California 2010

I'm just in the final stages of planning a wee jaunt around NorCal at the end of this month and just into the beginning of September.

I'm flying into San Francisco from Edinburgh, via Schipol on the 26th of August, my son's flying into SFO from Boston Mass. where he's going to be on business for a couple of weeks. We're staying with my buddy Jack in San Jose and pick up a couple of R1200GS from Dubbelju in San Francisco on Saturday 28th for a 5 day rental.

Currently the plans are still a bit fluid but my buddy is going to join us on his R1200GS for the first three days. If anyone remembers the article in Bike Magazine of June 2008 entitled Seven days in Calfornia, Jack was the guide for Mark....(temporary memory lapse - I must be getting old. ) who wrote the article, so we'll have a fine guide for the best and twistiest goat tracks that NorCal has to offer.

We then have a couple of days to ourselves but I think we're going to be joined by a guy who I became acquainted with when the old Bike Magazine Forum was in existence. He came out with us for a day on his K1200R, the last time I was in California in 2008.

Following that, my buddy Jack has suggested that, rather than renting an econobox....the GS rental isn't coming cheap....we borrow his Chevy Silverado pickup for the remaining three days that my son's there and my remaining four.

Staying with good friends in the Bay Area and riding motorcycles with my son and buddy Jack is probably the closest I'm going to get to heaven.

There may be more, including pics even, in due course. California dreamin'....

Schtum said:

.....................

Following that, my buddy Jack has suggested that, rather than renting an econobox....the GS rental isn't coming cheap....we borrow his Chevy Silverado pickup for the remaining three days that my son's there and my remaining four.

........

Click to expand...

That all sounds fab but especially the pick-up bit

I've been trying to look for rental ones for our trip at the end of Sept (SF to Vegas) - I don't suppose your friend has any pointers?

What ever, I'll be in contact soon to pick your brains as I need to start planning some sort of route

Andres

Outtomunch said:

That all sounds fab but especially the pick-up bit

Click to expand...

Thanks Andres, I'm hoping it's going to be as good as my several previous trips over there. I recently had an e-mail correspondence with a buddy who's an ex-pat Scot living in the Bay Area in which I asked him if it was only me or was California really the best playground on the planet. Even after living there for several years he replied that California is indeed an amazing place and that he is very lucky to be there.

I'm not sure about pickup rental. For the past few years when we've been there, SWMBO and I have just rented an SUV from the airport. It's notable over the past couple of years that what you get for a "standard SUV" has been downgraded a bit but sometimes that's no bad thing. For example 2005 was a Chrysler Pacifica and 2008 was a Toyota RAV4 which was actually a nicer drive, in spite of having 1.1L less and two cylinders fewer.

Certainly feel free to get in touch if you need any advice about route planning.

The week before last, my son and I did c. 1200 miles on the two GSes which we rented for 5 days from Dubbelju.

It's unlikely to spawn a full-blown ride report. We didn't take that many pics. The trip was more about scratching like dogs wi' fleas on great mountain roads than touring. We had a couple of guides for our ride; both of them friends who I've ridden with before in NorCal and both of whom are extremely quick riders. I think it's the first time that I've actually ground the pegs on a GS and it certainly showed up the limitations of the Tourance on the rear of my bike, although the EXP on the front seemed much better suited to attacking the twisties.

It also involved the strangest crash...or not...that I've ever had....

On the final day, we'd just completed a short freeway section as we headed down from Folsom where we'd spent the night, towards the Napa Valley, before heading over to Highway One on the Pacific Coast. We were coming off the freeway off ramp, a long curving right hander at a steady 60 mph or so. My son was in front on a GS and my friend from Folsom was leading on his K1200R. The road had recently been resurfaced with tarmac which is quite unusual in a land of concrete freeways. However, both bikes in front were making steady progress.

Suddenly, there was a bang - the front wheel tucked - the bike went down. Just as soon as it went down and I expected to be deposited on the road on my ass [sic], it seemed that the right side crash bar touched down and the bike stood up again and I continued on my merry way......with a sphincter the size of a pinhole.

Seeing that I'd disappeared from their mirrors, the guys pulled up at the side of the road until I joined them and described what had just happened. Inspection of the bike revealed tar and chippings around the right side of the front and rear tyres and wheels. The right side crashbar had been slightly marked when I collected the bike from Dubbelju and it didn't appear to be any worse. Perhaps the surface was so loose that it merely slipped over loose chippings or perhaps it didn't touch down at all and the front wheel somehow gripped again and allowed the bike to stand up. In any event it's probably the luckiest "crash" I've ever had. If things hadn't turned out so well, I might not have been able to complete the ride across the Napa Valley in a temperature of 102 deg F and then onto Skaggs Springs to Stewart's Point Road and thence down Highway One, over the Golden Gate, through San Francisco down to San Jose.

