DVD-Friday

[tugrik]

Today's pics are here, but as it's a travelling day, there's not many of them.

There's a moment of fanfare, about 1m8s into the track "Closing In" off of Information Society's "Don't Be Afraid" album playing over and over in my head. It takes me a few minutes to realize that it's not some memetic input gone wrong, but instead is the sample-clip I've used for my phone's alarm clock function, and it's now 4:30 am. I knew I set two more for 4:45a and 5:00a, so I gladly smack it and try to snooze a little. It doesn't work, though -- I know what the day will bring. By the time the third alarm triggers at 5, I'm already dressed and going over my checklist.

Glum's awake, much to my surprise. I guess he's truely gone nocturnal now. I haven't seen much of him since his return from Hawaii, which is apparently due to intense levels of work. Hopefully things lighten up for him soon. I stagger around the house getting myself used to the whole 'vertical' position and dig the last of the laundry out of the dryer to stuff into the Helen2Wheels bag.

The bike was packed last night, save for this bag. On it are the following things:

Left Saddlebag: the stupid CPAP, spare straps and cables, room for my leather jacket.
Right Saddlebag: spare gloves, first aid kit, jumpercables, room for the fleece jacket
Left pannier: Autocom, primary GMRS radio, backup FRS radio, spare wires and cables
Right pannier: cargo nets, charger cords, battery spares, Wee Willy visor-cleaner
Tankbag: Camera, tinted visor, tire gauge, sunglasses, celphone, work celphone. 2 RINOs
Pelican 1490: Laptop, lashed to the tail of the bike.
Pelican 1400: IS Binocs, lashed atop the laptop case
"dashboard": StreetPilot GPS and Passport radar detector, both on RAM mounts

The waterproof stuff-sack, made by the Helen2Wheels Adventure Motorcycling company, is one of two that I use. Normally one holds my clothing and the other holds tents/sleeping-bags. The 2nd one gets left home this time as I'm motelling it. The one I'm taking contains the spare boots, a spare big puffy parka jacket (in case of extreme cold), and all my clothing. The last of the newly dried jeans go in before I twist, tie, and lock it shut, then strap it on the rear seat atop the saddlebags and passenger area, leaving a Tug-sized spot between it and the tankbag.

As for me, after a final check, I'm wearing thick socks, sweatpants, jeans, boots. Overtop that, my riding pants. Topside I've got my black-pegasus shirt, fleece, leather jacket, then riding jacket. On the hands are the winter gloves (Joe Rockets), and then the HARD-light equipped helmet (with spare batteries in the wallet for said light). This may sound like a lot of layers, and it is: but it's COLD outside, and I don't have electric clothing yet. I don't regret my clothing decisions as I climb up onto Highway 85 southbound and the cold air bites at my throat and cheeks. I reaaaaly should have bought that balaclava (pull-over, under-helmet face mask) back when reality_fox bought his.

The moon is setting behind me as I make tracks down to Gilroy, in a very beautiful way. It's going to be a full-moon weekend. The first fillup is just before the Highway 25 exit; if I know the crowd of folks I'm riding to meet, they'll be ready to go the instant I have them in sight. The meeting-point is 10 miles south of Hollister, decidedly just past the last gas stop, where the sign says No Services: 76 miles. I'm supposed to meet them by 7:15, and no later than 7:30. It's 7:18 on the GPS when I finally see the little general-store with the GS's in front of it.

Riding with me are four others from the ADVRider board: Turkish, the really cool fellow I bought my new seat from. R.Dubb, the one whose idea it was to band together for the ride. Ricardo, the absolutely cool and utterly psycho colombian adventure rider who kit-bashes bikes like others make Lego sculptures. And the fourth member of our party, who I never really got the name of, but I'll call Arrogant Red-Faced man, or Arf! for short.

Now you have to understand this about the ADVRider crowd: most of them are attitude-heavy. It's not the 'big mean Grr!' biker-attitude like Harley clubbers, nor is it the 'look at my svelte tight leathers as I go 180mph on the track' attitude the crotch-rocketeers have. It's more of the "I ate granola with bolts for breakfast after riding 400 miles through mud, snow and ice while a thunderstorm was going on. Oh, in Bolivia." type of attitude. Most all of them are pretty hardcore folks, but to be truthful most of them are just Hearty Adventurers, not insane, invulerable ones. It's just that there's an undercurrent of "Hardship = Good" and "Bring it on!" throughout the behavior. While sportbikers might challenge each other to take a few more seconds off their Highway 9 bombing run, an Advrider might challenge his riding buddy to go around that 'pass closed due to snow' sign just to see how far they could make it before they had to turn back. Yeah, we're the idiots who go out when it's raining cats and dogs, just 'cause it's raining.

