Anyway, for your reading pleasure or as a simple waste of time . . .
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... 175222.DTL
SUNDAY'S EASY RIDERS
Traditional motorcycle trip up Highway 1 hasn't run out of gas
Alex Horvath, Special to The Chronicle
Friday, June 8, 2001
Even at 70, it's unlikely that Bill Verbiscio will ever slow down.
At least not while he can still ride his Seca 600 street motorcycle, or take his ATK Dual Sport bike up the coast as part of Marin's weekly Sunday Morning Ride.
It's a high-speed motorcycle ritual referred to by many who participate as a morning of "controlled insanity."
If a screaming Ninja bike has ever passed you on Highway 1 between Mill Valley and Tomales on an early Sunday morning (and it's being pursued by the California Highway Patrol), chances are you have witnessed part of this weekly game of cat-and-mouse.
So far, say some observers, the mice are winning.
Verbiscio -- who could pass for 50 -- owns the Cycle Town Motorcycle shop in Novato. He is also one of the original members of the Sunday ride: His first was back in 1959.
No one is certain how the ride actually started, but Verbiscio is willing to relay his version.
"I knew someone who would ride out and visit a friend in Bolinas," Verbiscio recalled. "So me and a few other guys started going along with him. Pretty soon the ride kind of escalated, and then there were 15 guys. All of them were good people who knew how to ride."
The result (no matter whose version you get) is that, 42 years later, bikers still come from around the Bay Area -- and even the world -- to experience the Sunday Morning Ride.
The number of riders on a given week changes with the weather. If it's rainy, 15 may show up; expect more than 100 when the weather is nice.
The flight up Highway 1 isn't nonstop -- the bikers pull off the road at regular intervals along the coastal route to take in the glorious vistas and panoramic views.
Clad in colorful leather and expensive motorcycle gear, they are a stark contrast for the passing tourists to observe as they gaze out over the bucolic cliffs of West Marin. The riders come from all walks of life, and many estimate the median age to be in the mid-40s.
There is no rhyme, shape or reason for what draws people to the ride. People are known to show up every weekend, sporadically, or once in a blue moon.
No matter how long the absence, everyone is welcomed.
Riders are either a newcomer -- meaning have been going on the ride for less than 15 years -- or a "die-hard" -- and capable of looking back in time for decades to the days when the West Marin roads were far less crowded on a Sunday. No matter which faction you fit into, according to the riders, their perspective is better.
"We're not 'fair-weather' riders," said Petaluma resident Ray Roy, 50, speaking of the old-timers who go on the ride. "None of those newer guys are really serious Sunday Morning riders."
"The die-hards make up the ride," said Roy, who has been a part of the ride since 1965. "There are the newer riders, who don't show up when it's 40 degrees outside. And then there are us old-timers, who have been having breakfast together on the coast for more than 30 years."
If nothing else, the ride is an excuse to meet for breakfast -- on that, everyone agrees. When the motorcycles finally get to Point Reyes Station, they pull off at the Station House Cafe. Dozens of high-performance motorcycles line the parking area in front of the cafe, as if marking the territory as owners enjoy coffee and a morning meal. It is at the restaurant, usually in a reserved seating area in the garden outside, where friendships start to build, said B.T. Bullet, 44, a freelance software designer and author from Corte Madera who has been going on the ride since the early 1980s.
Bullet is one of a handful of women who go on the ride each week. Two years ago, she published her own book about the Sunday ride called "Tales from Over the Edge." Fifty riders contributed stories and photos to the book, which chronicles the exploits, accidents, breakfasts and the constant run-ins with law enforcement over the years.
But at breakfast, the conversation is simpler, Bullet said. As the staff refills numerous cups of coffee, riders make small talk about family and kids, advise errant riders to do things more safely, and relive colorful stories about previous rides.
Roy remembered an incident in 1968 in which three bikers were arrested at gunpoint during breakfast at an Inverness restaurant.
"They had ridden past a deputy sheriff, who pursued them," Roy said. "They didn't even know he was behind them. He found them at the restaurant. The sheriff stood there with his gun drawn waiting for the highway patrol to arrive. One of the riders refused to be arrested until he could finish his breakfast."
The bikers became known as "The Inverness Three," Roy said.
"Most of the time we'll talk about politics, or what has happened during the previous week," said Bullet. "We'll also critique one another about how to enter a corner, or something they could have done better earlier in the ride. There is a lot of feedback from everyone about how someone's ride-mate might have done. Everybody watches out for everyone else."
"It's over breakfast where a lot of self-policing gets to happen," said Steve Fischer, an art director from Petaluma who has been a part of the ride for the past three years. "You've got to be respectful in the town areas. I've seen new guys upbraided for doing wheelies through town."
For many, said one of the riders, "getting up early in a Sunday and attending the weekly excursion is their version of church."
