tugrik

I didn't take too many pictures this weekend. Of the ones that I did, they weren't that spectacular. My heart wasn't into the whole camera-thing; I was too busy riding. This has been a trend lately that I hope doesn't last. The spark to take proper pictures again will show up soon enough.

---- Friday -----------------------------

The UPS guy didn't show up with my BestRest cargo plate until almost noon. So much for 'by 10am!" delivery. I got it installed and hit the road by 2pm, racing to get out of the Silicon Valley area before the madness of rush hour settled in. The last thing I wanted was to compete with all the workaday-roadfelons blazing back home to Tracy and the central valley. Up here they don't pull guns like the LA folk; they just use their cars as weapons. Even with the midday start I still hit stalled traffic on the Sunol grade, lanesplitting with the heavily-packed bike until 84 branched off towards Livermoore.

I kept it to the backroads from there, following Tesla over Patterson Pass, dodging up the delta through to Rough and Ready Island in Stockton where the 88 meets 99. The San Joquain valley was curse-inspiringly hot; I'd picked the worst time of day. I pulled into a Wendy's in a suburb named Waterloo, California. The air conditioning and huge drinks were welcome as was the nice lady manager who thought my bike was pretty cool. She even let me fill my camelback with water and ice from their soda machine before I continued on my way.

88 was bakingly hot. One small-town bank I passed by happily boasted "109F" on its blinking sign. The tropical moisture that we're being nailed with this week wasn't here yet, thank goodness, so the trick of splashing water on the jacket-vents really helped. It didn't cool down until the road wound its way up over 4000' in the foothills. By a mile-high it was a wonderful 75 degrees and breezy. 65 was even nicer when I got up to Carson pass at over 8000'. Altitude is a wonderful thing in the summer. Stopping at a roadside vista, I did the camera-timer thing to get at least one pic of me on the bike. Embarrasingly I had to get on the bike so quickly that the jacket bunched up, so it's an oh so beautiful shot of my gut hanging out. Hrmf, I say.

I believe that's Silver Lake in the background. The bike had both sattlebags and the tankbag full. The left had spare shoes, gloves, road suppiles, first aid kit and some of my clothes. The right had my CPAP (which I should have padded better) and the rest of the clothes. The tankbag holds the spare visor, tire gauge, sunscreen, aspirin, cel-phones, folded up fuzzy jacket and the SLR camera. The jacket is both to pad the camera against road-bumps and as emergency warmpth if I get stuck in cold riding areas without much warning. Strapped to the cargo-plate in the back were the two Helen2Wheels waterproof stuff-sacks that I like so much. One contains two sleeping bags (I zip 'em together to make one monster Tug-sized bag) while the other has the Thermarest pad, tent, cooking gear (stove/mess kit) and a nice big fluffy pillow. Having a comfy pillow while camping seriously rocks. The two GPS's were mounted on the handlebars: the StreetPilot III (for on-road) and the Rino (for offroading). Paper maps were in the map-pouch on top of the tankbag as a backup (always a good idea). In the jacket pocket was my iPod, hooked to the sealed earplugs I like so much. On my back (the black straps around my shoulders) was what got me through the heat of the Joquain: my trusty Camelback Lobo. Love those things.

It was about 7pm when I rolled into the Hope Valley Campground's site #6. There were riders everywhere. Knowing I was soon to run out of sunlight and energy, I quickly waved at others but didn't stop to talk, instead making for a quick unload and setup of the campsite. Thank you, REI, for making the Taj-3 tent. It packs small, rides light, and it's easy to set up even if you're incredibly tired from being overheated and under-oxygenated at 8,500ft. My neighbor in site #5 was the infamous Ricardo -- the craziest Columbian rider ever. He and I chatted and hung out while getting things squared away; definitely welcome company. Finally everything was in the tent and the bike was naked once more.

