After a half year of planning and preparation, Jenny and I completed the
Grand Tour of the
Good Roads of the Pacific Northwest. She rode 3138.5 miles in nine days of riding and I rode 4738.6 miles in 13 days. My mileage is greater because I rode down to San Francisco to meet her and then rode back home after we arrived back there.
Almost all the route consisted of roads I had already ridden in 20 years of exploring the area, and I think they are the best the Northwest has to offer. It was fun to show them to someone who had not ridden any of them. I think Jenny got her fair share of twisty bits and by the end of the ride her comfort level in negotiating tight curves was obviously greater. I was amazed and impressed by her stamina, safe riding practices, and positive attitude. She really jumped into the deep end with this ride, because prior to it I don't think she had ridden a single day with over 300 miles, and on this ride every day was more than that. Most people need to get used to long hours in the saddle, but she seemed to adapt to it right off.
We had some really hot weather in the first five days, which added some stress.....check out the cell phone reading below:
We had actually seen 105 degrees on a building thermometer shortly before this. Those are darn hot temps to be riding with boots, helmets, gloves, jackets and long pants. It seemed like the mornings were fine, and we would usually start out with vents closed and jacket liners in but start shedding stuff until by mid afternoon the heat really set in, and made a cold shower and a cold beer the topmost thoughts in our minds.
One of the ways we found worked for helping to cool down was to wet our shirts to get some evaporative cooling. This was not a wet t-shirt contest:
A faucet in a campground was another opportunity to cool off:
I have a bunch of pictures, so rather than describe the ride in a day-by-day format, let me just show some pictures and a bit of narrative.
This is a selfie Jenny took as we were leaving her house. We both had jackets with lots of ventilation, but also with liners that could be worn underneath to block cold air when necessary......such as riding in San Francisco. We wore nylon rain over-pants when it was cold to block the air going through our vented riding pants.
We came upon this logging museum on the way from Susanville to Bend. I always find logging museums interesting. It was another type of Wild West that was just as exciting as cattle drives and gunslingers. The interesting thing about this photo is that Jenny gets to hug a tree
and a logger at the same time.
We spent one night in Baker City, Oregon, and then rode a beautiful road called Rattlesnake Grade that ran along the top of Hell's Canyon.
Then we took a break in Joseph, Oregon by this beautiful lake. Carolyn and I took a look at this town when we were scouting places to live in the Northwest, but it was too remote from any major airports which we needed as Carolyn was still working and was going to sky commute.
At the top of my list of favorite roads is the Old Spiral Highway out of Lewiston, Idaho. I have written about it at other times in this blog. It was built when cars were just becoming useful means of transportation, and was designed as a way to go north out of the Snake River canyon. It has been superseded by a modern four lane highway, so has very little traffic. What really makes this road great, besides the curves and good pavement, is that you can see around many of the right hand corners and know that there is no car coming the other way. That greatly increases my confidence in leaning over even further than normal, because a slide that puts you into oncoming traffic would lead to a real bad day. Here are a couple of pics of just parts of the road:
After an over night in Walla Walla where we got the biggest portions of Chinese food I ever saw (we could have split my order of Kung Pao chicken and still not been able to eat it all), we got back into territory that I can ride on a day ride from home. This includes an overlook of the Columbia River Gorge above the town of Hood River. I just had to show Jenny this sight;
Looking another direction is Mt Hood:
Then we took the Wind River Highway, with a bunch of fantastic curves, to an overlook of Mt St Helens:
We arrived at my house on Friday in time to take Carolyn out to dinner for her birthday, and the next day Carolyn and Jenny picked up her kids at the airport. The next couple of days were "Camp Grandma" time for Jonas and Adina, while I did bike clean-up and maintenance. I spent a day doing an oil and filter change on my bike and a valve clearance inspection on Jenny's bike. It takes a lot of effort just to get to the point of checking clearances and fortunately I didn't have to go the next step and change any shims.
There were still some good roads in the area that were not included in the original plan, so Jenny and I took a day ride to catch some more of them. Big Mike came with us and led us on a route over to the coast.
We stopped to get gas at this fun little place. Notice the sign on the building "Team Glock". There are a bunch of firearms for sale in there, and Big Mike loves it.
Soon enough it was time to start on the second part of the PNW Grand Tour. By this time the heat wave was over, and we had some company on part of the first day heading back towards San Francisco. We met Orv, Ross and Leo at the traditional Krispy Kreeme meeting place.
We all rode together over some twisty local roads near Mt Hood until near noon, when they peeled off to start heading back.
After lunch in Detroit, Oregon, Jenny and I headed for the Mackenzie highway. This is another curvy road, but it also passes through some interesting lava fields where an observatory has been built. We stopped for a look:
Our over night that day was in Oakridge, Oregon, and we stayed in a little motel that is one of my favorites because 1) it's cheap and 2) it has this little picnic area which comes compete with a friendly cat. It's a great place to have a beer and snack at the end of the day, but this is a picture of Jen having coffee the next morning:
The next day was a ride from Oakridge to Weaverville, CA. We passed through little burgs with names like Happy Camp and Hoopa, where the women tended to have a single tooth in front and customer service in stores and gas stations was pathetic. There was some great scenery, though.
That was our longest day at 418 miles, but the next day to San Francisco was over 400 miles also. We rode the famous highway 1 from Leggit to Ft Bragg, and then took a road I don't remember ever being on before.......hwy 128 from just south of Ft Bragg to Cloverdale on highway 101. It was also a
good road, but this was a Saturday during peak summer vacation and there was some slow camper/motor home traffic tending to ruin the curvy parts. Jen and I sometimes adopted the biker "stop and go" method where you come to a stop and wait until a vehicle comes up from behind. Then you can take off and ride the curves until you catch back up to the roadblock.
On Sunday I spent a large part of the day cleaning the bikes, doing an oil change on Jen's bike and solving the sticking throttle problem that both our bikes developed on the previous day.
Monday Jenny went back to work. As if she hadn't had enough riding, she took her bike:
After she went to work, I headed for home. Just north of San Francisco on hwy 101 there was a massive traffic jam with stop and slow going, so I lane split for several miles and saved a whole bunch of time. Since I used to live in California, I had no problem with lane splitting except that this time I was concerned that my bike was too wide because of the hard cases I had on it. I took it slow and had no problems.
I had planned to stay on 101 to Crescent City, but the four lane stuff got too boring, so I cut down hwy 20 to Ft Bragg and rode the best part of hwy 1 again. I finished the ride the next day in the rain.......typical motorcycle trip; heat, cold and rain, sometimes all in the same day. But that's what makes it special.
I don't know how many of these long rides I have left in me, but I'm going to enjoy them while I can.
