Finding a Piece of Heaven

The canyon is empty as the sun starts to rise over a ridge and an eerie peace scuttles across the horizon. It’s a tranquility that won’t last long. In the distance low lying bushes of brush wave back and forth in a soothingly slow warm later summer wind as the heat starts to build. First waffling through the air, then bouncing off the asphalt. Rapidly increasing with gigantic steps in small minutes. Soon the air filled with the roar of an L-Twin.

Heartbeats go by and I find myself dropping another gear. Matching the revs again. Hearing the engine’s fiendish growl once more before sliding over in the saddle to meet yet another grand corner coming from nowhere. The kind of curvaceous concrete monument to mankind that would never be built today for fear of a million litigations.

Under the helmet, I bite my quickly drying out lips and sing an inner song of defiance. Because roads that whip like this should never be left alone for long… And today they won’t be…
Yet another brilliant corner on Montezuma Valley

Swing my head left, I look as far off into the distance as I can, yet still can’t comprehend the grandeur of the moment. The bike settles down. Bites with a ferocious force. The feeling shooting directly through my motor-deprived soul. It’s a combination of grit and giddiness that I haven’t felt in quite some time. As I let the last bits of the front brake out, the bike finds itself and its set of rails before it starts to hammer. The asphalt interface beckoning to bend the laws of physics right before my eyes — yet the bike never backs off, never slows down, never hesitates in any way. Instead it throws down with a deep seeded soul-searching kind of left-handed hook that’s so smooth and forceful that it’s purely magical. In flashes, everything just happens, with do before you think ease. And as soon as the corner comes to an end, the next corner comes flying forward and it starts all over. Hit, repeat, hit again.

Dozens of minutes later I pull off at a viewpoint filled with an ever-growing vista and pop my helmet off to soak in the moment. Amongst the missing elements of life, I hear the sounds of the silence as they’re overwritten with the fire-crackling embers of a suddenly still 1098S. A day of full tilt total motion that feels like it was ages in the making.

Waiting for the old man to play catch up, I unzip the leathers. Feel the sweat burst down my neck. Gaze over the open valley floor and swear to myself that in another lifetime I must have experienced this kind of heavenly brilliance before. While my mind simmers on the subject, I light a smoke and take the day in. Revel in the fact that Montezuma Valley Road is as good as it gets.

Photo Op on Montezuma Valley RoadOpened for the first time to traffic in 1964, the state highway connects society to a furnace full of life. Cut from the very cliffs that surround the Anza Borrego Desert, the road bends and banks its way to the town of Borrego Springs with a wild turn your head on its ear kind of sensibility that’s simply memorizing if you dig corners with altitude and attitude. Supposedly the road took 10 years and 160,000 tons of dynamite to create. It would take a lifetime to enjoy completely.

Watching the asphalt bake I can’t help but think that the men responsible for building this road enjoyed the concept of the ride to the fullest. The feelings that the road elicits put the magic in magical.

A moment later MotorMilt comes to a stop right behind me on top of the ST3. It’s been more then a few days since we last took a ride together and while life has lead us both in a variety of directions, there’s something extremely comforting about being able to take a few hours and hark back to another time. Of course we don’t quite go back as far as the Anza-Borrego area. Eons ago this desert was vivacious creator of life, filled with lush greenery and a vast slice of the animal kingdom. Eventually the continents moved and the earth shifted. Mountains formed which pushed coastal cloud cover higher into the sky. This evaporated what little moisture was left and suddenly a desert was born.

With his helmet off, the old man looks out at the vast Anza-Borrego Desert and says with a grin, ‘This is just like Route 33’. All I can do to acknowledge him is smile back. Because the remnants of this drastic biological and geological shift is a mountain range on the eastern side of the valley floor that rises to an impeccable 2,400 feet before plummeting 2,000 feet with a rapid succession of heavenly curving asphalt corners that rank amongst the best I’ve ever tackled. The road plays longer then it’s mileage but ends all to quickly. Offering great pavement, tremendous views and incredible turns that make you shake your head and smile. Without a doubt this is one of the most spectacular routes I’ve ever had the pleasure of riding.

Hours later, while sitting in the garage and staring at the bikes, I take a soft sip of a glorious single malt and find myself wondering what took me so long. After more then a year in the southern part of SoCal this is the road that was worth the trip. It’s not a Route 33 clone – I’m not sure that anything is – rather it’s probably best described as Route 33’s younger sibling. Just as empty, just as stark, just as curvy, but not nearly as endless. It’s hard to comprehend why I waited this long to bask in such a supreme sportbike riding afterglow.

More picts after the jump…

A View of Borrego Springs