An Observatory Called Lick

This story starts with the improbable James Lick who was born in Pennsylvania in the early 19th century and chased every boy's dream of becoming a piano-maker, in the manner a boy today might want to become a YouTuber: by just doing it. 

Lore has it that he didn't stop there and was tickling something more than mere piano ivories, for he got a mill owner's daughter pregnant and received such a sound thrashing for his impetuosity that it forced him to bail out of the country of his birth and take his skills to the place where his pianos were being bought in large numbers: Buenos Aires. 

Escaping Portuguese imprisonment while returning from a trip to Europe, Lick moved his craft to Chile and then onto Peru to escape political disfavor, before leaving once again to complete an epic arc around the Americas, moving for the last time—along with his piano tools, thirty thousand dollars in gold, and six hundred pounds of Peruvian chocolate—to the little port town of Yerba Buena that would soon change its name: San Francisco. 

Lick was known to be a surly man but his chocolates went over so well with the gold rushers that he decided to open up this opportunity to his buddy back in Lima: Domenico.

That chocolatier Domenico—like his fellow Genoese Christopher Columbus more than three hundred years prior—had similarly set sail across the Atlantic, but with the more prosaic intent of setting up a coffee-and-chocolate business in Uruguay rather than discovering India, before moving that business to Peru and now, responding to Lick's scrupulous market research and audacious proposition, moving it once again along that same epic arc across the Americas that would end up in that town of several hundred by the Golden Gate, where he installed his fledgling chocolate business and bestowed it with his last name: Ghiradelli.

But let's not lose track of the prescient Lick who started buying real estate in that small rechristened town that grew twentyfold in two years when the gold rush really hit, only to double down by entering the hotel business and setting up Lick House on Montgomery Street—the best hotel west of the Mississippi until it would be consumed by the big earthquake of 1906—and then buying even more land far down where his ambitions grew, even as the peninsula ended: San Jose.

Laid down by a stroke and presumably wreaked with introspection, Lick spent his last three years considering how he might spend his considerable fortune, giving up the idea of erecting a pyramid in his own honor in San Francisco that would be larger that the Great Pyramid of Giza and opting instead to fund a mountaintop observatory with the largest telescope ever built by man, that would be installed in his name atop the tallest mountain in the entire bay area: Mount Hamilton.

So what has all this to do—you may rightfully ask—with what you came here to read: Motorcycle monologues?

Well, the Lick Observatory is my destination and I leave early in the morning so I might ride across the entire city of San Jose in minimal traffic before joining up with the serpentine route 130, constructed exactly over the same track laid down almost a century and a half ago to convey building materials, cement, and presumably large refracting telescope parts across twenty miles and three hundred and sixty five curves and switchbacks, but with a slope never exceeding six degrees so it may comfortably be ascended with the best propulsion of the time: Horses.

My ride today is tougher than usual, the challenge having less to do with the terrain and more with the punishment meted out by the rising sun that flashes sharply and unexpectedly between the countless turns and tall trees on the mountain road, taunting my vision and rendering futile my sunglasses and visor, for my ride this morning—unlike recent others—has put me in a new direction: East.

Pointing the motorcycle at the large white dome of James Lick's largesse, I reach the summit a bit before nine, park the bike under the Olde Astronomers Dining Hall and dismount with that urgent singular intent that yearns for privacy, only to spot a lone cyclist rubbing his hands to bring some warmth into the cold morning and gently shifting his feet with that powerful suggestion of identical intent, before he looks at me to allow our eyes to confirm exactly what our bodies seek: a Bathroom.

There are many households at the summit for the astronomers doing duty, with explicit signs reminding visitors to lower their tones but not their zippers, for daytime is when their denizens sleep and the neighborhood is where their children play, when they are not attending that single-roomed institution that shuttered as recently as 2005, after operating for well over a century: The Mount Hamilton School.

The steep driveway to the observatory is blocked off by a locked gate that will only open at noon and just as I accept the utter disappointment of that last-mile denial and prepare to dolefully ride back down the mountain, a staffer appears in a white pickup truck and warmly agrees to open up the gates, allowing the two of us to ride up to use the bathrooms and soak up the spectacular views that—on a clear day like this one—can sweep 270 degrees counterclockwise from due north to due east: Mount Diablo to Yosemite National Park, arcing through the valley of Silicon.

A dozen riders wearing blue Viet Cycling Team jerseys arrive red-faced and panting at the end of the unrelenting six-degree climb to the summit that has taken them almost three hours from the crack of dawn and I chat with a few of them and take some group photos while getting recommendations for restaurants in Vietnam Town in San Jose—the city with more Vietnamese residents than any outside Vietnam—where I plan to stop for my favorite type of sandwich: Banh Mi.

About an hour's ride later, I stare down at a long banh mi that starts with a baguette derived from that country's French colonial past and stuffs it with tofu, mushrooms and avocado instead of Vietnamese pork, as a concession to veg-friendly California, then adds cucumber slices, coriander, pickled radish and carrots in a spicy chili sauce to deliver that perfect amalgam of western bread filled with eastern zing, that I now send down with sips of plain water, for I have declined that thick brew where an ultra-bitter decoction would feud in my palate with super-sweet condensed milk: Vietnamese coffee.

