Message: 25 Date: Sun, 09 Nov 2003 18:46:46 -0600 From: Rick Corwine <rickcorwn@msn.com> Subject: My PCH Ride Report the Long and Late Version It's DOW, Dead of Winter late 2002. I'm on the phone with Ralph McComb and Francois St. Laurent and we're trying to figure out a place we can get together next summer So we look at what's equal distance from the three of us, hmmm, Oklahoma City. Not quite the great riding area we had hoped to meet at.(Sorry Warren) We decide to meet back on the Pacific Coast but what we'll do is arrive unannounced so we surprise the group. We sign up for the ride as three French PC riders touring the USA and want to join the American riders on their Pacific Coast ride. We are Athos, Porthos and D'Artagnan, the three Musketeers. Leland doesn't see the humor in our signing up incognito and demands real names in a scathing return E mail. This is both good and bad. Obviously he doesn't have a clue who we really are but won't accept our applications for the ride. Well , to bad for him we'll just show up anyway. About a week before we leave Francois can't go so it's down to just Ralph and me. Now I've only got a week off of work, so I need to hustle myself out to Eureka California. Our plan is to surprise the group at the Sunday night dinner gathering. If I leave after work on Friday that gives me 54 hours, including the time changes, to cover 2200 miles. Just like the trip to Missoula I make it to Jamestown North Dakota after work. In the morning I'm off early, I have breakfast in Bismarck, ride with some Swiss Harley riders who just came from the Harley 100th birthday party, across eastern Montana. I hit a little weather as I get into the Rockys in earnest near Livingston MT but it clears quickly. I have dinner in Missoula, night fall comes in Spokane and I get a room in Kennewick Washington near the Oregon border at 10:30 PDT. 1220 miles, a very productive day. In the morning I get gas just across the border in Oregon, will you look at that a "good" gas receipt, I'll have to make note of this. From here it's just a hop and a skip to the Columbia River Gorge. What a stunning geographic feature, it changes so much from east to west, from a near desert to a near rain forest in just a couple hundred miles. In Portland I turn south on I5 and follow that 'till I get to Grants Pass Oregon where I turn off the interstate and onto the two lane highway. Just after you cross the California border you enter the Redwoods Nat. Park and as the name implies there are Redwoods, big ones. The road itself turns serpentine as it follows the South Fork River through the park. What a welcome change after 2,000 miles of interstate! Just before I clear the Redwoods I can smell the ocean and move into Crescent City and I get my first glimpse of the Pacific ocean. It's cool and overcast, almost foggy actually. The fog gets worse then better and I make it into Eureka at 4:30 PDT. Ralph is already checked in at the Ramada. I've chosen this particular hotel for a few reasons. First it's away from the motel that all the other riders are staying at. Second it's built up on stilts with parking underneath, that will hide our bikes from prying eyes. (Hey, it's not much of a surprise if they see us coming). But the number one reason I chose this hotel, it's got a hot tub! That fact alone has kept me going for the last few hundred miles. It doesn't take me long before I slip into the tub and bake away my aches and pains. Dinner is at 8:00 pm so we show up about quarter past and walk into the back room where the group is eating. Everyone is of course surprised, Leland comes over and gives me a big bear hug, he's obviously tickled to see us. We squeeze in at the table and dig in. There are lots of familiar faces around the table, a few introductions take care of the rest. Over the next couple of hours there's lots of story telling, lies, back slapping and all kinds of good guy type camaraderie. Once back at the room I'm asleep before my head hits the pillow. In the morning I'm a new me! I'm refreshed and ready to ride, and ride we did. As in the past we start by riding to the Lost Coast. This is a very rural area off of the main highways. We follow mostly lane and half paved roads back into the hills and eventually to a remote stretch of the coast. Local lore has it that most strangers that venture this way are closely observed. They say that there are some secret marijuana fields back in these hills! However, all I see are cows. We head east and pick up The Avenue of the Giants, more Redwoods. A little farther south we turn off of Hwy 101 onto Hwy 1, the Pacific Coast Highway. This 22 mile piece of the PCH is really one of the finest roads on the planet. It's like eating a T-bone steak. It's all good but there's that little piece on one side of the bone, the medallion, that's even better. Those 22 miles are all through the forest, ducking and dodging through the redwoods and smaller pine trees. Skirting along the rock walls and the underbrush as we work our way towards the ocean. Then all at once you break out into the sunlight and your there, your on the Pacific Coast. On the side of the road is a small gravel pull out and we slowly roll to a stop. Once everyone has their helmets off the grins tell the story. We all just stand around laughing and joking as we soak in the scenery and the sea air while the waves crash into the rocks below us. Now it's all been worth it. The sore muscles, the achy knees, the long days in the saddle, all worth every single moment to get to this place. We wander down the coast for another 30 miles or so and we're in Fort Bragg for the night. It's September the 9th and the second anniversary of 9/11 is still two days away but for several of us this is where we were on that day in 2001. For us this seems like the anniversary. 