Today it is scheduled to be a 90 degree day here on the hilltop. When I awoke in the middle of the night I checked the weather for the day and it said it was scheduled to be a high of 87. I guess that changed in the past few hours and I will admit that where I consider anything in the 80s on the hilltop to be pleasant (remember, the humidity is almost always nice and low by any standards I have from growing up in more humid places), I am always a bit more wary of anything with a 9 handle on it. That is particularly so today because I am taking a motorcycle ride that will start at 10am and probably go until about 2pm, in other words, in the heat of the midday sun. Add to that, I will be heading out east into the mountains and deserts where the scheduled high temperature is at least 5 degrees warmer than it is on this hilltop with its sometimes cooling breezes from the ocean.
This was the week that I was getting a visit from my old high school motorcycle pal Michael, who I haven’t seen in 54 years since that last semester of high school when we used to go around with two other friends on British twins, his a BSA and mine a Triumph. We weren’t exactly like Marlon Brando in The Wild One (1953) or even Steve McQueen (my personal hero in those days) in The Great Escape (1963), but when I look back on the Polaroids Michael sent of us on our bikes in those bad old days, we looked pretty rough by today’s standards. I used to ride that Triumph 650 Tiger TR6R without a fairing or windshield and a three-quarters coverage helmet that I had painted silver and printed the letters USA in black over my forehead. If you don’t recall, that was the look of the U.S. Ski Team helmets worn by Robert Redford in Downhill Racer (1969) and I was convinced in my patriotic expat zeal that it was all very cool. Strangely enough, we weren’t exactly smart enough to think we needed ski helmets in those days as we raced down the slopes of the Dolomites in places like San Martino di Castrozza or the nearer Apennine resort of Terminillo. So, no windshields on the bikes and no helmets on the slopes. In other words, we were normal dopey teenage kids who knew no better but thought we were all that and a bag of chips. I will also add that many of the pictures Michael sent in advance of his visit were of us on a trip up to Austria in the summer on 1970, when we went to see a girl he knew up there. We made the ride on our Gilera 125cc bikes that were all we could ride in Italy at the age of 16 until we could graduate to the bigger bikes the next year. If you think its rugged riding a Triumph 650 without a windshield at 70 miles an hour, try riding a Gilera 125 at 70 through the Brenner Pass when you are my size. Those were really wild and wooly days.
With all those memories jangling around in my head, I was looking forward to going on a ride with Michael when he came down from Sacramento this week for a few days. He arrives tomorrow, but when I texted him about his stay, I asked if he was up for a ride since I keep two BMW bikes just for such occasions. He said he was unsure of his balance and the strength of his legs, which surprised me. Besides the fact that Michael was our high school cool-guy hero with his Hugh Grant floppy hair and his preppy dress, he has spent his life as a Mountain Man working for the National Forrest Service, as both a supervisor in Yosemite National Park for many years and as the Senior Ranger in charge of Denali for a decade. I have this vision of him as a big strong outdoorsy type that probably still garners looks from passing women. But I guess there won’t we a ride to be had, even though I’m sure we will go look at my bikes for old times sake. There comes a time in every man’s like when he has to face the fact that he is not who he used to be, so he had better become something else to get every ounce of life he can out of this world. Michael and I will share lots of good old times and hopefully spend most of our time together in fun reflection on the past rather than dwelling on all the things we cannot do these days.
While there are plenty of things I cannot and do not do these days (including downhill skiing, which I dearly loved and stopped doing after 15 years of skiing my ass off in Utah through the 2007 season), I do still ride. So, since I got that “Can’t ride” message from Michael on Sunday morning, I immediately set about my reaffirmation process and went looking for someone to go on a ride with. I swung and missed for a last minute ride on Sunday, though I did ride down to Carmel Mountain by myself to get the ants out of my pants. But I did manage to get two guys who have previously said they are always up for a ride organized for a ride this morning at 10am. One is Melisa’s brother, Len. Len is a sort of Heavy Metal rocker who builds things. He is currently into doing anything in carbon fiber (especially high performance custom bicycles), but has also made high quality electric guitars for many of the great Southern California bands. He rides a Harley, not surprisingly. The other guy is Gordon, who is part of a very active couple that we have met through the Garden Club. The story is that his wife Quynh is a physician and she and Gordon do things like hang gliding and such. I’ve only met Gordon once, but he seems like your typical BMW R1250 GS Adventure rider like me. I don’t know either Len or Gordon particularly well just yet, but I imagine we will all know each other better after today’s ride. Motorcycling can be the great leveler and I expect it will be for us since we all need riding buddies and there are nothing if not great riding roads out here in North County San Diego. We will be out there today mixing it up in the 90 degree heat, reaffirming that we are all alive and well enough to ride up and down the golden hills and alpine peaks of this beautiful countryside. Live to ride and ride to live, as they say.