I say "we" because some parts of that crazyness I aspire to. I'm a softie, though -- a newbie amongst their ranks. But that's for another journal entry.

As expected, I barely get to stop the bike before they're ready to go. I get introductions from the two I don't know so well (ricardo and r.dubb), and Arf! just kind of scowls and we go. I heard something about r.dubb having accidentally tipped his bike over in the dirt lot when he got off the bike -- embarrasing, but on a GS motorcycle it's no big deal. They're built for it. By the time I hear this and start chuckling, we're already at high speed heading south on that strip of pavement that's built for motorcycles: Highway 25. The sun rises as we head south towards Pinnacles, providing a mix of beautifully-lit scenery, and eye-strain producing dives into and out of shadows. The scary part is going blind for those few moments before you dive into shadow.

This is the road I did right after getting my GS, going down to Parkfield and back up Big Sur. I jotted that one down back when it happened, if you're curious. The road is inviting and familiar, and I gladly picked up the pace. To my feeling I was going flat out, and doing a much better job of it than last time... but still, I was rapidly left in the dust. This just didn't feel right. Maybe on sportbikes, sure... but on GS's it's questionable they should have been going that fast. Doubly so when they were so utterly loaded down. Most had more gear than I did by far, as they were camping instead of motelling. Just as I'm thinking this, I crest a hill and see a motorcycle laying in the middle of the opposite lane, and Arf! is there on his butt, getting up slowly.

Okay, accident-management time. The others are off the side of the road already and up to help him out. He's already going to retrieve his bike. I turn around to go stop traffic coming in, as he's just over a rise; at any time someone could come flying over that hill and nail him good. But by the time I get up there, he's already walking his bike off the side.

It's a GS, and he slid pretty clean. Other than losing a bit of protective plastic, shaving some metal off the cylinder head and losing a few pride-points, he's A-OK. The only thing that annoyed me was that he and Ricardo kept wanting to stand in the middle of the street while the yakked about the crash and looked things over -- on a blind hill. At any time someone in a car doing speed could have flown over that and pizza'd them both. I just kept my mouth shut though -- and took a few pictures of things at Turkish's request. Midway through clicks, they slapped their gear on and left.

Now this is a personal sticking point with me: It takes me a bit to get on and off my bike when it's gear full. My Bates pants don't let me lift my leg up nicely, so it's a bit of a gymnastic swing-over maneuver that's hard for a 500lb guy. Also, I'd had my helmet off and gloves off to take pics, so I was putting stuff away. They're gone before I even get my tank bag sealed up; it's another two minutes before I'm ready to go. *sigh* Well, I know how this trip is going to go.

Things are uneventful until the turnoff to Hernandez resevoir. They all blast on by, while Turkish pulls off and waits for them to come back. I catch up to Turkish, who then zooms off to 'go get them' while I hold spot. About 5 minutes later they're headed back up towards me... so I zoom up the road to be leader for at least a few minutes before they ditch me again. Much to my surprise, the terrain is exactly the kind of uphill sweeps that I'm the most praticed at... and I've practiced them with that kind of weight on the bike. I attack my way up the hills with gusto, and end up leading the group for a good 20 miles. In fact, on parts, they had a hard time keeping up. Finally we got into some really tight downward hairpins I suck at, and they all bunched up behind me. I'd scared myself a little by bottoming out one too many times, and 'skipping' the back tire... so I pull aside and wave Arf! on by, with the others trailing. Turkish gives me a huge thumbs-up and wave as he goes by. As expected, zoom, they're freakin' gone.

At this point we've gained a bit of altitude. You know those signs on the side of the road here and there that simply say "ICY" ? Well, these ones meant it. The fields were crystalline. The roads were slick. The trees shimmered like crystals in the morning breeze. It was beautiful and dangerous. The crew slowed down a little, but not a lot. Not enough for my tastes, anyways. I admit it; I'm a wuss in comparison. But hey... I kept my bike rubber-side-down, unlike Arf!... who I caught up to just as he entered a dip in the road that water ran through, complete with ice-shelves on both sides.

