Retracing Your Roots A 1,100 Miles At A Time
Ducs on the Road at Alice's in NorCal
It’s flat and foggy. A collection of roadways, rattled by the everyday, intersect one on top of another. There are holes and grooves and unannounced visitors tucked behind the wheel of their ordinary machines coming up fast in the right lane. Folks cross the street without a care in the world. They never even look. Semi’s stroll along mass arteries of societal movement and never check their blind spots. It’s chaotic and mundane and unaware – And no matter what you do, you feel like you’ve already been here before… That you do it everyday…
And then the light changes. Goes Green. And the stop becomes the start of something special…
The road darts up the valley wall. Corners approach. Bend after bend they begin to build. One twist becomes one lean, which becomes one seamless arch – Then it all becomes two. Then three. Then four. The one-dimensional route becoming the two-dimensional, which begets the multi-dimensional. And you feel the bike bite down. The suspension settles. The tires grab the asphalt. The throttle advances. The gears engage. The L-Twin hums as the comfortable ceases and the challenge beckons. Your fingers beginning to bend just a bit before you hear the pop of the clutch, and the mechanical advances into the emotional. One gear up at a time.
A second, a minute, a moment, it all comes together — without even thinking about it – and then it’s just you and the road and the ride. Alone.
The ability to see ahead diminishes as the light goes dark, and the darkness then quickly becomes light again. To the side, tree after tree flies past and waves goodbye just as it says hello. The canopy above revealing little of what lies ahead and even less of where you’ve just been. You squint. You try to look ahead. But you can’t make it out. There are just pooled spots of light sitting on fragments of curved kinks that only a few hours ago you were idly tracing with your finger on a worn-out map while sipping your first coffee of the day.
Somehow, somewhere, it just doesn’t seem possible to be here. Right now. And yet you are. You are this very moment. This one, little bit of time, tucked away on the side of mountain.
As the road keeps climbing upwards, under your helmet, you struggle for your bearings. Initially grasping for the last remnants of a remotely general direction for where you’re headed. But slowly, as each corner wears you down, the need to know where you are dissipates. It evaporates. It disappears. Completely. You are lost and yet you are not – You’re just running from the preplanned part of your everyday life. Instead running towards the unarranged adventure. The thing that lies ahead and beyond what you can see. And for the first time in ages it feels good to not be worrying about where you’re going, just that you’re getting there.
After all, that’s why they make the maps in the first place.
Hitting the first uncovered straight in multiple miles, you catch a glimpse of the sun that’s sitting overhead as it settles into a groove. And through the break in the tree line you hear the exhaust resonate throughout the canyon walls. Booming and echoing from right below your helmet to the very valley floor sitting beneath you.
And you see. You see and see and see.
Acres of the uninhabited. Natures very own solitude. The last vestige of life before mankind ever arrived here. It is beautiful and it’s awe-inspiring and so counter to the half-dozen or so concrete or stuccoed boxes that you move between in your regular daily regiment that you find yourself wondering where did all this come from? And more importantly, how did I get here?
Then it’s gone. A flash frame in a scene of forward progress.
Hundreds of trunks of bark race right next to you, as bits of light flash in-between, and you just carve. Carve corner after curve after corner. The rhythm of the roadway repeating itself in the revs of the engine. Up and down and up and down. You shift. The bike. Your weight. Your mindset. It’s engaged. It’s complicated. It’s sequential events unfolding in microseconds of thoughtless processes; You see the road come at you, You catalogue it, You think back on the collection of roads you’ve ridden in the past, You process the event at hand, You come up with a game plan, You enact it. It just happens — almost instantly.
And a hundred corners later, you climb off the bike and breath. Big breaths. Deep down to the bottoms of your lugs. Because you’ve just experienced something that doesn’t happen everyday – something that doesn’t even happen every month.
You’ve just experience the beauty of a multi-day ride.
It’s been three days since I returned home from a 1,100-plus-mile voyage with the old man, and while my body is physically beat, my moto-spirit has never been better.
I feel more at peace with riding than I’ve felt in countless months. More confident. More connected. More passionate. More alive with what it means to actually ride.
It is as if I have returned myself to me. In a way that perhaps only I can understand.
And oddly, in a way I have.
Because for the last week MotorMilt and I have retraced our very own footsteps, rushing up and down the California coastline, one curvy road at a time, in an eerily reminiscent journey to an adventure we took almost five years to the very day from when we left town. Five long arduous years that have been full of change and circumstance and the evolution of life. 1,825 days where the only constant has been that there are few constants if any in life. With the obvious exception being a mechanical, dare I say near maniacal, advancement of time.
Honestly I don’t know what took so long to do this.
While we’ve done road trips or multi-day rides over these past five years, none of those journeys were like this journey. Because none of those trips featured this many miles in just five days of back to back riding, this far up and out of what I know.
It’s a kind of riding that is so righteous and profound that I’m not sure that I can fully comprehend it’s meaning in totality. It is as if the mile-markers are Brillo pads for everything that ails us in life and as you pass each one by a little bit more of the regular pressures or concerns of daily life get scrubbed away.
Each corner or sequence or hidden short-cut that turns out to be the long-way around holds the power to re-initialize your own hard drive and each gas station fill-up doesn’t just put fuel in the tank, but also installs a little bit more fresh code for your own personal operating system. Somewhere on day two or three or four, you wake up and suddenly it’s as if you’re a brand new machine all over again, fresh from the factory floor.
I’ve sorely missed that feeling.
Instead of bemoaning its absence, what I should have done in retrospect was tossed my leg over a bike and just go for it. Just ride. Till the flame in the sunset went out. But I didn’t. I let the real world and the deadlines and pitfalls of so many other things get in the way. Which begs the question, why do we wait to do the things that give us the most pleasure? Why do with rationalize the destruction of the very things that let us be us?
