Beat the Rain

In fact, the prediction of rain might have been a bit overblown.  We've had a few sprinkles, but not much.  It is still in the forecast, though, and our gardens need it.

It was such a beautiful day with perfect riding temps that I just couldn't take the most direct route home.  I came up over Mt Hood and down a normally great curvy road into the town of Hood River, but the road was messed up by a lot of cinders left over from the last effort to provide traction in snow and ice.  So I rode backwards on the road that provided the view in my first day's blog, and then added the Vancouver area racer road from Carson to Cougar.  It was a great way to end the ride.  Today was 260 miles and I got home about 1pm.   The total trip miles was 2,353. 

I've got the bike cleaned up and on the lift ready for a bunch of maintenance, the most intensive of which is a valve check and adjustment.  Based on the comments yesterday from Mike, I checked the charge going to the battery at high rpm and found it to be normal, so I guess I just happened to have a couple of burned-out bulbs and not a voltage regulator problem.  I have been planning to install a voltage gauge and was just waiting for the valve check to give me a chance to install it.  My last bike left Carolyn and I stranded outside of San Francisco when the stator fried itself and the battery went completely dead.  A gauge will give me some warning about these problems. 

I'm thankful for a fun and safe ride for both myself and Jenny, and that Carolyn is not suffering too many after effects of the accident.  It's also good to be home. 

Doin' Miles

468 to be exact.  From Auburn to Bend.  It's not the shortest route, but it keeps me from going through Portland.  I had a good reason to put big miles in today; it's supposed to start raining at home tomorrow afternoon.  I would like to avoid riding in rain if I can.

The roads were straight freeways or two laners and in parts of I5 and hwy 97 from Weed to Bend I was doing consistent 75 mph.  The little Honda ate it up, but also ate up the gas.  I was getting down in the 60's in miles per gallon.

Not many opportunities for picture taking today, but how about a nice view of Mt Shasta from a different perspective than along I5:

And a picture of a very bug splattered bike:

I'm having some minor bike problems.  Jenny noticed yesterday that my tail light was out, but the brake light still works, so since I don't ride a night, it's no big deal.  Then today an oncoming driver turned his headlights on as he passed me.  I  thought maybe he knew bikes were supposed to have the headlight on at all times and was trying to tell me mine wasn't.  Sure enough, the next time I stopped I checked and my low beam was out.  So I solved that problem by turning my high beam on, which is a separate light on the other side.  Maybe it's a little bright for drivers I come up on from behind, but so be it. 

Tomorrow should be a fairly short day and hopefully I will get home before the rain starts. 

Local Rider Leads the Way

I regularly visit and post on a website for Honda CBR 500 riders.  I discovered that one of them lived not too far from Auburn and contacted him a couple of months ago.  He gave me his phone number and said to let him know when I get in the area.  I did that, and today he led Jenny and I on some of his favorite roads.  Since he was leading, and didn't have an intercom, I could not get him to stop for picture taking, so this post is going to be short on pics, but it was kind of relaxing to not have the navigating responsibilities.

Turns out this guy likes PMTs and one of them that he chose had several of the first ever 5mph turn advisory signs that I have seen.  I've seen lots of 10s, but never a 5.  He seemed pretty worried before we started on the road that Jenny would not be able to handle it, but she soon showed him that she is a very capable rider and had no problems keeping up.  He did include some faster, smoother roads and we all rode at pretty much the same pace.  It was a nice ride, but we had limited time, as Jenny needed to ride another 100+ miles to get home and also wanted to beat the Sunday traffic returning to San Francisco.

We did get this self picture of us at our lunch stop:

Rick actually has two CBR500s.......a 2015 "F" model and a new to him 2015 "R" model, which is what he rode today.  He is a bit younger than me at 65, but he has been riding for a long time and claims to  have done some track and road racing.  He is a good guy.

We got back to the motel about 1:30, and Jenny was underway shortly after:

She sent me a text that he got home safely around 4:30, so it was a successful ride.

