Frenchy's Rant

“C’mon honey, just one more time. Please? I promise it’ll be quick.”

Sleeping Beauty knows me too well to believe it will be quick, but, being the good sport she is, she nonetheless agreed.

It’s really her fault anyway. At the conclusion of The Epic Ride, I parked Rain Cloud Follows, with a promise that we were done with long distance riding for the season. We covered some ground this year, and to tell the truth, towards the end, I was a bit burned out. And if I was a bit burned out from driving all those miles, I can only imagine how Fiona felt, sitting on the back and staring at my big, dumb ol‘ head day after day.

I was OK with the decision, figuring I’d use the down time to repair the damage suffered at Wounded Cloud, Wyoming when I stupidly let Rain Cloud take a nap. Motorcycles are notorious for wanting to rest, and the natural resting position of any two wheeled vehicle is on it’s side.

Rain Cloud Down at Wounded Cloud

I ordered some replacement parts to fix the damaged ones, and life slowly returned to a somewhat normal pace.

Normal, until her cousin Colleen called. Colleen’s boyfriend owns a beautiful yellow Ducati 998, and we’ve always said one day we’d go for a ride. That day came Wednesday, as they were out riding, and wanted us to meet them. Never one to turn down an offer like that, we were off in an instant. We met at a gas station, and headed for one of my favorite California roads, the excellent Angeles Crest.

I’d never ridden with Ivan and Colleen before, and to be honest, I wondered if my sport tourer would be able to keep up with the Number 34 Ducati. Graciously, I let Ivan take the lead.

I didn’t have much to worry about. Ivan took it easy on me, as we stayed pretty close to the legal speed limit. The road twists and curves and turns and weaves through the Angeles Forest in an almost unending squiggle that causes that little gland in my brain that oozes and spurts happy juice to kick into overdrive.

Back in 2004, Mother Nature decided to put an abrupt end to the happy juice oozing by wiping away part of the road in a huge mudslide. Crews did their best to fix the damaged roller coaster, but, as I know all too well, Mother Nature always wins. In 2006 she outdid herself, wiping away huge sections of the road in an early spring deluge.

I think I could get through.

The road closes about ten miles past Newcomb’s Ranch, which is just as well. Newcomb’s is a fantastic place to hang out and bullshit with fellow motorcycle enthusiasts. Every time I’ve been to Newcomb’s Ranch, it’s taken hours to leave. Bikers check out each other’s rides, talk about other favorite roads, and generally pass time telling lies and stories. Oh yeah, and the chili is pretty good too.

I met Bob, a local rider on a KTM 640 who said CalTrans is building a bridge over the washed away part, and that bridge should be open sometime next year. He said the gobs of money being spent on the improved road will be well worth it when it finally reopens. I agree.

After lunch, Ivan graciously let me take the lead. I flogged Rain Cloud as hard as humanly possible as we railed back down off the crest, in a misguided attempt to impress Ivan. That beautiful yellow Ducati was so close it seemed like I was towing him down the road.

All too soon, our ride ended. We parted ways with a promise to do it again soon. Yes, this promise would break that other promise, but what can I do? An addiction is an addiction.

On the way home, we stopped off to visit with Fiona’s sister. Her niece Áine ran out to meet us, and excitedly jumped on the motorcycle as soon as she could.

We talked about our ride, and it occurred to me how much I love motorcycling, how much it is a part of me and who I am. To be honest, at the end of the Epic Ride, I wasn’t so sure if that was the case anymore. It was a relief to realize that the riding burnout was just a temporary thing. It was a great day. In fact, it was the Best Day Ever.

The motorcycle wheels may have stopped turning, but the wheels in my head were spinning full speed with one thought, how can I convince Sleeping Beauty that we should take one last ride, even just a quick one, before the motorcycling season truly ends?

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, which, for me usually means nothing more exciting than losing lots of my semi-hard earned money, which, true to the saying, always seems to stay in Sin City. This week was no exception. The WWE circus tour rolled from our show in Anaheim onto The Strip very late Monday night, but not late enough to stop me from sitting in front of a One Armed Bandit and helping the Hard Rock Hotel pay the electric bill.

