Message: 1 Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2003 20:51:30 -0500 From: "Revill" <rider_of_whirby@gbronline.com> Subject: PCH Trip report Chapter One Howdy everybody. Revill here. I was working on getting a PC trip report done, and then I sliced my finger this afternoon and am typing one and a half handed. Not going to get a lot done this way. So, Here's Chapter One. Enjoy. I'll put out some more in a few days. August 30th, the first day of my 51st solar orbit, was a cold day in Texas. It must be the end of the world. Now, you have to understand that cold is relative in Texas. We're not talking about solid water or any of that stuff, but cool and rainy weather all the way across the Llano Estacado and the Southeastern New Mexico desert in August is ... well, I don't know what it is. Unprecedented? Definitely, but that's a bit mild. Unthinkable. Impossible. Inconceivable! It must be a sign. The end can't be far. And here I am sitting next to my tent (Aaaaah!) in the Lincoln National Forest near Cloudcroft, NM and it's raining. (Ooooh! Aaaaah! Sighhhh..) All dry and comfy under my awning. (Sigh. Aaaaah!) Smell that air. (Sniff. Aaaah!) Inhale! Exhale! My first day in the mountains I huff and puff like HR Puffinstuff himself. Yes, I'm very pleased to be where I am right now but most of those asperational vowels were expended trying to get enough air. There's not a lot of air in the air up here. But it's lovely air. Bet you wish you were here. I left Austin waaaay too early. At 5:12 I passed the bank in Llano, where it was 80 degrees. The high for the day. Humidity was at saturation. It kept fogging up on the outer corners of my windshield. The sun came up "red sky at dawn". Not too far past San Angelo was a nasty black cloud with several levels, each moving in different directions. Sitting dead smack on the highway. Time to suit up. Waterproof, I continued on. What else to do? There's no cover. This is the edge of the Llano Estacado, one of the flatter parts of this globe. It was 30 minutes after dawn, the sun is shining up redly on the undersides of the clouds making them even darker. Rain ahead shines like obsidian. Lightning was making a continuous flicker somewhere waaaay up there in the pitch black overhead. The air was a dead calm. Just to one side of the road, there's a heavy black cloud reaching from the low overhead to within feet of the ground. It's shaped remarkably like an anvil. The next level of clouds over it is racing by to the east. Through occasional holes I can see the next level above; it's racing towards the south. Suddenly a black wall becomes a waterfall of huge drops. Then a gust of wind, from one direction, then another. The rain slacked back to a good downpour after the first minute, then stopped/started/stopped/came back hard and started bouncing. Big sleet or small hail are accumulating on my tankbag. A minute of this, then another waterfall melts the sleet. The rain slacked down to a drizzle and continued that way to New Mexico. Mountains! Oh, I've missed mountains! Oooh! Aaah! (gasp!) August 31. Oh, but that was a delicious night. I'm breathing a bit better now, as long as I pause for a comma or a period now and then. (huff). The rain has gone and it's fall in the Mountains. Brisk. A lovely brisk with copious sunlight to take the edge off. I spend the whole damn day just tootling along between Cloudcroft and Santa Fe, looking at the light and smelling the air and enjoying the occasional curve. This one day makes up for all the commuting I did all spring on I35. I love New Mexico speed limits. 20 mph in town and 60 (or less) on the open road is so much more relaxing. Even if you don't get very far at those speeds. You can take the time to look, and sniff, and enjoy being right out there in all that air and sunlight. Motorcycling at it's best, just like the glossy photographs. Except in the ads there's always an attractive passenger with a bright and remarkably bugfree smile. I've got a bag of riding gear bungeed on instead. Every time I get a good scare I buy more protective equipment. I've got my leather jacket and pants, with warm liner, sweater and heavy winter gloves; my summer jacket and light summer gloves, and a rain suit. Boots. It's bigger than I am, and doesn't pack much better than I do either. It's a lot to haul around, but if you don't have it with you, what good is it? Since I have to be ready for all extremes, I always have to pack the other extreme. I need a trailer. Sept. 1. Spent the day visiting with Marsha in Santa Fe. We went for a ride out to Bandolier National park to climb around the cliff ruins, then back. Incredibly lovely as only the Santa Fe area can be in Fall. Delightful roads, warm sunshine, cool mountain air. And an attractive passenger smiling brightly, no bugs in her teeth. Not many bugs in the mountains around Santa Fe. All indications were that Marsha thought so too. She was even asking those dangerous questions about price, and maintenance, and all that. I wouldn't be surprised if she took a riders training course soon.... I would if I lived in Santa Fe. The town is a perfect place to ride, some parts of the year. The low New Mexico speed limits make it a lot less stressful than other places. And those mountains... No bugs.... Motorcycle Heaven (in the summer.) Revill Rider of Whirby Austin (Center of the Universe) Texas
