Once again I’ve been slacking on the ‘ol posting front. Somehow this week sort of snuck up and engulfed me, but even while dealing with the chaotic nature of the workweek I keep finding myself being reflectively drawn back to Sunday’s wondrous ride. Over the course of the past few days whiling I’ve been sitting in the office I keep finding myself replaying various moments of the ride over and over. It was that good…And each time relive the sequence of events in a daydream like haze I keep trying to find the right word to describe how the ride felt.
Thus far the only word that seems to suit is remarkable.
Remarkable because Sunday’s ride was a marvelous five-hour adventure that simply just went on. It was the kind of ride that held the sort of smoothness that I sometime struggle to find. There was no looking at the clock or wondering about time, it was rather just a series of brief rides and welcome breaks that added up to a wonderfully free flowing event that was just what I needed. It was relaxing, it was special and it was immersive. When I sit back and think about the totality of the event, it’s hard not to shake my head and wonder why every weekend ride can’t feel this way.
It was just remarkable.
I’m sure there are better adjectives out there that a true wordsmith might employ, but after weeks of on and off SoCal rain, lots of time spent at work till the late hours of the night and a mixed bag of emotional turmoil, the word somehow fits for me. No matter how much I try to think of something else, I keep finding myself ponder the ride and internally commenting to myself how ‘remarkable’ it was. In many ways it’s a simple word. But it’s also clear and hopefully it conveys the extreme awe the day offered. Because when you find yourself lost in a daylong ride while making laps around the largest urban national park in the country it’s hard to not feel a twinge of the extraordinary run through your veins.
There’s something special about that sort of spellbound moment. It’s an automotive trance that captures your soul and blocks out so many other bits of noise that float around in your head. At least they do in mine. Having that peace and quiet is amazing.
If you look at a National Park Guide Map you find that The Santa Monica Mountains are comprised of 153,075 acres. That’s big. To put it into perspective, it’s roughly 153 football fields (without their endzones of course) strung together. That’s a massive chunk of land. If anything hits that home in LA, it’s the fact that the Santa Monica Mountains run through five area codes and roll over twenty six different zip codes. The area includes an incredible amount of biosystem diversity and a number of endangered species. I’d imagine if you were a biologist it’d be as close to heaven as you could get this side of an Amazon rain forest.
Of course I’m not a biologist, but rather a gearhead and yet this land is just as holy for me. Not because I’m some kind of spiritual wizard, but rather because in a world where the best roads continue to get straightened out for new subdivisions and supermarkets, this place is continues to exist. It’s unique and it’s immense. In LA terms these roads are rare. One day I have no doubt that we’ll call them ‘endangered’ just like some of the animals that run through the brush.
I wonder if the folks who first paved these stretches of asphalt had any idea what they were creating. The online DMV and LA transit history is a bit sketchy to say the least but at some point someone obviously had a plan. Someone thought it through. Said to themselves, hey this place needs a curvy emotionally gripping rollercoaster of a road. Right here! In the middle of a barely habitable canyon. This week I’ve wondered who that person was because it’s a legacy that ought to be recognized. It ought to be remembered. Yet all that stands these days are the roads.
Wonderfully winding, curving, soul searching routes that the legions of faux LA car aficionados surprisingly don’t pay attention to. Frankly it amazes me. This is a city of cars and car culture. The hot-rod was invented here. People drag raced up and down Ventura Boulevard in tricked out muscle cars. The tastes of this region influence automakers worldwide. Every major car company has a design studio here. Even the average garages in this city are a loaded with brand new heavy metal rides. People here treat their automobiles differently. Folks here may not own their own homes but for damn sure they’re going to travel in style everywhere they go. To some I’m sure this seems sick or twisted or maybe even quite silly, but this city forces different priorities on its inhabitants. Cars here are part style, part substance, and part livelihood. Yet for all that hype and the inevitable commercialism of the various imported rides, few folks here use their wheels. Nowhere is that more readily apparent than the Santa Monica Mountains. These canyon roads are forgotten lands. They straddle suburbia, city life and the beach scene and yet none of these groups use these roads to their fullest.
Ironically only two groups really push these asphalt raceways; cyclists and motorcyclists. Perhaps it takes a two-wheel mindset to appreciate what’s here. I don’t really know. What I do know is that Sunday was remarkable because of how empty it was. There were hundreds of two wheeled folks running around, but seldom did I see a car or truck heading the other way. On a day when all I wanted to do was lose myself in the ride, it was fantastic to find these magical roads empty and open. Ready for riding.
My day started off roughly around 9 am when I met up with my buddy Lowell and longtime Twisting Asphalt reader Avi. Both are fellow Ducatisti and avid riders. Lowell rides a Multistrada 1000DS and Avi runs around on a ’05 749. As I’ve mentioned before I usually tend to shun group riding, as it’s something that I’ve often felt uncomfortable with. When I’m riding up and down the coast on a typical weekend morning it’s not unusual to see packs of riders flying around but from my perspective most of these groups tend to have a very different definition of pace than I do.
One of the remarkable things about this particular ride was that Lowell, Avi and I comprised a small but nicely wound group that rode with a wonderful pace. It was fast when it could be and safe when it had to be. I never felt that as a group we were pushing beyond what was prudent or secure. In many ways it felt just right. Everyone rode within their own comfort level and at their own speed.
