The last several weeks have been as strange a collection of days as I’ve had in quite some time. While they’ve been exciting and enjoyable, it certainly feels like I’ve been all over the place - and physically speaking I have. So it goes when you’re spending your time traveling. Yet as tripmeter for life has continued to roll on, I keep finding myself feeling greatly at odds with my new local riding roads.

At first I dismissed this as mere lethargy relating to the recent traveling, but as the days have passed, I keep finding myself feeling this nebulous sense of uncertainty when it comes to riding. Not in terms of the desire to ride, but rather where to ride.

I suppose I should have seen this coming and perhaps it’s just the natural order of uprooting yourself, but after years of living and breath the curvaceous bends of the Santa Monica Mountains it’s been harder then I had anticipated to get adjusted to riding around the Temecula region. I don’t say that to dismiss the local riding around here, but rather to admit that I have yet to find the roads I’m seeking.

Part of the problem no doubt is the fact that I simply haven’t ridden all that much as of late – and I certainly haven’t ridden all that much down here. Hell, I have yet to feel acclimated with area in general, especially when it comes to the simple things in life (‘Where was the Starbucks again?’).

Thankfully yesterday I finally had some time to get a ‘local’ ride in. As strange as it sounds the jaunt was perhaps only the fourth or fifth ride I’ve taken in the area since moving. That’s not a lot of time on the ground, so logically I can’t find fault in my sense of confusion when it comes to not knowing where to ride. You can’t instinctually know where great roads are – you have to discover them. And that takes time and ride after ride after ride of research.

More after the jump…

With that in mind I’ve been spending a great deal of time on the ‘net searching for new local riding roads. It hasn’t been a completely futile search, but it’s been close. While most of the great motorcycle roads in California have been well detailed on the internet, the greater Temecula region and the upper end of Northern San Diego County don’t seem to be as well documented. At least I haven’t found a site that offers much in the way of a sportbike riders’ utopia. I was hoping the well known motorcycle road website, Pashnit.com, would shed some light on the subject, but the site seems to focus far more on the upper end of the state then the bottom end.

Yet as fate would have it, it appears that I have not been the only one scouring the net, looking for more local riding roads. A thread started on the DucatiMonster.Org website, titled,
What’s the opinion of De Luz Road?

As some of you might recall, the last ride I took in the area was on Sandia Creek & De Luz Road. Long time reader Ford had pointed it out and my initial reaction was that it was a pretty decent place to play around with the sportbike.

Yesterday I tried an alternate take on the same loop that was suggested in the DucatiMonster thread by a rider named troyslap.

De Luz is tight, no runoff room, and streams cross the road. Great ride is I-15 to Clinton Keith Rd, west. then on to Tenaja, then Via Volcano, then Los Gatos ( Los Gatos is about a 25% grade downhill, and kinda rough, beware, feels like you are going over the bars when you brake) left on Carancho, then onto DeLuz and to Fallbrook or Temecula, you choose. After Clinton Keith turns to Tenaja it is a nature area, sometimes horses. These are great roads for Monster, SBK ride is tough. All these are narrow, and blind corners with cars or trucks coming at ya sometimes, so ride to the right and within your ability, no room for error.

It was definitely an interesting experience trying a few of these roads out for the second time around – this time via a slightly different loop. I don’t quite understand it, but yesterday my reaction felt so very, very different then the first time out. Perhaps originally I was blindsided by the ‘need’ to find something, yet this time I felt so greatly at odds with what I remembered the road feeling like. Yesterday the road felt rougher, the water crossings more apparent, the gravel and sand on the surface more intense. There seemed to be so many more obstacles that presented danger that I for much of the ride it felt like I was battling the odds and not enjoying the journey. Who’s to say which reaction to the same road is correct. Maybe the first time out my senses weren’t sharp enough or perhaps this time around I was simply in a downer of mood. I really don’t know. But by the time I got home the residual feelings and emotions were a strange twist on post-riding depression. I felt so greatly disappointed and yet so curious about what the road really was like. It was as if these two diametrically opposed versions of the same reality were battling it out inside my mind. And the result was a complete inability to reconcile what I saw with what I felt on either journey.

This much I think is clear, without a doubt De Luz Road is the crown jewel of the Temecula wine region. The rest of the roads that connect to it hold so much promise and yet don’t quite live up to it. At least they didn’t yesterday. If there were no water crossings, better pavement and a tad more camber these could be some killer roads to traverse. But instead they never quite let you getup to speed – at least not Santa Monica Mountain speed. With so many obstacles it’s hard to push it much beyond a nice sport-touring pace and perhaps that nagging sensation I’m still feeling is the fear that sport-touring is this region’s calling card.

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