And it never got any better. After the show ended on Tuesday, I returned to the Hard Rock to once again prove Phineus Taylor Barnum’s ‘Sucker Born Every Minute‘ theory correct. Thanks to my extremely crappy luck, I pretty much worked for free this week. After paying for the cab to the airport, I didn’t even have enough scratch left for a cup of coffee. Then, to further hammer home how bad my luck was, I walked past the newest and most novel way for Vegas to fleece tourists:

Unfortunately, after my staggering losses at the slots; losses that rivaled the past few weeks on Wall Street, I realized I couldn’t even afford oxygen!

Time for this sucker to leave town.

Bitter? Me? Naah… not at all…

Well, maybe just a teeny bit, but who can blame me? Look at this picture of me in nursery school, up there in the back row. It all makes sense now.

Just look at those pants. Who wouldn’t be bitter??

Thanks to alert reader and fellow plaid wearer Bill Dennen for reminding me of the ‘good’ old days.

… to get kidnapped or something, so I’d at least have something interesting to write about. Life is back to the predictable endless-loop-stuck-on-fast-forward boring cycle of fly, work, sleep, work, sleep, fly, repeat.

Yuck.

Seems like it’s almost time for a major life-changing event to happen, or at least another motorcycle adventure, which, fortunately will happen in exactly seven days. I’m throwing a dart at the map this week, and hoping it hits Baja California.

Kidnappings are up in Baja, so chances are good that I’d have something interesting to write about, assuming somebody posts my ransom.

My friend Tom (a.k.a Zamfir, Master of the Tape Room) and I made it our mission to go out and kill as many brain cells as possible on Saturday night. After many stops, our destructive field trip took us to Kell’s Irish Pub, arguably the best bar in Portland. The band, ‘Ockham’s Razor‘ was amazing, and the Guinness was as smooth as any I’ve ever had, making it almost too easy to eradicate those stubborn remaining neurons. It was a good night.

Though the bar was crowded, Zamfir and I managed to score a great table almost directly in front of the stage. Many pints were drained in the name of our mission as the band rocked the house. Suddenly, out of the ever-growing crowd, two uninvited strangers dragged a couple of chairs over and joined our little party. These two dudes looked straight off the campus of Microsoft, a pair of tall and dorky clowns with matching foo-foo girlie drinks in hand.

Zamfir and I looked at each other and shrugged. Great. Since they were already sitting at the table, there really wasn’t much we could do about it. Because we couldn’t really care less about these two, we introduced ourselves as ‘Jimmy and Fred’, shook their hands and then did our best to ignore them; not too difficult for me, considering more pints of Guinness than blood sloshed through my veins.

Just as suddenly as Frick and Frack sat down, our little party was joined again, this time by a group of seven girls out on a wild batchelorette party night. The bride looked pretty bombed as she staggered around. Her bridesmaid, sober and scanning the room, had some sort of list in hand. Seemed they were on a mission too.

When the entire Girls Gone Wild party stopped in front of our table, Frack’s eyes lit up. Wow! A girl! A bunch of girls! Live ones! How keen! It could be Frack’s lucky day! The bachelorettes started twittering and whispering to each other.

Frack looked like he needed encouragement, so I leaned over and stirred the pot a little, saying I thought the bride was definitely into him. I guess I wasn’t exactly discrete, because she heard me as well. The soon-to-be future ex-wife smiled at me, then grabbed Frack’s hand, leading him toward the restroom. A flicker of jealousy flashed over Frick’s face as his buddy, about to get lucky, disappeared. Always willing to help a cause, I leaned over and said, “Dude, what the hell are you waiting for? There are SEVEN of them over there! Get going, man!”

Frick jumped up and disappeared as well, leaving his half empty Cosmopolitan on the table.

Ten minutes later, our two friends were back, looking pretty crestfallen.

“What happened?”

“Nothing,” replied Frack. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Aww, c’mon. Tell me what happened!”

They both looked at each other, then lifted their shirts.

Across their scrawny chests, scrawled in bright red lipstick, were the names of every girl in the bridal party, all long gone. Mission accomplished!