Message: 20 Date: Fri, 3 Oct 2003 22:34:47 -0500 From: "Revill" <rider_of_whirby@gbronline.com> Subject: Pacific Coast, part Two Part Two, Pacific Coast Highway Enough of this day by day stuff. I quit noting the date in my notes a couple days out. It's a good feeling, not being sure what day or date it is. Not easy to do in familiar surroundings, but after four of five days on the road, which is it? Four? or Five? It was, ah, I think it was Saturday when I set out. Yes, it was. Now, the first night I stayed.... Something to do on the long stretches through the desert, but if you don't write it down immediately you have to do it all over tomorrow (or sooner) With, quite likely, a different answer. Checking the newspaper at a gas station is cheating. Much more fun to have no idea, travel from day to day and be surprised by weekends. And to not bother with noting date and time when inspired to write something in the notebook. >From New Mexico it was a day through the Hopi and Navaho reservations, to the Kaibab Plateau. I bought some mutton from a Navaho butcher shop and grilled it high on the Kaibab with corn on the cob and a baked potato. Delicious! I always had thought that mutton was sort of strong. This was tender and sweet, very delicate. Not at all greasy and no discernable lanolin flavor. The butchershop was in a block building beside the road. It featured.... Mutton. The butcher was anglo, big and gangling and fifty. Shaved most recently a couple days ago. I asked for something I could grill and he offered me a vertebrae. The whole thing, one end of the sheep to the other sawn almost but now quite through to make a string of medallions. "How many ya want?" 3. So he sawed off the 3 nearest the end and wrapped them up for me. Came to a couple dollars. And a bag of ice. The butcher followed me out to the bike and started to talk about motorcycles. He'd seen several, and a friend of his once had one for a while. "Aren't they dangerous?" Truth is, they are. "What sort of mileage does it get?" Depends on the road. Good roads, lots of curves and hills and blind corners to keep the speed down, 50-53. Lousy roads where the traffic forces you to go 85 or die, 42-45. "I bet it'll cruise at 100 all day." Yeah, but all I'll do is 85, and that's only if I have to. He gave me a look, we said our proper goodbyes, and he went back to his mutton and I went on to the north rim of the Grand Canyon. Only a couple of hours away. As I climbed up out of the desert, it was raining on the mesa. It had never been really hot the whole way. I'd been quite comfortable in my mesh gear. Now it's time to put on the warm waterproof stuff. Another mile, and I'm glad I did. Amazing what a few thousand feet of altitude can do. The climb up the side of the Kaibab is superb. The lower reaches are open, with switchbacks looking out at the Vermilion Cliffs on the other side of the Colorado River, a few dozen miles away. Then you climb into pinyon pines, cedars, and just as the road crests the edge of the mesa, ponderosas. The air is pregnant with humidity. The pines reek like a mall candle shop. It rained on me gently several times as I rode the last thirty miles to my campsite, twenty miles from the north entrance to the Grand Canyon. A pretty little self service park, nearly empty. I picked out a secluded site with a carefully boxed off and leveled tent pad. Luxury. Supper done with, it was another delicious night spent gasping for breath under the pines. If you've got to huff and puff all that air in and out just to get a little oxygen, it should be nice air. This is very nice air. Just a little thin. Huff. Whoof. Aaaah. Next morning, a quick tour of the Canyon. If you haven't done this you must. The south rim is in the high pinion desert; the north rim is alpine. With 1/10th the traffic. And a much, much better road. There's only one. Nicely twisty, winding through the alpine forest with surprise lookouts here and there to infinity. Pretty colored infinity. This thing is big. How big is it? Try big enough to hide a helicopter you can hear damn well RIGHT THERE until you get the scale, and realize that that itty bitty speck over by that mesa, a good half mile BELOW YOU is a six person helicopter touring the canyon. And he's not flying low either. He's thousands of feet above the terrain he's flying over. And he was so hard to spot because it's so far over to that mesa he's above that the sound comes from five degrees behind the little yellow thing moving in the... near distance. It's a LOT farther to the far edge. You can't photograph the canyon. It's too big. I've got several shots mounted here and there and they're good. Very dramatic. And every bit as true to the canyon as a toenail clipping is to you. Anyone can get a snapshot of the canyon. Millions do every year. Really good photographers have spent years and miles of film documenting it's every light and mood. Unsuccessfully. You just can't photograph it. It's too big. Doesn't stop us from trying, does it? I took a shot of my feet, dangling over a mile vertical drop. Just to give scale. Didn't work. A nice study of size 14 Redwings against a colorful background. No feeling of enormity. At least, none from the background. But the road to the viewpoints is a lovely road. Tempting. The National Park speed limits are not just refreshingly slow like New Mexico, they're so low it seems silly. It's not. I came around a corner to find a car stopped smack in the middle of the road, a camera poking out the driver's window at a deer. A few miles farther, after a scenic stop and cetera I was playing in a particularly sweet little ess curve at, well, within 15 mph or so of posted, when I came up on a little elderly couple from somewhere flat where there aren't big disconcerting trees so close to the road and that enormity yawning on one side or the other ever mile or two. Not to worry, they'll pull off at the next scenic view, watch. So I poodled in train, doing 20 around a marked 25 mph curve as a group of BMW's came up on my tail. Coming out of the curve, with less than a hundred feet of road visible before the next, the leader passes me and the cage. So the rest do too. The last one actually passed ON the curve with exactly no possibility of continuing life if there had been a car coming. There wasn't, so he (and the rest of us; if cars and motorcycles had started flying around on that road it would have been like bowling) got to live a bit longer. This is just plain stupid, excuse me. This is a park, guys. Go play racer somewhere else. Like California. More on that in a while. Having seen the sights, it's back the way I came. A pleasure. It's warm next to the rim. The sun is shining, the light is almost physical. Coming