The ride was also remarkable because for a short stretch on Latigo Canyon I found myself following Lowell while he was wickedly countersteering his Multistrada in and out of a series of tightly wound corners. Reaching back on the throttle I started to smoothly apply more and more power and at some point we found this fantastic groove where we were hauling pretty good but far enough apart to react independently to each other. And it was during that moment that I found myself breaking through my recent hang-up with the new tires. As I’ve mentioned in previous entries the new Michelin Pilot Powers are wearing in nicely, but between the recent rains, the light dirt covering the roads and my mental inability to trust the rubber, I’ve found it hard to find the sort of faith and rhythm that you need to really lean the bike over at or near the apex.
For the past several rides I’ve felt rusty and unsure of myself. Internally I’ve found myself dialing it back several notches below my normal comfort level because it just didn’t feel right to push it. Yet here I was flipping around, corner to corner, following Lowell and somewhere in the middle of this glorious canyon road it hit me that I was no longer thinking about grip or contact patches or dirt in the middle of lane. I was just there, in the middle of this fantastically fluid moment where the bike and I were acting as one. We were gliding through each corner and it wasn’t a race, but rather this easy and comfortable pace that was taking my mind off of my recent hang-ups. It was a marvelous realization and I can only hope that the sentiment continues on the next ride.
But one moment doesn’t make a five hour ride glorious, it take several to do that and this particular day had a number of great rides within it. Remarkably Avi, Lowell and I found the time and had the energy for a number of laps around the canyons. We shoot up from Latigo Canyon and fired right through the back half of Mulholland until we looped back on Encinal Canyon. After a brief, but very LA at the beach type stop at the Starbucks in Malibu we found our way back through the lower portion of Mulholland before hitting Saddlepeak Canyon.
If you asked me to rank the Santa Monica Canyon roads, Saddlepeak Canyon would be at or near the top of the list. It’s one of those amazing routes that offers two very distinct types of riding depending on where you are. The eastern portion of the road is technical and very tight, but once you hit the one-hundred and eighty degree turn about half way up and cross over to the western portion of the road it all changes. The lanes open up into a very fast, sweeping ride that shoots you up and above everything else. The views up there are fantastic, the road tends to be empty regardless of the time of day and the actual asphalt is pretty good as a general rule. There’s quite a bit of grip up there. On most weekends I tend to ride from the coast to the valley which puts me in the lane that boarders on the edge of the cliff, but here we were heading in the opposite direction and suddenly I bracketed between the mountain and the other lane. Even though I got over my fear of riding on a road next a cliff a very long time ago, there’s still nothing quite like having that extra lane of protection. All that extra room was yet another astonishing revelation for the day. Sometimes I think I tend to forget how different a road can feel going the other way.
About three-fourths up the road Lowell and I switched bikes for a bit. In the near future I’ll be doing a full write up of a new Multistrada and I’m sure I’ll have plenty to say about the bike as I found Lowell’s 1000DS to be quite a hoot. It’s definitely not a knee dragger, but once I got used to the extremely different seating position – as in massively higher - and wide handlebars I had an absolute blast hauling around the canyons. It was wild to feel so much leverage each time you turned into a corner. Especially when I combined it with some good old fashion bodysteering. Who would have thought that Ducati would ever build a bike that can actually be muscled around by pressing down on the pegs. The last bike I could move around like that was my first BMW R1100RS and that bike was not exactly a bastion of sportbike heritage. The Multistrada on the other hand is surprisingly aggressive for what it is. Outside of the SuperDuke, which I believe KTM is still not importing into this country, the Multistrada has to be the most street oriented endostyle bike on American soil. Perhaps I’m over stating things a bit here, but it’s hard not wax on about the Multistrada when you get off a 999 and hop on to a Strada thinking you’re not quite sure you want to and in mere minutes find yourself ridiculously attracted to the bike. It’s oddly addictive and it’s not even funny. Few bikes I’ve ever ridden have so starkly reminded me of riding a 92 horsepower Hot-Wheels three-wheeler. Only this bike has got some serious hops. I ended up stealing Lowell ride from roughly the top of Saddlepeak, through Piuma and Stunt Road and then all the way back down Mulholland until we took a break at The Rockstore. All told, it’s a remarkably easy bike to get comfortable on and it took little to no time to get up to speed and beyond. By the time we were heading down Stunt I was running around at seventy plus mph with a gigantic grin. I never would have thought I would have enjoyed such a ride. Who knew Dylan like’s leverage and comfy seats…(Shhhhhh don’t tell the sportbike crowd 
)….
The Rockstore turned out to be remarkable for an entirely different reason. As fate would have it we arrive between crowds. That is to say it wasn’t packed and it wasn’t empty, however it was mass idiocy on display. Outside of a stunter vid I’ve never seem more wheelies and burnouts in such a brief period of time in my life. If burning rubber in front of a hundred plus other riders is cool, then I’m about as far away from coolness as you can get.
After our stop at The Rockstore we looped back to Latigo Canyon and carved our way back to the coast. As the ride started coming to a close I found myself in awe of how magnificent the day had become. In many ways my continuing education into group riding is opening my eyes to a whole new level of the riding experience. The journey of riding has always been a very personal activity for me. A place to go where I can get away by focusing my attention on the road and the bike. It’s a journey for peace and quiet. Yet now I’m beginning to understand that there’s an additional level out there. The ride can be personal and yet at the same time have an added social component. What Sunday ultimately highlighted to me is that with the right group there’s something beyond just an escape. There’s a mutual adventure and that’s pretty cool. I’m seriously looking forward to the next round.
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