Sniffles and Sunday Rides
Oct. 14th, 2002 11:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tugrikI had planned to make it up to Faire this weekend. I've never seen Roon perform (well, almost never -- I caught the tail end of his act a few years ago) and I've wanted to actually hang out non-onlineishly with Paka and Es, so I figured I'd attend the last weekend of Faire. A tickle way up in the sinuses Friday night wasn't a good omen, and sure enough I woke up on Saturday with a nasty case of sniffles and sneezes.
The sucky thing about sleep apnea treatment is that it requires your nose being clear to work. If it gets stuffy you simply cannot sleep. I spent most of friday, saturday and sunday nights doing the tossing and turning thing. While I ended up resting until the midday both weekend days I still didn't get much rest. Luckily these colds are rare for me nowadays. I used to get 2-3 colds a year, but this is my first one in a year and a half so it was probably overdue. The timing just stinks, is all. Novato faire sounded fun.
Today I'm feeling just nasty enough to talk myself into taking the day off and dosing up on DayQuil. My stupidly present sense of responsibility will probably make me go in to work a little later if the medicine has a positive effect.
My first thought about where to go was to head up through the city and on in to the Point Reyes National Park area. It's an amazing ride that I've not done in a terribly long time. From there I'd head inland and give myself the option of spending an hour or two at faire if the timing worked out and I felt up to it. Much to my surprise both Dusty and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
reality_fox motivated and became part of the equation. Not to sound too harsh, but I figured both would have already bailed on me since it was 11:30a and here I was still lounging around with headphones on. The rare days they want to ride or do something they're usually wanting to be on the road freak-all early and get grumpy when I don't motivate.
Dusty wanted to go to the coast and get lunch. Reality_fox just wanted to ride, and while he had his 'no, I won't do that' parts he didn't especially have a 'yes, I want to go' idea either. Since Santa Cruz BMW had sent me a flyer about their 'oktoberfest' celebration, which included parts discounts and free food, I figured we could just do something to hop creatively over the hill and end up down in Watsonville, taking the usual-and-safe Uvas canyon back home. I was nice and alert, but I wanted an easy out if my cold started to get the better of me.
Highway 9 has two major parts, motorcycling-wise. The bay-side end going up to Four Corners is a sport-biker speedrun. It's usually full of road squid trying to prove something and easily claims the highest motorcycle-accident rate in the south bay. Understandably we wanted to avoid that on a nice-weather weekend; squidboys would be out in force. The back-side from four-corners down into Boulder Creek is longer and much more twisty, but a bit more tame traffic-wise. The goal would be to get there without going up the ugly side. The best way to do this would usually be Bear Creek Road. I say 'usually' because I drove it last weekend in the van and found the repaving efforts to be right at the most difficult stage, leaving the road looking like something out of Bosnia. The next loop over was Skyline itself, from where it joins Highway 17.
The good side: Skyline to the southern end of BearCreek to Highway 9 was beatiful -- dappled sunlight through tall redwoods, low traffic, clean road surface, no red-and-blue-light taxation devices. The downside: What traffic we did meet consisted of one oversized SUV on the four mile long single-lane section of Skyline. I saw him coming and could dip in low, ending up love-tapping his mirror with my handguard but nothing more. The two behind me had more room than I, but after talking to them they appeared to take it much less favorably. We flowed down into the small town of Boulder Creek and weigh options. Empire grade over to Highway 1? or just stay on 9 and get down to Watsonville post-haste? The latter was chosen.
The 9 was sunday-driver city. The rest of the trip to Watsonville was spent in line with every gawking bay-area tourist with an urge to drive, the experience seasoned with scads of extremely attitudy and agressive bicycle riders. There's something about strapping on lycra and a styrofoam-cup helmet and sitting on a $3k titanium bike that turns the mild-mannered office worker into a pedal-powered bucket of attitude. They wove in and out of traffic in defiance of the cars, taking the 'share the road' suggestion to a 'it's my road you dumb-ass cager' extreme. As usual, they blew through traffic lights and signs rudely, with a 'screw you buddy I'm on a bike' attitude. My opinion is if they want the respect they request as moving vehicles, they need to obey the vehicle laws as well. "Share the road" works a lot better if they're not blasting through red-lights and swearing at drivers that almost hit them.