from shadow to sun is like walking around a corner into a stiff wind. Riding down a winding road following the edge of the Grand Canyon through a pine and spruce forest. Bright sunlight, an overlook. Dark (and damp and slippery) tight hairpin turns. A quite wonderful 12 miles. As I pass the gatehouse, things are looking very damp ahead. More rain. Happens a lot anywhere in the west you get up into the pines. Nice rain. Gentle drips with no alarming flashes or booms. Mostly. Since it' s not a bad rain I haven't bothered with the rain suit. I hit the part not included in mostly and got a bit wet here and there. Then me, the road and the bike went down off the plateau in 55 mph sweeps to the desert. I was dry by the time I got there. Stop, change to the warm stuff, cram the cold stuff in the bag and onward. Another rainstorm in the desert. I didn't bother to change from the ventilated gear. Felt good. In the mesh gear I'm soaked in half a minute, dry again in ten. I've been through here several times but there's one route I haven't taken yet. Good enough reason. I headed up Hwy 14 to Utah. I now have yet another favorite ride. Hwy 14 goes over a high mesa, much higher than the Kaibab. Off comes the warm gear and on goes the cold gear. The road is delightful. It twists and winds and loops it's way up to nosebleed altitude unhampered by low speed limits. It clouds up, starts raining. Up here the road is pretty straight, following the edge of the plateau. It's socked in thick fog/drizzle. At the plateau edge the storm stops and it's clear and bright over the desert. As the scalloped edge of the cliff moved closer and farther, the precipitation clears and thickens. Big trees loom out of mist, then sudden brightness and infinity to the right, just as suddenly in the rear view mirror as I cross the mesa top through the clouds. Sudden sunlight. The storm is over. Across the high plateau all the tall spruce are dead. A bark beetle infestation. Aspen are taking over. The sky is much darker than an afternoon sky usually is. The road then winds it's way back down to high Nevada desert through a canyon designed by Disney Inc. with impossibly perfect little side canyons with carefully sculpted white and cream rockwork and artfully placed shrubbery accenting each set piece. Couldn't possibly be natural. Too neat and perfect. Watch the road! My goodness, that's quite a drop off. The high ground was drizzly, now it's sunny and warm in the desert. I want to do that again! Next day was Hwy 51 across the high Nevada Desert. This is the "Extraterrestrial Highway" according to the signs. The saucer (suspiciously similar in size to two satellite dishes) that was sitting beside the "Little Alien" diner (closed) last time I was this way was no longer abandoned roadside, it was getting a tow. By a junker mid 50's towtruck from a junkyard. The diner was still closed. Next to the diner (by Nevada standards; about a quarter mile away) is a gas station. Out here the rule is "if you see gas buy it". So I did. $2.85 / gallon for unleaded. Only kind they had. The station owner didn't have onna them digital readouts by the cash register. He had binoculars. Easier than walking. Next stop, Mono Lake. There's a lot of territory on the extraterrestrial highway. It can be horribly hot. It wasn't. No, I saw no extraterrestrials. No aliens of any sort. Nor any experimental aircraft. In fact, I saw or heard no aircraft at all, the whole way. Stealth technology is my guess. Just outside Tonapah, there's construction. That's what the sign says. Stop for flagman. I stopped. Neatly dressed and groomed for a flagman. Wearing a tan uniform with Nevada Dept. of Highways on the hat, sleeves and reflective vest. He asked if I planned to continue on to Tonapah? Well, yes. (Duh. There is exactly nothing anywhere nearby except several cacti, a military base, and Tonapah). He flipped his sign around from STOP to SLOW and told me I was "free to go, Sir." What do they gain by posing MP's as highway workers? Like something from a bad TV show. Later that afternoon the Sierras began to raise up faintly in the west. Almost surreally, since they're so very much higher even from far away than you'd expect. Even from the high desert. Bluely, almost transparently and far too high above the horizon to be anything but clouds. Then closer, and all you can see is foothills. Just as the road started to turn the slightest bit upward into them, I passed a guy walking along the side of the road pulling, or possibly wearing a trailer. He has a billboard/sunshade with the words LOVE LIFE a foot high each attached to a packframe on his back. It continued forward to make an awning over his head. He's Steve "No Clue". He's walking around America. He has a website. And a nickname. And a story. A sad one. The nickname came from his first attempt to walk the Appalachian trail. The story is unrelated. He's walking all the way around North America. Has new shoes waiting in for him every couple hundred miles. Steve "No Clue" Fugate Stevie Lee Fugate Foundation. www.markhorner.com/steve/fugate.HTML As the sun set I was winding up in the foothills of the Sierra Madre just a few miles from Yosemite. I found a lovely campsite five miles down a dirt road where I spent the night listening to a Sierra river tumbling past my tent. Somebody's got to do it. Mars looked like a taillight, visibly red and almost a disc. The moon set early and it was a velvety dark, liquid night later on. Got cool. I opened my riding jacket, stuck the whole sleeping bag and feet assembly inside and zipped it up. Much warmer. Two days through the Sierra Madre, enjoying wonderfully engineered 55 mph mountain roads and hiding from Native Californians who drive these roads at 80 in SUV's and MiniVans. This is where those idiots on the BMW's need to come riding. Just try to take on one of these minivans, I dare you! Out of sheer cowardice I'm turning up the speed in the corners, using more and more of the bike's ability. And it handles every curve with total aplomb, completely ignoring the load. As always. It's a PC. What did I expect? And that brings me to Eureka on the Left Coast, and a logical stopping part for this chapter. To be continued. Revill Rider of Whirby On the Road
