I’m dancing through the last great section of curves on the Pacific Coast Highway when my tightly packed week of riding finally catches up with me. What started this morning as a gentle ache has now turned into a full fledged omnipresent kind of soreness and as I work my way down the coastline, I can feel it cascading through my body. There’s a constant twinge in my wrists, a growing deeper by the minute knot in my lower back and an ever increasing sunburn on the back of my neck. Yet oddly amidst the sensation of soreness I find myself smiling. For some that might seem like a strange and rather sadistic kind of reaction - yet to feel this physical feeling means I’ve only been doing one thing lately, and that’s riding.

Around the next sweeping bend in the road, I come up behind six cars that are slowly ambling south. They expand and contract like an accordion before and after the apex of the next several corners. Bunching up in all the places I want to pass - all the places that I think it’s safe to pass on this road - so instead of stressing the point, I find myself having to acknowledge that it’s just a slow day along the coast. There’s not much I can do to change that, so I dial down the speed and enjoy the mellow moments of today’s journey. If you’ve got to be stuck in relatively high traffic, there’s perhaps no better place to do it then on the PCH. It’s the kind of forced sightseeing time that I ought to make myself experience more often. It seems after years of trying to get faster, now I need to work on becoming more proficient at going slowly.

As the day rambles on and one great corner after another fades away, I find myself becoming keenly aware of just how fleeting vacation time feels when you’re on the backend of a trip. Even though I’m still 200 miles away from home, I’m no longer fixated on the ride but rather already starting to focus on what waits for me when I walk in the door. My mind continually goes over what needs to get done when I arrive, calls I have to make, things I have to pick up, all those minor tasks that take up time and don’t seem like very much fun. It’s one of the sick tricks of travel - somehow vacation time never last as long as it’s outlined on your calendar. And I’m not sure why — Why does it seem to so hard to enjoy the last bit of riding to same degree as an outbound journey? I’m still on the bike, still traveling in a great part of the world and enjoying a great road, yet my mind has already packed it in and moved on to tomorrow.

A Few Additional Thoughts on The Trip:

• I hadn’t realized just how much I had missed long trips - it was great to get away on a long journey. It’s something very different then getting out on the racetrack but equally as satisfying.
• The ST3 ran up and down the California coast with a ruthless - dare I say - near BMW efficiency. The bike started right up every morning even though it wasn’t on a trickle charge for most of the trip. Never needed oil. Seemed perfectly happy to run all day long in a variety of weather conditions.
• Every time I run up the coast I’m amazed at just how magical it is - and I’m not alone - the level of interest and admiration for the beauty along the Central Coast connects everyone who visits or lives there… And there are few places that seem so universally appreciated.
• Over all I rode just over 1,100+ miles and averaged approximately 41.685 miles per gallon, even through the twisties and coastline. It’ll be interesting to see if that kind of mileage continues back home (not that I really care, but…)
• The ST3 now heads to Pro Italia for it’s overdue 600 mile service. Hopefully the slight surging can be addressed easily.

More picts after the jump…