The prototypical squid is a guy in his early 20s who has just bought his first bike: a new ZX10R. It's fully financed and he's using the minimum amount of insurance legally required, other wise he'd be unable to afford it all. He probably hasn't done any sort of rider training. Now Skyline is famous. There's a place up there where bikers congregate on the weekend ( "Alice's", kind of like the Ace Cafe[1] ) so you get a bunch of guys on a somewhat technical road on bikes they have no business riding, and carnage follows. People going too fast into turns and going down ravines, some rear ending other riders, others making stupid passes and embedding themselves in the grill of some old dude's Buick. There's enough of these types up there on a sunny weekend that you can get some pretty impressive body counts. -- Michael [1] http://www.calhsta.org/library/alices.html
The intersection by Alice's is especially noteworthy because it's a two way stop and no more than 30% of the folks passing through it seem to realize this. You've got clueless east west traffic pulling out in front of moving north south traffic along with cluless north south drivers stopping when they should'n't. The squids add to the general interest by doing wheelies through the chaos to impress the crowd while the Harley crowd tries to counter-impress the crowd by blipping their unmuffled bikes to see who's got the loudest exhaust. Meantime, the sherriff's deputies swing through periodically checking for illegal license plates and ticketable equipment violations and the fire trucks go blasting by every half hour or so to scrape another squid off the pavement. Did I forget anything ? I like it a little better in the cooler weather when most of this crew is home watching TV.
In the sixties, it was a contraction of the words "Squirley" and Kid meaning "Squirley Kid on a Motorcycle"
That is the first time I've seen squid defined as someone learning to ride. I don't think a learner is necessarily a squid. Someone could be conscientious and careful while learning to ride.
I'm guilty of having stopped once or twice at that big phat white line that looks like the limit line at an intersection. It looks like a four-way stop intersection that's missing a stop sign, and frequently there's enough weird stuff going on, like the clueless east-west traffic, that stopping isn't a sin. But my saving grace is that my vehicles have this innovative feature: whenever I step on the brakes, a red light lights up in the back. I hope that people following me get the clue that I'm slowing down and possibly stopping. I try to avoid the place, but it is on the way to a friend's house.
John Higgins () gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying : Simple. They can't cope with the concept of a roundabout.
In the 70s, when I was reading mags like "Big Bike" and "Choppers Monthly" (IIRC), the term in use was "squirrel". I only ever encountered it in US West Coast-based publications, though.
Appealing isn't it. I lived out there for a little under a year in San Mateo (although that was during my biking "hiatus" of 20 yrs) and regularly drove in the area around Skyline Boulevard. Visiting again this summer with the family (sadly no bike). -- jeremy '01 Triumph Sprint ST in green _______________________________________ jeremy0505 at gmail.com
Hmmmm. Thank you. I've got a sister living in San Carlos. Looking at the map, I suddenly detect a need to visit this summer, rent a bike and ...
I never did understand the CA interpretation of them. It's not first-come-first-serve, but some kind of clockwise round-robin, but the riced-out Acura doesn't have to stop, and anybody who does stop loses a turn.
Makes sense, I suppose, although it had a V6 engine, so certainly not a volvo power train. I had a US-spec XC70 last time I was over here which was quite a dissapointment compared with my own '99 V70XC. Too soft and wallowy by far. -- _______ ..'_/_|_\_'. Ace (brucedotrogers a.t rochedotcom) \`\ | /`/ GSX-R1000K3 `\\ | //' BOTAFOT#3, SbS#2, UKRMMA#13, DFV#8, SKA#2 `\|/` `
Ah, I see. What I don't quite understand though is the way the term seems to be used as an insult on here... -- _______ ..'_/_|_\_'. Ace (brucedotrogers a.t rochedotcom) \`\ | /`/ GSX-R1000K3 `\\ | //' BOTAFOT#3, SbS#2, UKRMMA#13, DFV#8, SKA#2 `\|/` `
