The Rest of the Ride

Well, my blog on this ride sure has been a bust, hasn't it?  I didn't keep my daily updates mostly because while I was visiting people I didn't want to take the time out to do the blog.  It actually takes a bit of time to deal with the photos, especially if I have taken them with my phone.  I am also using an iPad tablet instead of a PC, and I'm having problems dealing with the change from a Windows system to Mac. 

I did take a few pictures and will try to describe the rest of the ride as I remember it. 

Jenny and I planned to ride down highway 1 to San Luis Obispo, so Saturday morning we suited up and took off.  Here is Jen ready to ride.

 

 The first section of the ride was over Skyline Drive past Alice's Restaurant and then down to Santa Cruz to catch highway 1.  We stopped at one of the iconic bridges that often appears in articles and videos about the coast highway.

 

And got another tourist to snap our pic:

  

 

But everybody takes a selfie nowadays, so we did too:

 

 

Here is a view a little more pleasant to look at.   

 

 

Jenny is developing more and more as a rider.  She is obviously more comfortable in the curves and picking up speed there.  Highway 1 sure has the curves, too, but being it was a weekend, there was so much traffic we didn't get to enjoy them much.  It's a beautiful ride, though, so we just sort of kicked back and enjoyed the scenery. 

 

After an overnight in San Luis Obispo, we headed back to San Francisco on some roads that lie between the coast highway and 101.  When I lived in Riverside we used to ride these roads when heading up to Laguna Seca for the National road races there.  There was one very interesting looking road (on the map, anyway) that we didn't ride back then because it was not paved, but now it looked like it was paved according to the map legend.  It goes through fort Hunter Ligget, which I thought was closed, but there was actually quite a bit of activity going on there.  However, the road got narrower and narrower until it looked like this:

 

 

Then we came to a sign that said the road was not through, even though it showed a through road on the map.  We turned around and went back through an area where there was a smoldering wild fire.  It was strange that as dry as California is, they were letting the fire burn.  We even came upon some live flames:

 

 

A close-up of that branch:

 

 

We eventually got back on the right road (Carmel Valley) which headed back to highway 1 at Monterrey.  From there we stayed on the coast highway back to Jen's house where we celebrated the ride in the traditional way with cold PBRs:

 

 

The next day (Monday), Jen went to work and I headed back south, only this time I took hwy 101.  Just south of  Atascadero I took hwy 58 over toward Bakersfield to get to my friend Jim's house in Tehachapi.  I remembered hwy 58 as having some great curves and which passed through ranch country that in the spring had beautiful grassy hills and fields.  Now, with the drought, the grass is not just brown, but is not even there......just bare earth:

 

 

Many of the ranches are up for sale......pretty hard to raise cattle with no grass.

 

Jim and I go way back to when we both worked at the same place and lived in Corona, CA.  Around 1970, we both rode our first enduro together (Jim said it was my idea), and got hooked on riding them.  Pretty much a whole day was wasted at work on the Monday after an enduro, due to our bench racing every mile of the event.  We rode many enduros together, as well as a lot of play riding.  After a few years, we even got street bikes and did some touring, including a ride from Southern California up to Canada with several other guys from the club, including Mike who rode the WBDR with me in August. 

 

During the summer, Jim and his wife Laura live in the mountains above Tehachapi at an altitude of over 5,000 feet.  They have some huge Ponderosa Pines on their property, but they have also lost several of them to Bark Beetles.  Here is Jim on the deck of their house:







 

And here are some of the views from that deck:

 

 

 

 

 

Jim says they have California Condors that perch in their trees, and also bears, bobcats and deer.  During the winter they move to a condo they own on the coast near Camarillo, I think. 

 

Jim was always a better rider than me, and eventually got into grand prix and best-in-the-desert competition where he did real well in his age group.  However, we played racquetball during my visit and I beat him, so there.  In fairness, he has had back surgery and is doing well just to be on two feet. 

 

We had a great visit and probably bored Laura to death with our stories of the "old days".  After a couple of days, though, I had to leave to meet Carolyn, who flew down to Orange County where our daughter Carol Anne and I picked her up.  It was a nice visit to Riverside and the places we used to live, dine out, and play.  Carol Anne has a nice apartment on the north edge of Riverside and we spent a lot of time around the pool, because it was hot!  Temps were in the high 90's. 