Message: 3 Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2003 22:18:47 -0500 From: "Revill" <rider_of_whirby@gbronline.com> Subject: Pacific Coast Highway Ride, Chapter 3 Chapter 3 The Ride If that's Eureka ahead, this must be Sunday. I'd kept to high ground since Yosemite. Now I was running out of continent. Several PC sightings. I must be getting near Eureka. The road in to Eureka is quite an exceptional bit of tarmac. By this time I'm a bit jaded toward tarmac, even exceptional bits. The pack of PC's headed opposite a few minutes ago was probably having a lovely time in the twisties. I was trying to decide whether to stay at the very nice, but 30 miles away from supper State Park or get a room at the motel intown. A night indoors? Haven't tried that in a while. Doesn't sound all that tempting, but it would be convenient, and I guess a shower wouldn't be so bad.. And then there's laundry.. On through town and stopped at the motel with all the chromeless motorcycles out front. One last tussle with the idea of sleeping indoors -vs- a night in the coastal forest with surf in the background. It's 30 mile north. Then back for supper, back out to bed and back in next morning. And I need to do laundry.. Expediency won. The parking lot started filling up with PC's. Lots of people I've seen before, even more I've slapped a bunch of keystrokes at but never met before. A warm greeting from several. Comparing farkels. Everyone's drooling over the Unigo one wheel Trailer. The extra cargo capacity would be nice but the cool factor is overwhelming. Purest Star Wars. The matching PC and Unigo look like a Xylon Segmented Speedster from Foogula. Drool. And then there was laundry. Laundromats are the same everywhere it seems. Sort dingy and always needing a sweep. At least one lights not working, and smudged plate glass walls to the street. For surveillance purposes I suppose. Even in Eureka CA it's hot in the Laundromat. I started my load and sat down in the bolted-to-the-floor steel and plastic chairs/bench against the window/wall to read a five year old Newsweek. The machine hummed, my sit bones were getting much too familiar with the hard plastic seat. Someone knocked on the window behind me. eBuzz was there. Being eBuzz. eBuzzing? He'd spent the last ten minutes outside the window trying to bother me by throwing a shadow with his finger on my magazine where he thought I must be reading. Buzz does thing like that. We'd met on the 2001 ride. This was going to be an entertaining gathering. He came inside, greeted me and started his laundry in the next machine. Lots to talk about. Buzz has recently defected, selling his PC and buying a VFR. (Very Fast Rocket) We admire it outside. It's pristine and faster than greased hell. He's intimidated by it as any sane person would be. And thrilled, because it is a beautiful bit of metal and plastic sculpture, and the motor does make a really lovely purrzzzzzzip! when you goose the throttle. Hasn't tried the top half of the tachometer yet. It's exciting enough below 8 grand he says. A bit wide eyed. He flew in from the Right Coast and bought it, plans to ride it home. Gutzy, Buzz. The VFR isn't nearly as bad as some eggbikes for long trips, but it is what it is, and what it is not is a luxury tourer. On the other hand, it can easily (and relatively comfortably, for an eggbike) maintain cruising speeds more appropriate to wings than wheels. But, no trunk. Back at the motel near suppertime the whole group gathered in the motel parking lot to ride out to Samoa for supper. This is a town on an almost island, previously used as a lumberyard. Not much there these days. The diner is the former Company Cafeteria. Twenty miles or so from Eureka. A longish drive through foggy coastal marshes, then a sudden left into the driveway. No lights. If you miss the turn (I did last year) it's solid fog all the way to the Powerplant. Lots more faces and names to try to match. Juan from Alaska made it down, even if he did trailer his bike to Vancouver. He rode it all the way from there. Leland came over on one of his fleet, a white one. He has one of each, black, white and red. Harry from Montana was there with his black one. He's caused a longwinded PC epistle and manifesto to be printed on the rear of his PC. The PC has rather a large rear due to the trunk, and Harry used most it paenfully to explain exactly why the PC is his choice of motorcycles. Twenty PC's more or less were getting started up. It was not deafening. Riders were conversing on idling bikes. The riders were drowning out the bikes. There's a reason why hitting the starter on a PC while it's running just blinks the headlights. It's an easy mistake to make. Especially while loud banter is being traded. Some of the bikes are a bit louder than others. PC's of a certain age start to tweedle like old VW bugs. The VWubbers call it "Fweem" and prize it. My bike, Whirby started to fweem at 60,000 miles. I'm sitting near the head of the line, tweedling quietly with the others. Finally Leland takes the front and the whole Silent Horde headed off for Lumberjack food. Pretty good, and if you don't eat enough they come around and harrass you. Gently. After all, one wouldn't want to start anything there. There are too many sharp objects on the walls. And the floors. Large gasoline powered somethingorothers are lined up on display along the walls. They have several rooms and had the foresight to put the PC'ers in a back one where we wouldn't bother others with our noise. Somewhere near twenty started out, but a smaller number arrived. The rest had taken the powerplant tour and caught up with us after the first course. The Year 2k + 3 Internet (International, Intergalactic) Pacific Coast Riders Club Pacific Coast Highway Ride. It all starts in a Mall parking lot in the fog. 9AM. Can't see fifty