Planetary Drive

Having a window seat isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be.
Twenty-five years after writing a seminal paper describing how I could never work in an office under artificial light, I negotiated a return to one of the tallest office buildings in San Francisco’s South of Market area. That’s not what this post is meant to be  about, though. But it is worth mentioning because when I returned to this company I came back as a new employee, though not exactly fresh meat. I’d been in this meat locker before. But with a new employee ID, new post-merger management and loss of all accrued vacation benefits, I was technically and actually the new kid on the block.

Not so bad, though. It was the dawn of the dot-com and having recently been in Seattle, I shared the feeling of many of my fellow Starbuckians at all that was weird about San Francisco. And having been a former resident, I found myself living in San Mateo, which was a Good Thing. I needed to experience life where summer meant wearing shorts every day. And where taking a motorcycle ride in the hills didn’t mean bundling up against the cold. In fact, my next door neighbor bought a motorcycle shortly after I moved in - his first bike. And so I had to get one also, not to keep parity, but because I had always had motorcycles, and I sold the last one as my last act before leaving for the Pacific Northwest.

But that is not what this is about, either.

One thing led to another and I got promoted several times and changed groups once and was re-united with old friends and achieved a job I’d always wanted. I took responsibility for a chunk of the infrastructure and helped build it into the world-class spam magnet that it is today. What that got me, along with attrition and a kindly administrative assistant, was a cubicle next to the window, where I can see between the new tall buildings to San Francisco Bay, and to the towers of Pac Bell Park, and to the seasonally green slopes of Bernal Heights and San Bruno Mountain. And if I looked down, I could see an army of earthmovers chewing away at the place our 151-car parking lot used to be, creating the foundation for what was to become a 32-story hotel.

But this isn’t about the hotel, either.

Some days I’m at my desk, not on the phone, nor engaged in conversation, not scowling at the flying porta-potties being hoisted by crane to the servicing truck on the street. Just the usual background drone, but then I’ll hear it - the distant hammering of a big twin-cylinder engine, accelerating up one of the four lanes of Howard street. And as the engine approaches the intersection, I hear the familiar rattle of a dry-clutch Ducati, as it slows for the light. I stop what I’m doing and listen, waiting for the even thrum of acceleration. And it comes, the sound resonating from the street and bouncing off the 32-story blue-glass curtain wall facing our mirrored windows. And I know that one day I have to have one. I’ve wanted one all my life, and if I’ve gotten to the point of having a seat next to the window, I’m at the point where I can be seated on a Ducati.

I didn’t expect the call when it came, and I didn’t expect to pick it
up when I did, but a fresh red 1098 is sitting in my garage as I write
this. I actually got it yesterday, right at closing time at Munroe
Motors. I thought the new nurse’s graduation was on Saturday, and was
running around like crazy trying to get everything together. As it turned
out, it was the FOLLOWING Saturday.) I had a voice message from Rory at
Munroe, who just asked for a call back. I should have know he was calling
for more than just to talk about the weather.

The bad thing was just that morning I transferred a big chunk of money
to my VISA account, thinking I should pay it off in order to avoid
paying an exorbitant finance fee every month. I figured it was going to
be September at the earliest before I’d get my hands on a bike. So I
didn’t have the money in my checking account to cover as much of the
cost as I wanted, and wound up putting it on a credit card. I will fix
that later.

When I called Angelina (from a gas station, where I also added fuel to
the non-metallic tank) and realized I didn’t have to be in Danville
after all, I dropped all my stuff off at home and headed south on 280.
I swept up over the hill on Highway One and continued through Pacifica
and Half Moon Bay all the way to San Gregorio, when I went inland on
the road of the same name. It was a perfect day for a ride. There was
no one behind me on the entire stretch - a good thing too, since the
rear-view mirrors are useless.

There was one car ahead of me, and he kept a pretty good pace. But I
was driving at break-in speed, so it wasn’t like I wanted to catch him
anyway. And the boys at the shop must have warned me a dozen times
to take it easy on the tires until I had scrubbed in the edges.

There is no slip in the drivetrain at all. None. Let out the clutch,
and it surges ahead instantly. Gear changes are as smooth as pulling a
nylon shirt over your head. Torque is available from the moment the
discs engage, and it pulls like German Shepherd on a leash after the
postman.

It’s so light, too. It has to be at least 50 pounds lighter than the
SuperHawk, and it’s lower to the ground - something I hardly thought
possible. The bars are a bit lower, but if I can push myself back in
the seat, I have room to stretch a bit. I can rest my arm on the tank
for a break, and doing so lets me see what’s behind me in the left
mirror.