One of my best ideas for this ride was to go to one location and stay in the same motel the whole time.  This meant we didn't have to pack and unpack our luggage every day, and we also didn't have to ride with it on the bikes.  For me, I notice the difference in the handling of the bike when it has the extra weight of the luggage, but it also allows me to get on and off in the normal "cowboy" way of swinging a leg over the seat.  This is much easier and more natural than the "Rocketts" high kick to get on with the side cases and tail pack mounted.

Tomorrow I start the slog back home.  I packed clothes for a three day trip, but I should be able to do it in two days.  It is actually a shorter distance than San Francisco, which I always did in two days.  There is also a forecast for rain at home on Wednesday, which would be nice to avoid.

PMT

The Butler maps have a category of road they call PMT, which stands for "Paved Mountain Trail".  We rode several of them today.  They look something like this:

Or This:

They definitely slow the pace, but are also often pretty bumpy and dirty.  Sometimes they lead to interesting places, like this bridge to bathrooms that you couldn't get to:

Jenny was her usual rebellious self and disobeyed the sign:

Today went much better than yesterday as far as navigating because there were no  road closures.  We did have a scare when a road we were on had a sign that said "Road Closed Ahead due to Snow".  Then a little later there was another sign that said "Your GPS is wrong.  The road ahead is closed due to snow".  I figured we were going to be in for another day of map reading.  I decided to continue on anyway just to get a picture for the blog of the snow-closed road.  It was a lucky decision, because before we got to the closure, we were instructed to take another road that headed south, not further east into the mountains.

In general, I followed the planned route using the GPS for most of the day, with one exception being a small loop I had planned to take off of the main general ride loop.  For some reason the GPS has a hard time with a route that comes back on itself and then continues on.  It kept telling me I was off route and wanted to calculate a new route that usually meant turning around.  We finally gave up on it, but it only cut out maybe 10 miles or so.  Still, it was another eight-hour day of riding and I was a tired puppy at the end.  Jenny seems to have more stamina than me even though she rides less.  Could it be the age difference?

Since it was Cinco De Mayo, we went out for a fine Mexican dinner:

Change to plan B.......wing it

The best laid plans of this mouse went slightly askew.  We went about 40 miles on the planned route over a couple of super good roads, following my planned route on the GPS.  Then the next road, which also looked super............was closed.  There was no option but to return the whole way, which was not a bad thing as it was such a good ride.  Here is a pic I took of the canyon with the road far below:

But now the problem was I had no GPS route to follow.  We had to resort to (gasp) paper maps:

What a pain!  We made a long detour and got back to the point where the closed road would have put us and finished at least part of the planned route, with a lunch stop here:

It ended up being a long day.  We started riding about 8:30 and finished at 5:00.

The significant event of the day was happening back home.  Carolyn and her sister were over in Portland and this happened:

Our car is totaled but Carolyn and Lynda seem to be OK.  It might be a different story by tomorrow morning.

So who knows what tomorrow will bring?  Hopefully no closed roads or accidents

HooYa!

I rode 225 miles today and all but the first nine and the last ten were on super roads in perfect weather with no traffic.  In fact, that has been a feature of this ride so far ......I have had the road almost all to myself.  Not all the roads today were smooth and fast, some were like this:

But that was fine, because it made me slow down and enjoy the scenery.

I was concerned about running into snow, and I did come on some:

But the roads were dry without even much melt water to worry about.

I took this GPS shot on one of the best roads of the day.  This one was mostly fast and smooth:

As I got to the lower elevations it got greener and greener.  I don't think I have ever seen California looking better.

Jenny arrived at the motel in faster time than Google Maps estimated due to her getting aquainted with lane splitting again.  She also got to use the carpool lane.  Bikes rule in California!

Tomorrow we start three days of epic riding.

Transit Day

Today was about getting from point A to Point B.  Point B being Susanville California where I am now.  Not much in the way of twisty bits, and it was still a bit cool, but sunny.  I think one of the reasons it was cool is that between John Day and here I was always above 4000 ft altitude.  And it wasn't mountainous, either........just high level sagebrush country.  It didn't look high and if it was not for my GPS I would have thought I was more like sea level.