feet. We're having a Photo session. Looks like more PC's when they recede off in the distance. Buzz is late. He shows up, still zipping and packing. I have time for breakfast. We admire farkels, greet those we've met before, make bad jokes and put on raingear. Harry has a digital movie device mounted to his dashboard so he can capture the ride. Ahead is the Lost Coast Highway. This badly marked, indifferently paved two lane (or less) road with 10 mph 12 degree downhill hairpins and random gravel patches starts a little way out of Eureka and ends in Humbolt State Park in a grove of redwoods. Two hours of bliss for a motorcyclist, a day of terror for a motor home. Haven't had this much fun since Utah. The Sierras are tame. This road was just put here, it wasn't engineered. And one thing led to another, one curve to another, a lovely day through the redwoods led to a drippy day through Marin County. I was able to strongly reinforce my reputation with the group as a Full Goose Looney by having a wonderful time riding in drippy rain and fog. But it was fun. And it wasn't all that wet, just a little bit. Just the feet. The scenery was pretty, the road kept wandering right and left, and traffic was light. You want sunshine too? Well, sometimes it's nice but rain and fog can be fun too. Got to get a pair of overboots. One more thing to carry! Oh No! Today we gathered at Alice's Restaurant for brunch (not the one from the song) then again at Pescadero Beach for photos. The photo session was cloudy and gloomy of course. So as usual we got fed and took photos of each other in the sunshine and took grey photos of the bikes. Just as well, since the riders wouldn't go sit on their bikes. Buzz was in his best worried puppy form. He did the "pretend to shake hands then walk on past" routine from Jr. High School to me. I swatted his head, which he expected and ducked. You got to watch him when he gets that '60's waif' look to his eyes. He's up to something. Something goofy. Good at ducking too. Monterrey has a pretty nice, if not all that rustic campground right smack in the middle, at the top of the hill at Veterans Park next to the Military Language School. I picked one of those down the path, in the wooded corner campsites and found my path part of the regular cross country run for a half a hundred cadets as I was setting up my tent. One after another, chanting in unison, mostly. The lead group was mixed, then mostly men, then several apparently completely unconcerned women going along at their own pace. I walked back in the brush a few feet and discovered barbed wire and a building. As I was getting ready to go to supper Taps played just over the hill. Supper that night was on Cannery Row. It's changed a bit since Michner saw it. Food was good. Like everywhere these days, food isn't local. If it is, be careful. Ever eaten Fisherman's Brewis? Haven't missed much. The World food on Cannery Row is better. I had a Calmari Steak imported from Mexico, and it was delicious. Fisherman's Brewis is cheaper. Even in Canadian dollars. Leaving Monterrey I got lost, again. That town I can not figure out. Maybe I need to buy a map? I was to meet the group at 9. At 10 I gave up getting out of Monterrey and did some shopping, hit a cash machine, ate breakfast, and gassed up. As I was eating breakfast (fried squid, BEST IN TOWN!) (It was delicious) (Yes I am in a rut) one of the women in the booth next to me started to feel my jacket. This wasn't quite as good as it could have been since I'd taken the jacket off and tossed it on the booth. She's a Biker. Owns a Harley Hugger. Didn't feel safe without her leathers, but when She and her Sig. Oth. went hot places (This is a Monterreyian. Hot places are elsewhere) it was tempting to go without. But scary. She'd never seen a mesh and foam armor hot weather riding jacket. They don't sell them in Harley shops. I advised her to visit any non-Harley motorcycle shop, or one of a number of internet sources. In return, she gave me directions out of town. Do you know the difference between a Biker and a Motorcyclist? Mufflers. More road. Getting more urban now. Much more traffic. I'm hours behind the group at this point, I guess I'll just poke along. So I did. Pleasantly. Stopped and thought seriously about touring the Hurst Castle. Declined again. The daily destination was Lompoc, where I knew from past experience that there was no good camping. The group was camped in the Motel 6, so I did too. My second motel of the trip. In Lompoc it wasn't such a sacrifice. Previously, the Internet(national, galactic) Pacific Coast Riders Club Pacific Coast Highway Ride 2K +3 supper was at a place in Solvang, a manufactured Olde Worlde destination (based on a real Danish colony nearby!) 35 miles from Lompoc. Problem was, they roll up the sidewalks at 6 and the Scandanavian Smorgasborg Supper place closes at 8, so time was tight. So this year we ate at an Italian place in Lompoc. We gathered in the parking lot and softly fweemed our way down the main road. At the restaraunt the parking lot was full, so we circled a bit and finally parked across the street next to the bank. People were standing around in groups watching something. The patio was full with diners and they were all watching too. Across the street at the Bank of America branch. We all went inside, announced our presence and waited for a table. I stepped over to the bar for a beer while we waited. I asked the bartender what was going on outside? Oh, a bank robbery. At the BOA. Been going on for hours now. He's still inside with hostages. Really? Oh, yes. I accepted my beer and reported to the group. We couldn't think of anything we could do about it, nor any particular reason to be elsewhere. There was a brick wall that direction. At least we weren't on the patio. On with the meal. This date two years ago many of these same people were on this same ride of the Pacific Coast Highway when another of those Newsworthy Events happened. That time one of our friends, (among others) died. Again, there was nothing whatsoever