Sitting here tonight, I can’t escape the thought that there is something marvelous and magical and damn right special about just hitting the road with minimal pre-planning, a couple of saddlebags filled with two-days worth of clothes – max — and nothing more than a general direction of where you’re headed. It’s illogical, it’s unorthodox, it’s counter-intuitive on just about every level to how I run the rest of my life and yet it’s trips like this that lay the very foundation of my soul. For they are so much more than the sum of their parts. They are journeys built on a collection of routes and roads and off-the-beaten path highways that transcend the love affair with a machine or a weekend jaunt, and instead enter a realm of serenity where you exist in a nine or ten hour window of obsessive-compulsive movement.
They offer the kind of release that’s impossible to achieve on a regular ride. Impossible to feel when you’re wondering where you put the garage door clicker or if you locked the front door. When you’re on the road for multiple days none of that matters. Your head lets go of the grocery lists and the car payments. It’s as if you exist in a vacuum, where it’s just you and the road and the freedom to come and go as you please. It’s an almost primal reason to advance.
However the thing that truly stands out about the past week – and what I’ll always remember about this particular trip – were the things that finally had the time to be said. The words and the phrases and the sentences that somehow seem to get lost in the madness of the everyday. While the ride was great, it’s the bits in-between and afterwards that encompass the outstanding. Whether it was standing on the edge of North America and peering into the great blue beyond or shuffling up to the bar late at night and ordering a well deserved single malt, those are the true memories I’ll hold. The true moments. The things that matter the most.
It is perhaps that the best part of a long adventure – the time you have person to person to communicate when you’re unwired, untethered and unable to receive Outlook notifications.
A couple of other quick thoughts on the journey;
Awkward Dance Partners - The Ducati ST3 & MV Agusta F4 up The California Coast
California Route 33 above Ojai
At first there’s one. A second later comes another… And then all hell breaks loose, as a cascade of perspiration rolls forward with vengeance. It’s the first real tangible clue that you’re getting close; close to the middle of nowhere and close to California’s Central Valley in the middle of summer.
Coming out of yet another series of contiguous sweeping corners, you feel the slight ache in your wrist - because it’s already been a long day - but instead of falling victim to your inner demons you press on. Ignore the pain. There’s just too much bounty to be had here. The sirens of an empty road are far to captivating as they call out.
So you roll the throttle back. A minuet movement in a landscape of grandeur. Once again feel the bike pick itself up and hustle forward as it shoots up the short straightaway that connects this twist with that twist and a moment later you remember to exhale before getting right back on the brakes, settling the suspension back down and diving into yet another arched asphalt form of serenity.
It’s a fast paced dance done with a mountain top. You throttle up, you throttle down. You duck, you dive, you pick it back up. You brake. Perhaps you even continue breathing.
And as the pace quickens so to does the transformation. Not of riding but rather life.
What had been a scenic route splitting bundled patches of pine tree derivatives quickly evolves. In minutes, or maybe just heartbeats, you rip through another banked corner and crest a 5,160-foot summit of dreams.
On the other side lies a stark and desolate arena. The average visitor might think it far to remote and well past dull to bother with, yet for an actively engaged motorist it is an untroubled paradise full of unique forms of individual adventure and challenge.
Welcome to the Southern edge of California’s Central Valley.
The landscape is harsh and dry, built on brush and cattle, tumbleweeds and water prudent oak trees. A place far removed from the concrete jungle and yet fairly dependant on it for survival. To live or work here is to languish in an alternate version of society, more Steinbeck then Grisham, where the quality of the water pump in your pick-up truck is far more important then the latest magazine cover girl.
It is also a place that time has forgotten and yet still hit hard nonetheless. Where every hundred miles empty retail spaces battle big-box stores for supremacy and conflict runs deep, which somehow encapsulates both the best and the worst of the Golden State all in one place. Everywhere you look the hopes, the dreams, the challenges, the exploration, and even dire hopelessness are blatantly apparent trends.
Yet life still goes on. Moves forward. Boiling upwards, inch by inch, in a thousand degree melting pot of that exists on the fringe of civilization.
A day later I swing the other extreme, subtly freezing as I watch seagulls dance just a short fragment off the coastline and the last drip of coffee tries its best to push past the lingering memories of a long last night. A quick wick the throttle and a different beast fires forward as a bucket of aspirin takes hold. The engine’s suggestive notes find instant traction. On the road and in my mind. Each millimeter of piston movement brings out a louder, deeper, more hideous wailing. A sound so strong it forcibly removes the thumping headache and matter of factly tosses it down on the road. For all to see and hear and trample. It’s the kind of evocative auditory experience that only comes from a bullish inline four cylinder that’s cracking its raw fists on the skull of an open road… And absolutely laughing about it afterwards.
Just like that I’m awake — But better yet, I’m alive.
Thanks in large part to the combination and contradiction of two completely distinctive types of riding – One which elicits sheer passion while the other remotely suggests it. Together they bend the rules of life and their associated meanings; forcing the yellow lines that divide us to vanish as the cool damp early morning fog evaporates in a mere moment.
This is a radical departure from my usual trips up the California Coastline — because I’ve never cruised up the coast on a true thoroughbred before…
Logically I’ve always held the belief that inside every machine is the perfect tool for a particular job and it’s foolish to ask a sportbike to do a touring task. Conceptually the idea of taking a full-blown sportbike up the coast has always seemed rather suicidal at best. The reasons and rationales range from the physical toll they take on a rider all the way to the unforeseen mechanical hiccups that could, and often times do, occur with trackday weapons are used on public roads.
Yet the older I get the less inclined I am to allow logic to infiltrate an arena of passion. If for no other reason then everything else in the day-to-day of the real world is completely and one hundred perfectly logical. And somewhere deep inside I keeping trolling over one basic core thought – If not now, when?