The pic is from the gas station in Sonora, opposite the Inns of California where we'd spent the night. Note the excellent BMG Adventure Jacket and pants which with all the vents open, even made riding in 100 + deg F a reasonably comfortable affair. Without vented clothing, we heat-sensitive Scots would have more than cooked in the temperatures we encountered, even in Northern California in early September. I was extremely pleased that I'd also obtained a BMG Zodiac Jacket for my son who isn't nearly such a gear freak as me, from British Motorcycle Gear who very kindly shipped it to San Jose where we were staying with friends.

more more.....

garfield said:

more more.....

Click to expand...

Takes you back, ehh.....?

Ok - some jottings....

Day 1: We picked up the GSes from Dubbelju - great folks who I really can't recommend enough. Wolfgang, Cherie, Gwen and the rest of the crew were real stars. We fitted our RAM mounts and GPS units, pulled the rubbers out of the footpegs, kitted up while other renters rode off in more casual attire and hit the streets of San Francisco.

My buddy Jack had given us a ride up to SF to pick up the bikes and had then headed back down to San Jose to pick up his own bike. So we got onto 280 down to Woodside Road and then up to Alice's Restaurant on Skyline Blvd where Jack and some of the other Apple Inc. motorcyclists pretty much have their own table. (The day before we'd had lunch up there with the Street Triple riding guy who was the architect of the iPad hardware.)

After lunch we attacked some of the Bay Area's finest goat tracks. Heading North along Skyline we took a left, diving down Tunitas Creek Road (not my video - we were much quicker ) which has been resurfaced since the last time I rode it. It's now a bit closer to racetrack than the minefield it was previously.

Coming out of the forest and down onto Highway One, we hung a left and then zigzagged up and down the grades between the ridge and the coast, stopping at the Davenport for a late lunch before we did more of the same on the way back to San Jose. Stage Road, Empire Grade, China Grade, Last Chance, Bonny Doon, Smith Grade all came and went in a blur of great twisty, bumpy roads in an order that now escapes me before arriving back at our hosts' place in San Jose.

Next:- A real Sunday morning workout.....



and then..... {video courtesy of Burnzilla but gives a flavour of the road}

<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/GCpGlGh4zss?fs=1&hl=en_GB"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/GCpGlGh4zss?fs=1&hl=en_GB" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>

When we got back to Jack's place in San Jose, early Saturday evening, he began to examine his bike as the handling had been a bit squirrely; although it didn't seem to slow him down in the slightest.

He found 20 psi and and a nail in the rear Avon Distanzia which he'd also managed to scrub to a slick. That was going to make Sunday's ride fun.

Sunday morning we turned up at Road Rider in San Jose at opening time in an attempt to source some new rubber. Unfortunately, both they and Cycle Gear had neither Jack's desired Avons or anything else suitable.

Time for Plan B. Jack convinced a friend to loan her his rear wheel, complete with brand new Tourance which she'd only had fitted the previous day. There was some muttering about a "time-share tyre" with Jack using the bits which Tammy would never reach.

With Tammy's cast wheel on the rear of Jack's bike we set off up Mt Hamilton.

This is wee video filmed by a guy on what I think may be a VFR gives a fair idea of the ride up the mountain to the 4200 ft summit. It picks up at about 3:30 secs in and illustrates why my son described the ride as "intense". It certainly was the biggest Sunday morning workout I've had in ages and I kept wishing I'd been on a supermoto on the way up.

<embed id=VideoPlayback src=http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-2702571230894583607&hl=en&fs=true style=width:400px;height:326px allowFullScreen=true allowScriptAccess=always type=application/x-shockwave-flash> </embed>

At the summit is the James Lick Observatory where we took the guided tour of the Great Lick Refractor (Excuse the camera-phone pic) If you're into Steampunk then look now....



We left the observatory, rode down the other side of Mt Hamilton, still on Hwy 130 and took the fabulous Del Puerto Canyon Road to Patterson for lunch in Las Gaviotas a Mexican restaurant. You can get a sense of the ride on Del Puerto Canyon Road from Burnzilla's video which I posted above but we flew down it in close formation and I'm not sure that one cruiser rider even knew we were there until we'd passed him and the same was true for the guy on the old black K1100RS on the way back to the junction with Mines Road where we turned right for Livermore and a quick visit to a local winery before heading back to San Jose.

Hey Mike!!! It was great riding around with you & Callum for a couple days during your trip to CA! Truly epic!!! It was fun showing you some of my favorite roads, but that was just a sampling... there are a whole lot more to ride! Take care and any time you want to make the trip to CA and do some riding hit me up!

Hey mods! How do I upload my avatar? Is this one of those forums where you have to have a silly number of posts to upload a custom avatar??? Not cool! Haha!

Day 3 We again set off early with Yosemite National Park as our destination. High speed and quite aggressive filtering up I 280 got us out of the Bay Area and we made good time to Yosemite. Sadly, when almost there, I got a text message from my wife back home saying that she needed to talk to me. When I managed to get a phone signal, she gave me the sad news that her mother had died. This was difficult.... My wife reassured me that there was nothing I could do and little point trying to get an early flight back home and that my son and I should continue with our holiday.
We rode up to Glacier Point at Yosemite in a sombre mood. Nevertheless, the majesty and scale of Half Dome and the Sierra Peaks never fail to impress me from that vantage point.