The Fame and Infamy of La Honda

The Younger Gang—outlaws and co-conspirators of the infamous Jesse James—once hid out here, presumably with their stash. Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters lived communally in a redwood cabin here where they held their light-and-sound psychedelic LSD-fueled parties, seeking to expand the consciousness of mankind. Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test—chronicle of the roots of the hippie movement and among the best-cited works of the New Journalism style—got its raw material here. The Grateful Dead played here. Which means the Hell's Angels rode in on their thundering motorcycles. Hunter Thompson and Neil Young lived here too.

I'm in La Honda—a tiny forgotten mountain town with less than a thousand residents—that I reach around nine on a recent morning. The ride, along Alpine Road, winds west for many miles over long stretches of frequent tight turns through nature preserves and creeks, leaving the motorcycle raucous and impatient in second gear. 

At low gear and speed, a motorcycle gets hot very quickly and will dutifully let your legs know. Early motorcycle engines were air-cooled and depended on metal fins around the cylinders to stick out into the airflow to give up their heat. Then liquid cooling came along using water's superior thermal properties over metal to soak up engine heat. But liquid cooling needs a big radiator up front to dissipate heat from the water itself and that mucks with the aesthetics of motorcycle minimalism. It is for this reason that most Harleys are still air-cooled even as their riders atop are willfully slow-cooked, like the frog in the fable. Harleys also persist with V-twin layouts that puts one unlucky cylinder at the rear and in the hot slipstream of its happier twin ahead. 

Bad science! Bitchin' sound!

I stop at the La Honda Market—the town's only store—with supplies, beverages, and a sandwich counter that looks barren. A man in a blue plaid shirt takes my money and points to the large coffee carafe. 

Tiny 50 oz. bottles of Jack Daniels and Smirnoff stand tidily against each other like soldiers in a parade, ready to move for $2.99 each. A framed old poster on the wall offers a $500 award: 

Wanted Notorious Outlaw—Belle Starr. 

Belle Starr was a rare woman outlaw from the post Civil War period and an associate of many of the notorious Missouri-born criminals, including the Younger Brothers who had moved to La Honda. But she must have lacked their keen bloodlust, for the poster warns us thus: 

"Though not a killer she is known to carry two Pistols and has a reputation for being a Crack Shot!"  

Shot to death at the age of forty-one, Belle Starr lives on in many movies, books, and songs from musicians like Woody Guthrie and Mark Knopfler.

I take my coffee to the small porch outside and settle down on one of the tables overlooking the road. The coffee lid frustratingly lacks an air vent and the enjoyment from the beverage is rudely annulled by my constant anxiety from trying to get at the coffee while fighting a possible spill at every sip. Tired of fighting nature's abhorrence of a damn vacuum, I finally remove the lid and throw it away.

A cyclist pulls up, leans his bike against the rail, and goes in. Two large water bottles sit on the triangular bike frame, like V-twins on a Harley. He comes out with a sandwich and I find a way to start up a conversation. Turns out that he's on an 85-mile bike ride today that will take him across the mountains, to the beach and then back again—which I believe might partially explain why he didn't come out brandishing one or more of them 50 oz. bottles for two-ninetynine apiece. But he makes me curious about the fuel requirements for his arduous trip and so I ask him what he's eating. 

"Ham and cheese is what I usually get, but they are out of it today. Don't know what this one is," he says as he peels back the wrap and digs in. Small semicircular cutouts appear rapidly on the round fat bun that soon disappears. 

We leave together and I'm happy to be the one on the motored bike. He slips his feet into clipless pedals to become one with his bicycle, waves and rides away with striking ease.

I cross the street and walk over to the rustic shack diagonally across. This is Apple Jack's—a roadhouse and watering hole—that has quenched bandits, horsemen, stagecoach travelers, beatniks, bikers, hikers and techies, over 142 years. The facade wears an exhausted droop and the tall redwoods that surround and dwarf it appear to have taken over the responsibility to prop the place up and keep it standing. The saloon still comes alive every weekend with live blues, rock, and country music that floats around, adding bounce to the dusty feet dancing away on the creaky floorboards, before wafting down the mountains and dissipating into the valleys.

I get back on the bike and ride down a narrow side road looking for Ken Kesey's restored cabin, but can't find it. Kesey was supposed to have written parts of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, his first novel, on the bathroom walls and I wonder if they might have been preserved. The road ends at a trailhead leading to the newly created La Honda Creek Preserve and I disappointedly turn the motorcycle around and ride back out. 

I head out north for a few miles on highway 84 to get to the junction with highway 35, marked by the iconic Alice's Restaurant—a building from the early 1900s that was turned into a restaurant in the 50s and proclaims to be "little slice of bliss among the redwoods". Motorcycles and low-slung sports cars fill the irregular lot in the middle of the four-way junction that it occupies. A single retro gas pump with an analog readout gurgles away, in stark contrast with a biker in a mod red-and-white leather suit fueling his fiery red Ducati. 

I turn south onto Skyline Drive and follow the road over the ridge of the mountains for about fifteen miles, before descending down in a flurry of bends.