Raven's Roads
Living an interesting life: the travels and musings
of motorcycling author Linda R. Moore

Jul 8, 2004

Part 7: The Golden Gate Bridge

July 8, 2004

When I was eighteen, I met someone at a ham radio rally and ended up dating him for eleven months. The relationship didn’t last much beyond my arriving at university and having a whole ocean of young men to meet, but he did teach me how to ride a motorcycle, and for that I am very grateful.

I didn’t ride again for seven years. This was a good thing, because I was reckless and would probably have gotten hurt. But I never stopped loving motorcycles. Every time I passed one I’d inspect it and make appreciative noises.

I started learning again in January 1996, when I was 25 years old. A co-worker had brought in an article about a motorcycle school, and I needed to stop constantly asking for car rides to get to work (I hated driving). I took the safety class, where I was quite obviously having so much fun that the instructors were grinning ear-to-ear alongside me and tagged me “Evel Knievel,” and then did six months of intensive one-on-one training. The instructor would follow on his bike and tell me what to do by radio. I became a good rider and eventually, on the third attempt, passed my test.

My husband learned how to ride too, but he wasn’t doing it because he loved it; he was doing it to hang on to me, and we were already drifting in different directions. Around two months later we split up. It was a sad time.

But the riding helped me over the hump, as it were, and I was able to cope with being single and alone for the first time in my life. I did well. Riding gave me a confidence that I had been lacking, and made me feel fully alive.

I rode solo to Cornwall and back, meeting my parents theree–it was an 800 or 900 mile round trip. My parents said they were proud of me, which was quite something, since they have very mixed feelings about riding. Dad had a rather nasty motorcycle accident just before they were married, and has never ridden since. That was the most ambitious thing I had ever done, the height of my riding “career” at that point.

I met my second husband, Don, online, and emigrated to California in August 1997. For various reasons, I did not ride almost from the moment I arrived, even though he had bought me Arnie in January 1997. It started off with his bike failing so he took mine to work (no car at that time), then I was very ill for a while, and eventually I just fell into a strange hiatus which I still, to this day, don’t fully understand, knowing how much joy riding a motorcycle brings me. Eventually Arnie fell into moderate disrepair due to lack of maintenance and lack of money.

Then, in 2002, my parents had a windfall and shared some of it with us. It paid for repairs to my motorcycle so that I could start using it again. My husband was unemployed, so there was time to do those repairs. In 2002 I rode 27.5 miles. In 2003, 1011.4 miles (Arnie was off the road for four of those twelve months). So far in 2004, I’ve ridden 2500 miles, with many more planned.

On 8 July 2004, I rode to Petaluma and back. I took freeways–lots of freeways, and only took one wrong turn, somewhere where it didn’t matter. 280 is wide and easy-going, its surface smooth and pleasant to ride on. The road lifted me up and up out of Silicon Valley and into the rural surrounding areas. Wind pushed at me every inch of the way.

I passed landmarks I’d seen on the back or from a car; the giant leering statue of Father Junipero Serra. The reservoir that’s built on the San Andreas fault. I rode faster and faster, passing cars, confident in my machine.

Before I knew it, the traffic was getting heavier and I was making the turnoff to 19th Avenue. This was my first time in San Francisco and I didn’t quite know what to expect, except hills. Hills I got, but the traffic light gods were good to me and I needed to do only one hill start. I hopped up the hills, passing rows of colourful Victorians and playing tag with a couple of classic cars from the Thirties–so old that they used hand signals to point where they wanted to go.

I glimpsed the Golden Gate as I went down the other side, visible but touched by grey mist, and then rode through the Golden Gate park. At last I came through and was on the Golden Gate for the first time ever. What a rush!

The bridge towered over me, its girders brick-red and imposing. The mist was there, gray and damp, and there was a distinct chill in the air. The metal expansion plates thudded and tugged disconcertingly at my tires as I rode; you could not have chiselled the grin off my face if you tried.

I took some time to gloat quietly to myself in a sea of strangers at the vista point. The bridge was visible, but there had been fog and so everything was hazy. The city looked neat from up there.

I rode in San Francisco!

I was ten when I first heard about the Golden Gate, from a girl called Julie. I’m not sure if she ever ended up in showbiz, but she was the type who would make a success of it. I was envious - she had been to America - the name of the bridge tugged at me in a way I was not to understand for many, many years when I enjoyed my first view of it, over fifteen years later.

It felt like home.

Before I became too chilled, I rode through the rainbow tunnel and so into Marin, and picked up the 101. From there it was a straight shot to Petaluma, fighting my urge to turn off at every intersection which pointed at some historical marker or another. I had a job to do.

I inspected the campground– a place with shady trees, nice log cabins, and great lumbering RVs all over the place, and put down a deposit. I lunched on milk and Chex mix, hauled my bike upright from the intensely steep slope that I’d parked it, and went all the way home again.

Miles: 188.1