California, Here They Run . . . : Why I Ride : Following Her Bliss Down the Angeles Crest Highway : She projects Honda Civic, not Harley- Davidson, and her loved ones worry. But she doesn’t get the same rush on four wheels.
My mother is horrified. Any mention of my motorcycle causes her to turn away involuntarily and hold her breath, as if I am a toddler too close to the top of the stairs.
My girlfriend is quiet and patient. She doesn’t say so, but I know each time I phone home from the road, the possibility that I’m calling from a hospital passes through her mind. Understandable. I’ve done that once before.
Complete strangers--even casual acquaintances--seem genuinely shocked. They squint their eyes to focus on me a little more carefully as they say, “Really?” Something about me--a freckle-faced 29-year-old woman--projects Honda Civic, not Harley-Davidson.
Why, they all want to know--or, in the case of my mother: Why? WHY? WHY?--did I take up motorcycling? It is about as useful to ask runners why they started running or writers why they started writing. Because something made them try it--and something stronger won’t let them stop. Because it is part of who they are.
Granted, for some, motorcycling is simply a form of commuting. They relish traveling in that no man’s land between lanes, zipping to the top of a column of cars, then accelerating into the horizon as the light turns green. They hail the benefits of riding in the freeway carpool lanes and of parking in spaces one-fourth the size of a VW Beetle.
I am not one of those people. My linen pants get too wrinkled in the saddle. I can’t bear coming into work with “helmet head.” And frankly, car drivers scare me. I wish everyone with a driver’s license were required to navigate traffic on a two-wheeled vehicle for a while. They might pay attention a little more and talk on cell phones a little less.
Still, on weekends, the road beckons. In 90-degree heat I’ll don leather pants, gloves and jacket. I’ll warm up the engine, check the tire pressure, fill up the tank. Usually I’ll ride with friends up the Angeles Crest Highway or out Mulholland or up California 150 to Ojai. Getting there isn’t half the fun; it’s all the fun.
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It was just about three years ago that a co-worker offered me a ride on the back of his Ducati. We flew down California 118, the Ronald Reagan Freeway. When he later told me how fast we were moving, I said, “Really? It didn’t feel that fast.”
That’s when, he said, he knew I was biker material.
After that I spent many weekends on his 50-cubic-centimeter mini-motorcycle, learning to stop, shift gears, steer by leaning left and right. I took classes from the Motorcycle Safety Foundation, getting up before dawn for riding instruction in a giant parking lot. It was not as hard as learning to drive a stick shift at 16--at least I was never reduced to tears--but it required undeniable effort.
There were early heartbreaks and humiliations. My first year riding, I dropped my bike while navigating the bumper-car ride that is the Griffith Observatory parking lot. No one stopped to help me get the little Kawasaki upright, and I learned how, with the right combination of adrenaline and embarrassment, a 115-pound person can lift a 300-plus-pound motorcycle.
My second bike, a BMW, met a premature demise on Angeles Crest. A driver didn’t see me and pulled out to turn left, and I didn’t swerve far enough around him. For a car, this would have been a slow-speed fender bender. For me, it meant 400 pounds of motorcycle on my leg and the aforementioned phone call from the hospital.
I then invested in some more expensive gear: $200 boots, $400 padded leather pants, $350 helmet. I’m saving up for a new jacket, which will set me back about $600.
Motorcycles are an expensive hobby. Still, they’re a cheap luxury. When most people imagine the vehicle they would drive in their fantasy lives--a Ferrari? a Lexus SUV? a 1965 1/2 Ford Mustang?--reality intercedes with a hefty sticker price.
For a year or more, I dreamed about the Honda Hawk. I read about it on the Internet and in old magazines. I admired Hawks in the parking lots of biker hangouts.
The bike, imported only from 1988 to 1991, was considered too expensive and didn’t sell well, but it was slightly ahead of its time in terms of style and technology. It’s a small machine with a 647cc engine--quick, maneuverable, fun. Hawks are fairly difficult to find. Amateur racers snap them up and customize them for the track. The editor of Motorcycle Consumer News told me that Hawks are the only used bikes to increase in value in each of the last five years.
Oh, did I mention that I actually own my dream vehicle? It cost $2,175.
The fastest stock motorcycle in the world right now is the Suzuki Hayabusa. Motorcycle journalists have clocked it going faster than 190 mph. It costs $10,500--less than a modest entry-level car such as the Suzuki Esteem sedan.
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Yet if you find traveling without doors and seat belts terrifying, nothing will convince you otherwise. It eases my girlfriend’s mind only a little that I wear protective gear. It comforts my mother not at all that I don’t speed through the canyons, passing cars on curves.
But sometimes people who have never been on a motorcycle understand this: When the weather is right--about 80 degrees--and the air is clear and I’m riding along a straight stretch of Potrero Road near Thousand Oaks at 45 or 50 mph, flanked by farms and horse ranches, it feels like flying. It feels effortless, as in dreams. It fills me with the same joy I felt as a child coasting downhill on a bicycle. It is bliss.
Bliss is temporary. Someday, something will make me hang up my helmet--children, carpal tunnel syndrome, arthritis. But I wouldn’t trade my hours riding a motorcycle for anything. They mean I’ll never say: “You know, I always wanted to . . . .”
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Robin Rauzi is assistant editor of The Times’ Calendar Weekend section. She can be reached at robin.rauzi@latimes.com.