While waiting at a traffic light that was shuttling both sides of the road through a single-lane under repair chunk of Highway 9, Dusty and I were having an animated conversation. Earplugs and running motors make the vocal part difficult, so often bikers use a lot of body lingo when talking; it helps. While making a comment about riding armor making one feel "Strong Like Bull", I did one of those muscle-guy poses, both arms up, flexing, elbows out. WHAM The biker zooming past at 20mph took my elbow solid. "Asshole!" trailed off with a nice doppler as the cyclist recovered well, not losing much speed at all. Whoops. I had utterly not seen the guy and for whatever reason he had decided to zoom by me with only inches to spare instead of using the semi-copious shoulder. I felt bad about it, but he was the one taking risks. The bicyclist blew through the red light and kept going, even as oncoming traffic was using the single-lane. A few miles later when I passed him again, I shouted out an apology (sorry dude!) and got a dirty look in response. Ahwell.
The dealer trip wasn't a good one. The flyer said free food. Instead, Dusty and Reality_Fox got their hotdogs, and then got a bill. At least it was cheap. I avoided the things anyways, being on the liquid-fasting -- and that's a good thing, as that spicy polish the Fox had came back to haunt him later in the day. The so-called parts sale prices didn't appear to affect any parts that I was interested in. I also annoyed my riding companions a little because it took about 30 minutes for the parts guys to look up the bits I wanted to order instead of the 5-10 it should have taken. The downside here was that as I was leaving I met up with some other GS fellows I'd known from Helimot, and took to a good chat about the bikes and things we'd done. I never get to geek with other GS-riders offline; there simply aren't any I daily ride with. I've sat around Buell dealerships for hours with Dusty listening to him and his buddies go off on their bikes, so I was a little cheesed off when my co-riders decided to get on their bikes and simply leave instead of having the courtesy to tell me "we really want to go now". They figured they could just ditch out and make me go instead of politely asking or letting me finish all of five minutes of convo with my fellow GS'ers. I didn't want to make a social incident out of it, though, so I just geared up and left, with an apology to the other GS guys at the awkward sudden-leaving.
A bit of traffic tied us up over Hecker Pass, and the Fox got stuck behind. When going with a group that might get spread out the rule is for the leader to stop at each major turn-off to wait for the tail to catch up, so they know to make the turn. The job of people following is that if you fall behind, stay on the main road you're on until you see the stopped group up ahead. We did the wrong thing: Dusty and I turned off and got out of sight by a half block. Realizing this, we were in the process of turning around when Fox caught up and did the right thing: kept on the main road, hauling ass to make up time, before we could get back to where he could see us. Dusty hammered the throttle and I followed, both of us catching up to the speedyfox a good five miles farther. Since Uvas is a mesh of entries and exits to the same canyon system, I figured we'd best just keep going and re-enter farther up at Edmunsen road. The Fox's blow-by and our rerouting ended up saivng us all a lot of money.
Half-way to Chesboro resevoir, bikers approaching gave me the 'cop ahead' (patting their helmet from atop) and 'slow the hell down now' (palm down below the handle bar, pushing towards the ground) hand-signals. We immediately did so. For the next four miles we didn't see anything, so it was a bit puzzling... but when we hit Quail Run (the roadside harley bar) we saw a fair bit of motorcycle police loitering about. Hmmm. We kept it cool as we ambled on past, and then saw what was really going on. At the intersection of the roads connecting Uvas Canyon and Chesboro was a command RV. Beside it, two troopers, two dualsport motorcops, and two roadbike motorcops. They had a little crowd of sportbikes pulled over, and there was a lot of scribbling going on in those little ticket books. Crackdown day. As we made our way back up to Calero, we passed no less than four speed traps, manned by all three types of motor officers: cars, bikes and dualsports. It appears they're tired of Uvas being used as a speed-run and noise-blast, and were being equally as harsh on the Big Loud Harley crowd as they were on the sportbikers.
Had we made the first turnoff from Hecker Pass we would have hit that speed trap at full tilt. Almost all the bikers take the Chesboro side, so I doubt we would have had any friendly bikers giving us 'slow the hell down' warnings. The curve they were sitting on was a blind drop and we would have ran right into it at the expense of our pocketbooks and driving records. So, Mr. Fox.. thank you for doing the right thing and zooming on by. The relaxed ride back home was actually a nice change of pace. I've never done that much of Uvas at 40mph. There's a lot more to see than I would have thought. :)
We got home not long after. The evening consisted of watching Sopranos, Adult Swim, and then heading out to the theater to watch the surprisingly well written and well acted "Knockaround Guys". My cold started picking up with a vengeance by the time I got home, and it was another sleepless night that's lead me to sitting here typing journal entries instead of working this morning.
