Up Front

UP FRONT

THE OUTLAW

Progress ruined my perfect record. The downfall began in innocent circumstances; a warm afternoon, Daylight Savings Time and the chance, for once, to leave the office on schedule. Too good a shot to waste, so I ignored the test Multis parked in the garage and rolled out my own Single, for a trip home the back way.

I am a short order cook, by which I mean I have knobbies and full dirt equipment on my street-legal dual-purpose bike, all so I can go about my daily rounds with short bursts of enjoyment. I have been doing this for years and years and by now what looks to laymen like a 25-mile ride home on the Interstate is to me a 40-mile loop with goat trails, downhills, uphills, a quick dash down the bluffs overlooking the ocean, a stretch of pasture, even a water crossing.

There I was, then, with my new gas/oil shocks raising the back end, my secondgeneration fork kit rippling away beneath the bars and my big desert racing tire, the bike steering well for the first time in its 5year-old life. Oh. perfect day.

As is my custom I took the back road through the canyon, then down the trail into the abandoned orchard. Great place to practice slides. Seems some kids were playing with matches and set the woods on fire, so the fire department came out with 'dozers and cut a fine network of paths.

I whipped around there for a few laps and headed down the trail into the canebrake and the wash above the creek, going due east toward the crossing.

I slid to a halt in the nick of time. The rains had washed away the bank and carved out maybe an eight-foot drop to the water, rather more than I figured to tackle. So I rode down the wash until it sloped to the actual stream, then across the water. No, I didn’t manage to get the front wheel up, but then, I seldom do.

Out of the weeds and across the flat section where the horses practice, up to the hill and the curve around the oak tree, back around once for good measure and across the construction site to where the pavement begins and . . . the . . . police car . . . is . . . waiting.

For me. Obviously.

About that perfect record. I began riding motorcycles before there was such a thing as a motorcycle operator’s license. Soon as the law was changed I took the test and passed it. I have ridden just about every make and model. I have ridden on the east coast and the west coast, from the Texas gulf to 10 miles south of the Canadian border. During all that time, from age 16 until this occasion. I had never been stopped by an officer of the law. I had never been asked for my motorcycle operator’s license.

Until now.

I carefully parked, shut off the engine, removed my helmet.

“May I see your operator's license, please?”

“Certainly.” I fished it out and handed it over. He scowled and mumbled into the mike.

“May I see your vehicle registration, please?”

“Of course.” I handed over the registration card and my insurance card just for good measure. More reports to and from headquarters. As I stood there, the computer was reading my file. “May I see your notarized permission from the owner, giving you permission to be on that property?”

Got me. In California, counties have the option of requiring anybody found on private land to prove he has permission to be there. No complaint required, none of this presumed innocence stuff they teach kids in school. As you’d guess, persons on foot, bicycle or horseback seldom need these authorizations. Motorcycles, well now.

What could I say?“I don’t have one. Rocky (owner of the stable just upstream from where I crossed) has always let us ride here, provided we stopped the engines when there were horses near us.”

“I don’t want to criticize anybody, but Rocky has no right to tell you that. The land you were on isn’t his.”

Got me worse. “Oh, boy. Look, I came down the road from the bluff and through the old orchard and across where the fire was. I was headed for Rocky’s trail but it’s washed out so I just went south until I could cross the creek.”

“You’ve just admitted about 15 counts of trespass.”

“Damn. I’ve been riding down here for eight years. Before they built the apartments the other neighborhood kids and I used to have a motocross track down by the oak tree. Nobody ever said a thing.”

“This isn’t a small town anymore.”

“I guess not. Too bad, too.”

Then a softening. “I was down here watching for motorcycles. We’ve had complaints the bikes have scared some horses and a couple of people were thrown. I busted five kids here Saturday. Kids, they don’t listen. An adult maybe is a little different.”

I am not one to throw away an advantage. I reckoned he was right.

The subject changed. He asked “How long you been riding?”

“Since ’54.” >

“You done 100,000 miles?”

“I dunno. Never figured it out.”

“I put 80.000 miles on my BMW 600.”

Allan Girdler

You meet new friends in the strangest places. We talked about motorcycles, his BMW, his current Honda 350 (not powerful enough or big enough. His wife doesn’t like to ride on it and he likes to tour so he’s saving toward another BMW.)

We talked about the Yamaha Triple, touring bikes vs sports bikes. We talked about howr come a man who had as much exposure as I have to the newest and most advanced motorcycles, has for his own bike a 5-year-old Single. (Because I like it.) We talked about chain vs shaft, about whether anybody really knows if frequent oil changes prolong engine life, about if you could re-use engine oil after you filtered it throughly, about fairings (he likes ’em, I don’t). He wondered if I had deliberately picked a model motorcycle that isn’t required to have turn signals. (No, I said, just lucky.)

Mercy, you may be thinking, didn’t the talk ever end?

I w asn’t sure if it would end or not. What I did was infer that I was not going to be clapped into the slammer. I would not appear before a jury of my peers, not if I read his attitude correctly.

What I also inferred was that it was the better part of valor not to ask if I was free to go. So we talked, from 6 p.m. (approx.) until his radio buzzed and he had to go track down another complaint. It would have been 7:25 p.m., I think, because I live a few blocks from the scene of my detention and because I got home at 7:30. On the dot. My wife was worried. She was also mad as hell. It was our 15-year-old’s birthday and the party had been waiting for me. For an hour and a half.

I explained as best I could. The kid didn't mind. When he was 10. he w^as one of the kids using the motocross track, a 250 for me, a 50 for him. On one occasion he T-boned me in the tight section.

“You’re not supposed to centerpunch your father,” I complained.

“You were going so slow,” he apologized.

Bad enough living with a father who can’t manage a good berm shot. Think how much worse it would be if I had become a convicted criminal.