Rain, rain, go away, come again another day. It came and went on and on up until gone 11am when I should have relinquished the room to housekeeping. She was reluctant to start, the cooler spark plugs seem to demand more choke in the morning . She smokes, like a nicotine dependent, while she warms up to greet the day. I resolved to switch the plugs back to 6’s, suitably gapped, at the earliest opportunity.

We chased the clouds up the coast, sometimes slowing, when the showers started, so as not to catch up. There seemed to be a micro climate effect going on where the rain clouds were held back inland by the coastal range. We ran the gauntlet between the water in the clouds and the water in the ocean. Continue reading “Day 31 Big wood” →

My ‘to go’ pizza from last night was great but so great that I had to leave the last slice, in the box, outside, on the balcony. In the morning it was gone, I remonstrated with myself over the stupidity of leaving food out in a state with a bear on its flag until, walking around the cabin to go sit on a rock and contemplate the ocean, I caught sight of a ringed tail disappearing into the bushes. The culprit, a raccoon about the size of a small dog, later ran across the lawn and up over a fence and down into the bluff to sleep it off.

I delayed hoping that the rain would clear, blogged, packed, watched the rain, refitted the battery to the bike and loaded it, checked out then whir, whir, splutter, rat-a-tat-a-rat-a, you know the story.

Continue reading “Day 30 Wet, wet, wet, shocking” →

Kicked out of the motel at 11, Karl had left earlier and the sun was out. Not yet ready for the day I passed up trophy photographs of the bike in front of the Golden Gate Bridge, no doubt I’ll regret that one day, probably many days. On the bay I came across a seaplane tours company and, like the fool that I am also declined with the intent of getting some significant intercourse between the tyres and highway 1.

A glorious road with a justified reputation. The recent rain had displaced gravel and small rocks from the slopes down onto the apex of the shoreward curves and the four wheelers (four wheels good two wheels bad) had arranged it neatly into hazardous piles in my path.

Continue reading “Day 29 Coasting” →

I have to confess that I had a backup plan, the cables that I bought from Steve and the new carbs were part of it, MG Cycle MI had dispatched another set of cables and an electronic balancing tool to Tom in Cedar Creek. It was those that he held in an alarmingly large box when he welcomed me to his and Patti’s amazing and cavernous house. Filled with curios, clocks, cabinets and wood turning tools and surrounded by interesting vehicles including a fork lift truck, not something you see every day, not something I’ve seen any day before.

A welcoming host, Tom is a man of many projects recently laid low with gluten intolerance now, thankfully, back up and at them, remodelling the house in a way that I found calmingly familiar, my own kitchen has had no ceiling for years but the comparisons end there this place was amazing. We chatted for a while and with more rain and a chance to meet his aircraft building buddies for lunch I opted to just replace the cables and re-balance the carburettors with the new tool, switching to the new carbs was tempting but just too risky at this point. Not a fan of diagnostic tools with LEDs I was surprised by how easy it was to get them set up and she was transformed by the tune.

Tom drove me to lunch, not in the Ford Model A above, that was later. I met Rich, Rick, Bob and Stu (?) collectively and individually interesting active engaging people engaged in aircraft and automotive engineering long into their retirement. Bob was fabricating teardrop wheel housings for his plane requiring admirable sheet metal forming skill and thought. Stu (?) had a hanger full of toys to die for, vintage Cessna and Corvette Stingray amongst them.

My head was spinning already at the overwhelming barrage of stimulation then Tom drove me around the hangers in one of his Model A cars and sent me over the top by letting me drive it. Crash gearbox, double de-clutching, timing advance and throttle levers on the steering wheel, heaven.

I needed to take it back down a notch before the stimulus overload overcame me and, bidding farewell to my gracious hosts, set off on the now sweetly running Guzzi for San Francisco. Up over the hills into Berkeley and then electing to make the, longer but quicker, anti-clockwise loop of freeways around the bay and finally over the Golden Gate Bridge to my Travelodge of limited choice on Lombard Street (not the twisty bit).

I watched but didn’t ride the cable cars, there really is a long continuous cable running under the road that the ‘brake man’ engages the car with to drag them up the insane slopes. Fate once again led me, astray perhaps, to a fantastic bar, “The Black Horse London Deli” is what it said over the door, it also said “HOT BEER, LOUSY FOOD, BAD SERVICE, HAVE A NICE DAY”,

James the owner had the genius idea to serve cans of beer from an ice filled bath tub behind the bar upon which he sometimes perched playing a guitar while we all sang along and into which he plunged willing devotees head first for a ‘baptism’, I and my new friends Joe (a Fed-X salesman from Washington DC) and Michelle (a nurse from DC who had moved out here) and most of the people in the bar were born again before closing time. I could go on about the music, the dancing, my first shotgunned beer and the ‘Black Magic Voodoo Lounge’ that we all decamped to, including James, for “afters” but I won’t spoil the unbridled joy and surprise that you will feel should you be wise enough to find this place, and you should.

What a day! What a city!

An unexpected visitor, a young lady, came to my door asking whether she could come in for a while, I declined. Perhaps spooking my karma because, when the rain looked like clearing for long enough to get to Concord, the bike wouldn’t start. Rat-a-tat-a-rat-a, here we go again. I went through the plans and got to ‘D’ quickly, panting up and down the motel car park in a T-shirt with all the luggage stripped off the bike. Eventually she fired up, with a push from some of the staff, and I set the idle insanely high to keep her running.

Continue reading “Day 27 Not all bad” →

She started. Not startled I departed as early as possible in order to have a small chance of getting to Mark at Moto Guzzi Classics in LA before he closed at 5 pm. It was a long shot, over 300 miles and around 6 hours in the saddle longer if I stopped to wonder at things like this.

Out in the middle of nowhere sand dunes rose up from the harsh rugged landscape and drifted across the road. The North Algodones Dunes attracted buggies of excessive, singleminded, horsepower.

Continue reading “Day 22 A trip to the beach” →

Motel, road, gas, road, gas, road, motel. A rhythm emerges and I won’t bore you with the practicalities or pain of persuading old components, mechanical and biological across 362 miles of sun bleached wind blown highway. We both made it although the portion of my large nose that protrudes below my visor is now shedding its second skin.

“That’s your problem Timothy, you just don’t think” my mother would say after my latest mishap. She was right, of course, I don’t think, not in that organised safe, all outcomes considered, all risks evaluated way. I envisage a happy path or sometimes a sad one, often a little above achievable or below believable, and off I go. Bags on bike, gas in tank, cash in wallet, let’s rock! Impulsively swinging between optimism and pessimism. What was I thinking?

Continue reading “Day 18 Tornado Alley” →

I rose at 7, the fishermen had departed at 4 am and managed to hitch up their overpowering boats to their overpowered pick ups without recalling me from the land of Nod. Wandering around the corner to a gas station that I had spotted the night before, I was disappointed to find the shop closed and the pumps signed ‘card only’. I hate ‘card only’ because my English cards don’t work on account of not having a zip code to enter on the numeric key-pad at the opportune moment, sometimes they do not need a zip code but, as disappointment often offends, I avoid them like the plague. Instead I have to go into the shop, proffer a deposit greater than the expected tank full and then return for change having filled up. I kept walking, sure enough there was another around the corner, like London buses they cluster.

Continue reading “Day 17 Plain sailing Sunday” →