The Mobil garage in Lee Vinery basks in cool sunshine, I am greeted by some pristine weekend bikers and feel ashamed at my dusty disheveled appearance but they are undeterred and we chat away. I am constantly impressed how friendly people are – I suppose in London you get this self protection system; it is normal to ignore fellow human beings. I hesitate to write anything about communication except I appreciate it so much more when on the road and away from my family. Bikers wave on the road, this is not unusual – again, this happens a lot when away from the uk, on the continent.

Wild fires kill 3 people in Iowa, fires in Taho, on the Freeway this morning the news of a car spinning off, catching fire and trapping the person inside as the ambulances arrive. I don’t want to leave the motel room in downtown San Francisco , Lombard St. I am due to meet up with relatives today in Palo Alto today and am looking forward to that.

Yesterday I travelled through touristy Yosemite with all the trees, water, mountains and chipmunks crossing in front of me – a dream-like world where people wander around with pressed cotton clothes and hats and helpful park rangers lurk behind trees ready to jump out and help you.

Then, the road to SF along straight roads through flat fertile farmlands. I stop off at a biker bar and take a few minutes for my eyes to work. A pretty barmaid welcomes me, seeing I was a little out of place. She looks like she is in her early forties – the bar conveniently allows the customers to view her rear end, clad in a pair of denim shorts. Ah well. A huge guy, 22 stone next to me has a T shirt “if you cant run with the big dogs, stay on the porch”… ahem. The other side of me another two bikers, one with no front teeth chats to the barmaid/counsellor. “hurhurhurhur” he laughs. I talk to Dusty, the guy on my right. We talk about bikes, the journey, southern rock (which plays on the jukebox).. he is a year older than me, was drafted to Germany in the Vietnam war and was at Monterey to see Jimi Hendrix and tripped at Altamont but did not see any ‘heavy stuff’ … he did not think that the US or UK should be interfering in the middle east and told me of the car bomb in Glasgow. He also told me of the day before when 3 other bombs were discovered before they went off.

A group of bikers walk in , laughing. A Chinese looking girl with the most dense and coloured tattoos all up her arms guffawed – I tried not to stare but it was difficult not to.  The beer was weak but George Jones crooned from the car-sized jukebox – another group at the other end of the bar  gets up to leave, saying farewell to the sage-like barmaid/nursery minder and sunlight floods in to reveal the leader of the group mounting a perfect lemon coloured Indian motorcycle. Dusty says, thats one rare motorcycle. Indians went into production down the road  for a few years but have stopped manufacture again. I volunteer $25,000. Dusty corrects me: $36,000 more like. Well on the way to a third of a house, then.

0I felt very much at home here. They wish me luck on my journey, giving me detailed instructions on the route from outside the bar to Anchorage. Ensuing handshakes and I am back on the road. The last section on the freeway was er, not pleasant. The SF drivers overtake me at astonishing speeds, crosswinds increase. I am terrified by weaving caused by grooved concrete highway. More cross winds blow me from one side of the slow lane to the other, my bags act as a sail and weigh down the rear which really does not help. My speed drops to 50 as I hold on for dear life! After 34 years of riding, I did not find it easy, it was the combination of tiredness and the wind, speed of adjoining traffic. The bridge toll causes 2-3 miles of stationary traffic which I gingerly filter through… filtering still goes on and rather than wait an extra hour I proceed with caution. At last two magnificent bridges spanning high over the bay and I am in SF.