Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
People still ate the trout in the 80s. Nature had begun to fall apart and die, but the hard
evidence didn't glare for a few more years, and that deep in the wilderness the trout seemed
plentiful. The fire crackled. The hash pipe glowed. Pan fried trout and stream-chilled beer
equaled perfection. As dusk thickened to twilight logs went on the fire till it flamed beside the
burbling stream. The wilderness could renew perspective on growing complexity.
Firelight under big sky and a wealth of wilderness capped the milestones of recent months:
migration from east coast to west, emergence from poverty to mobility and from youth to
something else. The wilderness felt like home, and so did a new motorcycle. John Lennon had
died the prior December. It was
all too much for me to take
too, the love that had shone all
around us.
'69 to '81 felt like a crackle in the flames, a blip in time with a lingering essence. John
Lennon said, “Life is long.” And just as day follows night, the fire needed more wood and life
would require more dough.
Moving north to the city by the bay made sense. People live in cities to make money.
Country people don't take well to cities, but San Francisco was different. With a reasonably
tuned motorcycle and a decent flat in the Upper Haight, a heterosexual guy could do well in
San Francisco. The artistry at hand felt like a resource, so the scooter got a makeover in deep
sea blue with voltage arcing the tank sides and fenders. A wrench in Canna Screws rebuilt the
top end and went ahead on new jugs since she was peeled open. Sorry: a mechanic in Santa
Cruz replaced the valves and went ahead on new pistons (the bottom end), since the engine
was already open. What the fuck. Why not?
She growled sweetly. Harley Davidson tried to patent the sound but lost in court to the
growling yellow peril and officially introduced the next corporate phase at Harley Davidson:
looking foolish.
Meanwhile, I could ride across town and back to a North Beach curb for a lazy latte and
girl watching easy as drifting into a backwater over a deep hole for lunkers. North Beach was
as far from the Castro as Neptune from Uranus, and coy passers-by offered hope. A bumpkin
could have fun in the city.
But too much fun in the city closed in on cold cloud cover, concrete, chronic hangover
and the cocaine cringe, in which the body wanted more and rejected too much, defaulting to
one mo' time. Then came the swinging dicks, so that a thin, healthy guy could not go to the
grocery store without learning all about sexual objectivity. Maybe it was karmic. It felt creepy,
possibly hateful; so it worked. Canna Screws was not warm and sultry and did not feel like
home, but a house lot showed up for sale in the classifieds there and looked like good anchor-
age on a lee shore.
In the 80s a borrower could still draft a loan app and tax returns. Two stops, at the bank
and the P.O., for blank forms, and a third at a CPA could align numbers. The banks were
happy to lend, if the borrower could demonstrate no need and the ability to repay, and the
