A Perfect Day

What makes a perfect day?.....For riding anyway, it means weather in the 70s, no wind, no traffic, curvy roads, and riding with my two Amigos Ross and Orv. Orv is experiencing some serious health issues, so anytime we can get out for a ride together is to be treasured. We took a relatively short ride of about 160 miles, but it is one of our favorites and has been done many, many times. We call it the Carson/Cougar loop.

We always stop at the McClellan overlook of Mt St.Helens, which you have seen several times in this blog. It is either at the end or the beginning (depending on direction of travel) of a really nice smooth curvy section, plus it has a nice view and a toilet.

That is Mt St. Helens in the distance under a cloud cap. We had lunch of some pretty tasty Clam Chowder in Cougar and then home by 1:30 in time for some house chores.

Long Day

My plan for today was to skip riding hwy 1 and go all the way to Grants Pass so that I would get through Portland before rush hour. However when I got to the turnoff at Coverdale to take hwy 128 to Ft Bragg, I couldln't resist. It was supposed to be clear and sunny on hwy 1, and that doesn't happen very often. So I did hwy 1 AND rode all the way to Grants Pass, for a total of 487 miles and 11 hours of riding with very few breaks.....and most of it into a headwind. I am a tired puppy tonight. I was a little disappointed in hwy 1, though. It has also had storm damage with washouts and lots of gravel in the turns. The bottom half towards the coast was OK, but the upper part towards Leggett required extra caution. I think I will steer clear of it for awhile. Tomorrow should be a relatively easy day with 300 freeway miles and about six hours of riding. A blog has to have pictures, right? I didn't have time to take any today, so here is one of my trusty Honda getting a well deserved rest after a hard day. I seems to be able to shrug off anything I dish out.

Somehow I have lost the ability to make paragraphs in this blog when using my Ipad. That big mess above was actually supposed to be four paragraphs which is how it looks before I post it. Oh well, technology strikes again.

Observatory Ride

Yesterday I was checking over Jenny's bike and discovered the front brake pads were about worn out, so we made a quick run to the downtown San Francisco Cycle Gear and bought some new ones that I installed:

I also tried to lube the clutch cable but was not too successful without the cable lubing tool that pressure feeds lube down the the length of the cable. Jenny suggested an early start today for our ride to Lick observatory so that we could beat the traffic. We stopped for breakfast on the way at "Just Breakfast" in San Jose:

Her suggestion to start early was right on the mark as we had no traffic on the way up to the observatory on one of the best roads I have been on. It's only flaw was that it was a little bumpy. Here is a pic of my GPS when we got to the top:

Now that's a curve:

Some more pics taken at the top:

I could hardly believe it, but the ride down the backside of the mountain was even better. The road was smoother and had more "flow" to it. You can never have too many curves, but I found you can have enough, and by the time we got down off the mountain I had had enough. At one point it got kind of narrow and there were even a couple of water crossings. Who needs an adventure bike?

There were more views of the beauty of California after a rainy year:

What is a ride to San Francisco without a stop at Alice's Restaurant? So we went by there on the way back, but it was such a jam up, with no parking even for motorcycles that we just kept on going. We got back to Jen's around 3pm and a cold PBR and a snack really hit the spot:

Tomorrow I head back. Maybe I can get to grant's Pass which will allow me to beat the Portland rush hour on Tuesday.

Rainy Start

Woke up yesterday to rain, as expected. Sure glad I wasn't camping. One of the advantages of starting a rainy day from the motel is that I can put all the rain gear on before I leave the room, as opposed to having to do it alongside the road or under a tree or overpass. I was also lucky to find a parking spot for the bike that was under cover. Finding rain gear that works has taken me a long time and several failed attempts, and I'm still not 100% there. Early on I thought a full rain suit would be the way to go since you alway wear the pants if you need the jacket, so why not combine the two into one garment. The problem is that in order for these "onesies" to be able to be put on, they need to have a zipper that extends to at least below crotch level. Then when in the seated position, a pocket forms in the crotch that collects water. No zipper made can withstand that kind of puddle. I also had an anorak type jacket at one time but it was almost impossible to put on over my leather jacket. My boots are basic waterproof motorcyle boots and they work fine. Here is a pic of me in my current rain gear. I still have some problems; the pants need longer zippers in the legs so they would be easier to put on over boots, and the glove covers are also difficult to pull on over gloves. I don't have them on in the pic because I can't operate the camera with them on. My Tourmaster jacket is fantastic.