helpful that we could do. The best thing was just to continue. Still is. Dammit. Sept 11 has been haunting me since Sept. 9th, in Port Arthur. I stayed in the same campground, albeit NOT in the same site (It was empty, it's a pretty site but I was scared) I'd slept in two years ago in 2001. In the morning, no one had important news to give me. I was so relieved, I still don't believe how relieved I was that nothing spectacularly terrible happened while I slept. The bank robbery and hostage situation somehow felt trivial, like seeing a TV commercial being filmed on the street. A feeling that I am very ashamed to admit. When I got back, the list was full of hundreds of messages about similar feelings on Sept. 11th. So many I could only read a few. Supper was very good. I never found out how the situation turned out. Didn't make national news, at least nothing I saw. Only one or two lives at stake. I'm ashamed. At myself, at the country, at the world. Next morning, I kept up with the group for the first hour and a half, then had to stop for a bathroom. Leland's rules are "Ride your own ride. If you want to ride with me, fine. Just don't expect to ever get a chance to pee". I can't do that. I've never been one of those cast iron bladder types, and since I passed the halfway mark I find a stop every hour or so fairly essential. I stood it for as long as I could, then exited the freeway and the ride. Bye guys. It's been a great ride but I've GOT to pee. On my own again, I took a detour that needs to be added to the Regular Program. Mulholland Drive. It's the Lost Coast Highway South. A wonderful twisty little poorly marked two lane, (no gravel, no cattleguards at least) through the Los Angeles Coastal Range. Mostly dry sagebrush covering unreasonably steep hills. Here and there you pass squid gathering spots, indicated by the squiggly black rubber lines on the pavement. At Topanga Canyon a right turn takes you back to Highway 1. For a few miles. This is the urban part of the road. End of the ride. Time to get on the freeway and head on down to Long Beach to visit with Sumac. He's been expecting me. Last time I saw him, Long Beach and the whole country were undergoing an epiphany of consensus. I was skeptical, and I was right. Dammit. Time to think about heading back to Texas. Revill Rider of Whirby Austin (Center of the Universe) Texas
Message: 18 Date: Sun, 12 Oct 2003 22:01:56 -0500 From: "Revill" <rider_of_whirby@gbronline.com> Subject: PC Highway Ride 03, Conclusion For the best Cambodian food, turn to the Internet. If this is Friday, this must be Long Beach. One of the good things about doing a ride twice the same direction is that you can establish a pattern. I showed up at Sumac's door not too long after 5. I found him obsessed. Seems that last time we met I'd mentioned a wish to someday try Cambodian food. When I called the day before he remembered. A quest for Cambodian food was underway. Long Beach has a large Cambodian population, thanks to Peace with Dignity. Many thanks. They're excellent citizens, with some exceptions of course. For the most part pleasant, hardworking and tend to have very pretty kids. Sumac has lived among them in his own little ethnic enclave for decades and never eaten Cambodian food. So what does a less than young man do in such a circumstance? Search for "Cambodian food, Long Beach CA" on the internet of course. Apparently there is an internet group for Cambodian Food Lovers, with listings (and ratings) by city across the country. One of the highest rated places was not too far from Sumac's domicile. So off we went to partake of Cambodian food. The first shock was the menu. The prices were... reasonable. We each ordered a dish, with one to spare. Less than $20. The food was won-der-ful. I particularly enjoyed the mussels. They were fresh and cooked the minimum possible to be considered cooked in a heavily spiced garlic broth. Those faceless internet types know their stuff! Saturday we spent enjoying the Greater Los Angeles Metropolitan Area attractions. A swap meet. Clambering around tidal pools at low tide. Quite a change from the last time I came by. Two years ago, we went down to the Tourist District for supper. It was two days after 9/11, and an impromptu pep rally was going on in Long Beach and the rest of the US. People were driving around in convertibles chanting vaguely patriotic slogans. Walking around with supportive signs. It was all so nice, so carefully unagressive. No demands for blood. No anti anybody slogans. Clean, Wholesome Patriotism. I was skeptical. Sumac was charmed. It was charming. I'd have liked to be charmed too, but I couldn't. I was right. Terrible thing, that. Didn't help the slightest bit to be right, and I could have just been charmed right along with everyone else and only one thing would have turned out different. I'd have had a better time of it. It's been a painful, contrary and ugly two years. Out of Unity, divisiveness. Out of Charity, war. Our Unelected President took the bait, hook line and sinker. Then he went out and gobbled another one for good measure. Another what? Another massive dysfunction mislabeled a "Country" with a starved, terrorized and politically balkanized Islamic population. That's obviously the only possible point for attacking the US with suicide hijackers. To provoke our leaders into doing something really stupid. To put ourselves in control of an Islamic population as conquerors. And Bush went out there and did it twice. Once wasn't good enough. Excuse me please for the politics. The preceeding statement has been getting a very poor reception every time I've tried it out. Seems pretty obvious to me, but others don't get the connection. There was no sign of politics in Long Beach CA this September 2003. Just a constant mild temperature with a breeze off the ocean and great Cambodian food. Sunday morning, it's time to head back. First there's Greater Los Angeles to get thrugh. Freeway to freeway, through the unending urban accumulation. In Azusa I needed gas. I tried three gas