AGV Backmarker: This Riding/Writing Life

It’s been one of those days. In fact, it’s been one of those weeks. Actually, now that I think of it, I’m having one of those lives. So please forgive me if this edition of Backmarker is abbreviated, late, and/or disjointed. I’m starting this column on the train. I’m heading up to Anaheim to pick up a motorcycle from the Triumph fleet center. If you read this on Thursday, I’ll be somewhere in Big Sur with a photographer, on assignment. I suppose it’s nice work if you can get it. I used to really like these travel gigs, but now that I’ve got a reason to want to stay home, I’m of two minds. Once I’m on the bike, I’m sure it will be fun.

On the first day of the ride, I plan to channel Steve McQueen. We’ll have breakfast in the diner at the Santa Paula airport, where he lived in a hangar. I’ll also try to find his old mechanic, who (I think) still lives in Ojai. Then, we’ll drop in at Bruce Brown’s place in Gaviota. I expect he’ll run me off with a shotgun, but it should all make for a good story.

Of course, that’s contingent on the coast not being on fire. The Santa Ana winds are blowing and, I hear Newcomb’s Ranch—the famous burger stop on the Angeles Crest—has already been char-broiled.

Speaking of Brown (director of On Any Sunday), I checked in with ’70s short track hero Gene Romero earlier this week. For the last dozen years, he’s been promoting his own West Coast Flat Track Series.

He was pumped up after a couple of real good rounds in Oregon, where his events drew about 4,000 fans apiece. This year, his series will comprise nine events in Nevada, California, and Oregon. Each one has five classes of racing, drawing as many as 150 riders. On weekends where the AMA Pro series isn’t conflicting, guys like Kenny Coolbeth or JR Schnabel sometimes show up, so it’s the real deal.

His focus is keeping racing affordable—and providing value—for everyone: racers, spectators, and promoters. “I don’t charge for memberships or licenses,” he told me, adding in what might have been a dig at AMA Pro, “and there are no cliques. We keep it simple; our rule book is about three pages long, and that’s in a big font.”

Okay, I’m back having arrived at Triumph’s SoCal fleet center and picked up my bike for the week—a new T-bird cruiser. Not my usual style, but in the ride from Anaheim to Hotel Erwin in Venice, where I was meeting up with my photographer for the gig, it grew on me.

I had a rare run west on 91, then up the 405 past LAX with no traffic. By the time I got into Venice, I was in a good mood (albeit starving and thirsty). I found my shooter, an English chap named James Cheadle.

I’ve never worked with him before, so I had a little trepidation. After all, we’d be living in each other’s pockets for the next few days. I needn’t have worried. He had a chilled bottle of wine, and a chill attitude in his room. The Erwin is right down by the boardwalk in Venice, which is an area of L.A. with lots of, um, character. (I have a funny story about Venice Beach, dating back to the first time I ever visited California in about 1901. Okay, back when I was 19. Remind me to tell it to you some time.)

“We don’t have a lot of homeless people where I live,” he told me. He lives in Bath, which is a beautiful town in Southern England, “but when I go into London, the homeless people are really rude and horrible. Here, your homeless people are so polite.”

By then, we’d killed a bottle of wine and walked out into the warm night looking for a late burger. We were cursed at, heckled, and threatened three times in the first three blocks.

“What was I saying about your homeless people being so polite?” James asked.

Oh well. Over burgers, I got to know a bit about him. When he’s not working for motorcycle magazines, he shoots a lot of features for lad mags like Loaded and Maxim, so he regaled me with some of those stories. When he found out I was from Canada, he said, “I’ve been there twice. Once to swim with the polar bears, and once, to Toronto, to shoot a feature on the world’s largest sex shop.”

He once turned a Honda C90 into an 8-foot-long chopper, and rode it the length of Spain for a feature in Bike called “Cheesy Rider.” And two of his friends are currently preparing a trip across Siberia on similar bikes, that they’re calling “The Wrong Way Round.” The only thing that bothers me more than someone stealing my story ideas is someone who steals my story ideas before I have them.

Anyway, riding up the coast with this guy will be good fun. We’ll also be joined by Tim Prentice, of Motonium. Tim is a one of the world’s comparatively rare freelance motorcycle designers. He was the principle stylist of the new T-bird. I’ll have a few days to grill him on whatever he’s got on the surface table right now. Of course, he’s sworn to secrecy, but “a journalist’s job is to make people say things they shouldn’t.”

Wow. Now, as I type this, it’s 6:22 a.m. I’m looking out the window of the hotel, and I’m almost literally watching the sun come up over Santa Monica Boulevard.

It’s all cool, but my deadline won’t wait. There was a lot more I wanted to write this week: James “The Rocket” Rispoli is up at the motorcycle-only BUB land-speed record meet on the Bonneville Salt Flat; he’s another flat tracker taking a page from my friend Chris Carr’s book and trying to set some land-speed records. He missed one by .001 mph last Tuesday. Also, the embargo’s off a new Shoei helmet I’ve been testing. The RF-1100 replaces the old 1000 lid, and it’s a big improvement. It promises great value for money in the upper-middle price range. And I was going to check in with Jimmy Moore, who raced in the NW200 and the TT this spring and is hoping to race at Macau this fall.

Those stories and more will have to come later. I’ve got to hit the gym before I spend the next few days sitting on motorcycles and eating road food! I’ll try to be more coherent next week.