Ain't No White People Left in California

You have a lot of casual gas station conversations when you're riding across the country on a motorcycle. For one thing, you have to stop a lot. The tank only holds 6 gallons and some stretches of road are pretty desolate - you never really know how far it's going to be to the next station so you fill up when you can. When you do, chances are someone is going to walk over to admire the motorcycle in a terse ritual that doesn't change much from state to state, generally starting off with, "Nice bike."

"Thanks."

"Where ya headed?"

"California."

"Cool- that's a nice ride."

"Yeah."

And so it goes. You see a lot of Harleys along the way, but you don't see a lot of BMWs. And it's a new model. The guys who really know motorcycles see that and they want to delve a little deeper, ask how fast it goes, examine the controversial placement of the rearview mirrors. How's that cruise control working out for ya? Sometimes it takes a while, which is fine with me because we're on a stretch break and I'm not in any hurry to pull that protective coccoon they call a helmet back over my head. Apparently, this motorcycle is similar to the ones the Highway Patrol cops use, which at least partly explains why Patrick has ridden it 11,000 miles in the last 5 weeks without so much as a flick of the siren. They don't pull over their own kind.

People are pretty nice to us considering we're from California. You know what people think about Californians in other parts of the country, especially up here in the northern Bible belt. If a kid from Wyoming tells his parent he's moving to California, all kinds of scary thoughts run through their minds... nude beaches, Liberal politics, Castro Street. So the locals could be excused for being a bit wary, but they aren't. They either ignore us or engage, generally around the motorcycle. What's weird, though, is how you can be having a seemingly normal conversation with a kind and friendly stranger, and then they'll randomly let out some comment that reveals what should be a deep, dark and shameful secret. Only for them, it's just a casual remark. "California, huh? We used to live in California," one lady says, scrubbing the windows of her husband's Ford with a squeegee. "Lotta Mexicans over there."

It's hard to know what to say to that. We did take it from Mexico, after all.

"Ain't no white people left in California," she continues, as if the land we call California had ever been predominently white before the 20th century. But what can you say to a comment like that coming from an otherwise kind and friendly person?

"We're there," Patrick says, "so there's at least two of us."

She had to think about that a minute, and by then we were back on the bike and continuing on our way.