stations before I found one that would let me pee. I've learned that on the Left Coast, ask first before pumping. Having exchanged fluids, I was just about to pull away from the pump when a small Hyundai with roller skate wheels and a purple metalflake paint job pulled up next to me and the obsidian window rolled down. A Hispanic "kid" (under 30) looked up at me and asked "what kind of motorcycle is that? " A Honda. "Oh. Cool. How many (obscene spanglish word for femininity) do you get per mile? " Best I can guess, he thought the Pacific Coast was sexy. I was a bad boy after that. I was supposed to get back on the freeway. Instead, I headed up Azusa Blvd. to Mt. Baldy. Once upon a time, during the Kennedy Administration I lived not far from here. Mt. Baldy was a mythical mountain. It appeared three or four times a year, when we'd get a strong cold front that cleaned up the air. Then it was a big snowpeak looming over the northern horizon. You could see it over the back fence from the living room. The rest of the time it was hidden by smog. The smog is still there. Not as bad, not nearly as bad as I remember. But you still can't see Mt. Baldy from Azusa, twenty five miles away. The map showed a road through the mountains to the freeway I needed to take north out of the San Bernardino Valley toward Las Vegas. Longer, slower, but it's NOT A FREEWAY! So I went up into the San Berdoos. Steep, impossibly steep. Mostly dead dry scrub. Looks like any spark at all would send the whole hillside up in flames. As I'm heading through the last couple of stoplights into the foothills a group of sportbikes catch up with me. A Ducati, a Suzy SV650, a Ninja 600 and a BMW. I join in with them for the first couple of gentle curves. They're slower than Leland. I keep pace until the overbraking on corners gets to me and I pass the Suzy. On ahead the group is stretching out with the Duck in the lead. I set myself a comfortable following distance from the Beemer and see how long I can go without touching the brakes. Four or five miles of this, and the group heads off to the right. I continue straight past the sign "ROAD CLOSED AHEAD". Stopped at the next sign, smack in the middle of the road on a big gate. The road is closed because a fire in '02 caused erosion that has the mountainside so unstable, the highway department decided just to close it for a few years until things calm down. Once the hillside decides where it's going to be, assumably they'll rebuild the road. Sometime this century. Now what. Turn around. Back to Azusa? Look at the map. It's not clear at this scale, but it might be that the road to the right comes out on the freeway I want, forty miles before I'd intended. Looks like a fun road either way. Squiggly. Right it is. The road climbs and climbs, somehow never managing to get up into cool air. It's hot, sticky and smoggy. It is a fun road though. 10 mph. hairpins, no center line, no shoulder and no guardrails. Squid tracks here and there. One long uphill was burnout alley. So thick with rubber that it felt sticky. I encounter a couple packs of sportbikes, all headed the other direction. Fast. Up and up and up, a few pines here and there. A crossroads. Left to Mt. Baldy. Another five miles up into big pines. A ski lift. End of the road. No, it doesn't connect to the freeway. Three hours after I gassed up I'm back 20 miles east of Azusa filling up again. On to Las Vegas. I got off the freeway long enough to drive the strip. Not appealing. I wanted to ride that Hwy 14 in Utah again. And camp in mountains. The excursion into the San Berdoos cost me the night in the mountains. But Hwy 14 was coming up. And it is every bit as lovely the other direction. The Disney Designed canyons are endemic to that part of Utah. The farther along I went, the more fantastic they got. Back down off the plateau, I could either retrace familiar territory by heading south on 89. North was still untravelled. North it is. This leads to Hwy 12. East toward Colorado, but in a temptingly nonlinear fashion on the map. It passes Bryce Canyon National Park and spends many miles bordering or crossing the Grand Escalante Staircase National Monument. I now have yet another favorite ride. This one's got legs though. One canyonside after another, one amazing escarpment after another. It just keeps going on, all day and into the next one. At Bryce Canyon I paid my entrance fee and got the pleasure of driving a mile an a half into the park, to find that they were working on the road. A 45 minute wait each direction, estimated. No mention of that at the entrance gate. Hmph. No, No refunds. Past there, it's just plain fun. The scenery's spectacular. The road is a six owl hoot. Within the bounds of careful engineering, it's one surprise after another. A series of tight 45 mph esses pops you up onto a canyon rim with infinity suddenly 3/4 of the view. Twist around the tops of bright pink and cream sandstone ice cream formations. Then back down, five miles crossing a desert valley running just at the bottom of the cliffs. About 5:30 the light is the most gorgeous I've ever seen. I stop every few miles to take yet another gorgeous hillside glowing a color not normally found in nature. Incredibly frustrating, because just like at the Grand Canyon, all I can get is snippets. The front brake's making a suspicious hint of a noise. I start using it as little as I can get away with, so it'll last. More fun in the twisties to use compression braking an careful lines instead of lots of brakes anyway. The road follows a steep thousand foot dropoff edge for miles. A hill, a hard couple of esses and a steep downhill. The world opens up and the road is a loop of black dental floss dangling between rocky fingers. On both sides are 3/16" shoulders, then a 70 degree slope changing to perfectly vertical a few hundred feet down. The road drops a hundred feet to a knife edged bottom, then climbs just as steeply to the castellated edge of the far bluff. Gun it! Feel the G's at the bottom! What did I do with my wings? As it was getting