 

 

We also met daughter Karen and she and John treated us to a great dinner at a Korean BBQ down in Westwood. 

 

My impressions of Southern California after almost 20 years away are mixed.  On the positive side, I was impressed with the air quality.  Apparently all the smog control measures are having an effect.  The air was crystal clear the whole time we were there, and Carol Anne says there are seldom smog alerts anymore.  On the other hand, there are even many more people living there and the freeways are now often six lanes wide.  When I left Monday morning the traffic was almost dead stop from the bottom of Cajon pass to the turnoff for hwy 395, fortunately on the inbound side, not on my side. 

 

So now I was making time homeward bound.  I went north on hwy 395 past our old desert competition areas until I got to hwy 89 towards Lake Tahoe.  On the way I stopped at the Eastern Sierra visitor's center where I took this picture of the mountains that include Mt Whitney.  Carolyn and I climbed that once, I think about 1994. 

 

 

I also stopped at a rest stop at Mono Lake and got a bike picture:

 

 

Heading up 89 towards Tahoe, I took this picture of the area east of the Sierras.....pretty desolate and quite a contrast to the crowded cities of California:

 

 

I rode around the west side of Lake Tahoe and took this picture of Emerald Bay:

 

 

I spent the night in Tahoe City, and the next morning started out in the coldest temps of the trip; 44 degrees.  It didn't stay cold long, though, and it was nice to have cooler temps after the heat of Southern California. 

 

Hwy 89 crossed my southbound route at hwy 70, and then I headed toward the coast on hwy 36, cutting north on hwy 3 to 299 and Weaverville.  These last three roads are famous motorcycle roads and I can't get enough of them.  I had planned to spend the night in Weaverville, but it was early, hot, and windy, so I kept on to the little burg of Willow Creek on hwy 299.  My impression of Willow Creek is that it is the last hangout for 60's era hippies.  I would have loved to take some pictures of the locals, but didn't think it would have been received well. 

 

Wednesday I got to hwy 101 just north of Eureka and then rode 101 to Lincoln City where I spent the night at this place:

 

 

It was actually a nice motel at one of the best rates I had on the trip. 

 

Thursday I had a relatively short ride home over familiar roads, arriving around 1 pm.

Total miles for the trip was 3830.  I was gone for 16 days and was riding on 12 of those days.  The bike ran flawlessly.  I didn't have to add oil or even adjust the chain.  Total miles on the bike is now almost 111,000. 

 

Another good ride on Good Roads.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

Thursday

Woke up this morning at six and it was not raining, but when I looked at the radar on my phone I saw it was not far away.  Got a quick breakfast and put on the rain gear.  This took about half an hour.  I have rain jacket and pants, of course, but also boot covers and glove covers and then rain covers for my tank bag and tail bag.  All of it worked through a couple of hours of steady rain.   Between Susanville and Oroville there are some really good roads.   Most notable of these are highway 89 and highway 70.  I think Big Mike and I rode these a couple of years ago on our ride to the Reno area.  Hwy 70, in particular, has some stunning scenery and lots of curves.  Unfortunately, it was raining the first rain in a long  time and I could actually see the oil/water mix on the pavement alot of the time.  I was riding a bit tense.  There were also rocks falling off the cliffs so there were some bowling-ball size rocks in the road.

Eventually I got past the front.  I checked the radar app on my phone to be sure.  This is a great app for a motorcyclist.  Here is a picture of it that I took after I had been past the rain band for awhile.

Later on when I was near Clear Lake, CA I ran into a little bit of rain and used the app to reassure myself it was just a minor shower, so I didn't stop to put on any rain gear.

We hear a lot about the drought in California, but I obviously was not experiencing any of it.  However, I did pass over a reservoir just outside of Oroville that shows an example of how bad it is:

I got to Jenny's house around 4:30 and found cold PBRs waiting for me in the fridg.  I rode just over 1000 miles in the three days to get here and managed to miss most of the rain, which I understand from talking to Carolyn is still falling at times at home.  My original route down the coast would have been about 830 miles.

