We had just finished running one of the twistiest paved roads that exists in North America, over an hour and a half of non-stop steep climbing and diving corners, rarely getting out of first gear, and when we did it was to only shift right back down again. The Nacamiento Fergusson Road was the only way out of the dead end that the Pacific Coast Highway south through Big Sur had become after a section had been washed out more than a year ago. It was a lot of fun, nerve wracking as hell with no guardrails and many places where there was no room for oncoming traffic, but fun. We were happy to find a place at the end to get off for a well deserved stretch. The pull out even came with a tank.
A couple minutes after we had stopped a passenger van filled with Japanese tourists pulled in from the opposite direction, and while most of them made a beeline for the tank and started shooting pictures and selfies like crazy, one came over and made hand motions as if asking if she could take a picture of my bike. I decided to go one better, and indicated that she should pose with the bike.
What a moron I am. I should have seen the storm coming. As soon as one had her picture taken, the rest wanted their pictures taken. In ones and twos, then every combination they could think of, they posed with it, on it, beside it, on top of it, in front of it, behind it, and then dragged me in for some more. I'll swear not a single one of those Japanese tourists had ever seen a Japanese motorcycle.
Ray stood a safe distance back laughing his head off at my predicament as I tried to keep them from clambering all over my beloved machine and playing with everything I had strapped and clamped onto it.
At least he thought it was a safe distance. When I'd finally had enough I pointed to Ray and shouted something about "The Orange Tiger", and the whole process started all over again.
We finally managed to shoo them off the machines and fled. We were still laughing an hour later when we stopped for gas.
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