Good Weather, Bad Traffic

 Before I get started on the past two days, let me show parts of the Lick Observatory ride.  These are screen snips from my route planning program called MyRoute: 

This is the part of the ride up to the Observatory

And this is only a small part of the road past the observatory.  The first time Jenny rode it was with her neighbor who rides a big BMW road bike and he hated it and swore he would never do it again.  A smaller, agile bike is a real advantage.  

So on to the two day ride up hwy 1:  Probably because the weather was so good, which is kind of rare on the north coast, there was a LOT of traffic in the first half of the ride.  After that it got much better.  I suspect a lot of people were doing a day drive from San Francisco, and once we got to the point where they had to turn around to get back home, traffic thinned out.  By the time we got to the super curvy part from the coast up to Leggett, it was all good.  This is the first time I rode it up and then turned around and rode it back, so it was about 44 miles of the good road.  We stayed overnight in Fort Bragg after a long day in the saddle, but only 280 miles.  The next day was back to Jenny's house and traffic again as we got close to SF.  California has some great motorcycle roads, but the price you have to pay in dealing with the traffic can make me have second thoughts about coming back.

I didn't take many pictures, but I have some of the standard ocean views: 

We took a side trip to Point Arena lighthouse. 

It was 200 miles from Ft Bragg back to Jen's, and I was pretty tired.  It was definitely the right choice to cancel the planned ride down south. I don't think I would have lasted very long in those 100+ degree temps.  In fact, the three days that we did ride was enough for me.  Maybe I'm getting old......well I know I am; I just had my 80th birthday.  But I want to Never Stop Riding. 

One last thing: We took the dog for a walk and saw this automatous car driving around the neighborhood.  It did have a person in it but I don't think he was doing any of the driving.  Sensors were spinning on the top and all kinds of other places.  A look at the future?

 

Longest stretch of Curves I have ever ridden

 Jenny and I rode 220 miles today and a lot of it was freeway and hot, but there were over 60 miles of the most unbelievable curvy road that made it all worthwhile.......even hauling the bike down from home on the trailer.  The last time we rode it, the only fly in the ointment was that the pavement going up to the observatory was pretty bumpy and getting broken up.  But this time, what a pleasant surprise.  The road had been completely repaved!  Nice fresh smooth stuff, too.  The road down the other side of the mountain had not been repaved and it was now the bumpy part, but not too bad to have a good time.  And to top it off, there was essentially no traffic........actually probably more bicycles than cars.  There were some spots that would have made a great picture, where you could look down the mountain and see the road and just how curvy it was, but there were few level spots to turn off to take a picture.  I did take some, though, and here they are: 

Ready to go.  Jenny's son Jonas' new car behind her.  He is just learning to drive and it is a stick shift, which is pretty challenging in San Francisco.  Those of you familiar with my bike my notice that the Laminar Lip windscreen extension is gone.  I took it off when I thought we would be riding in a lot of heat and I wanted to get the most airflow I could through my jacket.  It helped in the heat today and think I will leave it off for summer riding.

 

I did manage to get one good picture of Jen.  It also gives a good idea of the pavement quality.  She , was a little timid at first as she has not had a chance to ride much, but towards the end of the 60 miles of curves she was getting with the program and feeling more comfortable and faster.  

This was taken on the road down the back side of the mountain on the older pavement.  You can just get a peek of the observatory dome in the back.  We stopped to take out jacket liners because it was beginning to get hot.

Tomorrow we are going to head up highway 1 and it should be a lot cooler.  Looking forward to that.

Two years in planning, ride changed at last moment

Last year I had planned a five-day ride with Jenny where we would ride from her house to Porterville, California and then ride loops from the Air B&B there.  Covid trashed that.  So I planned to try it again this year and had reservations at the same place for June 16th to June 20th.  I figured mid June would be a time of reasonable temperatures and not much chance of fires in Southern California.......wrong!  There is a heat wave predicted for just the days we will be riding, with high temps between 99 and 110 degrees.  Even in the higher elevations that we would be riding, like Lake Isabella, the high was to be 100.  

There is no fun in riding a motorcycle in those kinds of temps, even with vented gear and evaporative cooling vests.  I reluctantly cancelled my reservation and forfeited all but the cleaning deposit on the Air B&B.  

But I have a new plan, and I'm getting pretty excited about it.  Jenny and I are going to do one of my favorite day rides around San Francisco, the Lick Observatory loop. We did this in 2017 and I reported it in this post: https://thegoodroads.blogspot.com/search?q=observatory.  This will be our day ride on Wednesday, and on Thursday we plan to ride up hwy 1 all the way to Leggett and then back to stay overnight in Fort Bragg.  Jenny has not ridden the northern portion of hwy 1, from the coast inland to Leggett, and it is absolutely one of the neatest roads I've ridden......right up there with the Tail of the Dragon.  I've done it many times, with the first being in the early 80's, and I never get tired of it.  It will be fun to show it to Jenny.  When we leave Fort Bragg, we will head back to SF and take some of the roads that cross between hwy 1 and hwy 101.  These are really good also.  And to add to the goodness, the temps are predicted to be between low 60's to mid 70's.......perfect riding weather.