I’ve been dancing and dodging with butterflies all afternoon when I finally come face to face with a one-hundred-and-eighty degree mind-bender of a corner. The kind of curve that shakes the numbers straight off of a civil engineer’s calculator. Makes you as a rider do a double take. Because the arc seems to go on forever. And in the split-second before the bike enters full attack mode and starts to dive for the apex, I find myself thinking that this just might be a touch to much for today’s pace…

But before the thought can take a revolution ’round the carousel and work its way down the synaptic pathways to my limbs, the bike hikes ahead, seemingly unaware of the consequences for an ill-fated assault. Quickly I start modulating the front brake, trying my damnedest to sheer off some speed. I drop the bike down a gear. The tach rockets. The bike churns. Continues on. The L-Twin howling with a ferocious sense of anticipation. The sound running straight up the mountain’s wall before dissipating into the dark, gray skies that are hanging as close as your girlfriend’s breath the morning after… And then something strange happens, admits the dire sense to get the hell out of dodge, I find myself ignoring the inclination to duck out the door… Then the bike matches the heartbeats and almost instantly the clouds part and within their greyness I finally see a bit of hope spread its wings as the light pours on to the proceedings with a flicker of luck.

[Photo by Rick Clemson]

Several corners later, I’m taking a break and lighting up another drag as I listen to the sound of silence that’s rushing through the mountain’s crevasses when it dawns on me that this has been quite an unexpected adventure. Historically I’ve always found gray colored days hard to ride. They have a cold personality and they’re rife with uneasiness. A negative tension huddles close and whispers in your ear almost always at the most inappropriate moments. The whole deal feels well past solemn and often portends to a downtrodden riding experience - at least for me - and yet today, unlike so many previous journeys through the mist, the greyness was a mere prelude to surprise.

After Friday’s magical ride, I woke up this morning feeling a certain sense of excitement and oddly enough it was because of a road sign. While flying around the desert two days ago, I happened to notice a rogue road on the way back home. Like many before me, it was a sign I’ve glanced at from the corner of my eye a hundred times before but never actually seen. A metal post teetering on the edge of a forgotten glimpse. One that’s never made much of a lasting impression nor seemed remotely interesting. A name that never held much value from a word that seemed so foreign that to think it might be of interest seemed doubtful at best. And yet here we are, today, where for whatever reason the very sound of the word illuminates the mind and launches the imagination in a hundred different directions. Inspiring a whole new train of thought, as you quizzically check and recheck your mental image. You picture the sign, then the beginning of the road, and then finally the hill top beyond and wonder, as if for the very first time, ‘what lies over that ridge?’ And like our forefathers before us, with our curiosity peeked, the gauntlet lays itself out before our very eyes and the question is no longer if we will traverse the landscape, but when.

With the waters in the cauldron of an asphalt exploration now boiling, it only seemed right to return to the cookbook of riding and take my cue. Thus began an early morning game of Google Maps seek and destroy, where the I stumbled back to the route, which on paper not only looked nice and squiggly but appeared to connect to another nicely squiggly line. And that line appeared connected to yet another and soon I was making mental reservations for a journey intent on discovering fun roads in another part of the world. Thus began a trip through Temecula Valley Wine Country, where besides the aforementioned wine there seems to be molecular predisposition for horse breeding, orange grooves, and curvy picturesque asphalt.

A mere five minutes after turning off of CA Route 76, if I hadn’t known better I would have sworn I was straddling the yellow line in the middle of the Central Coast of California. White farm fences lined the road and the hills offered that unique California Ranchero aesthetic with minimal fuss. New vistas and experiences abounded. And the roads, ahhh the roads, while not exactly a sportbikers paradise they were sufficiently screwy enough to keep the day-to-day dwellers to a minimum and the curve-to-grin ratio high enough to allow one to bask in the best parts of the ride and savor their remains. Each corner imprinting bits and pieces of themselves until the residual afterglow burned so bright that you began to remember the joy that’s involved in discovering new unique riding experiences. And in the end, perhaps that’s the best part of sport-touring, even if it’s in your backyard - the sense that through your connection with the machine, you can explore, discover and conquer parts of the world that would never blip on your daily radar. That you can in a sense turn back the clocks of time and feel, if only briefly, that same sense of astonishment as you turn the corner and see something new in the same vein and through the same eyes as the very first adventurers who set foot on this great continent.

More picts in the Gallery.