(pics courtesy of Jack Walshe)



We then parted company with Jack who rode back to San Jose to be ready to turn up for work in Mr Jobs big company in Cupertino on Tuesday morning. My son and I had decided we'd spend the night in Sonora. It was only as we rode into Sonora on Hwy 49 and turned right onto the main street that I had one of those flashes, I'd been there before. I remembered the crumby Chinese restaurant where my wife and I had eaten in 2005 and the entirely more pleasant Inns of California further up the street where we pulled in and got a twin room for $84.00 for the night.

Gassing up in Sonora. In the background is the Inns of California where we spent the night....



Day 4 Michael rolled into the parking lot on his K1200R. Saw me standing out in the sunshine next to a Harley, talking to my wife on the phone and his face fell so much inside his Arai, I could see it through his black visor. He thought that our GS rental had fallen through and we'd had to make do with a couple of "those things". He was quickly reassured when he saw the GSes parked outside the motel room and we went down the street to a local breakfast place. We fuelled ourselves and then the bikes and headed out to tackle Sonora Pass. We honked up the pass to a giddy 9,624 ft at the summit. No wonder the GSes began to feel a bit down on power on the way up. I even detected a bit of pinging pre-ignition at one point until the knock sensor did its stuff and retarded the ignition. No wonder the the GSes began to feel.... On the way up, I was leading with my son behind and Michael riding shotgun when we caught a lone Harley just as he approached an uphill righthand hairpin. Perhaps the rate at which we caught him unsettled him but he made a complete pig's ear of the bend, scraping his footboards and bouncing over onto the wrong lane. It was tempting, at that point, to squirt up the inside of him but we held back, got past him on the left at the first opportunity and were on our way.

Ascending Sonora Pass (pics courtesy of Michael Chiara)





Coming down Sonora Pass, we flew. Michael later commented "You guys were flying coming down Sonora Pass". We flew.....(I could get into this repetition thing - maybe I could just go back and do it all and more all over again as well...:d
At the end of the pass, it suddenly opened out onto a wide flat plain and at the end of a long straight piece of road, there's a US Marine Base, separated from the road by nothing more than a low wall and a ditch. There was an Apache helicopter and a larger transport helicopter sitting on their pads and a troop of armed marines, in desert cammo, sitting around on the perimeter of the base next to the road. Lots of small signs on poles said "Do Not Stop". It didn't exactly say "No Photographs" but we didn't chance our luck. The Marines looked at us impassively as we rode by.
Sonora took us onto Hwy 395 where at one point, Michael tapped the top of his helmet with the palm of his hand - the recognised sign for "Cops". I wondered how the hell he knew this but right enough, shortly afterwards, I spotted a black and white CHP SUV lurking under the shade of the trees in a layby at the side of the road

Ascending Monitor Pass









395 led to Hwy 89, Monitor Pass which took us up to 8314 ft and which passed in a blur of bends and scraping footpegs and slips caused by riding off the edge of the rear Metzler Tourance on my GS. If it's Tuesday, it must be another Californian mountain pass. We continued on 89 to the Mormon Emigrant Trail, taking us to Pollock Pines, then rode up 50 to Ice House Road & Wentworth Springs Road into Georgetown where we pulled up in front of the old wooden saloon and went in for some food. By then it was getting late in the afternoon and Michael suggested that we should spend the night at his apartment in Folsom so we then took Marshall Road to 49 to Salmon Falls Road to Folsom where we spent the night.

Day 5 This was the day of the "almost" crash - http://www.bikersoracle.com/gs/forum/showthread.php?p=7466#post7466 for me and a gentle lay down for Michael.

To be continued.... + additional pics.

An interesting read Schtum.

Yosemite is rather impressive isn't it? In fact, California is a biking paradise.

Aidan1150 said:

An interesting read Schtum.

Yosemite is rather impressive isn't it?

Click to expand...

Thanks Aidan - yes, Yosemite is truly awesome. That was my third time there and I don't think I'd ever tire of it. First time was in 1999 on honeymoon when we "camped" in the pre-erected tents with the adobe walls in Curry Village.

That time while we were also up at Glacier Point, I heard a Scots female voice and turned to look at the woman. I said "It's nice to hear a Scottish voice". She said "I thought that was why you were looking". When we got talking, I discovered that she'd been the telephone operator in my home town of 2,500 people just on the right side of the Scottish border.

That was also the year that as I stepped back onto the blacktop in Death Valley after having been off into the dunes, avoiding the rattlers while I went for a pee, a guy walked up to me and said "So is there a pie shop doon there...?" He then said, "I looked at your white legs and the colour of your hair and said to my wife - that guy's a Scot".

In fact, California is a biking paradise.

Click to expand...

It'd be hard to argue with that description. If we had the weather and maybe the wealth here in Scotland, it would come close.

More to follow....including another wee serendipitous event.