A half hour later while shooting up CA-46, which is an inland oasis of an open road, the traffic is surprisingly light for an upcoming MotoGP weekend that will take place in Monterey. Brilliantly crisp vineyards fly by on both sides as we burn through California’s Central Coast wine country on two rather awkward dancing partners; the old man’s brand new MV Agusta F4 and my trusty Ducati ST3. Neither is the perfect 1,000-mile adventurer yet they might just be the most fun for a joint trip covering a collection of remarkably empty and remote curving roads.
Coming around the next kink in California’s landscape of tarmac armor, I flash backwards eleven days and think how ridiculous this all must seem. A little less then two weeks ago the old man and I hit the track where one might have thought that we would have gotten our fill of getting our rocks off on the fast paced sportbike ethos. Yet we didn’t. Instead a strange thing happened on the way home.
We decided to let go of logic and instead starting formulating a plan entirely designed by passion.
The F4 was just too enjoyable – and to be honest, probably too new - to leave in the garage… So we left Buttonwillow openly talking about ratcheting up the stakes on our coming California coastal adventure. Could it make it Monterey? Could we survive it if it did?
We had no idea.
But it was a gamble that seemed worth taking. So we did something that even now strikes me as somewhat flawed. We left a perfectly good and capable sport-tourer in the garage, the BMW K1200RS, and instead flew the coop with one full-blown sportbike and one seriously sporty sport-tourer.
Our plan; A multiday escapade over and through some of California’s finest routes, starting with Central Valley staples CA-33 and CA-58, followed by the more coastal CA-41, CA-46, and inland avenues of chance G14 and G17, and then finally the mother of all great California roads, CA-1, which is better known as the Pacific Coast Highway. And that was before we started all over and did it again in reverse.
It’s a journey that over the past few years I’ve had the pleasure to attempt several different times – The old man however hasn’t been as fortunate for a variety of reasons, most of which center around time or the lack thereof. But motorcycles are about more then just tracks and canyons; they’re also about escapism as well. So once we committed to attending the GP races at Laguna this year we decided it was time to take a different kind of journey together – a more mellow, free-flowing amble North, which traversed both dreamlike scenery as well as our collective past.
Entering Lockwood, we stop at the aptly named Lockwood Store for a BSB break (butt-smoke-bathroom) and snap a few pictures. It’s a slightly surreal experience. Because we’re in effect retracing our previous steps. Our first great California road trip adventure rolled right through here and it’s surprisingly odd to stand in exactly the same spot you did eight or nine years ago in a seemingly remote part of the world and realize that while nothing has changed here, everything else in life has.
And then there are the bikes…
Eight or nine years ago we rolled through here on two BMW R1100S sport-tourers. At the time they seemed like the epitome of the perfect riding companions. Looking at the ST3 and the F4 that seems like a long, long time ago.
“This is a very different trip,” MotorMilt says, while running his hand over the tank of the F4, “and we’ve come a long way since then”.
All I can do is acknowledge the sentiment with a smirk as he smiles and says, “These are just a hell of a lot more fun”…
Both bikes offer a more fluid system of travel then the Beemers did; yet when compared to each other they are radically different animals. The ST presents a unique blend of both speed and semi-comfort while pushing the sport side of the sport-touring equation to the forefront of the category’s inherent compromise between the two extremes.
The F4 on the other hand is completely uncompromising to say the least. It’s a full-blown racing bike that just happens to have mirrors and lights. Everything about it is harsh. Hard. And uncomfortable. The footpegs feel like they’re stacked against the exhaust, the seat is the antichrist of plush, and the only seating position that feels remotely comfortable is a completely tuck.
Yet what this bike lacks in creature comforts it more then makes up for in wicked acceleration, awesome exhaust notes and remarkable handling. The bike just feels completely planted. All the time. It’s a freakishly secure feeling that’s night and day different then any of the Ducati Superbikes I’ve ridden, including the 1098S. On the F4 it feels as if you’ve got a holy ghost lingering above and watching your every move as you attack each successive corner. The chassis feels so solid that seems damn near impossible to upset it unless you’ve done something completely idiotic.
Of course the irony of idiocy on this bike is that it’s only a throttle advance away.
Twist your right wrist and you thrust the machine forward so fast that even a GPS enable iPhone accelerometer has trouble keeping up. The bike just hauls. Flat out and with idiocy in tow.
Just in case the warp speed disappearance of the landscape surrounding you confuses your visual sensory perception, there’s also a series of auditory battlefield explosions as well. The four organ-like pipes in the back bellow out such a nasty, evil, downright scary wail that both big and little critters alike flee in fear.
Stacked next to the 1098S it’s a very different riding experience. Far less fluid and far more point and shoot. Where the ’10’ feels torquey, the F4 feels defiant. Making such a loud and demonic noise that it makes mothers across the country to cringe in terror. The 1098S lets you delicately dance into and out of apexes where as the F4 cracks heads like sledgehammer, never losing sight of the fact that it’s got somewhere else to be.
An hour later I am somewhere else, as I take a slow drag from the smoke and suck down my eighth vitamin enriched energy drink of the day. Glancing at the digital clock in the dash it’s hard to fathom that it’s not even noon yet — Already my sense of time and space has been lost, much like contemporary society’s awareness of the true roots of California.
Looking out at a collection of wide-open fields surrounded by rolling hills and mammoth mountains in the distance, the old man smirks, “It always amazes me how empty most of California is,” he says before matching my puff of smoke with his own, “I think we tend to forget about that sometimes”…
He’s right; the enduring legacy of California isn’t the marvelous technological advancements, the Disneyland theme parks or the beacon like draw of the Hollywood scene that continually draws thousands of young dreams each year, rather the permanent fixture of the State is what’s missing in a pristine undisturbed landscapes. There are no hands-free gizmos sprouting out of anyone’s ear nor the rushed sensibility to trade your gas guzzler in for a hybrid so you can sleep better at night, instead just an honest panorama that’s not all that far removed from our pre-technology existence.
