From: noemi@maui.cs.ucla.edu (Noemi Berry)
Subject: The European Adventure: Day 1
Organization: UCLA, Computer Science Department
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 92 09:24:24 GMT

This is the next installment in the tale of my 9-day
motorcycle adventure in Europe suring the summer of '92.
As always, I apologize for its length and hope that your
news/mail software will allow you to skip over it easily
if it is no interest to you.

complaints, flames, flattery, money etc. welcome

noemi
--------------------------------------------------------

9/29/92
The European Adventure
Day 1: The Day of the FT

    And so it came to pass that she was summoned unto a distant land
    to tame the daemon Adnoh.  Her journey was to be fraught with peril.
    The peoples of the land spoke in strange tongues, spreading tales
    of thunderous steeds.  It was thus that she came to tame Adnoh and
    venture into the wilderness.  
					-Demonthenese

Thursday, August 27, 1992
Paris, France

The end of the two-week car trip with my sister found me back in
Paris, all fired up to find a motorcycle rental to ride in Germany.
I couldn't find any rental at all in France, and so tried calling
places in London.  Rentals in England are plentiful and relatively
cheap; however, the snag is that the International Green Card insurance
that you must have to ride, does not allow US (and strangely, Canadian)
citizens to take bikes out of the U.K.  No continental riding for
cracker-jack box licensees!

I already knew I could rent a Suzuki GS500E for 699 DM a week at a
Honda dealership in Frankfurt.  Hoping to do better, I called a few
places (there weren't many) I had copied from the Gelbe Seiten (yellow
pages).  I found if I spoke simply and clearly, most people could do
decently well with English on the phone.  So I just asked for 500cc
range bikes, how much and for how long.  One place in Munich offered
a Yamaha XT600 for 160DM ($114) a *DAY*. Never mind, sir.

Then I talked to a place in Frankfurt that had a Honda FT500 for
599 DM a week, with the first 2500 km free.  I had never seen
an FT500, and asked the guy (Claude), if it was tall.  "No problem,
it's small."  I pressed.  "You sure?  I'm small!" (less than 5'2"
with short legs).  "No problem!"

So I arranged to pick up the '84 Honda FT500 (sold as an Ascot in
the USA), on Thursday afternoon, August 27.  I bought a Paris <-->
Frankfurt round-trip train ticket for 780 FF (about $160), packed up
my leathers and helmet in a huge knapsack, bungeed the rest of my
gear on a set of luggage wheels, and set out at 6am on August 27.
This gear consisted of an Eclipse tank bag, a small bag of rain gear,
and a duffel bag that I'd sewn four Fastex buckle "feet" into.  I had
the four other halves of the buckles, along with nylon webbed straps
to attach to the bike, and some bungee cords just in case.

The train arrived in Frankfurt at 2pm.  As I disembarked the train,
my heart began to pound.  I'm back in Germany!  Am I REALLY doing
this?!  I said aloud to myself: I am NOT scared.  With the help of a
friendly German man (Ludwig), I negotiated the U-bahn to Eckenheimer
Landstrasse and then set out for a hot 1-km walk to the place where I
would meet the thumper that would be my companion for the next week.

The place turned out to be a mechanic's shop, with a few extra
motorcycles for rent.  My red FT was waiting for me, not new-looking,
but clean and apparently well cared for.  Claude was very helpful
and nice, and I relaxed as I watched his mechanic do a full pre-flight,
including chain, suspension, battery, tires, oil etc.  The mechanic
explained to me that this bike has trouble starting, and said not to
crank the starter.  Instead, give it a touch so it turns over once or
twice, then try again.  Something to do with the starter motor, but
his English was not good enough to explain it to me in detail.  Fine,
I figured I'd just follow instructions.

The bike was a little (well, a lot) tall for me, but I sure as hell
wasn't turning back now just because I had less foot on the ground than
I would have liked.  Claude was tall, and left on an FJ1200, and I
thought, I should have known better than to believe him that the FT
is small!  But no matter, nothing was going to dampen me now.  I'd
learn.  Undaunted, I loaded up my gear, changed into my untested
leathers and boots and finally took off at around 4:30pm.  Right into
Frankfurt's rush hour.

I fell in love with the FT at the first turn -- it leaned over so willingly.
It had a very DP-ish feel to it: it was light, had a large front wheel, a
torquey engine and a higher suspension than my little Kawi.  I loved being
so much higher up, and didn't mind at all the reach to the ground.  Grateful
for the stretchy panel above the knee on my new leather pants, I quickly
learned to solidly plant one foot rather than teetering on two at lights.
This lesson was reinforced by the fact that my new boots didn't flex that
well at the toe.

Frankfurt's rush hour was crowded but quiet (I learned later it is against
the law to use one's horn except as a warning), and I used my time in
traffic to familiarize myself with the controls of this strange motorcycle.
When I got to the autobahn, the control I really wanted to try was the
throttle, and an eager twist revealed the single cylinder's willingness to
pull all the way to its 7K redline.  It quickly topped out at 150kph
(~95mph -- and totally legal, yeah!), but I was very pleased that it
wasn't a huge struggle to eke out the last drops of speed.  I'm told
thumpers have a fairly linear power output, and it was a welcome change
from my reluctant Kawi.

Everyone who always told me that my 306cc Kawasaki parallel twin vibrates
has never ridden the Kawi: glancing at the impressionist art that now
masqueraded as the FT's mirror images, my Kawi was vindicated: it is
remarkably smooth for its size.

OK, so now I'm psyched.  I've pulled it off.  I'm in Germany, I'm riding
in full leathers (and it felt so wonderful I couldn't believe I'd ever
ridden without them), I'm cruising down the autobahn on a motorcycle that
actually has power and a working speedometer, and have a whole week of
adventure in front of me.  When another rider waved at me, I knew I had
arrived!  He waved at me!!!  I'm one of *US* again!  yay!  My face
fixated in a Joker grin.

My goal that evening was Heidelberg, where I planned to meet Bill Wohler,
a rec.moto lurker and longtime friend of Hesh's whom I'd met at a party. 
(In fact, Bill's first bike, an interesting '76 Kawasaki KH250, a
2-stroke triple, is now in pieces in Hesh's garage.  Hesh growled me off
the old KH when I eyed its turn signals for spare parts, so there is hope
for it.)  Bill lives in Heidelberg and kindly accepted a visit from me.

I thought I'd take a "fun" non-autobahn route, but found that the
area was so dense that there was only one or two km between towns,
and everything in between was just annoying traffic.  Lights turn
yellow before they turn green (and red), which was nice when I needed
extra time to heft my body over to the right side to put the FT in gear. 
Eventually I abandoned this process and just used my right foot to
balance the bike at lights, so it was an easy matter to put it into
gear.  The clutch action was extremely heavy and the lever was the
usual just-out-of-reach proposition, so holding the clutch in at
numerous lights for longer than 10 seconds was painful.

After an hour of barely 20km progress, I changed course and headed
for a few roads that didn't appear to be lined by towns on the way
to Heidelberg.  I was teased by about 30km of mountainish roads, and
revelled in the different feel of my FT.  But geez, I hope Germany
has more twisties than this!  It seemed like a little oasis of
elevation and curvy roads among a vast network of little roads
swarmed by towns and traffic lights.

I met up with Bill around 10pm in Heidelberg, exhausted and burnt
from the overload of all that had happened to me that day.  My day
had started out in Paris at 6am, lugging all my things on the Metro
(Paris' subway), and 8-hour train ride, another hour to Claude's
place, lots of preparation to leave, and hours of annoying traffic!

Bill was an extremely gracious host and it was a tremendous relief
to have someone to talk to while I tried to sink in the fact that I
had actually done this.  His place in Heidelberg was gorgeous, and
I was extremely grateful that he made me feel so at home.  Excitement
kept me wide awake well into the night, so I looked over maps for
hours until my mind was finally willing to permit my exhausted body
a few hours of fitful sleep.  Tomorrow I would really ride.

End of Day 1.

noemi
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noemi@cs.ucla.edu (for now)     				KotSBL
DoD #443  						'82 KZ 305 CSR
							(hang in there!)
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