Fast food and slow rides

Mom was visiting from Boise this weekend and we celebrated her birthday with scenic walks and many foods off her usual healthy regimen -- chile relleno at Tia Margarita on Friday, Jack in the Box tacos for Saturday lunch, clam pizza (Ty's idea) on Saturday night, and corned beef and cabbage on Sunday.

Still enjoying the new bike. I took a few longer rides this weekend (through Golden Gate Park out to the beach and back) and practiced figure 8s in the city's most scenic parking lot outside the Legion of Honor. I also practiced filling the gas tank. It took one gallon, counting the drops that spilled on the gas tank while I was mastering the technique.

Thanks to Mom, I am highly visible and well armored. Here she is modeling the new jacket.

Jumpy

I've been riding the new bike after work to get in some extra practice time. This is not the ideal time to practice because of busy roads and impatient drivers on their way home from work. I almost decided against evening practice when I had trouble with jerky transitions between gears on Monday. Imagine my happiness when a co-worker explained that dirt bikes (and hybrids like mine) are supposed to be a bit "jumpy." This was confirmed by a review I found online. To quote the experts (in an otherwise favorable review): "Backing off the throttle is nearly impossible to do smoothly and picking up the gas is only slightly easier to control." Far from giving me buyer's remorse, this review gave me new rider's relief.

Knowing I wasn't doing something wrong completely transformed my enjoyment of the ride. I had a blast on Wednesday and ventured onto Geary for the first time. No mishaps -- except for sliding downhill for a few feet when I tried to start from a stop sign in neutral...

First Ride and More Small Bursts

My new motorcycle arrived at 10:30 am yesterday -- driven up from Sunnyvale by JT, the biker friend of Henry's. He talked me through some bike basics -- making it all seem a lot simpler than the explanation in the owner manual and the safety class. Like the masked man in Lone Ranger episodes, he probably would have been happy to ride off into the sunset (sunrise) with nothing more than my thanks, but he needed a way to get back to Sunnyvale, so I bought him a cup of Angelina's coffee and a raisan cookie (his modest selection from the array of goodies) and collected more cycling lore while I drove him home.

Rain was threatening by the time I got back to SF, but I was eager/nervous about my first ride and decided to head out into the mist. As usual, the things I had worried about were not the things I needed to worry about. The bike was not all that difficult to balance and maneuver. I did have trouble accelerating and braking smoothly. I can see that this will get easier with practice and I have a perfect practice area within a few blocks of home. For my first ride, I wound through the ritzy Sea Cliff neighborhood overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge and up to the Legion of Honor. Today I'm hoping to take a ride through the Presidio, another beautiful and low traffic area near home.

On the subject of small bursts, Ty and I went to a San Jose Earthquakes soccer game last night with Rain and Sally. We almost backed out when we discovered that it was an open stadium under threatening clouds, but Ty urged us to go for it. Rain convinced the guy at the ticket booth to upgrade our $20 tickets to $40 tickets at midfield. Between that and finding street parking, we saved $100. That small burst made up for getting soaked by the rain that fell off and on throughout the game. The Earthquakes lost to the New England Revolutionaries (1-0), but I had forgotten the fun of being at a live sports event. We all enjoyed stomping our feet during corner kicks to create an earthquake effect in the stands.

Small Bursts and Perfect Strangers

In Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, the title character distinguishes between Big Bursts (like weddings, births, etc.) and Small Bursts (everyday events that are sustaining in different ways). I will have to go back to the book to see exactly what she says about them, but it got me thinking about the bursts in my life. Here is one I shared with book club:

After eating an austere lunch of cottage cheese and carrots I decided to treat myself to a bag of Fritos from the vending machine at work. Unfortunately, my bag snagged on the mechanism, trembling there out of reach. I gave the machine a few tentative shoves to no avail. I was about to convince myself that it was all for the best (healthwise) when a stranger saw my dilemma and gleefully rocked the machine until the bag dropped free. Hell’s bells, as Olive would say. This episode improved my outlook for the whole afternoon.

Olive did not mention medium bursts, but I will have to start a category like that for having my new/used motorcycle discovered, test-driven, and delivered to me this Saturday by JT, the perfect stranger.

The Deed is Done

Here's how it came down... Once I decided on the type of bike I liked, Henry put me in touch with a friend (JT) who knows bikes. JT found a barely used Honda CRF 230 (dual sport) at a trusted dealership in Sunnyvale. A deal was struck. The dealership being far from home, JT is driving it to SF this Saturday -- taking a route that could someday be my commute: Page Mill to 35 to Highway 1.

