I left Blacksburg, VA late morning on May 19th. I'm skipping pretty much all of my driving the truck cross-continent. Aside from the tornado storms (mentioned above) it was largely uneventful and I made pretty good time. I do recommend staying in parks for the thrifty traveler, that was a great experience and cost practically nothing.
Yakaru met me in Phoenix AZ late in the afternoon of the 22nd, where we dined with some old fencing friends of mine I'd seen just the week before on the opposite coast while they visited Virginia. They graciously let us spend the night before continuing on to CA. Thank you Austin and Katie for letting us use your guest beds! Unfortunately, this is the first ‘on trip’ problem we had. On the westbound drive from Phoenix, we realized Yakaru's favorite sunglasses had been left at the restaurant from the previous night. The pair dates back to our highschool days, so they are long out of print. Needless to say, someone else had already given them a home.
Once in California, over the next few days we made a trip by several of the local motorcycle shops, which included me buying an entirely new set of touring gear for the trip (Rev’It Galactic leather/tex jacket, Gear 2 pants, RSR full gauntlet gloves and Dainese Fulcrum touring boots) at Yakaru’s favourite local retailer, as I didn’t have anything particularly well suited to the temps and touring that wasn’t also bulky. I’d anticipated only some of the expense of this new set but was, and continue to be, very happy with the purchase as the gear is the best-fitting and most comfortable I own. So a big thanks to Denis down at BeachMoto running the best gear shop I’ve ever set foot (and left a lot of money) in.
We took several days to settle in, catch up, generally relax, and get me educated on how motorcycles are expected to behave in CA (lane splitting, etc). At one point Yakaru decided we should go up to Mulholland. Long ride short, discovered that road is actually multiple roads, and isn’t contiguous. We wound up going through a residential area, and found Mulholland Dr, the dirt road. I decided to explore a bit and said “I’m gonna go dirtbiking for a minute.”
I’m not sure it lasted that long. As I realized it was gonna be a lot of dirt road ahead of us, I started to turn around. Uphill. I gave Perigee just a little too much throttle (read: anything greater than zero while turning in dirt) and promptly dumped over into the dirt.
Bright side, no real damage other than a couple small paint scratches, a scuff on my brand-new Rev’it glove and some pride. While recovering from that though, a pickup came bombing down the dirt road and almost made things MUCH worse for all concerned.
We decided to get underway on the trip a little early, to help things be more relaxed pace-wise. So, Tuesday morning we set about doing our pre-flight and doing final checks of our luggage. As part of pre-flight, we changed Yakaru’s oil, cleaned up the apartment, took out the trash (including kitty litter), and a bunch of other small things. So many, in fact, we didn’t really get fully prepared to leave before about 5pm. But we had plenty of daylight left, so we grabbed our water bottles and said our goodbyes to Yakaru's beautiful two cats, and set out.
Somewhere in the process, I'd suggested we freeze some water in our hydration packs to keep it cold. This wound up freezing Yakaru's water bladder in a shape that made it nigh impossible to install into the luggage. Stomping ensued (to break up the ice), which led to a busted membrane leaking water and a trip to REI on the way out of town to replace the bladder. Word to the wise: Don't stomp on your camelback, and if you freeze it, set it in a good position. :blush:
By the time we got that sorted, got us fed and on the way out of town, it was getting close to 6. We decided to not do Mulholland and Topanga canyon in the dark, so turned about and snuggled the kitties another night.
Wednesday (the 28th), we got started bright and early. No muss, no fuss, just straight on the way. Sortof. Yakaru’s route (
map)had us taking some pretty twisty road out of town. While this sounds awesome, we discovered why some of them weren’t listed as motorcycle roads. Especially the one that was at a (no kidding) 40% incline going up hill with hairpins called Fernwood Pacific Dr. I DO NOT understand how that’s desirable real estate, or even reasonably habitable at all. That road is a death trap, not to mention for anything moving. Good summit view though; I took this pic at the top of that road
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We hopped through Topanga Canyon on the way out, which was rather pleasant, but we took it easy, still working on really waking up and not wanting to abruptly end the trip. We also cut through sections of Tuna Canyon and a good bit of Stunt Rd. Eventually, we reached the big road itself, Mulholland. It was deserted (Tuesday morning) so I almost missed the Rock Store before Yakaru pointed it out. To be quite blunt, we were both pretty disappointed. With all the hullabaloo that road gets, I’d expected it to be miles of bendy roads that really push ya, not 2 minutes of interesting curves, of which the highlight was the Snake. Frankly, I’ll stick to the Tail of the Dragon any day. (Yes, I accept that we maybe didn’t know all of the best sections to hit, but still…) Snapped this pic at the overlook just past the Snake.
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Fast forwarding through some straight-flat, we went over to Ojai. Taking 150 into and 33 out of Ojai was some of the best riding of the whole freaking trip. Those roads were just the right amount of bend to hit solidly but safely, the scenery was excellent and visibility was good. We stopped in Ojai for gas and lunch at a local diner Eggs ‘n’ Potatoes (which earns every bit of the 3.5 stars on Yelp).
I snapped took this pic as we stopped on the north side of 33 to check maps/GPS.
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From there, we took 166 up through Nipomo, and caught up with Highway 1. The coastal highway’s reputation is well deserved. It offered some absolutely stunning views, good road quality and a variety of sweepers and some sharper corners to sweeten the deal.
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DSC09674.jpg (yes, that’s my finger at the top of the frame. I probably have more pictures of my fingers/gloves than anything else)
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The single most awful thing about that road, was the RVs. We spent probably an additional hour on that road, stuck behind one dipstick or another that ignored the multitudes of signs saying DO NOT BRING LONG VEHICLES ON THIS ROAD. Please, don’t be one of those people.
We pulled over at the Riverside cabins to swap visors (from shaded to clear) and pop in some liners as the temp dropped in the late afternoon. We carried on with Highway 1, and drove through some low clouds clinging to the cliffs, which was a bit chilly but rather neat. Yakaru scared me at one point in the clouds by darting ahead then losing radio contact due to the hillside between us. Monterey was our final stop for the night, pulling into a motel 8 there around 10pm, some 390mi since we started that morning. We both had intended to write this report as we went, but after spending the whole day in the saddle, we each got a shower, prepped a little for the next day and passed out.
