A little weekend riding
Mar. 10th, 2003 12:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tugrikI got a new rear wheel from CalBMW on Friday afternoon after having broken spokes since the Death Valley trip. They replaced it for free after looking it over and determining it was a defective rim that caused the problem and not abuse. It was pretty obvious considering the pattern the spokes broke in. I couldn't have shed spokes like that even if I wanted to! For $130 I had them throw a new tire on it while they were at it. Dusty came over that evening and helped doublecheck putting it on. I've done wheel replacement before, but it never hurts to have an experienced 2nd opinion before riding the bike.
Saturday's big fox-generated plan got screwed up by an appraiser taking forever to finish over at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
reality_fox's house. We both wanted to ride but he wasn't up for doing the Sonoma run with this late of a start. I've always wanted to get him on Highway 25 and so we headed that way, even though I was just there a half-week before. He seemed to enjoy himself with the exception of a wallet-bobble at a ranger station and getting passed by the Minivan of Terror on the way back. I'm sorry, but that driver should be jailed. He was doing 120mph in a minivan full of kids and family. It was doing a shimmy-shake on its suspension at that velocity. All it would have taken was a single crosswind puff or a bit of dirty asphalt and we would have been treated to a roadfull of minivan-wrapped dead-family salad, high on the red dressing. If you want to go fast, be it on car or bike, do it solo please. Avoid other traffic. Even then, use a vehicle that's had its designers check it at those speeds (sports car, motorcycle, etc) and not a family-box that gets unstable at 70. It was scary to watch.
Saturday's trip ended far too early for me. A simple 154 miles or so and we were back home, even after adding little wiggly local roads on the way. I honestly wanted to keep riding right past the house and up the bay, but I knew tomorrow would bring more roads. Frang called as I walked in the door; he'd just gotten out of the Game Developer's Conference. The usual crew got together for dinner (Arbys, go figure) and a movie (Cradle 2 the Grave). It was a fine cheese-fest. Between chats, recorded Stargate SG-1 episodes and just plain goofing off I was up until 3:00am.
Sunday, 8:30am. The sound of pounding on my bedroom's sliding glass door. A too-bright sun silohetting a vaguelydustykat-like riding-suit wrapped figure. Yay for 5.5 hours of sleep. We called Reality_Fox who kindly told us to let him go back to sleep. I didn't want to move. From prior experience I know the best way to wake up is to simply get moving. Sure enough, by the time we were on 880 northbound I was perky and feeling good. Amazing how that works.
680 to Sunol lead into Highway 84 through Livermoore. Tesla Avenue (I love that name) turns into Coral Hollow and sneaks over the hills south of the Altamont Pass. 20 miles of boring agricultural-straight-roads later and we're in Modesto. Bad hot dogs, crash videos and AMA-Superbike coverage on a bigscreen: This was the Racing Day party at Modesto Buell, Dusty's target for the day. Racing was rain-delayed so they were showing home-made riding videos instead. Deciding that it wasn't worth staying for we headed out as soon as Dusty's 2nd goal (some minor servicework to his Buell) was completed.
The way back was much more fun: 580 to Patterson Pass Road. I met one of my long-time Bay Area road-goals and found the line through all the wind-farms in the Altamont Pass. We stopped for some photos that I'll post later this week. That's one of my 'alternate lives', by the way: windfarmer. I think I would have really enjoyed being someone who sets up, maintains and refines windmills over huge, lovely properties like this. Maybe next time.
Lunch was in Livermoore at the worst English pub I've ever been to. Sure, the burgers were okay but it took over an hour to get them and there were more flies in the place than in the barns back in Michigan. From there we did the traditional 'sportbike loop' of the area: Mines Road to Mt. Hamilton. Thanks to a distracting moment with an officer of the law (it was quite the evil eye he gave us, even though we were behaving) we missed a turn and ended up in some random national park. It was quite pretty; I need to return there sometime. 5 miles of backtrack put us on Mines road again and led into 28 miles of severe twisties with sheer dropoffs for a good part of it. A litlte spooky but a lot of fun.
Just before Junction (where Mines, Mt. Hamilton Road and Del Puerto Canyon road meet) there was some kind of sportbike wreck. We didn't see the details -- just the 10 or so other bikers sitting around chatting, and an ambulance rather casually pulling up. With the lack of urgency everybody seemed to have I'd suspect someone snapped an ankle, roadrashed or something else non-life-threatening. We stopped at Junction just long enough to shake and stretch, then did the 40 miles over Mt. Hamilton. The backside had been freshly chip-sealed, which is about the absolute worst thing the county can do to a road when it comes to motorcyclers. 15 miles of tar, loose gravel and flying rocks, yay. *snort* The weather was perfect, however, and roade conditions aside it was a beautiful ride.
Over the hill and down into the park leads to a quick left onto Quimby. This is a miniature rocket-ride up and down the mountains that separate Grant park from the southern end of San Jose. It's also the home to ill-tempered monster-truck drivers that like to do hairpins on the wrong side of the road. Dusty peeled off towards his house and I did the last 10 miles through the burbs back to mine. 265 miles, but we'd been on the road for nearly 8 hours. Twisty Good. Mmmmm.
This was followed with dinner at Chipotle withchipotle (heh) and then the theater with Fox and Revar to see Tears of the Sun. Decent movie. Harsh movie. Exceptional soundtrack. It's by Hanz Zimmer, Lebo M and Andreas Vollenweider. I kept finding myself closing my eyes and just listening to the background music. It was familiar and wonderful, yet new... and when I saw the names in the credits I knew why. All three of those artists are ones I really like.