California’s Central Valley isn’t just physically at the state’s core but emotionally as well. This is the land of classic California virtue. Where dreams drift in the soft summer breeze and potential is allowed to amble undisturbed until it’s ready to come to fruitarian. What exists here today is completely indicative of what used to exist everywhere and the more you peer over the landscape, the clearer it becomes that something tragically got lost in our society’s evolution from the past to the present.
I’m not completely sure what that exactly is but each time I step foot in this Valley there is a sense of peacefulness and comfort that you could spend a lifetime searching for in the big cities and never find. A sensibility of hard work and determination scratched on people’s faces that echo’s the founding of this great nation not the current sense of elite entitlement broadcast nightly on E!
Six days after setting out I’m flush with fear when entering LA County again. While I’m still physically on the bike, I’m no longer not actually riding it. Instead I’ve already made the mental leap towards re-entering the ‘real world’. Something I feel inherently loath to do right now, but I know I must. Because that’s the way it works when you grow up. When you have bills to pay and tasks to do.
As the traffic thickens, I feel my lower back start to tighten up. The muscles squeezing the nerves for all there net worth. It’s not a comfortable sensation by any means, but then the last leg of a thousand mile adventure almost always ends in some sort of ailment.
Yet today the physical toll that the trip has taken is the least of my worries.
Rather it’s the never-ending game of mental catch up that I’m frantically playing that’s drawing my attention as I try to deduce what I’ve now got to get done while still expressively coming to grips with where I’ve just been. What I’ve just seen. Who I might be.
It’s an inherently unstable moment to say the least and one that leaves me wondering why the ride home always feels both completely premature in its arrival and yet long over due at the same time?
But then I suppose all great rides ultimately are comprised of a mixed bag of emotions. On one hand, you never want to see them end and yet on the other hand there’s definitely a physical and mental ceiling that you hit. Especially when one of the bikes you’ve chosen for the particular task is the completely wrong tool for the job from a logical standpoint.
Of course common sense only gets you so far in this world and in the space of the past eleven days, from the trackday at Buttonwillow to this trip up the coast, the old man and I have gone from one extreme of the motorcycle persona to the other, battling and conquering the vast differences between logic and insanity.
Without a doubt my non-riding friends would say that taking a bike, any bike, to a track is an insane endeavor. Yet my guess is that they would completely understand the appeal of a good ol’fashion road trip – even if it is on a bike.
Yet as the road buckles down and the traffic comes to a halt, it occurs to me that these two divergent extremes of the motorcycle experience are exactly the opposite. The time we spent at Buttonwillow was all about the application of logic. Perfecting the art form of proficient riding. Taking two Italian motorcycles on a thousand mile journey up and down the coast on the other hand isn’t just an adventure – It’s also just plain nuts.
And it’s also a personal fantasy come to life.
For all the times I’ve ridden up and down the coastline, I never done it the way I’ve really wanted to – on a full blown sportbike that has a wicked engine, killer brakes and instinctive handling. Instead I’ve always bent to convention or at least logic and taken a sport-tourer of one kind or another. To finally make this sort of fantastical mental image come to life is something that’s worth any and all residual back pain and leaves me thinking that perhaps the axiom of the right tool for the right job is incorrect at its core. Maybe, just maybe, sometimes we need to choose the wrong tool for the right job in order to make dreams come true.
Cornering Speed : The Past Year of My Life
The 1098S idly rumbles beneath me while a cool wind slides through the air. Together the bike and I sit and wait. The motionless tires straddling the edges of two never quite ending rain puddles. All around us the winter leaves swirl. Finally the garage door begins to slowly open. Its old burnt orange colored panels chattering with each inch of movement. It’s a unique sound. A sound that’s full of history. The gearhead equivalent of growth rings in a tree. Each creak and clack allowing its listener to hear the sound of time in motion. Eventually the door stops rising and I put the bike in gear. The ‘10 grunts up the hilly driveway with ease. Pops straight into its well worn tire chock and as I kill the engine I wonder, does the bike even know its year has now ended?
As 2007 comes to a close I once again find myself looking backwards. The past twelve months have certainly offered a roller coaster of life events which have ranged from total brilliance to utter despair. This in and of itself is not unique - it’s part of the core human condition - and it has been my experience that seemingly every year offers wildly emotionally oscillating moments. Yet what feels particularly divergent and different about this past year is that I continue to find it hard to properly quantify or categorize the moments contained within the past twelve months. They are new parts for a mental warehouse which has no inventory control. Events forged in context and yet with each growing day persist in confusing my emotional filing system.
The past year has been built mostly by complex moments. Events which on some level are greatly intertwined with their preceding and proceeding moments and yet when taken individually they feel surprisingly disconnected from everything else. This both seems like a strange contradiction and yet it also feels like it makes perfect sense too. Perhaps it’s just the usual demons of self-reflection once again infiltrating my mind.
History would suggest that mankind has always pondered its place in the universe, if not simply just one’s individual life. The very etymology of the word human for instance is derived from the Latin text humanus and means “of the earth” which of course stands in stark opposition to the idea of “celestial beings”, whomever or whatever they might be. The great pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Protagoras claimed that, “Man is the measure of all things; of what is, that it is; of what is not, that it is not”. Even the famed Immanuel Kant got in on the action, writing that, “Man is distinguished above all animals by his self-consciousness, by which he is a ‘rational animal’.”