2014 Long Ride

Tuesday, Sept. 23

Every year, usually in the late summer/early Fall, I like to do a multi-day long ride to somewhere.  These are all reported earlier in this blog.  This year I decided to head south to my old haunts in Southern California and on the way there meet up with Jenny for a ride down the coast from San Francisco to San Luis Obispo.  Since she only has certain weekends that she can get away for a ride, we chose the weekend of 27-28 September.  My plan, then, was to leave home on the 25th and make a two-day ride down the coast to San Francisco and arrive at her house on Friday evening.

As the date of departure approached, the weather predictions called for a drastic change from the long dry spell we had been experiencing into days and days of rain.  After keeping track of the predictions for a week before, it looked like I might be able to head east instead of south and maybe stay ahead of the rain before turning south and around the edge of the front.  So I left this morning (Tuesday) with rain predicted to arrive within hours and headed easti for John Day, Oregon.  I made it the whole day and 330 miles with maybe 10 drops of rain hitting my visor.  

I've done this ride to John Day quite a few times and it is one of my favorites.  It has many miles of Good Roads and lots of great scenery.  I think I posted this picture before, but I just love this section from Shaniko to Antelope:  

There was a lot of nostalgia in this ride, remembering rides with friends.  I stopped at the Service Creek stage stop where we had stayed several times.  Once after a blazing hot day which ended up with rain, we arrived at the lodge and nobody was there.  The place was open, so we  got inside, but we were getting hungry and the nearby restaurant was unmanned.  Desperate, I rode 20 miles to the town of Fossil and back to pick up a frozen pizza and a six pack of beer.  Neither fit in my saddlebags very well, so they were sticking out when I arrived.  There are still pictures of the "Pizza bike" posted on some walls.  Another time I remember late in the evening watching the International Space Station with the space shuttle following it pass overhead in the evening sky.  And then there was the time we watched a bull elk with an impressive rack walk past the lodge and then be silhouetted against the sky on the ridge behind the lodge.  Good times.  

Much of the route follows the John Day river through some beautiful country.  I was stopped at this road construction for awhile

And just turned around to snap this picture:

Tonight I am staying at the same motel that three of us stayed in once in the same room.  I think it has changed names, and the attached restaraunt is closed but it's atill the same relative bargan.  There are a whole bunch of Brit motorcyclists staying here.  I chatted some of them up and found that they are nearing the end of their ride that went from Santa Rosa, up the West Coast and then into the Canadian Rockies, returning through Glacier Park and Yellowstone.  Tomorrow they are heading west to Bend and then down to Crater Lake.  I think they are going to get rained on.  There must be a dozen of them and they are all on heir own BMWs that they shipped over here.  

Wednesday

Today was pretty much a "make mileage" day  to get to where I am staying tonight (Susanville, Ca).  It was a long day with  a lot of very straight roads and some high winds.  The wind was almost always a headwind and cut my gas mileage from high 50s to high 40s.  I stopped to get gas and saw this Harley   rider giving up and loading his bike into a trailer.  He said the wind was beating him to death.  

Along with the high wind was blowing dust.  At first I thought it was smoke from a forest fire east of Sacramento, but then I passed a dry lake where I could see the dust blowing off the lake.  It was pretty thick and coated my windscreen and visor.  

The bike is running good.  There were some times when passing where I felt it was down on power, but I think (hope) it was a combination of the headwinds and the fact that once I left John Day until I got to Susanville, I was never below 4000 ft.  It's strange that the country can be so high and yet be pretty treeless and flat.

All this wind is a harbinger of a weather front that is approaching and which is supposed to make for a rainy day for me tomorrow......at least in the morning.

Building the Good Roads

Trails, actually.  The local dirt bike and quad club that I used to be active in is working with the state Department of Natural Resources to build some trails in the Yacolt Burn State Forest.  I had a day free and volunteered to  help out.

I rode the KLX up to the start of the new trail and got to work.  The club has purchaced a machine designed to build single-track trails and my job was to go along behind the machine and smooth out the "hump" that is formed in the midle of the trails by the tracks of the machine.  Here I am with a McCloud, a sort of rake/hoe that is a common tool of trailworkers and forest fire fighters: 

This is the trail building maching.  It has a blade in the front as well as a backhoe type digger:

The guy in the front is brushing out the route in advance of the trail machine.  

This give you an idea of the condition of the trail after the machine has done it's work.  It does take a skilled operator, though.  

