The European Adventure

Prologue: Cage Scouting

A few years ago, a friend said to me that it would be fun to tour Europe on a motorcycle. "That's a really dumb idea," I said scornfully. "You don't get from one place to another any faster than in a car, you can't carry as much stuff, you get rained on and you get cold. Why not rent a car instead?"

Why indeed.

That off-the-cuff analysis of motorcycle travel was actually quite accurate, though it completely missed the point. If someone told me that someday I would spend a week touring the European Alps alone on a motorcycle, less than a year after I wobbled through the first MSF safety class, I would have permanently wrinkled my face with skepticism.

Instead, I permanently wrinkled said face by doing exactly that.

But let me start at the beginning. I'd been riding for about 9 months and 12,500 miles, all on a oil-hungry Kawasaki 305 CSR. I finished my sentence at UCLA in mid-July, and as promised, the ink was not even dry on my degree before I moved my things into storage in the SF Bay Area, and took off eastward for an almost impromptu 6-week trip to Europe. One wonderful week of this trip was spent on a motorcycle.

My trip in Europe was based in Paris, at the home of a good friend of my mother's, Francoise. After getting used to being in France again and scouting out the local Patissiers, I took a 2-week cage trip with my sister Stephanie. One of my intentions was to go to Germany to scout out motorcycle rentals and to buy leather pants and boots. This trip was full of road- and motorcycle-related discoveries and is worth mention.