Still, not a bad weekend.
The sucky thing about sleep apnea treatment is that it requires your nose being clear to work. If it gets stuffy you simply cannot sleep. I spent most of friday, saturday and sunday nights doing the tossing and turning thing. While I ended up resting until the midday both weekend days I still didn't get much rest. Luckily these colds are rare for me nowadays. I used to get 2-3 colds a year, but this is my first one in a year and a half so it was probably overdue. The timing just stinks, is all. Novato faire sounded fun.
Today I'm feeling just nasty enough to talk myself into taking the day off and dosing up on DayQuil. My stupidly present sense of responsibility will probably make me go in to work a little later if the medicine has a positive effect.
My first thought about where to go was to head up through the city and on in to the Point Reyes National Park area. It's an amazing ride that I've not done in a terribly long time. From there I'd head inland and give myself the option of spending an hour or two at faire if the timing worked out and I felt up to it. Much to my surprise both Dusty and
reality_fox motivated and became part of the equation. Not to sound too harsh, but I figured both would have already bailed on me since it was 11:30a and here I was still lounging around with headphones on. The rare days they want to ride or do something they're usually wanting to be on the road freak-all early and get grumpy when I don't motivate.Dusty wanted to go to the coast and get lunch. Reality_fox just wanted to ride, and while he had his 'no, I won't do that' parts he didn't especially have a 'yes, I want to go
Highway 9 has two major parts, motorcycling-wise. The bay-side end going up to Four Corners is a sport-biker speedrun. It's usually full of road squid trying to prove something and easily claims the highest motorcycle-accident rate in the south bay. Understandably we wanted to avoid that on a nice-weather weekend; squidboys would be out in force. The back-side from four-corners down into Boulder Creek is longer and much more twisty, but a bit more tame traffic-wise. The goal would be to get there without going up the ugly side. The best way to do this would usually be Bear Creek Road. I say 'usually' because I drove it last weekend in the van and found the repaving efforts to be right at the most difficult stage, leaving the road looking like something out of Bosnia. The next loop over was Skyline itself, from where it joins Highway 17.
The good side: Skyline to the southern end of BearCreek to Highway 9 was beatiful -- dappled sunlight through tall redwoods, low traffic, clean road surface, no red-and-blue-light taxation devices. The downside: What traffic we did meet consisted of one oversized SUV on the four mile long single-lane section of Skyline. I saw him coming and could dip in low, ending up love-tapping his mirror with my handguard but nothing more. The two behind me had more room than I, but after talking to them they appeared to take it much less favorably. We flowed down into the small town of Boulder Creek and weigh options. Empire grade over to Highway 1? or just stay on 9 and get down to Watsonville post-haste? The latter was chosen.
The 9 was sunday-driver city. The rest of the trip to Watsonville was spent in line with every gawking bay-area tourist with an urge to drive, the experience seasoned with scads of extremely attitudy and agressive bicycle riders. There's something about strapping on lycra and a styrofoam-cup helmet and sitting on a $3k titanium bike that turns the mild-mannered office worker into a pedal-powered bucket of attitude. They wove in and out of traffic in defiance of the cars, taking the 'share the road' suggestion to a 'it's my road you dumb-ass cager' extreme. As usual, they blew through traffic lights and signs rudely, with a 'screw you buddy I'm on a bike' attitude. My opinion is if they want the respect they request as moving vehicles, they need to obey the vehicle laws as well. "Share the road" works a lot better if they're not blasting through red-lights and swearing at drivers that almost hit them.
While waiting at a traffic light that was shuttling both sides of the road through a single-lane under repair chunk of Highway 9, Dusty and I were having an animated conversation. Earplugs and running motors make the vocal part difficult, so often bikers use a lot of body lingo when talking; it helps. While making a comment about riding armor making one feel "Strong Like Bull", I did one of those muscle-guy poses, both arms up, flexing, elbows out. WHAM The biker zooming past at 20mph took my elbow solid. "Asshole!" trailed off with a nice doppler as the cyclist recovered well, not losing much speed at all. Whoops. I had utterly not seen the guy and for whatever reason he had decided to zoom by me with only inches to spare instead of using the semi-copious shoulder. I felt bad about it, but he was the one taking risks. The bicyclist blew through the red light and kept going, even as oncoming traffic was using the single-lane. A few miles later when I passed him again, I shouted out an apology (sorry dude!) and got a dirty look in response. Ahwell.
