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On
BUY THE BOOK!
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The sun shone through amber
strands of kelp 20 feet beneath the surface of Monterey Bay. A mottled
brown harbor seal circled twice, stopped to stare with black saucer
eyes, and disappeared with a flip of the tail. I gave a kick with my
neon-pink fins and followed my partner to 40 feet, just inches from
the rocky, sandy bottom of the Pacific. Water leaked into my Neoprene
boots, sliding in an icy creep past my ankles and heels, along the arches
of my feet to my toes. Between amplified breaths of dry air from the
tank on my back, I stopped to appreciate an enormous orangy-peach starfish
clinging to a rock, a crusty long-legged crab, and then I checked the
compass reading.
My dive class had been dumped in the middle of the bay and told to resurface somewhere respectably near the boat. Navigation skills were the last test for scuba certification. My motorcycle tour of America started in a few days, and I didn't want to blow it. A half-hour later we surfaced about 20 feet from the boat. The dive instructor let out a big yell and gave us a thumbs up. Amazing things, compasses. I'd always liked them -- and barometers, sundials, Richter scales... things used to measure and predict nature's cycles, pulls, and temper tantrums. I will mount a compass on my fairing, I decided, so I will always know in which direction I am headed. It was the last thing I'd put on the Ural. It was my first mechanical failure. Highway 1, with the Pacific Ocean to my left and Oregon straight ahead, is just about due north. The compass, a black ball painted with neon-green letters, floated wildly in its bulb of water. It insisted that I was heading southwest. The problem was the fairing. All that metal blocked the earth's magnetic pole. Such a small thing, a metal motorcycle fairing, compared to the earth's magnetic pole. I know this stretch of road well, from trips between Santa Cruz and San Francisco. I passed whale watchers gathered on the bluffs across from the town of Davenport, leaning forward like hunchbacks contemplating a leap from the cliff's edge. I looked at the compass and sighed. I'd take it off, maybe, and put it somewhere else. About this time a screw holding one side of the compass bracket fell off, pinged against the gas tank, and landed on the road. Oops. The compass dangled sideways from one side of the bracket. It was probably pointing due north now, I thought, and I looked for a place to pull over. But there was no shoulder here. A white Ford pickup behind me had been tailgating for miles, probably looking at the sidecar. In the month I'd had the Ural I'd been able to tell the chronic tailgaters from the antique-motorcycle enthusiasts trying to figure out what I was riding. I slowed down to about 40 mph and signaled a right turn. He got closer. There is a point on the road where you decide that a thing is too small to worry about. For instance, a dropped length of two-by-four, a dead or live animal, a spinning hubcap. All motorcyclists have experienced the elevation of adrenaline, the split-second decision process, and the unconscious muscle tensing before taking the shock, the skid, or the fall caused by the wood, the animal, the hubcap... hoping to flatten it beneath the wheels and ride it out while raising yourself up on the seat, loosening wrist, elbow, and knee joints. Similarly, it is ever so difficult to resist grabbing something that you know is going to fall off. Perhaps a plastic instrument cover, a side mirror, a wire flapping loose, a map blowing away. It's against nature, and underneath it all you realize that these things are worth less than the risk of damage or death, and that taking a hand off the grip to catch that something you could go back for, or buy another of, is just not worth it. You just grit your teeth and resign yourself to it, concentrating on the road and trying not to be distracted. And so it was a spectacular little crash. A brittle, plastic-enclosed water bomb exploded against the truck's metal grill. In my rear-view mirror I watched it shatter. At the next dotted yellow line the guy in the pickup passed me, rolled the passenger window down, and let me know how much he'd appreciated it. I shrugged and waved... What could I do? Besides the compass explosion, the morning had been a perfect motorcycling day, the kind of day where people ditch work to cruise Skyline Boulevard, Summit Road, the Pacific Coast Highway... empty, windy roads through redwood forests and vineyards, along beaches and old port towns. The people on these roads either live there or they are enjoying a journey. And I wasn't the only one who'd begun a journey that day. At a delay for construction work, I pulled up beside a middle-aged couple on a Goldwing with a trailer, painted a shocking, sparkling metal-flake tomato red. The couple was conversing via the microphones embedded in their tomato helmets, and enjoying the stereo, whose volume is automatically lowered at an idle. The man driving had to lower it manually when I pulled up beside them. I guess my engine noise confused it into believing they were going again. His wife smiled and asked where I was going. I enthusiastically explained and she nodded, blandly, from the back seat. I wasn't sure if she heard me or if she was listening to KSAN, or maybe a CD. Her husband just stared, and finally said, "Well, I guess I'm just more into comfort." A few days ago, the American space
shuttle Atlantis and the Russian space station Mir had met in deep
space. Associated Press journalist Marcia Dunn described Atlantis
as "the sleek white shuttle," and Mir as "the ungainly
Russian space station... assembled without any pretense at streamlining,
with bulges here and there and solar panels pointing every which way."
