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.