The dealer trip wasn't a good one. The flyer said free food. Instead, Dusty and Reality_Fox got their hotdogs, and then got a bill. At least it was cheap. I avoided the things anyways, being on the liquid-fasting -- and that's a good thing, as that spicy polish the Fox had came back to haunt him later in the day. The so-called parts sale prices didn't appear to affect any parts that I was interested in. I also annoyed my riding companions a little because it took about 30 minutes for the parts guys to look up the bits I wanted to order instead of the 5-10 it should have taken. The downside here was that as I was leaving I met up with some other GS fellows I'd known from Helimot, and took to a good chat about the bikes and things we'd done. I never get to geek with other GS-riders offline; there simply aren't any I daily ride with. I've sat around Buell dealerships for hours with Dusty listening to him and his buddies go off on their bikes, so I was a little cheesed off when my co-riders decided to get on their bikes and simply leave instead of having the courtesy to tell me "we really want to go now". They figured they could just ditch out and make me go instead of politely asking or letting me finish all of five minutes of convo with my fellow GS'ers. I didn't want to make a social incident out of it, though, so I just geared up and left, with an apology to the other GS guys at the awkward sudden-leaving.
A bit of traffic tied us up over Hecker Pass, and the Fox got stuck behind. When going with a group that might get spread out the rule is for the leader to stop at each major turn-off to wait for the tail to catch up, so they know to make the turn. The job of people following is that if you fall behind, stay on the main road you're on until you see the stopped group up ahead. We did the wrong thing: Dusty and I turned off and got out of sight by a half block. Realizing this, we were in the process of turning around when Fox caught up and did the right thing: kept on the main road, hauling ass to make up time, before we could get back to where he could see us. Dusty hammered the throttle and I followed, both of us catching up to the speedyfox a good five miles farther. Since Uvas is a mesh of entries and exits to the same canyon system, I figured we'd best just keep going and re-enter farther up at Edmunsen road. The Fox's blow-by and our rerouting ended up saivng us all a lot of money.
Half-way to Chesboro resevoir, bikers approaching gave me the 'cop ahead' (patting their helmet from atop) and 'slow the hell down now' (palm down below the handle bar, pushing towards the ground) hand-signals. We immediately did so. For the next four miles we didn't see anything, so it was a bit puzzling... but when we hit Quail Run (the roadside harley bar) we saw a fair bit of motorcycle police loitering about. Hmmm. We kept it cool as we ambled on past, and then saw what was really going on. At the intersection of the roads connecting Uvas Canyon and Chesboro was a command RV. Beside it, two troopers, two dualsport motorcops, and two roadbike motorcops. They had a little crowd of sportbikes pulled over, and there was a lot of scribbling going on in those little ticket books. Crackdown day. As we made our way back up to Calero, we passed no less than four speed traps, manned by all three types of motor officers: cars, bikes and dualsports. It appears they're tired of Uvas being used as a speed-run and noise-blast, and were being equally as harsh on the Big Loud Harley crowd as they were on the sportbikers.
Had we made the first turnoff from Hecker Pass we would have hit that speed trap at full tilt. Almost all the bikers take the Chesboro side, so I doubt we would have had any friendly bikers giving us 'slow the hell down' warnings. The curve they were sitting on was a blind drop and we would have ran right into it at the expense of our pocketbooks and driving records. So, Mr. Fox.. thank you for doing the right thing and zooming on by. The relaxed ride back home was actually a nice change of pace. I've never done that much of Uvas at 40mph. There's a lot more to see than I would have thought. :)
We got home not long after. The evening consisted of watching Sopranos, Adult Swim, and then heading out to the theater to watch the surprisingly well written and well acted "Knockaround Guys". My cold started picking up with a vengeance by the time I got home, and it was another sleepless night that's lead me to sitting here typing journal entries instead of working this morning.
Still, not a bad weekend.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2002-10-14 12:26 pm (UTC)I had a great time!
Date: 2002-10-14 10:32 pm (UTC)I'm sorry you felt like we were rushing you, it wasnt the intended meaning of going across the way. I did not know you wanted to geek with the GS guys or I would have shut the bike off and went to get a soda. Next time just tell me, K?
DustyKat
Armour and its usefulness =o.o=
Date: 2002-10-15 08:19 am (UTC)On the plus side, you now have a field-test of the armour =o.o=.
Ask me about my favourite method of stopping dangerous drivers some time };>.
-Deuce