We were making pretty good progress when the hydraulic pump sprung a leak.  Since everything operates via hydraulics, this pretty much brought work to a hault until the pump could be replaced and the hydraulic fluid tank topped up.  Big Mike is the club president and also the guy who does all the maintenance on the club equipment, so he took off to get a replacement pump, and I took off for home.  

Big Mike, before the pump failure:

The WBDR Through Fire and Brimstone

Last summer I reported on riding the Washington Backcountry Discovery Route (WBDR), a four-day dual sport ride from my house to the Canadian border http://thegoodroads.blogspot.com/2013_08_01_archive.html.  This past winter one of my fellow motorcycle club members and old friend from Southern California called and said he had heard I had done the ride and he and a friend wanted to try it.  Would I be interested in doing it again?  What made it appealing for a second shot was that they would have a chase vehicle.  This meant I would not have to carry my clothes for four days and therefore not need to wear a backpack.  I had really come to hate that backpack last year because it closed up the vents in my jacket and made it extra hot, besides the hassle of putting it on and taking it off all the time.  So the plan was on.  The two guys from SoCal who were doing the ride were still working, so they had to plan their vacation ahead of time, and we chose the 14th through the 17th of July.  In a normal year, this would allow for the snow to have melted at the higher elevations, but should have been too early for forest fires to be a problem.  But this turned out to not be a normal year.  By July 14th there were already fires along the route, and we were entering a multi-day heat wave.  I spent the week before their arrival keeping close tabs on the fire that was most likely to impact our planned route, and working on an alternate way around it. 

After a day and a half of driving, Mike, John, and Harold arrived at my house.  Sunday evening we had a BBQ featuring Tri-tip steaks and then a lot of catching up with the past.  Monday morning we were ready to ride:

John in the center and Mike on the right. 

Harold, who is retired like me, is driving the chase van.  

The first day was from my house to Packwood and was very familiar to me.  Beside the variation in the official WBDR required by starting from my house instead of Stevenson, I had also added in some extra mileage to ride some of the more technical roads that I had found over the past three years of exploring the area.  It was a nice morning; not too warm, and the wildflowers and low clouds were keeping things scenic:

Then we came on this:

I had been by this way a couple of weeks earlier and saw they were setting up this logging operation, but they assured me they were not going to close the road.  I reminded them of this and whether or not it had anything to do with it, they said they would have the road back open if we waited 15 minutes.  So the California boys got to watch some Washington loggers in action while they moved the logs out of the way. 

Continuing on, we got some nice views of  Mt Adams on the way to lunch at Trout Lake, where Harold met us. 

By the time we got to Trout Lake, it was warming up.  The predicted temps for the whole upcoming week were not looking good.  Fortunately I had discovered an old armored shirt that I had bought years ago that I never liked because it had a lot of foam pad in it that made it really hot.  I spent a couple of hours in one evening before the ride removing all of this foam, so that I could have shoulder protection with the mesh that was left after the foam was removed.  I combined that with some elbow armor I had to make a protective suit I could wear and not need the jacket.  So this is what I wore after Trout Lake and for the rest of the ride:



I had laid out a route for Harold to drive to meet us in Packwood, but when we got there.......no Harold.  We were hot and dirty and anxious for a cold beer and a shower, but everything was in the van. 

We eventually got tired of waiting for him and rode our bikes over to the pizza place a couple of blocks away and while we were eating we saw Harold drive by in the van and called the motel to have them direct him to the pizza place.  Harold had had a long day.  The directions I gave him to get from Trout Lake to Packwood led him to a dead end on a road too narrow to turn that long van around.  he spent most of the afternoon and early evening wandering around the Gifford Pinchot until he finally figured it out.  After Harold had eaten we all headed back to the motel, but Mike didn't show for awhile and then he arrived pushing his motorcycle.  He never got it started that night and it was too dark to work on it. 