dark I started down from the pretty country into desert. Wait a minute. It's a lot nicer up here. Uturn! Back up the canyon. Back into the Federal Lands. Back to that set of tire tracks I saw a couple of bends back. I stopped and walked the tracks back to a pretty campsite next to a flowing stream. Signs of flooding in the last month, but not more recently than that. It looked clear. Some sand, but I can get in here. And out, I think. I got in no problem. Camping in a tent on sand is a difficulty I solved long ago. Just make sure to put a 20 lb. or so rock on each stake that might pull out. And put the ground cloth so it makes an entryway where you can sit and brush off sand before climbing in bed. It took a couple of tries to find rocks that wouldn't break in half when you put them down. Sandstone. This is more sand than stone. A delightful night next to a babbling brook, with Mars overhead again. It's new moon now. Oh, but it's nice to sleep outdoors again. It was dark as the inside of a miser's pocket most of the night. Stars like an earthscape viewed from orbit. I fell asleep early and woke late. In San Diego I'd found a handful of sea urchin shells in a tide pool. I'd packed them in a plastic container wrapped in kleenex. During the night, something got into the trunk of my bike and chewed a hole in the container lid. Dragged out most of the kleenex and broke a part off one of the shells. Then apparently decided that they weren't edible after all and went about it's critterly business. At least, I feverently hoped it did. Just to make sure I spent most of an hour making sure. Time well spent. After a couple of weeks on the road, a thorough unpack/repack is a goodness. The lost was found, and there was space left over. Now back to the road through the sand. One scary moment when the front wheel followed the right rut but the back wheel decided to take the left one. Both feet on the ground in this stuff helps. Play the clutch carefully, engine just barely off idle. An itty bit more gas as the sand sucks up power. One wheel drive, street tires and 1,000 lbs. GVW. in sand is not a nice combination. I'm riding the razors edge between stalling the motor and slipping the tire. Here comes the grade. More power as the tire bites on gravel. That's better. Grip. Up! Made it. Back on the road. Three last turns, then desert. Another canyon climb, a roadside park. I stopped for a break and a brunch. A Ducati Multistrada stopped. He's from California, touring the Canyonland. We agreed it was a world class ride. I admired his new wheels, dry clutch rattle included. He continued on and I had a can of tuna with crackers. Twenty miles farther I caught up with him in a canyon. Passed him when I got a good legal chance, which he took as a challenge. He kept up with me for a while, then dropped back in the corners as the road climbed to the rim and the turns got sharper. Then down the other side. Starting across the next valley I see him coming up fast in the mirrors, so I sped up to 5k rpm through the flatland. That pattern kept up for miles, until I lost him completely in an extended twisty bit. I know it's not because I was driving too agressively, I'm still not using the brakes except in emergencies. But fast riding through twisties isn't learned in a couple of days, and he'd said he'd only had the Duc a couple of weeks. Onward. Colorado. New front brakes in Durango, a night the other side of Pagosa Springs. New Mexico. Back the same was as out, Hwy 14 out of Santa Fe. As dusk approached, so did the Sacramentos across the Jornada del Muerto. Last mountains before Texas. An unexplored sideroad took me up into the pines and the National Forest. A National Forest Access Road took me to a nice campsite, just as it got good and dark. There's a motorcycle camped there already. A ninja 250 with saddlebags. I'm impressed. Only a real motorcyclist would take a 250 camping. Only a real motorcyclist would think it possible. I parked a respectful distance away and walked over to say hi. He wasn't interested in socializing. So be it. I'd love to talk motocamping with someone who can do it on a 250, but if he's not interested, I've got a mountain evening and supper to entertain myself with. I set up camp and spent one last night happily gasping for breath in pine scented, low oxygen pressure mountain air. A nippy night. I was comfy, but getting up and out in the morning took willpower. Finally with my full riding gear on I was comfy around camp. Breakfast, pack, out on the road. It's still brisk. There was a Biker's Weekend coming up in Reodoso. It was only Thursday, but when I rolled through town it was already starting to fill up, even this early in the morning. I gassed up and headed on. A sunny but breezy, cool morning. Much to soon after, the mountains gave way to the Permian Basin terrain. And the wind picked up. It's blowing steady as a brick wall at least 30 mph in a cross/headwind from 10:00 North. I'm headed due east at 70. The Autolean (tm) system is compensating with a 15 degree tilt, about the same you'd use to take a marked 50 mph turn at 60. My neck is getting sore from the steady side pressure on my helmet. And I'm not even out of New Mexico yet! Down out of the mountains, but it's not any warmer here. I've still got on my heavy gear. On, and on across the plains, the endless plains. Leaning to the north, cowering behind the windshield at the wakeblast from trucks. On, and on and on. Finally as it started to get dark scrub cedar starts to show up. I'm in the Texas Hill Country. The wind is now gusty, whacking me in the open fields and letting go through the woods. Deer Hour. I find a pickup willing to run Bambi Guard and follow a respectful dozen car lengths behind. That damn wind fought me the whole way home, but I brought the weather behind it with me. Cool dry air from Canada, dragged all the way from the Llano Estacado. I rolled into the garage about 10 that evening. A night indoors. Didn't sound bad at all. Revill Rider of Whirby Austin (Center of the Universe) Texas