'Nuff said. We don't get much time to dwell on all the 9/11 stuff because soon after we depart in the morning it begins to rain and does so nearly all day. Ralph is particularly unhappy with this since his rain gear is at home, doh! We move inland to escape the rain and follow 101 to Pacifica. We're done riding pretty early, it's like 3:00, so I say to a couple of the others "I think it's time for a drink!" a few of us wander over to the bar there at Nick's and partake in a couple of adult beverages and some appetizers. I won't name names but it was the Williams bros., Juan, E Buzz, Harry, Don, Ralph, myself and possibly Tom and couple of others. We're having a good ol' time making mostly crude jokes about each other. Very male bonding type stuff. Then someone says "let's call Francois" so we do and use up all the time on his answering machine and then call back and talk at it some more. I don't remember just what we said to him but I'm sure it wasn't very intelligent or polite. It couldn't have been too bad because he called back later when we were all at dinner. So we passed around the phone and let him know what a great time he was missing and how much we were missing him. After dinner several of us hung out in the parking lot outside the motel, which is right on the ocean, We had a last drink and a cigar while we listened to the waves crashing on the rocks as we solved all the worlds problems, more male bonding. We're getting so bonded now I'm not sure we'll ever come apart. In the morning the weather is much improved and we head farther down the coast and then inland to La Honda and Alice's Restaurant. This is a popular biker hang out in the SF area. So, us being bikers... we hang out... and have a little breakfast while we're at it. More PCH wandering and we arrive in Monterey for the night. I need to find the AAA office here in Monterey, you see I left my maps at the motel back in North Dakota. No I wasn't able to ride 2500 miles across the country on my extraordinary sense of direction. I used my GPS, yes it's that good. But I need my maps, they're my security blanket. We dine at a restaurant on Cannery Row. In the morning Ralph and I decide to split from the group and we head inland just south of Monterey on a county highway. It's one of the few roads that run east from here through the hilly fringes of the Santa Lucia Mountain Range. The rolling hills here are are a golden brown and in the early morning light they're gorgeous. After about 50 miles we reach the small town of Greenfield right on the 101 (Californians always refer to their highways this way, "the" 101, "the" 405, "the" 5). We're hungry now and are on the lookout for a good local spot to eat, we find a great little Mexican restaurant/bakery. Yes that's right, burritos and glazed donuts. After breakfast we head south on the 101 'till we reach state hwy 58 where we say our good byes and split up. I crossed California on hwy 58 on the way home from the last trip out here in 2001. It goes up and over 4 small to medium mountain ranges and varies from a seldom marked twisty back road (one set of skid marks=35mph corner, a few skid marks=25mph corner, lots of skid marks=15mph corner) to a four lane highway through a wind mill farm across the last and largest of the mountains. Where 58 ends in Barstow I pick up I40. A bit farther east I stop at a rest area just on the northern edge of the 29 Palms Marine base and I'm treated to an impromptu air show by some fancy looking low flying fighter jets, cool. I'm out in the desert now and the temps are getting warm but the higher elevations are keeping it under 100š that is until I start down into the Colorado River valley. Once I reach Needles it officially hot now at around 100š. I find a nice little gas station, with a good receipt, with regular unleaded for $2.79. Yiekes!! As soon as I cross the Colorado River I begin to climb back up in elevation until I reach Kingman Arizona and stop for the night. The next day I head out across Airzona. I hope that this I40 route will be cooler than the I15 I've taken in the past. As it turns out it is, the elevation continues to rise to near 7,000 feet in Flagstaff. After that it drops off some but I stay up between 4-6 thousand feet all the way across Airzona and New Mexico. In other words, cool temps. Unfortunatly, some where just outside of Flagstaff I spot a sign, "Winslow 62 miles". Then it starts, in the back of my head... Standin' on a corner in Winslow Airazona such a fine sight to see... All the way across Airzona and New Mexico that same Eagles tune over and over. It wouldn't have been anywhere near as bad if I'd have known most of the words but I was left with mile after mile of da da da dada, daaaa. I peel off the interstate at Tucumcari New Mexico and head northeast into the Texas panhandle getting a room in Dalhart Texas. When I walk out of the room in the morning I'm greeted by a howling north wind. The sun isn't even up yet and the winds are strong and cold. I tool around Dalhart looking for a gas station I try three before I get the receipt I'm looking for. Once I've got that out of the way I head due north for the Oklahoma panhandle and Boise City where I find a good little cafe for breakfast and a Shell station with a receipt that has the time, date and city clearly marked on it. Farther north and I cross into Colorado and not far from the border is Springfield and another gas station with a good receipt. Well, will you look at that. If a I guy was looking to prove that he was in Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas he could do that in just 98 short miles, hmmm interesting. I continue north until I reach I70 and head east for Kansas City specificly Lee's Summit where Steve Ewens who put me up earlier this summer (when I went to North Carolina via Kansas) has opened his home to me again. In the morning Steve leads me on a tour of the scenic and interesting roads in the KC area ending up on I35 northbound. From here it's an uneventfull trip up I35 and I'm home in time for dinner. If you missed them my PCH photos are at; http://tinyurl.com/ubw5 Riding wise this was a very big year for me. I had some big plans and lofty goals for myself and was able to acomplish all of them. Between May 1st and mid September I put on over 27,000 miles. I saw all five Great Lakes, the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and the Gulf of Mexico. I rode in 46 states and crossed 4 Canadian Provinces. Belive it or not I considered this past summer as training and reconisance for what I've got planned for next spring. Hmmm, 46 states huh, missed 3, I'm going to have to do something about that next year. Stay tuned.
-- "To a man of imagination, a map is a window to adventure." Sir Francis Chichester Rick Corwine Chanhassen, MN 1995 PC800 "Raven"