Yahoo Autos Year of the Goose, Part 1: An Experiment in Motorcycling
I’d known about On Any Sunday since I was a tween BMX grommet back in the late 1980s. Somebody, maybe it was Stu Thomsen, suggested that the opening sequence-featuring a bunch of kids on Schwinn Stingrays on a makeshift motocross course-made him want to do exactly that. But for some reason, I didn’t get around to seeing it until 2010, when I was lying around in a lady’s bed in Oakland eating vanilla ice cream with sea salt and olive oil. Most transient artsy types worth their East Bay cred have lived multiple lives, and the heavily tattooed schoolteacher I was dating that fall was no different. She’d been a chef prior to her career in education, and the dessert was simple and delicious. Browsing Netflix, we settled on Bruce Brown’s documentary and were immediately taken with it as an artifact of our nowhere-California 1970s childhoods, hers down on the edge of the Mojave, mine in the Central Valley. They’re the sort of places where you just wound up exposed to machines. While my early education came via Pontiacs and Porsches, my mechanized world broadened when I befriended Robert in elementary school.
Robert’s family was on the junkpile-chaotic side of the lower-middle-class spectrum. The backyard was littered with various mechanical things, an orange Toyota Hilux there, a Mazda RX-3 wagon over yonder. His mother bred Pomeranians. His father taught me to shoot guns in some little hollow in the Sierras. Six out of ten times, Robert showed up with some new self-inflicted injury. The quickest route from his house to mine was through our elementary school. When the district tired of kids riding their bikes down the open-air main hallway, they strung a chain across the front when school wasn’t in session.
Still, if you laid the bike over sideways at speed on the slick concrete, you could round a corner right before the chain and sail through open double doors-most of the time. One day, Robert arrived at my house, disheveled, ripped up, and bloodied. Concern in his voice, my father asked, “Robert! What happened?” Matter-of-factly, and a little sheepishly, Robert stated, “I went through the doors at Creekside.”
By the time his family moved up to Klamath Falls, Oregon, when we were in junior high, Robert had managed to knock an equilateral triangle out of his two front teeth and had amassed more stitches than an NHL player, yet he shook it off every time and kept going. I have a feeling his dad never got around to fixing Robert’s ratty Honda CT70 Mini Trail because he was afraid it’d be the end of his hapless son. That crapcan bike was Robert’s favorite thing in the world. He’d get on and I’d push him around the yard. Once, we accidentally got it started. He was so excited that he immediately inadvertently killed the bike. We never did get it to run again. “But Dad!” he’d protest. “It just needs starting fluid!”
“You got starting fluid on the brain, Robert.”
Robert also had Moto Guzzis on the brain. I don’t recall him ever spouting off specific models, though I know he loved the Guzzi police bikes. The Mandello del Lario firm’s 1970s glory days still held a warm glow for those who weren’t swept up by the Honda Hurricanes and Kawasaki Ninjas taking over the streets in the mid-1980s. Guzzis, to Robert, were just utterly emblematic of motorcycle cool. And since Robert knew a lot more about motorcycles than I did, I decided they were cool, too.
I’d thought about getting a bike for years. My old roommate, Philippe, rode a Suzuki Hayabusa. I’d had a brief fling with a girl who rode a Honda CBR 929RR. My little corner of the East Bay at the time was sportbike country, but it was also the domain of guys like Arlen Ness. My friend Cole Foster was turning out some of the loveliest custom bikes in the country down in Salinas. But for one reason or another-lack of money, lack of decent health insurance, a disapproving significant other-I never got around to doing it. But over the years, I noticed that the guys who rode motorcycles could also drive. So when I arrived at Car and Driver last spring, I started considering my slowness relative to some of our resident shoes-august speedsters like Tony Quiroga, Don Sherman, and Aaron Robinson. I’m not sure that I’m the pokiest guy on the staff, but a morning spent chasing Quiroga will certainly give a man that impression. Given this publication’s legacy, I felt it was my duty to be faster, surer, and better. Why not see what riding a motorcycle for a year teaches me?
So I sent Moto Guzzi an email. Since Piaggio purchased Italy’s oldest continuously operating motorcycle concern, they’ve had somewhat of a resurgence in the States. Guzzi quickly agreed to my damn-fool proposition and offered me the use of a 2015 V7 Stone for a year. It’s their bestselling model, the sort of machine one can learn on and then grow with a bit. Especially if one lacks Kenny Roberts aspirations. Conveniently, I lack Kenny Roberts aspirations.
Powered by Guzzi’s long-running small-block engine, the V7 is a modest machine, rated at 50 horsepower and weighing 395 pounds. Under the iconic flared tank sits a 744-cc air-cooled V-twin splayed sideways, spinning the rear wheel via driveshaft. And it looks like a motorcycle. Like something Robert would’ve liked. Like something I could’ve ridden to the Sacramento Mile to watch Mert Lawwill race back in 1969. The sort of bike where a jaunt in the rolling hills at the western edge of the Sierra Nevada would invariably be soundtracked by squawnking clavinet, airy trumpet, and smooth, smooth Fender Jazz Bass.
While I waited for the bike to arrive, I accrued gear-a Signet-Q helmet in eye-searing fluorescent yellow from Arai, a sharp Dainese Street Rider leather jacket and Street Tracker armored pants, as well as a pair of their Scout Evo winter gloves, Hot Rodder lightweight gloves, and Germain casual boots. I also picked up a Dainese Teren jacket, a three-layer adventure-oriented monstrosity on clearance at my local big-box motorcycle-gear retailer, and a pair of bulky Alpinestars Scout waterproof boots. So equipped, I went and took my written test at the DMV and signed up for the Motorcycle Safety Foundation’s Basic Rider Course, the completion of which allowed me to get my motorcycle license without taking the state’s skills test.
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I thought to myself, “Well, if I scare the bejeezus out of myself, there’s no shame in admitting defeat. It’ll make for a good story and I can just give the bike back to Guzzi with an apology.” Spoiler: I do not want to give the bike back to Guzzi. Thus, the Year of the Goose begins. Over the next 12 months, I’ll knock around the world of motorcycles and hopefully figure out how riding can help you as a driver. Expect tomfoolery, hare-brained schemes, camaraderie, spills, travel, and a lot of pictures of the little Agata Verde Guzzi in interesting places throughout the American West. And Robert, if you happen to run across this piece? Thanks, man. It only took me 30 years or so, but I get it now. I totally get it.
What I learned: Got a deferred dream? You might as well do something about that, bub. You’re not getting any younger.
Don’t do what I did: If you think you want a motorcycle, don’t wait until you’re pushing 40 to get around to trying it out. Injuries heal faster when you’re younger.
Up Next: Learning to ride and sketchiness at Rattlesnake Bar!
Year of the Goose is West Coast editor Davey G. Johnson’s dive into the two-wheeled world. Spending a year on a Moto Guzzi V7 Stone, he’s exploring life with a bike as a new rider, talking motorcycles and culture with figures large and small, and ultimately figuring out how riding can help you be faster in a car.
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