Theoretically in big picture terms the importance of this self-reflection is to sort out one’s standing in the universe - to give meaning to the unknown in a logical or rational manor - but thoughts like that stir up bigger issues for a different blog. In practical terms the concept of reflection is an important part of maximizing the utility of having experiences in the first place. We look back on what we’ve done in order to decide whether or not to do it again. This process helps us determine whether or not we enjoyed an experience or were successful in completing a goal. Yet it’s also a rather dubious device because when it comes to emotional experiences reflection has the power to make you feel emotions - both the good ones and the bad ones - and sometimes these emotions transpire to cast a shadow of negativity or doubt over your life.
Over the past several weeks as the yearly self-reflection bout has taken hold, I keep finding myself going to bed with thoughts of what I know, what I wish I knew and what I want to know and yet only find myself waking up hungover from the possibilities of the future. When I was a child all of this was incredibly easier, each new year brought a specific milestone to achieve - the advancement to another grade or year in school. Even early jobs in my career offered a similar positional quest with definable points for reference. However things change with age and the trick of this past year was the gradual realization that this is now my life. I’m no longer young and I’m not old but rather stand somewhere in the middle. And it’s a big ‘middle’.
In many ways 2007 started as it ended - with lots of work, thoughts of the 1098S running through my mind and one heck of a nasty head cold. Though the bike wouldn’t arrive in States for a few more months, my January was consumed by Counting Down The Days and the thoughts of promise that only a new Ducati can offer.
Suddenly what had been a grim gray day seems awfully promising. It’s rather amazing to me how when you’re sick the world seems a whole heck of a lot less fun, much less friendly and all together tiring, but as the reality starts to set in that the arrival of the 1098 is just around the corner, no matter how sick I feel, I can’t help but smile inside… It’s going to be a very exciting year to say the least…
February was spent recovering from yet another sinus surgery - my 4th overall - which of course brought quite a bit of Doctor ordered time away from motorcycles. I suppose that everyone has their health related issues with in life, mine apparently is and perhaps always will be poor sinus cavities. Thankfully the Viccodine made most of the month a blur and by the time I was ready for action, Jake from Pro Italia was calling to say that the 1098S was almost here - sort of. The only question left was what kind of bike it would turn out to be…
I constantly keep finding myself awash in the memories of previous Ducati bikes and the dreams that come from purchasing a new model. What kind of temperament will the new bike have? Will she feel solid from the start like the ‘05 999 did or will she have to work herself in to shape like the ‘04 999? Will she feel as nimble as the ‘03 749 or will she turn in slower and stouter like the 9’s? How will she behave when she comes home and finds another Ducati in the garage? Will she like it? Will she hate it? Will she act up? This the tip of the iceberg in what has been a bizarre round of mental curiosity, but then long ago I came to believe that each and every individual Ducati bike has its own soul and its own unique character. They eat, they breath, they speak and they all do as they please with just a little help from us. So the question ultimately becomes what kind of bike will my 1098S be and I can’t wait to find out.
March 10th brought the first taste of an answer to that very question, but not before a reflective morning bout with a Building Euphoria Took Hold.
By now one would think I would understand the emotional outpouring that comes from a new bike. The hopes. The fears. The drain on the checking account. The crazy motolust inspired insanity of it all. After all this will be my fourth Ducati in less then three years and obviously I’ve done this dance before. Yet as the clock continues to move very slowly through the night I find myself feeling like a kid before Christmas once again. And again. And again. ( I mean who knew that March was the holiday season, right???)
Finally, after months of not so patiently waiting, Destiny Arrived. The old man, Motor Milt, and I headed up to PI and picked up the newest Diva before taking her out on her maiden voyage. It was instantly apparent that the 10 would be unlike any other Ducati I’ve ever owned. And that turned out to be a great thing…
Randomly while coming around corners you can’t help but feel like you’re playing yourself in an XBox game. The microsecond you merely begin to have the first inclination to even think about a movement or motion, it just happens. To say that this bike is responsive doesn’t even begin to describe how much movement it offers. While other bikes are fluid or fast, the 1098S acts on an entirely different level. It removes all hesitation or doubt, completely bypassing your central nervous system and taking its direction straight from the electrical impulses emanating in your mind. There is no other worldly explanation for how it can react so quickly and with so little fuss.
I usually hesitate to evoke religion when I write stuff for the blog since its such a divisive topic, but after four hours of riding through the Santa Monica Mountains just above Malibu, I find myself feeling fairly certain that this bike wasn’t designed in Ducati Corsa, but rather fell from the heavens. The fact that it is street legal is absolutely amazing and it’s just the first day, how crazy is that?
Chapters of Life: LA to Carmel
Dark highly defined clouds descend from above as I work my way towards a disassociation from the everyday. The curves come and go, one by one, as I find myself feeling fairly certain that every so often it’s a good idea to grab the handlebars, twist the throttle, and whip around a few majestic landscapes in the hope of escaping the regularity of the work week. Oddly there’s something completely reassuring and yet still intrinsically wonderfully about leaving LA in order to capture and conquer the unfamiliar bends in the road while you let the day-to-day fade away and watch the tripmeter continue to roll.
Three weeks ago I mindlessly found myself checking the calendar and realized that the coming weekend was the big event – the social gathering of the year as it might be - and as is the nature of those of us who ride, my first inclination wasn’t, “gee I need to book a flight” or “wow, I need to make sure my hotel reservation is correct”, but rather did I have the time? The time to escape…
Could I pack the saddlebags once more and hit the road, free and clear?
Of course, as motorcyclists tend to do, even though I didn’t really have the time, I found the time. Reconfigured the days and nights leading up to the event and the clock on the other end solely for the purpose of giving myself four days of pristine early winter riding on the California Coastline.
Perhaps it wasn’t the most professional thing to do, or the even most grown up – though I’m not quite sure what ‘grown up’ even means these days - but somehow it seemed the most prudent. At least to me. Because days tend to come and go, but few offer the chance to capture magic along the way…
To be fair, this all started with a mere phone call.