At only 419 miles it was far from the longest weekend of riding I've had... but it was enough to enjoy. Half of the roads taken on Sunday were completely new to me. It really helped chill me out, something needed in my life lately.
Saturday's big fox-generated plan got screwed up by an appraiser taking forever to finish over at
reality_fox's house. We both wanted to ride but he wasn't up for doing the Sonoma run with this late of a start. I've always wanted to get him on Highway 25 and so we headed that way, even though I was just there a half-week before. He seemed to enjoy himself with the exception of a wallet-bobble at a ranger station and getting passed by the Minivan of Terror on the way back. I'm sorry, but that driver should be jailed. He was doing 120mph in a minivan full of kids and family. It was doing a shimmy-shake on its suspension at that velocity. All it would have taken was a single crosswind puff or a bit of dirty asphalt and we would have been treated to a roadfull of minivan-wrapped dead-family salad, high on the red dressing. If you want to go fast, be it on car or bike, do it solo please. Avoid other traffic. Even then, use a vehicle that's had its designers check it at those speeds (sports car, motorcycle, etc) and not a family-box that gets unstable at 70. It was scary to watch.Saturday's trip ended far too early for me. A simple 154 miles or so and we were back home, even after adding little wiggly local roads on the way. I honestly wanted to keep riding right past the house and up the bay, but I knew tomorrow would bring more roads. Frang called as I walked in the door; he'd just gotten out of the Game Developer's Conference. The usual crew got together for dinner (Arbys, go figure) and a movie (Cradle 2 the Grave). It was a fine cheese-fest. Between chats, recorded Stargate SG-1 episodes and just plain goofing off I was up until 3:00am.
Sunday, 8:30am. The sound of pounding on my bedroom's sliding glass door. A too-bright sun silohetting a vaguely
dustykat-like riding-suit wrapped figure. Yay for 5.5 hours of sleep. We called Reality_Fox who kindly told us to let him go back to sleep. I didn't want to move. From prior experience I know the best way to wake up is to simply get moving. Sure enough, by the time we were on 880 northbound I was perky and feeling good. Amazing how that works.680 to Sunol lead into Highway 84 through Livermoore. Tesla Avenue (I love that name) turns into Coral Hollow and sneaks over the hills south of the Altamont Pass. 20 miles of boring agricultural-straight-roads later and we're in Modesto. Bad hot dogs, crash videos and AMA-Superbike coverage on a bigscreen: This was the Racing Day party at Modesto Buell, Dusty's target for the day. Racing was rain-delayed so they were showing home-made riding videos instead. Deciding that it wasn't worth staying for we headed out as soon as Dusty's 2nd goal (some minor servicework to his Buell) was completed.
The way back was much more fun: 580 to Patterson Pass Road. I met one of my long-time Bay Area road-goals and found the line through all the wind-farms in the Altamont Pass. We stopped for some photos that I'll post later this week. That's one of my 'alternate lives', by the way: windfarmer. I think I would have really enjoyed being someone who sets up, maintains and refines windmills over huge, lovely properties like this. Maybe next time.
Lunch was in Livermoore at the worst English pub I've ever been to. Sure, the burgers were okay but it took over an hour to get them and there were more flies in the place than in the barns back in Michigan. From there we did the traditional 'sportbike loop' of the area: Mines Road to Mt. Hamilton. Thanks to a distracting moment with an officer of the law (it was quite the evil eye he gave us, even though we were behaving) we missed a turn and ended up in some random national park. It was quite pretty; I need to return there sometime. 5 miles of backtrack put us on Mines road again and led into 28 miles of severe twisties with sheer dropoffs for a good part of it. A litlte spooky but a lot of fun.
Just before Junction (where Mines, Mt. Hamilton Road and Del Puerto Canyon road meet) there was some kind of sportbike wreck. We didn't see the details -- just the 10 or so other bikers sitting around chatting, and an ambulance rather casually pulling up. With the lack of urgency everybody seemed to have I'd suspect someone snapped an ankle, roadrashed or something else non-life-threatening. We stopped at Junction just long enough to shake and stretch, then did the 40 miles over Mt. Hamilton. The backside had been freshly chip-sealed, which is about the absolute worst thing the county can do to a road when it comes to motorcyclers. 15 miles of tar, loose gravel and flying rocks, yay. *snort* The weather was perfect, however, and roade conditions aside it was a beautiful ride.
Over the hill and down into the park leads to a quick left onto Quimby. This is a miniature rocket-ride up and down the mountains that separate Grant park from the southern end of San Jose. It's also the home to ill-tempered monster-truck drivers that like to do hairpins on the wrong side of the road. Dusty peeled off towards his house and I did the last 10 miles through the burbs back to mine. 265 miles, but we'd been on the road for nearly 8 hours. Twisty Good. Mmmmm.
This was followed with dinner at Chipotle with
chipotle (heh) and then the theater with Fox and Revar to see Tears of the Sun. Decent movie. Harsh movie. Exceptional soundtrack. It's by Hanz Zimmer, Lebo M and Andreas Vollenweider. I kept finding myself closing my eyes and just listening to the background music. It was familiar and wonderful, yet new... and when I saw the names in the credits I knew why. All three of those artists are ones I really like.At only 419 miles it was far from the longest weekend of riding I've had... but it was enough to enjoy. Half of the roads taken on Sunday were completely new to me. It really helped chill me out, something needed in my life lately.
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Date: 2003-03-10 02:51 pm (UTC)Yeah, I know; I have a weak ass. But I'm working on it and making it stronger.
Just what you wanted to hear, I'm sure. :P