Your mom should ride.
How to overcome the cliches.
Our son Henri was 17 when he told Jean and I of his intention to take the Motorcycle Safety Foundation course at Mission College in nearby Santa Clara back in 2012. Growing up in a bicycling-everywhere family, he knew how to coexist with motorists, pedestrians, joggers, dog walkers, skateboarders and other cyclists on the road. He was also a crack mountain bike rider, sharing hours of saddle time in the Santa Cruz mountains with experienced adults.
He was resolute in his decision. The plan was to buy a used scooter, then eventually work his way up to a largish motorcycle. He paid for the safety course, and passed with flying colors.
In many households the mother is typically set against her child wanting to ride motorcycles. Either the father doesn’t care or hasn’t thought too much about the inherent dangers of commandeering a gas-powered thing among other (bigger and typically distracted) gas-powered things on the road.
But in our case, Jean trusted Henri’s judgment and intentions. There was no mention of a need for speed (that came later) or wanting to buy a hopped up Kawasaki Ninja. Henri did his homework.
His diligence paid off, not only for his own needs but for mine and Jean’s as well. Having owned a mid `70s BMW R90/6 from 2000 - 2008, I bought a 2004 Moto Guzzi California Stone cruiser in the waning days of December 2013. The visceral feeling of motorcycling was so intense, I left the bicycle industry I worked so hard to master for nearly 25 years to manage an Italian motorcycle clothing store in San Francisco.
My journalist’s credentials caught the attention of Cycle World less than a year later, and by mid 2017 I was senior editor, escaping the soul-sucking clutches of retail for the open road. The people I met and the places I went during my tenure were priceless; there wasn’t a day where I wasn’t reeling from the high that motorcycling was providing, both from publishing an interview with the likes of the godfather of punk rock or traveling across the country with Henri.
But I wasn’t the only one bitten and smitten. Jean decided to take the safety course at Mission College over the same weekend Henri and I were experiencing Bonneville Speed Week, after getting cursory instructions from Henri a couple months before aboard his Sym Wolf Classic. Three months later, Jean bought her first bike, a custom 2007 Triumph Thruxton scrambler from Bryan Thompson, who we met on the Utah salt.
We’re now in the waning days of 2020, and Jean is on her third motorcycle, a 2013 Triumph Bonneville T100 (pictured above). The Thruxton was a bit top heavy with aggressive geometry, she thought, and the 2007 Yamaha V-Star Classic 650 was a bit under powered. She rides it to work, and co-leads our Sunday Moto Club rides.
Our garage — which used to hold upwards of 30 bicycles — now claims six motorcycles. A wall of helmets and a clothing rack full of jackets is our point of pride for getting out and enjoying the Bay Area roads.
Henri is responsible for all this moto madness in the Boulanger household, and I blame his mother as well.