I was a quarter of the way through a wonderfully self-indulgent single malt when the cell rang and the gal on the other end began to chatter. Beat after beat she beamed with pride over her coming wedding. What had been just a mere date on the calendar suddenly seemed like quite a bit more. Then she rather innocently asked whether or not I was planning on riding up to her wedding.
My response was fairly atypical for me, I hadn’t really given it much thought.
When it comes to planning adventures, get-aways, or simply days to ride, it seems I tend to be rather last minute about it all. It’s not that I don’t spend the time to ponder these sort of things ahead of time, but rather that I often find myself waging an internal battle between what I would like to do and what I think I should do. Perhaps that’s just the phase of life I find myself in right now, who knows… (more…)
The Art of Exploration (Morro Bay to SF)
I’m halfway between falling asleep for the third time this morning and waking up for good when I finally become aware of the sounds of the seagulls outside. At this point it’s no longer early and it’s not quite late either, yet I feel oddly removed from both time and space. There’s a tangible form of peace that’s sitting in the room. Staring me down as I lay in bed. It seems like ages since I felt this kind of distance from the day to day.
Ten minutes later the inner coffee addict comes around calling and it forces me to fight off the temptation to roll over again. Finally, I get up and open the shutters. Gray overcast light pours in, and with it the kind of early morning coastal community scene that seems like it has been forgotten in today’s world. The kind of moving image that suggests that the speed of life is directly proportional to population size. In the bay boats rock back and forth, all manor of birds go about their business, other hotel guests wander about snapping photos of the scenery and a gentle breeze rolls through the harbor, flapping flags with each breath. But none of it happens fast. Rather it’s all ebbing and flowing in controlled motions. Lamaze breathing for life.
When I enter the tiny diner in downtown Morro Bay there are just a few folks in the room. It’s amazing how quiet towns always have quiet places to wake up. Nobody moves quickly, nobody shouts, and nothing seems important. Noticing the leathers and the helmet, the guy behind the counter smirks while already starting to reach for an empty coffee cup before even asking if I want one. But then it must be obvious that I need something hot and warm. “Cold day for riding,” he says as he starts to pour, “Where you headed?”
It’s a question that you get asked a lot when you’re on the road, especially when you’re miles away from the ‘big city’. I smile back and tell him I’m heading up the coast. He says, “Better stay away from the inland roads today, it’s gonna get hot out there”. On a morning like this, hot seems like like a relative term. The gray overcast skies outside are keeping the temps down and even though I’ve only been on the bike for a few minutes, it’s clear that unless it warms up significantly, California Route-1, otherwise known as the Pacific Coast Highway, is going to be a teeth chattering kind of ride.
Sitting down, I sip the coffee and place an order. Then my eyes wander. The walls of the joint are covered in artistic representations of the bay that sits just a few blocks away. Charcoal sketches, paintings, photographs, and even the occasional newspaper article. It’s both homey and yet celebratory. As if living here requires you to acknowledge the beauty that resides here.
A moment later a group of five walks in and sits down at a large table across from me. They look extraordinarily ordinary. Worn flannels covering aged jeans. Normal folks, here to grab a bite before doing whatever it is that they do for a living. The kind of people you’d expect to see in a Ford or Chevy truck ad. Definitely not the regular LA crowd, that’s for sure. The waiter says hello, pours them some coffee, and takes their order. Then he disappears to nowhere in particular. From the corner of my ear, I hear a smiling voice, “You must be the one riding that Red Ducati out there”. I turn around towards one of the gals sitting at the other table and nod.
Several minutes later I’m heading up the coast and feeling a bit dumbfounded. Morro Bay isn’t exactly the middle of nowhere, but let’s be honest, it’s also not where you’re going to find out what’s hot or current either. Looking down at the ST3 that’s happily pacing with early traffic, I’m somewhat amazed that this bike even stirred a reaction in a non-rider at all, let alone a brand specific one. Had I been up here on the 1098 or the 999 I would have expected someone to say something - but the ST3? Outside of the bright red color, I’m not sure it aesthetically screams that it’s a Ducati in any specific way. When I look at the bike, because I know what it is, I see a fun bike. But compared to other Italian motorcycles, up until this point, I would have thought that it would have just passed by as any other bike. To be fair, it’s not the sexiest bike in the world, yet somehow amazingly stills garners attention. Who’d have thought it?
The morning ambles along for about thirty to forty miles: past Cayucos, up through Harmony, around Cambria and then right through San Simeon, the home of Hearst Castle.
And then the real fun begins — Just as the coffee and smokes kick in.
52 magnificently glorious miles of the splendid sits before me. A stretch of nearly uninhabited coastline that connects San Simeon to Big Sur with the kind of artistry that has long been forgotten by the folks who now build roads. It is an awe-inspiring kind of wonderland, a swooping and sweeping asphalt playground for anything that is automotive. Every corner and crest coming from out of nowhere and yet revealing such beauty that to go fast here is something far greater then a sin. It’s a travesty. The kind that you take to your grave because it means you sped to through life like a flash in the pan popstar.
However the bright red ST3 beneath me has other ideas for the day. It doesn’t care about oceans or seagulls or baby redwoods. Rather it’s here to do battle with a one of a kind roadway. Twisting the throttle back a bit, I try to feed it’s desire and calm it down, but instead I only make it worse. The bike fights to rev a little bit higher and run a little bit faster. It wants to claim its prey. Soon the bike and the scenery are engaged in a mortal battle for both the style and substance of what the day will hold. The next ten hours hang in the balance. Either magical images or marvelous speeds will result. It’s the kind of internal struggle that folks in cars rarely entertain and dare I say, probably can’t relate to. Yet for those who like to ride, it’s a common occurrence and a situation where compromise doesn’t come easily. How do you juggle enjoying the ride and the scenery at the same time? For the remainder of Route-1, I find myself teetering on the brink. Every so often letting one side of the equation win but never quite feeling totally satisfied one way or the other.
