my youth. I was a good student, I would soon learn that I had been admitted to Cornell’s College of Engineering, I was breaking free of the nest of home, the bonds of which were not particularly tight around me, but coming of age causes pangs of independence nonetheless. The world was my oyster and it was all laid at my feet with no thought of hurdles or barriers, only thoughts of great things that lay unspecified but nonetheless arrayed like a sumptuous buffet before me.
While my band of friends in high school in Rome were equally enamored at the time with motorcycles, we were all quite different in that pursuit. Bobbie was the origination of the trend and he loved the mechanics of motorcycles and was a true student of the machine. He had a decided bent towards European and especially Italian bikes and was always explaining the intricacies of them to the rest of us as he read all the gearhead motorcycle magazines. Today Bobbie owns a museum’s worth of old European and especially Italian bikes that he lovingly maintains and keeps at his compound in the countryside of Florida. I made a donation to his collection by giving him the 1975 Laverda 750 ST2 that I had bought in Brooklyn on a whim a few years ago and ridden only a few times to remind myself how much motorcycles had changed since my beginnings with them all those years ago. Bobbie was very pleased to add the Laverda to his collection of antique Moto Guzzis, Ducati’s, Nortons, BSAs and BMW’s. I have invited Bobbie many times to ride my newer bikes with me yet we have never gotten around to it. I suspect that Bobbie’s love of motorcycling is embodied in the maintenance and deep knowledge he has of the bikes he wrenches on his own. His rides are likely short and functional to keep the bikes in top repair. His is less a lover of the ride and more a lover of the machine. He is a nuts and bolts financial real estate guy who lives in exurban New York and Florida.
Tom came to the sport after me and to the best of my knowledge only owned a Gilera 125 Lusso and a 1971 Triumph Trident 750. I think he left motorcycling behind on the streets of Rome and did not pursue it further when back in the United States. His was the love of the small bits of freedom biking gave him from his attentive family. It also distinguished him from his older brothers who were a well-respected scientist at Cal Tech and a concert pianist who had studied in Denmark. Tom was and is to this day an accomplished photographer and videographer, but back then he was also a bad boy motorcyclist jamming around the back alleys of Rome with us in a way that gave him the ability to breath outside the range of mom and dad. Tom spent his days in Silicon Valley and is now a resident of Santa Fe living the cultured spiritual life.
There was one more member of our high school gang and that was Mike, who was the high school chick-magnet dreamboat we all wished we were. He was what one would call a preppy at the time and he rode the oh-so-cool BSA “Thumper” single-cylinder 500 that had a leg-breaking starter kickback habit that could splinter your leg if you were not careful when you kicked it over. Mike disappeared to his native California after high school and I don’t know what became of his motorcycling post-Rome, but he became a senior forrest ranger in Yosemite and spent winters as resident ranger snowed-in at Denali in Alaska. He traded in his preppy ways for the mountain man look complete with thick beard and presumably rough hands. I guess motorcycling for him was a way to get from one girlfriend in Europe to another (he had many and we met some on our travels around the continent).
In college, not one of my buddies was into motorcycles so I suppose that made me very unique to them in that regard. I came to the party with it and left with it buried under the snow of Upstate New York. It took me a decade of early career nose-to-grindstone work to remember my love of the sport and re-engage by buying a suburban BMW K750. Before that in Rome and Ithaca I had owned five bikes and after that I have now owned another series of twenty-one more motorcycles for a grand total of 27 to date lifetime total. Compare that to about 20 or so cars (I have a much harder time keeping track of cars since I consider them utilitarian transportation at best). I am in love with the freedom of riding and have only minimal use for tinkering with the mechanicals or gadgetry of motorcycles like my friend Steve or my brother-in-law Jeff. To me the ride is all, which is why, when I wrote my 400-page tome on my riding habit, I called it The Ride is All.
On Sunday I felt overdue for a ride so I took out my BMW R1250GS Adventure, which now has about 5,000 miles on the odometer from this year’s riding. I keep another bike, a Kawasaki Versys 1000 as well and truly enjoys riding it, but must say that the GSA is the best bike (by FAR) that I have ever owned and ever ridden. I have owned all manner of European bikes, Harleys, Indians, Hondas, Suzukis and Kawasaki’s, and none of them feel as right to me as the BMW GSA. It sits high and stable and yet is not overly heavy like the K1600 and R1250RT I owned right before this. This bike is more about the ride than any other I have ever owned. When one goes out for a ride in San Diego County (preferably on the Eastern and Northern parts of the county where the traffic is light and the roads are curvy), one sees lots and lots of other motorcycles. Sunday was a 75 degree day, so perfect weather for riding with no clouds in the sky and the Santa Ana winds in abeyance. I am in the habit of riding in my Siena Cavalry helmet that has a great Bluetooth speaker system above the open ear pieces. I usually listen to tunes on a playlist, but that day I chose to put on Barack Obama’s audiobook, Promised Land. When motorcyclists ride they always wave to one another in the camaraderie of brotherhood. I spent the day riding 120 miles and constantly waving to others with a smile on my face and a lightness of heart that can only come from listening to a great man like Barack Obama describing all that he likes about and wants for the people (all the people) of America and the world. What a great way to spend a Sunday, waving to the promised land.