He was riding through too fast, and with more load than he's used to. As he turned corners I could see his bike squat and shimmy, as the spring hit full compression and the low traction plus his downards weight (he's a hefty fellow like me, just not as bad) squirted the tire outwards to one side or the other. I saw it coming as he hit the water; one of those little tail-shimmies was going to be over glass-ice. Sure enough, his tire flew out to one side and down he went, in a little 20mph tumble-slide.

He was geared right, and his bike was as well built as ever. It slid on its guards, he slid on his cordura-and-kevlar-coated butt. Recovering was a matter of getting up and cursing loudly. This contributed to the image of him that stuck with me most the ride, that has me calling him Angry Red Face. A rant began, with the words "I'VE BEEN RIDING FOR 30 YEARS DAMMIT", and cycling repeatedly around the 'down two times in one day" fact. He'd just laid down the bike a week ago too. 30 years of riding, and only 3 lay-downs -- all within the last week. He was pissed and ranting. I made mention of "maybe you're not used to riding with this much load" since he said he hadn't really taken that much gear before. His rant continued, unabated. One of the other riders mentioned that he'd thrown tentstakes and rope all over the road a few miles back... and I noticed that some of his stuff was loosely tied on (like sandals wedged under ropes around one of his bags). I'm glad I didn't hit one of those stakes. He picked up his bike, and away we went.

Evidently nothing was learned about speed vs. conditions. Zoom, they're gone. I don't see them until the next decision point, just inside the fog on the west side of Coalinga.

A thick, angry fog had choked the entire central valley. The first little bits of it after all that nice morning sun were terribly disconcerting, as it was like tiny clouds suspended like volkswagon-sized cottonballs here and there... then you drove into a wall of white. The extreme humidity changes make the visor clog up inside as well as out and you end up riding lid-up with your face getting damp and eyes squinting until things even up enough. By then, we were in Coalinga proper and stopping for breakfast at some noname eatery. Arf! didn't come in, instead opting to go to the K-mart down the street to buy more tent stakes.

Small high point here: Turkish explained the thumbs-up and wave from earlier. Apparently I kicked ass and took names on the uphill sweeps. I'd impressed him and the other riders. Here I was, a guy my size, fully loaded bike, and I ripped the upbound pass in ways that had them panting to keep up. For a short moment, I had that wonderful King Of The World feeling. Oh yeah.

We decided to stick to the plan and bomb across the central valley as quickly and straight-lined as possible, since this fog well and truely sucked. We had quick pancakes, and Arf! finally joined us, having coffee before we left. The central valley was an unremarkable, dangerous, unfriendly blur... riding 10 miles of I5 in dense fog with thick traffic, then across Utica road to and past Highway 99. The center valley is like any other large-agri area, with letter/number streets on a grid. The wet air, damp ground from not-long-ago rains, and incredible amount of huge farm-trucks rolling about made them all slick and annoying, with mudspray coming off the bikes. We stayed at a pretty sane pace just out of the fact you couldn't go any faster and see anything. One quick pitstop for gas was done in a tiny town that I'll have to squint at a map to find the name of, as it was the last good gas "before the mountains" as r.dubb stated. A few minutes later, and we were in sudden sunlight. Blessed, wonderful sunlight.

The trip through the mountains was really nice, but scary. I was keeping up OK, and then I found the sand. At the entry of the road was a sign that said "pass can close any time. Carry chains -- all months". Hmm. Evidently it snows here a lot. Evidently they sand the roads to help with traction. The snow had melted, leaving a very fine-grain sand along the asphalt. This is like driving on marbles. The third time my front end almost washed out, you could stick a fork in me; I was done. I throttled back, and again the group left me far behind. I'm glad I did, too... as a moment later I did a full sideways slide right to the edge of the road, requiring a boot-contact with a parked utility vehicle. I kept it upright, but it was still terribly spooky. I grandma'd it over the rest of the pass, coming down to stop at a gas station near Lake Isabella and shake off the adrenaline leftovers.

Figuring the other hardcore-types were long gone, I loped on around the lake, following the Street Pilot's little lines. About now is when it decided to freak out on me. I kept having to power it off and restart it to get it to see satellites -- it'd lose sight of them without warning. Greeeat. Luckily I carried spare maps (ALWAYS carry paper maps!) in the tankbag's map pouch, and was all set. To keep from writing too much more about it, I'll summarize: the SP3 misbehaved on and off all the way to the start of Emigrant pass. Then, suddenly, it behaved again and played nicely until arriving in Furnace Creek. I think there might be a firmware error related to part of the map. I'll have to see how it performs on the ride home and also check with Garmin tech support.