My original plan for yesterday was to ride down 101 to Leggett and then take the famous hwy 1 down to the coast to Ft Bragg. From there it would be 128 back up to 101 at Coverdale. However, since it was raining in Eureka, I was pretty sure it would be raining on hwy 1 on the coast so I decided to stay on 101 and get more inland and hopefully away from the rain. I also happened to read the latest issue of Rider magazine the night before that had an article about riding to the Geysers. Back in the 80's Carolyn and I were on a ride up 101 and took a side trip to some geothermal hot spring resort that was at the end of a fantastically curvy road. We have often wondered where that was, and the article in the magazine made it sound like that was the place. If I stayed on 101 I would be going right past the turnoff and the map in the magazine showed a loop down to the Geysers and back that looked really tempting. Once I got off 101 I stopped for lunch:

If you are wondering why my phone is in my lunch container it's because it was windy and the phone kept it from blowing away (I was having a light lunch, har har). The map from the magazine is underneath. The road to the Geysers turned out to be the very one that Carolyn and I had remembered. Unfortunately it probably has not been repaved since the 80's, and it was in terrible shape. It reminded me of the Lost Coast highway out of Ferndale, which is another road that we loved back then but which is only suitable for long travel suspension adventure bikes now. On top of that, the loop shown in the Rider article couldn't be done because the road back up from the Geysers was closed, probably due to a washout from the rainy year California had.

So the ride was sort of a bust. Here is a picture of part of the road to give an idea of just how curvy it is:

I also got some pictures of the countryside on the way. California wine country is sure beautiful this year.

I got to Jenny's house around 6pm after 338 miles. It was so windy in San Francisco that one of the coast roads on the way to her house was closed due to blowing sand. Today was predicted to be just as windy, so we plan to take our ride to Lick observatory tomorrow.

Long Ride For a Weekend

Lat Fall, when Orv, Mike and I rode rented bikes back on the east coast, Orv started talking about trucking the bikes down to Northern California and riding some of the spectacular roads around Weaverville that I have written about in this blog. It seemed like a good idea to me and I began to look forward to it. Unfortunately, Orv couldn't make it, and that is not where the suck stops, either. But I needed a good long ride. This has been a tough winter and spring. In January we had more snow and cold weather than at any time in the 22 years we have lived here. A nearby pond froze over thick enough that people were ice skating on it, and the schools had so many snow days that they had to request a break from the state requirement for a certain number of days in the school year. In February I was recovering from my knee surgery and the weather wasn't fit for riding anyway. Then came March and April. It rained 48 out of the 62 days. I had to have a ride to look forward to, so I proposed to Jenny that I ride down to San Francisco and we go for a ride over the weekend. The first weekend in May was chosen as one that she was available and the destination was to be the Lick observatory on top of Mt Hamilton. Jenny has done this ride before and the way she described the road going up to the observatory made me want to give it a go. I started out this morning with a plan to stay overnight in Crescent City, CA, which is my normal overnight for the two day ride to SF. The weather has done a complete flip flop and today was beautiful, verging on being too hot in the afternoon. I first took the liner out of my jacket and then took off my long sleeve shirt. I couldn't do anything more to get cool. About that time, though, I was approaching the coast and before too long I was putting everything back on. I decided not to stop in Crescent City because it was still pretty early and another rider I met advised me that hwy 101 was really messed up by the winter rains and would not be fun tomorrow in the expected rain. So I continued on to Eureka, and before long I put my heated vest on and plugged it in. Today was a long one. No stopping for lunch and dinner was at 8pm, but I covered 476 miles. Needless to say, I don't have many photos to share, which is a shame because all that rain has made the countryside a lush green and very beautiful. I did take one photo with my new camera. This was taken at a rest stop:

Tomorrow I should have more time to take photos.