"When we pull into Tomales, there is a little white church where there is actually (a service) going on," said carpenter/motorcycle racer Michael Leister of Oakland. "During a period of incredible turmoil in my life, the ride has been something to look forward to every week. The camaraderie has seen me through some very rough times."
With an increase in the number of performance motorcycles on the ride, the weekly outing has also come under the increased scrutiny of the CHP and the task force it created to police the Sunday rides. Over the decades, the CHP has attempted to either slow or shut the ride down completely.
Even though they regularly reach speeds high above posted limits, longtime members of the club insist that they are there each week for the ride itself --
and not for a race.
But CHP officials maintain that the excessive speeds and the behavior of some of the riders have led to serious accidents and even deaths -- and extreme measures are needed to enforce the speed laws.
"It is a major enforcement problem that we continue to address on a weekly basis," said CHP Lt. Charles McLaughlin, who is based in Corte Madera. "Many cyclists are out there simply to tour and enjoy themselves. Others are there to push bikes to maximum capability. As a result, we have accidents and numerous citizen complaints. We continue to poise as many units as we possibly can each weekend to cite or arrest for reckless driving, or act as a rolling roadblock to slow them down."
McLaughlin said there had been several serious injury accidents -- and deaths.
The CHP lieutenant said that the riders often use cell phones to let each other know the locations of highway patrol officers.
"It is very much a cat-and-mouse game," McLaughlin said. We have no problem with someone organizing a ride and obeying laws. What we have here in Marin is trend of people who are trying to push their motorcycles to the max."
Club veterans shrug this off and blame the accidents on "squids," a derogatory term that refers to novice, showoff riders.
"There are the experienced riders and there are the squids," said leather- clad Gabe Ets-Hokin, a taxi driver, motorcycle racer and recent law school graduate from San Francisco, a member of the ride for four years. "Squids are riders who just got a new bike for the first time and don't really know how to use them. Squids are the ones who will power ride their bikes through quiet neighborhoods, and are the ones who cause accidents."
To ease tensions, a couple of the old-timers on the ride and the CHP got together in an informal task force, Bullet said. The bikers check in each week to see if there have been any complaints they need to deal with, she said.
The riders and the CHP also began hosting an annual fund-raising pancake breakfast event for Full Circle Programs, a residential treatment center for troubled boys located in Dogtown, a tiny enclave on Highway 1 just north of Bolinas.
"The kids love to watch us go by on our bikes," Bullet said. "It seemed like a natural way to get involved and help their program."
Former CHP officer David Fairbrother, now chief of the Ross Police Department, recalled organizing the first pancake breakfast in 1996.
"The first time it was a big success," he said. "The kids got a chance to interact and to find out who the bikers are. That they are business people, attorneys, doctors -- and a wide variety of other occupations. That they are members of the community. It was a good way to get everyone together at once. It helped us put everyone in a positive light and a win-win situation."
Since then, Fairbrother said, "the dynamic has changed since then for the regular, longtime local riders." But, he said, new riders or ones from outside the area still cause problems.
Roy said he had made friends with several CHP officers and that some officers have occasionally joined the ride.
"The ride is about building relationships," he said.
Love has also blossomed on the Sunday ride. For Peter and Christine Mars, the ride has been a big part of their lives.
"Peter has been coming on the ride since 1978," Christine Mars said. "I knew it was an extremely important part of his life."
The Oakland residents met in October 1999 at the Burning Man gathering in the Nevada desert and spent their first date rock climbing. Since they both share a passion for the outdoors, Peter, now 43, invited Christine, now 30, on a ride, and before too long they had purchased Christine her own motorcycle. They've been married less than a year.
"Before, I didn't have much experience on motorcycles. Now I have a real sense of how to steer the bike," Mars said. "We went on a ride in March, and go as often as we can."
Mars said that she definitely rides at her own pace, which is not the breakneck speeds some riders hit while going around the Bolinas lagoon.
"I've only been riding for a year, so I pretty much stay in the back, cruising at my own speed. No way would I try and stay in the middle of a group. "
Mars said she enjoyed riding motorcycles because "you are put in situation where you are challenging your fear. You have to be very meditative and can't think of other things."
She has enjoyed motorcycle riding so much, she said, that she had even inspired her mother to try it.
Oakland resident Leister said that one thing he has enjoyed about the rides is "you can really feel the history sometimes -- from the all the rides and all the people who have gone before me. Going with me, watching over me. In particular, people who may have passed. . . it's incredible."
Verbiscio said he doesn't have as much time for the Sunday Morning Ride as he has in the past, instead taking part in various senior citizen motorcycle leagues around the state. But, he said, a heart bypass operation he underwent in 1981 has not slowed him down.
"I don't go on the ride so much because I have too many things to do," Verbiscio said.
And, he adds, "I don't need to get any tickets."
Gina at her last SMR:
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... z0XiKbRxHi