Note the sleek European styling and blazing red color. Watch out world.



Nice review on MotorcycleUSA.com

Testing, Testing

Last Thursday I took myself down to the DMV and got my M1 (motorcycle) license. Because I had already taken and passed the rider safety course, this involved handing over $28, taking an eye test, getting my photo taken, taking an abbreviated form of the standard (class c) written test and a separate written test focusing on motorcycle riding. I wish they had let me keep a copy of the motorcycle test so I could share more precisely, because some of the questions were quite bizarre. For example, one question asked about the penalty for speeding away when instructed to pull over by a police officer and killing a pedestrian during the chase scene.

The next step is actually getting a motorcycle and getting some riding experience -- initially in parking lots and low traffic areas like the Presidio -- so I can answer people's questions about where/when/how I'm planning to ride it. My hope is that I will eventually feel confident enough to ride it to work one or two days a week -- taking the long way (highway 1 along Ocean Beach, through the forest along skyline and back to civilization down Page Mill road). Another goal would be to cross the Golden Gate Bridge, where the speed limit is a sensible 45 mph, for drives to Pt. Reyes.

I found a wonderful site for beginning riders and after researching bike reviews on that and other sites I find that I am leaning (note how biking lingo is creeping into my everday speech) toward the bikes in the Dual Purpose category. I made a list of the leading contenders -- Suzuki DR200SE, Kawasaki 250SF, Yamaha TW200 and Honda CRF 230 -- and highlighted phrases that appealed to me, like "pretty forgiving, don't worry about dropping this motorcycle, nearly indestructible, perfect for a new rider, phenomenal gas mileage." Then Adrienne and I went to Golden Gate Cycles to see the bikes in person. Unlike racing bikes that force you to bend over to reach the handlebars or cruiser bikes that encourage a laid back posture, the Dual Purpose bikes, which the sales guy described as "motards," encourage what I would describe as an athletic/alert posture. I was surprised and happy to find that I could reach the ground comfortably on all the models, even the Kawasaki, which listed a seat height of 34.8".

It is hard not to take color into account when choosing a bike. The best looking bike (to me) was the Suzuki (see below) . This one had a sleek black color. The colorful bikes are more visible and therefore likely to be safer. There is a flourescent color known as "Kawasaki green" that is hard to miss. The Honda was red and the Yamaha was blue -- the best match for the helmet I bought for the safety class -- but otherwise not as stylish because of fatter tires (need to research pros and cons of that).

As much as I love the sales experience at Golden Gate Cycles -- after a few minutes in the shop Adrienne was talking about getting a scooter for herself -- I would like to find a used bike on Craigslist. Leading contenders are the Suzuki (most comfortable) and Kawasaki (most exciting and clearly the sales guy's favorite). Shopping saga to be continued...

Uneasy Rider

I have already shared this information with my motorcycle mentors, but for the record…

I am still processing the riding portion of my motorcycle class, which took place last weekend. On the positive side, I passed the evaluation. Conditions on Sunday were bad – continuous light rain – but it was interesting to discover that there was no obvious loss of control/traction, at least at the speeds we were traveling (up to 20 mph). The negative aspect of the class was the instructor’s teaching style. He was a Vietnam vet whose behavior was almost a caricature of a domineering drill sergeant.

This made a physically and mentally challenging experience also an emotionally challenging experience. One guy -- the other beginner -- dropped out of the class after Saturday. I made it through most of the class without being the subject of the trainer's negative attention until we were doing a task that required braking on a curve. I learned the hard way that you need to get out of the lean/straighten out the bike before applying the front brake and "dropped the bike."

We (the bike and I) must have stopped abruptly and the bike, already leaning left, continued its descent. I quickly judged that I couldn’t get it upright and bailed to the left, skinning my left knee slightly and bruising my right shin on the brake pedal as that leg came over.

I am trying to remember that one reason for taking the course was to challenge myself. It has been a long time since I was scared to the point of trembling. I was the last in our group to go through each evaluation exercise and my hand was literally shaking on the throttle as I waited my turn, causing the engine to rev if I didn’t hold it off the handle. Between that and lack of confidence in my hand braking skill, the last hour was nerve wracking.

Stay tuned for the next installment: applying for a motorcycle license and acquiring a motorcycle (perhaps from a person who went through this whole process and decided it was a crazy idea).