When they connected, the Atlantis crew offered the Mir crew fresh fruit, chocolate, and flowers. The Mir gave the Atlantis crew bread and salt. I was sure the Goldwingers had fresh fruit and chocolate carefully contained in a cooler in their trailer. I had day-old bagels and peanut butter in a backpack strapped to the trunk of the Ural with bungie cords. The construction flagger turned her STOP sign to SLOW, and the Goldwing quietly roared away, the stereo volume automatically adjusting to the sound level. I kicked the starter of the Ural and felt a little like the Mir as I headed off to San Francisco. San Francisco, and the whole of the Northwest, was experiencing a heat wave. I chained the Ural to a tree on the wide sidewalk in front of my friend Marion's apartment, yanked off my leather jacket, and lugged my suitcase up the stairs. Marion was on a trip overseas, so I showered and walked up to Hyde Street for an iced cappuccino. "The City," as locals call it, has never failed to charm me, though I've visited many times in the past 20 years. My only disappointment has been that the Golden Gate bridge is not actually painted gold, but a rust-resistant red. Though I realize that the name "Golden Gate" is but a metaphor for the riches historically thought to be found in this area, I do wish that it could have been translated a bit more literally. The cable car system runs along Hyde Street, and each cable car was full of tourists crowding next to bored, chic commuters. San Francisco, though not a fashion capital, is a very hip place where anything goes if you're cool... beatnik cool or yuppie cool, grunge cool or gay cool.... People here mix in a way unlike they do in other cities I've visited. This lack of disapproval brings in more and more unstereotypical residents. I suppose it is what pulls me, too. Riding into town, I noticed that my sidecar and gender attracted mere interested glances, not the incredulous stares I am still trying to get used to. I found them again in Sebastopol, a rural town an hour north, where I stopped at the GNN headquarters to meet with Travelers' Center editor Allen Noren. He had brought his famous Baltic Sea BMW to work that morning, and would ride along with me for a little while. Allen led me through hilly farm roads and vineyards, taking the curves so gracefully that I almost longed for that connection you have with a two-wheeler, the leaning and the feeling of being at one with the machine. We separated on a rickety wooden bridge above the muddy Russian River. After good-lucks and goodbyes, we started up our motorcycles, me with a firm kick, he with a press of his thumb, and rode off slowly in opposite directions. How symbolic, I thought, to leave from the middle of a bridge. A physical crossing-over from one side to another, it was also a psychological crossing-over from the tasks and joys of a stable, somewhat predictable daily life to the world of a transient, where anything might happen. That "anything" has mostly to do with me alone. Where I turn, where I stop. Where I choose not to turn or stop. This was the first day of summer, the longest day of the year. I felt so suddenly solitary in the middle of it, which made it both thrilling and scary, like that ride you've been dared to take at the fair. Once they shut down the safety bar, it's too late. You're on for the duration. |
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