Since we were in a private campground everybody was squidding it. No helmets, no gear... some were just in shorts and sandals. We weren't ever going more than 5mph and weren't travelling more than 1/4 mile... it's just that it was all severe uphill or downhill, all the time. There simply wasn't any level ground on this river-hugging campsite! The fact that almost all the riders there are "ATGATT" nazi's made it all the more fun and ironic to see everbody tooling about on the bikes wearing almost nothing. (ATGATT: All The Gear, All The Time.) It was... liberating, to say the least. Dangerous, sure, but at those tiny speeds it and with no cars to compete with it wasn't so bad. I gladly pedalled the big bike down the hill to the main campfire site at the last camp-slot, joining the ~40 people already there.

The evening was long and wonderful, just chatting with all these freaks and losers from the advrider board. :) Much laughter and playful mocking was had; many beverages shared. Even non-beer-ites like myself had plenty of options. Rockin' Robin, one of the wonderful lady riders at the event, shared her stash of sodas and sobe's with me.

I had pre-bought three meal-tickets: Saturday breakfast, Saturday night BBQ, Sunday breakfast. Saturday lunch was to be on the road so I brought road-money, and Sunday was the trip back (so again, road food). But... this means I'd completely forgot about Friday night! The nearest store was some 30 miles away in South Lake Tahoe and was most likely closed. I grumbled about this, realizing I'd actually brought my cookgear and everything but forgot the two cans of soup. D'oh! I asked if anybody had some snacks to spare to keep me from being hungry-growly. One of the fellas who calls himself "Santa" on the board lived up to his gift-bearing name: he invited me up to his campsite to share dinner, which was to start in a few minutes. And ohhh... what a dinner it was!

Santa was having an odd trip. Two days before he's suffered a mini-stroke, going blind in one eye. The docs found a teeny tiny blood clot that cleared itself up; the CAT scans showed all else was cool. They said he was fine, to destress and clean up the diet, but to stay off the bikes until he was sure his eyesight was OK again. Not wanting ot miss the rally, he came up in his car instead of the bikes. He made up for the lack of riding-time by bringing aaaaaalllll the goodies. This included two BBQ grills and all the fixings for 6-hour ribs. They were amazing. Dinner that night was the best dinner I've had in weeks. Santa Rocks. I'm definately leaving out milk and cookies this year. :)

Squididng it back up the hill in the now-chilly 55 degree air was still terribly novel even though it made me shiver a bit. I gladly flopped out into the tent, plugged the dumb CPAP in to the RV power supply hookup with the included adaptor and .... nothing. Then a few diagnostic-code blinks on the machine. *blink* What? I debugged for all I was worth, trying it on other outlets, trying it hooked to the 12v supply on the motorcycle... all nothing. It was dead, Jim. This put me into a borderline panic. I can sleep without it, you see... but not very well. Even then it's a very unpleasant 2 or 3 day acclimation period where I am subject to extreme exhaustion and panic from not breathing right at night. This was exactly the wrong time for this to happen. I stayed up, fretting about it and trying to fix it any way I could until nearly 3am. Finally I gave in to exhaustion and slept raggedly for about 4 hours, waking up with the sun at 7am.

Much to my surprise, I wasn't that tired. Going through my options simply told me I had none. I had no replacement, no high-tech fix tools, and there's not a single medical supply place that's going to be open on a weekend. Even if I drove back to San Jose right away I'd still not have it fixed until Monday. Some serious self-convincing had to happen here. It was time to just shut up and Deal. Deal I did.

---- Saturday -----------------------------

Breakfast was a single, nicely made pancake alongside two eggs, with a Sobe on the side after waiting an hour for the little store to open. Morning grunts were exchanged with the other riders, staggering about in clumps and bumping into each other until little bands formed to go off on individual rides. This was an independant rally; open format. The point was to see each other, not to have scheduled events. The only 'scheduled' thing was to be tonight's barbequeue, and even that was pretty loose. I ended up with Jorge's crowd headed out towards the ghost town of Bodie, NV. For a few moments I felt really really tired... wanting to do nothing but fall over in my tent and sleep. This is a familiar feeling; a kind of post-breakfast sugarcrash, mixed in with not sleeping well. The best way to get past it was exercise so I walked around for a while until I could shake loose from it and get on the bike. As it turns out, going with them was an amazingly cool thing -- and if I'd spent the day half-sleeping (stupid broken CPAP) in a tent instead I would have never forgiven myself.

(to be continued next post, though here's a teaser pic:)