Up and out for the 90 minute ride into Long Beach. I’m quicker now, things are finding their place and I clear the room methodically from the bathroom back to the door. Last to go is the charging kit, not for the bike battery but for phone, iPad and backup battery. The phone is good fro 5 hours of navigation and needs the battery pack for the crucial run in to the motel. The iPad provides backup connectivity and seems to have better mobile data connections than either of the two phone sims, it’s saved me a couple of times when, in exhaustion, I need to find/book a motel.
Mark’s place, yards off the Pacific Coast Highway, is amazing. I’d like to think that in some parallel universe I am him and he is, hopefully, someone cooler than me.
The first things that caught my affection were two orange winged amazon parrots, happily sitting atop cages in the cavernous garage come workshop come parts store. My own orange winged amazon, Max, was so unhappy he screeched for nearly 20 years before I saw the light and sent him to have some pals at a parrot sanctuary, sorry Max. Next was the way that he beckoned me in, moving a bike out of the way and then shook my hand, almost before I could get my glove off. Today was not a good day from Mark, he’s just been stitched up on a verbal deal to buy three ‘basket case’ Guzzis for $500 and was spitting feathers, like me he considers a man’s word to be something of worth.
He replaced the brake pipe with a similar one from the pile, changed the oil, both engine and gearbox and balanced the carbs without vacuum gauges, sharing with me as he did, the art of setting the idle mixture by ear. Under a cover I distinguished the contours of a ‘Frog Eye Sprite’ (MG Midget precursor) and I asked him about it hoping to distract him from his pique over the deal and perhaps impress him with my knowledge, if I did it didn’t show. Also lurking was a NASCAR style race car with his name on the side, I didn’t enquire. With the bike on the lift I noticed the reason for her deteriorating clutch performance (I haven’t mentioned it before so as not to concern you but the lever has been getting closer and closer to the handlebar). The adjuster under the gearbox was loose and had been undoing itself, another victim of the rushed re-assembly at Joe’s Garage.
We discussed my weight and handling problems (with regard to the bike wobbling) and having discovered and remedied a somewhat flat front tire moved on to the state of the world. Mark enquired about the Guzzidom in the UK and I had to say that you rarely see them, he remonstrated about how he’d seen no jobs for a week and how this hub of combustion used to be bustling on a Saturday, There were ‘walk ins’ (casual punters off the street) but mainly spectators not participants. I asked whether Ewan McGregor, a Guzzi ‘ambassador’ came by and Mark said that he went to Pro Italia (more of a modern concern) up in the hills above Glendale and that he’d rather spend more money than less, something that Mark was pragmatic about, “why change it if it’s working?”. I left feeling like a dinosaur wondering about that big meteorite, at the lights a girl on an electric motorcycle didn’t wave to me.
LA was tough, hot and busy and hard to get out of, I stopped to see a beach and had to pay to park my motorcycle, this was not my kinda town. At some point I incurred the outrage of a motorist who followed me beeping then spewing a stream of expletives fit for bleeping and showed me her whole finger, goodness knows what I did but it turned me away from Los Angriness and along the coast and mountains to Santa Monica.
Bustling with holiday makers and a few genial homeless, I walked the shore into town and down to the end of the wooden pier, which has a car park on it, only in America. I sampled Guinness in the obligatory Irish pub away from the money end of town, then Steak and IPA in Joe’s Cafe, both pretty good and took a taxi back to the motel.
Le Mans man 