Yesterday MotorMilt & I were fortunate to finally get a ride in after what has felt like a month and half long drenching by mother-nature. Definitely not one of the best rides I’ve ever had nor the most enjoyable. I knew we were in trouble when we passed by the intersection at Topanga Canyon & The PCH, only to see it was still closed down. A friendly neighborhood policeman was making sure of that, his patrol car parked smack dab in the middle of the roadway. For as long as I can remember riding with MotorMilt, we have both preached to each other that ‘any ride is better than no ride’. Well, yesterday that axiom met it’s match. The roads were just filthy, dirty, distant relatives of the roads I know so well. I had fully expected that there’d be debris on the roads - after any decent rain in LA there’s always the seemingly prerequisite rock or two standing in your way - but the level to which the canyon roads have been destroyed it is quite extraordinary. Whole chunks of curb are gone in certain places, mini-mud slides are everywhere and in typical SoCal Caltrans fashion a good portion of two lane roads are now one lane. Stop signs are almost popping up at the mile mark. Yet to be honest, none of that really bothered me. What did was the thin layer of dirt that has coated the road surface. Perhaps it’s me, but the sportier I become in my riding the more time I spend worrying about my contact patch and yesterday given the reddish-brown clear coat that had been applied to the asphalt, I couldn’t help but wonder if the contact patch was in contact with anything other than a misty layer of mud.