Cat kibble - a sure lure

Today was a perfect day to ride to Alice's Restaurant, the Mecca for south bay area riders at the intersection of Highway 35 and Highway 84. On any Sunday you'll find riders in their various flocks, the cruisers parked in the lot next to the restaurant, the sport bikes, enduros and vintage rides on the other side of the street. Some of us are here to have a bite to eat at Alice's, some of us are just sniffing each other's bikes, some of us are just here to watch others sniff our bikes while we stand at a discreet distance trying not to preen or puff when someone says something nice about our bike.

The bike that caught my eye looked to be built on a vintage era boxer engine, joined to a sidecar fashioned in the same vintage style. Everything about the bike and sidecar, the frame, the suspension, the body were beautifully worked. The builder was a gentleman who brushed off numerous compliments on his extraordinary machining skills saying he just just a retired fellow with too much time on his hands. I would have liked to hear the engine, heck, I would have liked a ride in the sidecar, but I was too shy to ask.

Besides looking at bikes, I was counting the number of women riding their own - my guestimate would be between 4%-8% in the sport-enduro-vintage parking area. According a recent survey by J.D. Power and Associates, in 2008, 12 out of every 100 motorcycles are sold to women - that’s a 20 percent increase since 2003. On the highway I am seeing more women on sport bikes but my general impression is that there's a greater increase in women on cruiser-style bikes. Perhaps the lower seat height is a factor; another factor could be that the cruisers often ride as packs, and the safety in numbers offered by these packs is a draw.

I expect that the price of gasoline will increase growth in the ranks of scooter, motorcycle and trike riders - which is great. I do worry about the predictable increase in accidents that will come from this population.

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Saturday afternoon is my shopping day. I was browsing cook books when a young woman asked if that was my bike out front, the one with the yoga mat on the handlebars. If there had been springs in her shoes she would have been pogo-ing without the stick as she chatted about her upcoming MSF class. Okay, I'm shameless. Of course I'm aware that I stand out - I want women to see another woman using a motorcycle for mundane stuff like grocery shopping so they when they see a female butt on a bike they can immediately relate to what I'm doing. In the parking lot I felt a pair of eyes watching me coax two bags of cat food kibble into the bike's pannier. The watcher's fascination increased as I operated the lever that expands the pannier. I heard a slight gasp (which I ignored) when it was clear that the bags of kibble fit into the expanded space perfectly. I had to bite the inside of my cheek to not grin.

Now if I could just figure out a way to get my cats to come with me when I go shopping on the bike, that would really be a story. Here's somebody risking their karma - my cats would not put up with this.