Winter is now officially here! MotorMilt & I snagged a really nice, albeit far to quick, ride this morning. I certainly needed it even though it was blisteringly cold. Suppose it’s the first time I’ve ridden the Duc and actually needed the bike to warm up my rear end. While flying around the canyons it struck me that it’s probably time to look into picking up some winter riding gloves aswell. I never have really had to bother with a second set of gloves before because the beemers had heated grips but alas the Ducs don’t and this morning I really could have used them! My hands were absolutely frigged. Well, actually every part of my body was freezing. It was cold!

On the flipside, the nice thing about winter riding in SoCal is the decline of beach activity. I suspect because it’s cold there isn’t quite as much of a desire for the LA going beach crowd to hit the sand. So while I was seriously freezing there definately seemed to be less traffic on the streets which was really nice. On the other hand the downside to winter around here is rain. Both when it’s falling and the damage it does. While we haven’t exactly had a ton of persiptation lately, apparently it’s been enough to cause a few rock slides in the malibu canyons. At three different places our usual roads were either closed or cautioned off because of rock slide damage. Ah, the joys of LA in the winter time!

After stopping off at the Rockstore for breakfast, which was fantastic as always, we headed back on towards the westside on the PCH and I crossed over 600 miles. It’s funny to me how refreshing it was to finally get that over with. I know, it’s a small thing that perhaps only I care about, but I’m getting excited to finally be able to rev the bike a bit higher. That should be fun.