No dyce

Triumph, Harley and (yes!) Honda dealer Skip Fordyce set up shop in 1941 in Riverside, California after a career in daredevil riding during the 1930s. Within a few years and following a move to larger premises at 3698 14th Street, Fordyce was popularly credited with having America’s largest motorcycle dealership. The Fordyce Riverside Harley dealership was sold in 2013.

SoCal so cool

Not that it looked quite like this when I was last in southern California visiting (among other things) NAMM at Anaheim and the Fender museum in Corona (some bastard nicked the camera at LAX before I’d downloaded the pics), but the quality of light is instantly recognisable as overwhelming and unforgettable, the wide streets stretch arrow-straight for miles, the palm trees grow like weeds at the roadside and everywhere, in all things, California speaks with a unique voice.

Good times, bad times

Gimme some of that…

Ironic that it’s the bad times – squatting at the side of the road fixing a puncture – which make the good memories right? As a student in the 1980s, living on a grant in central London, my primary mode of transport (other than the CZ combination documented elsewhere at Mondo) was a scrap of cardboard and my thumb. The card bearing a destination – 'Further' to paraphrase Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters – and my thumb frantically flagging down passing (unfortunately male) motorists generally interested only in the contents of my Levis than any desire to whisk me from A to there.

And of course it’s the trips that went horribly wrong that are the most memorable. I certainly won’t bore you by recounting them here, suffice it to say that the next time you’re crouched in the dust poking an unsuitable tool into a flat tyre in a bid to pry it from a recalcitrant rim, bear in mind you’re making memories. Good memories.

Nowhere to go but everywhere

“I realised these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming of the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives…”

Jack Kerouac, On The Road

Semi-detached suburban Mr Jones

Harley and Indian parts to the cognoscenti from 235 Valencia St, San Francisco. The shop’s extant, the much-lamented Mr Jones isn’t.