Just on the other side of the lake they were all waiting, on a major highway turn on; one of the big 'decision points'. They'd been waiting a while due to both my slow pass-crossing and my break taken at the gas station. Turkish was off his bike. Arf! gave me a 'damn you' type of stare, and he, Ricardo, and r.dubb blasted off down the road. Turkish explained to me that they wanted to go ahead and had maps and everything... but he had none, and was glad for the more relaxed company _and_ my gps/map preparedness. Thank you, Turkish!

The next segment was semi-desert, and our first 'long straight road' instances where you could see spookily far. The HARD light blinked a few times here and there -- as there were actually two instances of the local law types out to boost ticket revenue. We behaved nicely and made it by them with no worries, but once we were on the open areas we were determined to catch up to Arf! and his buddies. To keep from totally incriminating myself, I'll just say that open desert roads + slight downhill + WFO throttle on a fully loaded GS is still a quite decent speed. Some weaving through gorgeous terrain ended us up just outside of Inyokern and Ridgecrest.

Entering the open bowl valley... I kept getting intermittent alarms on the radar detector -- the kind that let you know something at distance is going on, but not what. There had to be a few radar guns down trolling around, so I signalled to Turkish that cops were about (pat helmet on top of head with left hand) and we behaved as we went down towards Inyokern. 3 miles out we could see the red-blue flashers... and when we passed it, take a wild guess who'd been stopped.

We pulled over and chatted with Ricardo, who was away from the group. What had happened was they were spotted at a distance doing insane speeds (that's what the white marker strips on the sides of desert roads are used for -- long distance visual speed-checking), and the cop decided to try to catch them in the act. He'd pulled in front of a truck and sat there at the truck's speed. The three of them caught up to the truck. Ricardo had seen the cop, and was flashing/honking to get them to slow down and behave... but Arf! was having none of it, and blasted around the truck, passing over double-yellow lines at rather unhealthy speeds. r.dubb, trying to keep up, followed blindly. They passed the truck -- and then the cop.

The three of us sat there while the park ranger and the cop (more than one car was involved by this time) wrote them tickets. Evidently the park ranger wanted to give them a break, but the stater had a bug up his butt and kept telling the parkie "you have a JOB to do" until he wrote tickets. r.dubb got one for crossing the double-yellow. Arf! got that plus a 'you don't have your insurance stubbs' ticket, because he'd forgotten to carry it. Neither of them got speeding tickets because they'd not been full radared or paced -- but they did get a stern talking to about speed.

The tickets finally put a damper on things, and we kept to speed limit + 10% for the next hour or so, until the nowhere-town of Trona. Everybody knew that's where the cops simply didn't show up anymore, so the speed came back on. I kept up easily, as this is the land of the Close Encounters of the Third Kind highways -- super long, super straight, and you can see 20-40 miles to the next rise. This continued up until we took off on dirt road toards Wildrose, taking the Emigrant Pass entry into Death Valley. Again, they left me far behind. This time I simply didn't care. I was on familiar territory now, on the pass into Death Valley.

I stopped at the top and enjoyed an incredibly beautiful sunset. Goldenrod and purple, blended over desert sky, like I remember growing up in Boulder City. I hate admitting to my more sentimental side, but to say it was quiet-cry worthy would be true. I didn't even remember to bring out the camera. I just sat there. THIS is why I came to Death Valley. I truely do miss the high desert.

It wasn't to remain high for very long. Soon I was out of Emigrant pass, and on the long rollercoaster-ride that is the Stovepipe grade. WFO, to use the last of the remaining light. I'd swapped to the shaded visor back at the last gas before the mountains leaving the central valley and the clear one was still mud-encrusted. Either I had to get off the bike and scrub down a visor, or just pound it out the last 20 miles to Furnace Creek, visor-up in the dark. I chose the latter, and squinted my way through the dry night air. The moon was rising, beautiful and bright, as I pulled up to Furnace Creek Ranch's reservations building.

Eve was there, and met me as I stepped off the bike. The other four riders were in the campground, and I took a small amount of pleasure in thinking of them out pounding stakes and setting up uncomfy sleeping bags while I walked into the office to get my already-paid-for key. We got the room, unpacked, had a wonderful steak dinner that cost way too much and utterly crashed. We were in their 'duplex cabins', which just means 'cheaper than a motel room'. It was the tiniest bathroom and bed I've experienced in my adult life. Still -- it was a place to sleep, and I was glad for it.

Death Valley. We're here.