But the handling is unbelievable. It just flows into corners, flicking
left and right so effortlessly it’s unreal. And it stays planted too,
although I wasn’t using any steep lean angles. When I got to Highway
35, I headed south again until I got to the overlook of the South Bay,
and finally dismounted to take a look at her.

What is there to say? She is beauty defined in simmering red angular
surfaces. What isn’t red is business-like black, battleship gray, or
service-duty yellow, all metallic pieces designed for the job of
keeping everything rigid and stable at speed. It looks like a sprinter
in the blocks, waiting to launch itself at anything that is paved.

I reversed course and came back north on 35. I zipped right on by
Alice’s - there were a few bikes out there on either side of the road,
but by now it was past 7:00 PM and I wanted to be home before it got
dark. I got the fuel warning light about five miles before I hit the 92
junction, which was just about the time the first slow car appeared in
front of me. Remembering what I read in the owner’s manual during my
rest stop (break-in for the first 1000 KM is 5000 RPM) I backed off and

followed the car until I turned at Black Mountain Road and made my way
to gas station. I took another walk around the bike (the station was
empty, else they’d surely have thought I was crazy) and then retraced
my path to Black Mountain, and from there north on 280. I didn’t stay
on 280, though, opting to exit on 35 and ride the spine of the ridge
for a while before re-joining the freeway at Westborough and coming
home. All in all, I covered 106 miles. Thewre were four miles were on the clock when I
picked it up. That’s a pretty good test drive for a dealership in the middle
of the city.

It isn’t fun around town. The pipes generate enough heat to serve as
toasters; to my thighs, it feels set on “‘medium”. The clutch pull is
a little heavier than my SuperHawk, and I have to get used to the power
curve to keep from stalling it out. And a lot of stop-and-go driving
means I make frequent contact with the tank, which could lead to
serious damage.

But I have never driven anything like it. It is quick, taut, responsive
and sounds beautiful. I long for open roads and days with nothing to do
but ride. On my next vacation, I want to spend every day getting
re-acquainted with roads I used to know.

All four wheels sit perfectly on the ground in a square, suspending the car above them. There is space under them, not so surprising for a family sedan, but once you’re seated inside it feels like it is lower to the ground than it looks.

It’s a Honda Accord, and while many even among the rice rocket set say “Accord” with a certain amount of derision, most know the base Accord is a great starting place for building just about anything you want to mod up. You could easily spend half as much as the car cost in mods and still have it feel as comfortable to drive as the one you’ll test drive at the dealer.

This one is lightly touched. Two factory touches, the fog lamps and the spoiler. Two of my own touches, the Yakima rack and the iPod2Car. When you get down to it, that’s all you really need. The look from outside is ‘sporty’ as my manager long ago said. And from inside, you have non-stop jams. The only touch that makes people stop and wonder what else is going on the EX badge outside the car - and the manual shifter inside. The combo was hard to find when I went looking for the car in Hunter Green, and it remains unusual today.

This isn’t about Honda. It’s about coming back to your car after a long day at work, seeing it waiting there to take you home. It’s a feeling that comes with having come back many times to your car, wanting to go home. It’s not about having a lot of cars or even driving a lot. It’s about 12 and 16-hour days at work. It’s about a three-day weekend of backpacking stretched out to four days with a little rain thrown in. It’s about that crazy idea to hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and back in one day. It’s the day you volunteered to ferry everyone from the paved road to the beautiful but two-miles-away-over-a-rutted-road site your girlfriend’s sister chose for her wedding, driving a 1974 9-passenger Suburban permanently stuck in compound low. It’s after you finished your first 25K race, it’s after the shopping day from Hell, it’s the last trip of the day after you’ve moved everything from the old apartment to the new and finished cleaning the place and you’re leaving the pizza place with a hot pie and a couple of cold ones and dammit, tomorrow’s Monday but you are headed home, and that car is going to get you there. You will open the door and sit inside and turn the key and that engine will spring to life, the lights will come on, and all you have to do is steer it to the place you want to be, after being in the place you had to be, to bliss, to TV, to a hot shower, or maybe just to where you left a book you were reading that morning and was forced to put down.

It’s about my Subaru and my MG and even the dang Ford, and the Suzukis and the Yamaha the Flying Wing Hondas that brought me home after I chose to go away from it, off for a day of adventure or exploration or necessity. It’s about those personal conveyances that, as much as they were purchased for their looks or their style or for their je nais sais quoi, that ultimately provided the necessary function of bringing me home.

I know. It’s been a while. I’m a journalist, not a blogger.  I’m busy, you’re busy, we’re all busy and involved in living our lives. It is not often that our life is lived to write.

It has been long. Too long. My time is split, as this blogging effort is split. Like my goals are split.