A few miles outside of Big Sur, I pull off and have a smoke. Regardless of how fast or slowly you take CA Route-1, the best part of the road goes by far to quickly for my tastes. It’s here and gone before you’re fully aware of what you’ve just experienced. A highly charged emotional asphalt flashbulb that seemingly goes off in a mere instant. And perhaps that’s exactly why this place feels so special - because it’s rarity makes it romantic.
Hitting the city of Carmel, I take another break and peer over the map. On most trips up the coast, Carmel becomes the launching point towards the 101 and subsequently society. But not today. Not when I’m on a mission to miss the concrete jungle. So instead of heading towards the mundane, I head east on a far less direct path. It’s the kind of inherently foolish Point A to Point B screwy connect the dot directions that only a rider would make - because instead of getting you somewhere quickly and relatively on-time, it instead fills the day with nothing but squiggly lines. (more…)
Mesmerized by Majesty (LA to Morro Bay)
The sweaty leathers are laying on the bed in a near human pose and the helmet is airing out as the last drips of a ten year old Talisker slide down the back of my throat. The salty single malt starts sweetly before smoothly finishing with a bold and spicy burst of smoke. It’s both brash and ballsy. The kind of dram that kicks you in the pants and makes you take note. A seemingly appropriate conclusion for a day built on the backbone of astounding visuals, tremendous corners and one hell of a cathartic release.
Today has been absolutely marvelous. Truly a day to remember. Something that right now seems so obviously profound that it is begging to be cherished and appreciated just like a great single malt. Weeks and months from now I hope I’m able to sit back and recall this feeling. This sense of awe. The ease and comfort of how it feels. Both within my soul and in the scenery at large. Because it’s something worth remembering.
California is simply a gift if you’re a motorcyclist.
There’s just no other way to put it. The landscape holds such an amazing diversity and immense scope that you can’t help but feel that you’ve touched greatness when you ride here. From the ocean to the mountains to the totally horizontal valley floors and the rolling hills that connect them all, there is just something absolutely mesmerizing about snaking your way around this geography. I can’t help but wonder what the first settlers to this region must have thought they peered out into these vistas. Did they acknowledge the greatness that lies here? Did they see it? Did they feel it deep in their guts and in their souls?
Today, in just under 300 miles of riding, I was able to carve every kind of corner that exists and then some. On every species of road. Each asphalt surface its own unique conduit for the spectacular. (more…)
Getting Away: CA Route-1 LA to SF
The tach is rising as the temp gauge plummets when the first shadows of fog become recognizable along the horizon. Ahead of me lies an ever expanding right hand kink in the road that launches off into yet more of this one of kind unknown. Instinctually I begin to bring the throttle backwards before consciously realizing that doing so is almost a tragic flaw when you’re surrounded by this kind of magic. When you’re witnessing the very beginning of civilization and the last remaining vestiges of purity at the same time. Yet I’m not here to sightsee. I’m here ride. And this road is simply unlike any other that I’ve ever ridden.
Sliding towards the inside of the rapidly approaching corner, I brashly manipulate the front end, countersteering the bike back and forth in order to wiggle my way around a collection of errant rock formations before standing the bike back up as the road dives down towards sea level once again. To appreciate this kind of rollercoaster ride is to understand that this road isn’t anywhere near average. It’s the kind of place that you could spend days and nights dreaming about and still never find. Yet here it is and it’s real. It’s tangible. It’s alive with the kind of energetic pull that makes riding move beyond the merely physical adventure and instead enter the realm of spiritual prophecy come to life.
A few miles from Twisties
I have no doubt that evangelists from all walks of life struggle to explain the meaning that this route holds. Beyond the molecules of asphalt lies something greater then the ordinary, something much more profound which speaks on levels that mortals rarely seek and almost certainly never find. Yet if you’re into riding for the sake of the ride there’s no need to ask these kinds of heavy bothersome questions. You simply don’t have the time. After all this is a road surface that’s hell-bent on bringing the best out of you – not for a minute or sequence - but for the entire journey.
Peering over the fairing, the downhill push brings me face to face with one hundred and eighty degrees of conquest. On most occasions this would be unique, but not when it’s been going all day. As I rapidly start the process of downshifting and sliding off the saddle towards the inside of the hairpin like turn, the bike tilts its way towards a missing chunk of cliff before running right through the bend as if it were nothing more then a blip on the radar. The kind of blip that brings a gargantuan smile to your face before it’s forced to vanish in the eye of yet another twisting turn whose conclusion disappears beyond yet another jagged piece of exposed rock.
Continues after the jump…
(more…)
Winter Light
It’s 2pm in the afternoon and as I watch the sun start its rapid winter season descent, I find myself consciously thinking that this is one of those rare days where I need a table of contents just to organize my own thoughts.
At this point I’ve been on the 999 for almost six hours straight. Six splendid, amazing, and empty hours when all I’ve had are my thoughts and the knowledge that today started out just like any other day and then turned into something completely unique all by itself.
When I swung my leg over the Duc this morning I had no idea I’d end up here. 200 miles away from home in New Cuyama, California, sitting on the edge of the Central Valley, looking at slice of life and a landscape that time has never changed.
The short version is that it’s been a BMW day on a Superbike ride. One long curvy canyon of a loop that has led me here – to pristine cowboy countryside that time has forgotten. If an 1890’s Stagecoach rolled by right now I wouldn’t even blink. Amidst the Ansel Adams clouds and the rolling tumbleweeds there’s a certain kind of calmness that you can just feel. A calmness that I truly needed.
Of course in reality it’s been far more than just a long sport-touring ride. It’s been an adventure. A personal exploration into a gorgeous land and a journey into my own soul. Ultimately today has been unique for the simplest of reasons. Because it just happened. I had no plan, I had no map, and I right now, sitting here in New Cuyama I have no clue that I will eventually travel just over 350 miles in roughly nine hours and never think twice about it until I get off the bike when I’m back home.
