Got up this morning determined not to make the same mistake as yesterday and go riding lacking the proper amount of layers. So out came the thermals for the first time in a long, long time. Funny thing is they didn’t matter that much. I still frozen my ass off. Amazingly the Duc’s temp guage was relatively high and the usually hot running seat didn’t feel very hot at all. As I sit here now recounting my desire for a hot seat, I find slightly ironic that now that it’s cold out I wish the bike generated more heat. How strange… The oddities of riding an Italian princess I guess…

Anyway, back to the ride. I probably should have known that we were in trouble when as we headed north up the pacific coast highway I took my hand off the left handlebar and at that exact same moment a gush of wind hit me and the bike thus sending me across the lane almost instantaneously. Actually if I had to testify at an FBI interrogation I’d tell you them it felt less like a normal wind gust and actually more like the bike simply was sliding across the roadway. Freaky.

Once that was over, I thought well we’re cool now. Of course we weren’t. Instead we headed up the canyons and hit more wind. Wind like I’ve never seen before. Honestly, this was different than any other in climate riding I’ve ever done. Perhaps because when you’re dealing with rain or rocks in the road or other more relatively normal obstacles there’s a certain amount of control. You can press down on the handlebars in the rain or slow down and swerve when something stands in the middle of the road. Here however it was a completely uncontrollable force of nature at work. At any moment this killer wind could and would kick up and I found myself continually reeling in its wake. I hate to say it, but it just wasn’t fun to deal with. I found myself thinking about how I enjoy riding because of the challange found in trying to master a skill and also because I find it relaxing. And today was anything but relaxing.

On thge way back I was also reminded of something that one of the instructors at Reg Pridmore’s CLASS course once said to me. There was this fellow named Fred who used the term, ‘moments of concern’ several times to describe the feeling of near accidents or disasters. Listening to him the first time, I was struck by how simple an expression and yet how dead-on it was. As I was thinking about my moments of concern MotorMilt & I were flying down Kanan Road towards the PCH at around seventy-five mile an hour when another wind gust hit. This pushing me to left of the lane. A BMW 5 series was coming head on in the opposite direction. And as the wind keep pounding away, no matter what I tried to do the bike kept heading towards the yellow line. Luckily it eased up and I was able to pop back to the right of the lane, thus avoiding the BMW. But it was unreal. Almost like I had no control over a usually very controllable motorcycle. And afterwards as we cruised down the rest of the mountain, I found myself thinking how when I first started riding a moment of concern would cause my heart rate to jump and my hands to shake. Now, a few miles away from a near disaster, I felt fine. As if it didn’t matter and I was on to the next thing. How amazing. Right now, I can’t tell if I think this is a good thing or not…

Regardless of all the wind and the stress of riding today, it was still a great day to get out. LA is a funny place when it rains or is windy. It’s one of those interesting cities that benefits from it all and once the storm passes the areas true beauty seems to come out. If you could have taken out the wind today, even though it was cold, it would have been an absolutely picture perfect day in the canyons. Here’s a few pict from ride: