Um, help...

Last night I was supposed to go out for a drink to see my dear friend Zeecee off to the Big Apple. The lovely Anna and a little tequila in tow, we rode our bicycles down to the Makeout Room for a little dancing and our brief farewells as we both had appointments early this morning. She, a 6am yoga class to teach and I, a 9:30 viewing of the CL450. Needless to say, we both forgot how fun it was to dance our asses off and stayed out later than planned, resting my head on my pillow at 3:47am. Ouch. This really has nothing to do with motorcycles except I think its important to know where my physical and mental state was come this morning--eyes burning, thirsty, tired, with a slight case of the shakes--hungover. The weedwhackers at the park next to my house so dutifully woke me at 8:00 and I drank some tea.

When I showed up at the chick's house to see the bike, she seemed like the type of girl Ben warned me about...surprised I even showed, she was ever so chipper, bragged that she knew Charlie of Charlie's place, (dude doesn't anyone who takes their Honda there?) and that her bike was "a really, really great bike" (as most people often do who don't know much about their bikes he told me.) But I was already deducting $$$'s inspecting the rust, dried-out seat, scratches from when she dropped it twice, etc. She also informed me she's a lawyer, so I decided to take off another $100 for that. Plus the bike wasn't there when I arrived as her boyfriend was out getting it warmed up or "running errands" she said. Eventually, I had asked for a drive and was kick starting it, turned-over 3rd try & idled at a crazy four and a half rpms...dude was messing with it whilst "running errands." Whatever, I took off, tried to find a stretch of long road among the crazy hills of Upper Castro and Portola only to have it stall at a stop sign. I re-kicked it. No luck. I push-started and took off...for one block. And then crazy enough, it did the same thing my old Scrambler used to do--not go when you pull on the throttle...like you're driving in quicksand. Like you suddenly got too fat. Like when you just took another hundy off the asking price. Then I tried to find my way back to her place to tell her thanks, but no thanks when in the middle of a steep hill, it stalled and I was left holding this gigantic machine at a 45 degree angle, hand on brake so it wouldn't crash into the parked car behind me and dialing the lady's number to tell her to send muscles to come rescue me if she doesn't want her bike dropped a third time. I felt a little panic and had to hold it there for 10 minutes before muscles showed up. My hand had a deep handlebar imprint and I was sweating balls. Funny though, after telling Thom about this, it occurred to me that part of the reason I like motorcycles is for the same reasons one might hate them...being more aware of how screwed you could be and liking it.

So, I guess what I mean to say is that I'm either going to start pumping some serious iron to be buff enough to handle a bigger bike or stick to the flatlands. And tomorrow I'm going to see about a Yamaha RD400....ohhhhhhhh man, oh man, oh man!