I did pass by one place that brought back memories.  In the little town of Seneca there was at one time a lodge that catered to motorcyclists and only motorcyclists.  I had read about it on some website and happened by there on one of my trips.  I stopped in but it was too early in the day to stay for the night.  I did talk to a woman who was one of the owners and she showed me around.  Some time later Carolyn and I were on a trip in the Miata and decided to give it a try.  This time we talked to the husband of the woman I had talked to and he wasn't gong to let us stay because we were in a car.  I mentioned that I had stopped by earlier on a motorcycle trip and he said that was the magic word, so we could stay.  It was an interesting evening.  I must say the guy was the most self-centered, egotistical, person I have ever met.  He could be entertaining, but you had to be totally subservient to whatever he had to say or wanted you to do.  He was also a musician and singer, so we had to be entertained and convinced to buy one of his CDs.  Later I read some horror stories by people who had been told to leave because they didn't conform to what he wanted out of the guests.

The place was originally a lodge for workers at a local lumber mill.  The motorcycle lodge was called the Bearcat Lodge.  It hasn't been operational for several years.  This is what it looks like today:

It is currently being used by some forestry outfit:

One of the things I forgot to mention about my ride yesterday was that I came very close to running out of gas.  I went from home to Fossil, Oregon without getting gas and when I did put gas in it at Fossil, I put 4.0 gallons in my 4.1 gallon tank.  I thought I was going to be doing some walking.

Well, tomorrow I start on one of the routes that I put in my GPS based on what I discovered in the Butler map.  I'm a little concerned about snow, or snowmelt on the roads up high, because  could see snow on the mountains on the way to Susanville.

Going back to Cali

Every year in the dead of winter I start longing for a ride.  So I make my plans for the next riding season, which keeps me occupied for several weeks.  After last September's rain ride to Canada I decided to head for the sunshine, which means California.  Problem is, I feel like I've ridden about every curvy road down there, since I lived there and rode motorcycles for almost 30 years.  Then somehow I got wind of the fact that Butler maps makes road riding maps in addition to their Back Country Discovery route maps.  I had used a Butler map to plan my rides on the Washington Backcountry Discovery route, which I blogged about a few years ago.  I ordered a Butler map of rides in Northern California and discovered a bunch of roads I had never been on that were rated as great motorcycle roads.  I guess the reason I was not aware of them is because before the Internet I had been using AAA maps, which only show fairly major roads.  You have to get county maps, or Google Earth, to get the little squiggly ones.  I also saw that the highest concentration of these roads was in an area not too far from San Francisco.

So I hatched a plan to meet Jenny in Auburn for a three day ride with her.  By meeting in Auburn, which is about 100 miles east of San Francisco, I could avoid that tired old route of riding down hwy 5 and then 99 over to the coast to catch 101 to SF.
Another advantage of Auburn was that it was on the edge of this good riding area and we could return to the same motel each day and not have to take all our luggage with us on the rides.

Here I am loaded up and ready to ride.  I'm not getting any younger at this.

Since I didn't have to meet Jenny in San Francisco, I decided my first day would be to John Day, Oregon, which would include a lot of nice roads and good scenery.  For example, there is this spot that I often stop for the view of the Columbia Gorge.  The bridge in the distance is the one I would take over to the Oregon side of the river.

The route to John Day includes one of my favorite roads between the towns of Shaniko and Antelope.  I was vaguely aware that back in the 80's there was a cult headed by some guy from India that bought land and established a commune near Antelope, but they were no longer there.  A week or so ago there was a documentary series streaming on Netflix about this even and it was a really interesting story of a major clash of cultures.  It is called "The Wild Wild West", and I highly recommend it.  Basically, the cult took over the town of Antelope and elected their own mayor and sheriff, and taught their version of education at this school, which is now abandoned:

There is a cafe in town that is often shown in the documentary, but it too is now defunct:

Further along on my ride I rounded a turn at a brisk pace  to find a woman standing alongside the road urgently signaling me to slow down.  Good thing, because the local cowboys were herding cattle across the road:

I got to the motel in John Day about 5 o'clock after 347 miles.  After a shower I walked to a restaurant and nearly froze, as I had only brought along shorts and sandals to wear after changing out of my riding gear.  I think tomorrow I will sleep late and have a leisurely breakfast while I wait for it to warm up.