Leanings
LEANINGS
The hangar
Peter Egan
"A HOVERCRAFT WOULD BE NICE,” Hank said. “We could ride the bikes over to Ventura, get on a boat and hover on down the coast. Maybe have a drink in the bar and watch the lights of Los Angeles and Long Beach pass by. When we got to Newport Beach we could unload the bikes and ride the last few miles home.”
“A helicopter wouldn’t be bad, either,” Doug said. “We could go right down the freeway over the rush-hour traffic and be home in 20 minutes.”
“We could rent a garage here in Santa Paula, store the bikes until next year’s grand prix and buy a train ticket,” Barb suggested.
There comes a time in every road trip when you are mentally done riding and you want to be home. The trouble is, you are usually about a hundred miles away from your front door when it hits. Especially if you live in a large city.
It happened to us on our way back from the U.S. GP at Laguna Seca. It had been a glorious day of riding, 300 miles of canyons, backroads and sweeping mountain curves. Barb and I were riding our Beemer in the company of our friends Hank Murdoch on his R100RT and Doug Booth on his Ducati Darmah. The day had been almost dreamlike, but the dream was rapidly ending. We’d descended from the mountains into Santa Paula just at sundown, stopped for dinner at a Mexican restaurant and now had nothing ahead of us but two hours of jammed freeways and lane-splitting in the smoggy darkness.
Needless to say, we eventually did make it home. And without hovercraft, helicopter, train tickets or storing our bikes. We just zipped up our jackets, pulled on gloves, flipped down visors, paid our dues on the freeway and rolled into our respective driveways just before midnight. “There’s got to be a better way,” I mumbled as I unloaded the bike.
It turns out there is.
I learned about it a few weeks ago.
I got up early on a Saturday morning, loaded my Ducati into The Blue Whale (Chevy van) and drove to a shop called Pro-Italia in Glendale. Glendale is a city at the north edge of the Los Angeles basin, nestled right at the foot of the San Gabriel mountains, between Burbank and Pasadena. I took the Duck in to see if they could track down an elusive regulator problem that was cooking my battery (they did), and then hung around the shop for a while, sipping coffee and looking at Ducatis, Guzzis and other neat stuff. It’s one of those shops where their enthusiasm and love of Italian bikes is both evident and contagious, so a lot of customers tend to linger as I did, absorbing the atmosphere. This tendency is reinforced by a waiting lounge with a large coffee maker, a VCR and a big stack of recent grand prix racing tapes.
While lounging in the video room, watching last year’s Italian GP, I got talking to six other customers, who introduced themselves as Dave, Michael, Todd, Paul, Howard and Rick. It turned out they all owned Ducatis and Laverdas, and they all knew each other well.
“Where do you go riding?” I asked.
They pointed out the window and up the street. “Right there. This shop is only about two miles from the beginning of the Angeles Crest Highway, one of the best motorcycle roads in the world.”
“You're lucky to live so close,” I said.
“Oh, we don’t live here,” Dave said. “We live all over the L.A. area. We just keep our bikes here.”
“Here at the shop?
“No. At our clubhouse.” A couple of the guys exchanged glances and grinned. “Should we show him our clubhouse?”
“Sure.”
So five of us walked down the street a few blocks to an unmarked garage. The door was swung open, and there stood a collection of seven or eight Italian sportbikes with covers on them. Behind the bikes was an antique wooden bar, like something out of a western, with whiskey decanters, drink glasses and an ice bucket. Along one wall was a rack of racing leathers and helmets. An Italian flag hung nearby.
“What we do,” Dave said, “is get up early in the morning on weekends, drive our cars here, park out in back and then suit ,up for a ride on the Angeles Crest. That way we don't have to spend an hour using up a nice sportbike on the freeway. When we come back, we change our clothes, have a drink and sometimes we have a barbecue in the evening, right here at the clubhouse. And if we need parts or service, Pro-Italia is just up the street. We don’t have to haul the bikes around. We can push them to the shop from here.”
So. Here it was. An answer to those urban freeway sportbike blues: A hangar for motorcycles!
And why not? We did it for airplanes because airplanes, by nature, had to be operated from a spacious area at the edge of town. Sportbikes, too, need elbow room, and in many cases are no more suited to the crowded freeways and streets than a taxiing Piper or Cessna. And, like an airplane hanger, the motorcycle hangar is more than a storage garage. It’s a place to socialize, to sit out bad weather with your friends, to bench race, to put up flags and signs and to store your extra stuff. Not a bad idea, and a concept whose time has possibly come, at least to urban America.
While driving my van home from Glendale, I wondered if I could bear to park my Ducati in a faraway garage and visit it only on weekends.
After some deliberation, I decided I couldn't do it. Each night, before I lock the doors and turn out the lights, I go out to the garage and look in on my bikes for a few minutes. I’m addicted to that visual hit. It keeps the dream alive until the weekend comes. With a hangar, I’d need two sets of bikes. And shortly thereafter, no doubt, a good divorce lawyer.