The elk herd which hangs out in Packwood that I see every time I stay there was out in force:

The next morning Mike still couldn't get the bike to run.  It had no spark, so he loaded it up in the van and John and I headed out on the route from Packwood to Ellensburg.  There is quite a bit of pavement riding hwy 12 to get east of Mt Rainier national park, but there are also some great views of the mountain, including this one from a viewpoint:

Once off of hwy 12, we started the hardest section of the whole WBDR.  Last year I made it with no problem, but this time I had a crash on a rocky uphill where my rear wheel slid into a big rut and brought me to a sudden stop, causing my chest to strike the handlebars and bruise my ribs.  (The foam I removed from my armored shirt probably would have prevented that.)   After John helped me get going again I missed a turn and ended up going up and down another bunch of rocky hills that were not part of the route.  We had to back track about 3 miles and do all the hills over again to get back on track, and after that I was wasted.  I was riding like crap after the crash and hanging on for life in the rocks rather than relaxing.  The result was blistered hands, which I haven't had since racing in the California desert on poorly suspended bikes back in the day.  The ribs bothered me the rest of the week, especially when I coughed or sneezed, or rolled over at night.  Still, I knew no ribs were broken (been there done that) because I could still breathe OK. 

By the time John and I got to Ellensburg it was over 100 degrees.  A cold shower and a colder beer never were more welcome.  That evening Mike and John went over every electrical connection on Mike's bike and finally found a bullet connector on a wire coming from the stator that was not fully seated.  It was great to hear that KTM running again.  I hated to think that Mike had driven 1000 miles to get here and spent his vacation without getting to do the ride. 

So, Wednesday morning the three amigos started out for Lake Chelan.  The route would go through the area where I knew there were road closures due to the Mill Canyon fire.  From the internet I had obtained an idea of the area of the fire and planned a route that would take us to the outskirts of Levenworth from where we could head back into the forest to get around the western edge of the fire.  However, when we got to the detour road we found:

It may look like a couple of dejected riders with their heads hanging, but we are actually looking at our GPSs trying to find some alternate route.  The first alternate was also closed:

However, my GPS, but not Mike's or John's, showed another road further along that looked like it would work.  With all three of us working together, we found a route that got us past the Mill Canyon fire to the little burg of Ardenvoir, where we got gas.  After several more hours of riding old burned out forest, we got to Lake Chelan where it was again over 100 degrees. 

The next day, Thursday, I thought we were past the fires, but as we approached the little town of Carlton where we planned to get gas, we came upon more smoke.  This turned out to be the Carlton Complex fire that was not even reported yet on the official fire reporting website.  It had started two days earlier from lightening, and the fire fighters were just starting to fight it and set up operations.  We ended up getting a lot closer to a brush/forest fire than I ever had before.  The fire was burning right down to the road we were on.  In the picture below you can see Mike and I talking to a fire supervisor after John had gone ahead and turned around to take the picture.  We had just come through the area with all the smoke in the background. 

We got to Carlton, gassed up and continued on the trail, only to see of in the distance another fire that we were heading right towards:

This got to looking worse and worse as we got closer until finally we decided to turn around and stay out of danger and the possibility of interfering with fire fighting operations.  We attempted to take hwy 20 to Okanogan, but they closed hwy 20 15 minutes before we got there and we ended up having to ride all the way back to Carlton and then to hwy 97 and north to Okanogan.  The fire was by then chasing us down the highway and two of the towns we passed through, Brewster and Pateros, burned up that evening losing almost 100 homes.  Here is a pic of the smoky air we had to ride through with fires burning on the not too distant hillsides:

After a long, hot, smoky 85 mile road ride we got back on the track at Conconully and were finally out of the fire area.  We took a road with this road sign:

 

That led to this abandoned ranch:

 

Then, in one of the few times that the GPS led us astray, we got on this "road less traveled" and had to do some backtracking:

 

After one more time (the third) of Mike having difficulty starting his bike (he needed a tow start from John this time), we got to the border crossing.  It was closed since it was after 5pm, but we were not planning on crossing anyway:

 

 

Total distance from my house to the motel Thursday night was 760 miles.  Despite the heat, fires, crash, and blisters, I enjoyed the ride and spending time with a couple of old acquaintances (Mike and Harold), and one new one (John).  Mike and John put in a lot of miles even though they are still working.  Last year they did 1500 miles in 10 days on the Tour of Idaho.  Mike has over 30,000 miles on his 2004 KTM 450 (and based on the problems he had with it, I think it is time for a new one).  They are used to having some kinds of problems pop up that they have to solve, and this ride was no exception.  Because of this, they inducted me into their "club", which has as a logo a picture of a monkey doing the nasty on a football.  They promise to send me a sticker: