Port Costa

The engine turns over on the first try, roars for a few moments, sputters, and dies. This is typical behavior. It's Sunday at a quarter after eleven, and I'm trying to take Sweetie Pie for a ride. Soft clinking noises come from the house where David is making coffee. I open the choke up a bit and try again, this time easing the gas on to about 3000rpms and leaving it there. Sweetie Pie's whole body vibrates and the morning air is thick with the exhaust and the sound of horsepower. David ducks under the low branches of the apple tree and hands me a steaming cup on a white saucer.

"I thought we'd head up past the stadium on our usual doomed ride," David tells me, and slurps the top layer of liquid off his coffee. The last few times we've tried to get out past Wildcat Canyon Road, Sweetie Pie has died in inventive ways, landing me in the cab of tow trucks and the back of downtown body shops. I set my cup down on the mossy brick drive, and shove my head into the hand-me-down helmet supplied by a former colleague. It fits, but the padding on the top has worn away. I feel its skeleton against my skull; the remaining safety quotient is dubious.

Easing my right leg over the bike, I check the gas valve and adjust the velcro on my gloves. I close my visor, and depress the clutch, then ease slowly and backwards down the narrow drive, knocking apple leaves and unripe fruit everywhere. Once on asphalt, my left foot shifts down into first, I ease on the throttle, let out the clutch...

It's about 45 windy miles to Port Costa from North Berkeley, and I tip my bike before we've completed three of them. Headed up the hill towards the Berkeley stadium, I stop at a light and can't get going without rolling backwards. I stall, we go down, it's embarrassing. Stepping to the right side, I squat with my back to the machine, hook my fingers into the metal under the seat, and, bracing with my feet, lean 800lbs. of metal back upright. As is usually the case, a mustached man with a Honda has stopped to see if I need help. "I'm a beginner," I tell him. His grin indicates he noticed. He pushes Sweetie Pie to the top of the rise, and tells me I can use my foot brake to get started on inclines.

We head east into Tilden, over the University, the city, and the Bay. San Francisco is a hazy figure on the horizon. It's shady on the road, with little traffic, and I follow the American flag flapping from the back of David's Road King. When we come down over the other side of Tilden, it's fast, loopy curves through Orinda, and then winding residential roads through Martinez.

At about 2 o'clock we reach the end of the road, quite literally, and park in the gravel lot between the tracks and The Warehouse. About fifty other bikers are there, and a live band plays well-done covers on the back porch. You can see the Bay from shady seats, and order steak sandwiches. The whole place is built from first growth redwood, likely when lumber was cheap. There are beams enough that you can be sure the place was built to hold serious weight, but persistent ivy has found cracks in the exterior and winds in and out of the architecture. Wooden ducks, Harley paraphernalia, and old timey lanterns hang from the ceiling. Lobsters bound by rubber bands float in a murky tank. A polar bear roars unconvincingly from a glass case. Ladies with tattoos are tied into leather vests and bustiers, men wear long beards and tightly knotted bandanas.

Outside, the sun is white, and Mt. Diablo is settled onto the Northern horizon. Antique hunters and bikers eye each other with mutual interest as they move in and out of wooden buildings. Across the street from The Warehouse is the Port Costa Hotel, whose rooms are named after the women who worked in them back when it was still a five-start brothel. A brothel, anyway, according to the members of E Klampus Vitus, and signs posted at the Warehouse will have you know that this is Klamper Country. We sip iced coffees at a picnic bench facing The Theater of Dreams.

On the way home, we lean low into curved road. Riders coming from the opposite direction extend their first fingers into the "V" of recognition. I've never taken my hand from where it hovers with a beginner's assiduity over the clutch before, but as we snake through the hills in the dappled light that burns through the oak foliage towards another rider, I extend my left arm and two trembling fingers that almost brush his.