The SoCal Canyon Loop ( Approx. Time: 9 AM to 6 pm, Approx. Mileage: 350+)
At 8am this morning I never would have imagined that this sort of ride was possible. The sky was dark. The clouds were lining up to dwell. And I felt the pressure of the workweek crushing me in a multitude of directions.
It all started out innocently when I walked into the office and surprisingly nothing was going on. So I did something that I’m always talking about but rarely if ever actually doing. I time shifted my weekend.
I suppose that in today’s world time shifting has two very different connotations. On a very personal level its psychobabble for mentally moving your mind forwards or backwards in time to events that you either can’t control yet or can no longer change. Yet in a different light there’s the concept of time shifting your actual ‘time’. In this case since I’m scheduled to work all weekend I thought why not get a ride in today if nothing is going on??
Little did I know that what started out, as an idea to ride the canyons would turn into an all day adventure that still has me charged up…
Around 9AM I was shooting up Latigo Canyon when I was overcome with a craving for more coffee. On most days I’m quite the caffeine freak, but usually riding supersedes the desire. But not today… By the time I worked my way up to the top of the canyon I was dead set on finding another cup. Strange as that sounds, the desire for more coffee forced the first in several choices that eventually sent me half way around the world. Somehow I got the notion that the easiest place to pick up another cup would be the Starbucks in Malibu by Trancas Canyon.
Had I really needed that cup I guess I could have headed down Kanan Dune and shot up the coast from there, but instead the only obvious solution that came to mind was to ride further and faster across The Mullhulland Highway. So minutes later I found myself flying around the last few corners on what is quite literally the last real canyon road until you get way up North and feeling uneasy with already having gotten that far up the coast. Somehow it seemed too early to be that far away. And as I started backtracking towards civilization in order to grab more coffee, I felt a nagging feeling that the day simply wasn’t over. By the time I got off the bike at the Starbucks the concept of ending the day this soon seemed flat out sacrilegious.
Inside Starbucks I stand in line dressed in my full leathers with a bunch of proto-typical Malibuians. There’s the gray haired polo shirt guy with his collar raised up around his neck who looks like he’s just gotten off Ted Turner’s America’s Cup Yacht. Two tables away sits a wantabe North Hollywood gal with the required nose piercing but none of the tats and a upper anatomy text book. Behind the counter is a blonde surf dude who’s slinging the coffee like his life depends on it. Showing an amazing amount of desire for someone who looks like they just rolled out of bed. Standing next to him is a midget. A full-fledged miniature person, no joke. At this point I fully expect to see Jose Canseco walk in the shop any minute with the next season’s Surreal Life crew in tow. Instead I’ll have to settle for the two mid aged yoga woman who burst through the door with no pause in conversation or lowering of their volume level. As I walk up to order my coffee I realize that I probably look pretty odd for this crowd. Even though it’s Malibu and people ride bike here all the time, most folks don’t show up dressed in full race leathers. At that moment I become somewhat self aware and notice that everyone’s eyes are fixated on my ‘look’, which of course strikes me a bit odd since their ‘look’ is anything but ‘normal’. Floating through my mind, I vaguely remember Melissa Holbrook Pierson in her book ‘The Perfect Vehicle’ calling a riding outfit a person’s ‘costume’ and somehow that seems rather appropriate since it’s only been a few days since Halloween.
Leaving the joint, I see the first bike of the day when a dude on an SV650 zips by me in the parking lot. No wave, no look, no notice. And like that he’s gone in a flash.
Back on the bike I decide to head back up the coast. Just before I hit the intersection of the PCH with The Mullhulland Highway, it occurs to me that I’ve just been on that road and I’ve also ridden it quite a lot lately. Maybe I need something different. Something more out of a ride.
Seconds later I fly right by the turn and head straight up the coast. It’s a decision on a whim. Nothing more, nothing less.
Yet even though it’s early, I feel wickedly alive in this amazingly renewed sense. As if I’d slept for months straight and just happened to be in the saddle of a sportbike when I finally woke up. I’m barely awake yet somehow it’s already clear that riding is in the air. Riding the Ducati today is going to be good.
Swing around the giant sweepers by Pt. Magu, I can’t help but wonder if I’m simply reacting to the curse of the weekday ride. When you head out on the weekends on any sort of usual schedule, there’s a certain ebb and flow that you learn to understand. Yet today with the rest of the world stuck at work, it’s hard not to feel invigorated by the sense of seclusion. The sense of mystery is being alone and yet out on the road.
Something clearly is clicking inside my head because I’ve been on the bike for almost two hours and I’ve seen one other motorcyclist. Just one! It’s astonishingly quiet. There’s simply a lack of cars and even fewer mountain bikes or people. This is canyon and coastal life at its slowest.
Eventually I make my way to the 101 and head North. I suppose I could have looped back South and head towards the canyon roads again, but really what fun would that have been? Don’t get me wrong I enjoy riding around the Ventura County countryside because the farmland look is a relative departure from what I used to looking at in the canyons, but it’s not exactly sporty riding. It’s touring. Now there’s nothing wrong with that, but there’s also nothing explosive about it either. Knowing that I’m half way to Ojai and it’s still relatively early, I figure why not ride up and taste a bit of Route 33? What’s the harm?
Just after I get off the 101 and head North on the beginning portion of Route 33, I find my mind drifting to a conversation that I had last week with a friend of mine over dinner. My friend and I were shooting shit about bikes when they asked the simplest of questions, ‘why do you write your blog?’
At the time it seemed like a rather innocent question and as I think back on our conversation that evening, I’m not quite sure I gave a particularly good response. I suspect that my inability to answer the given question was simply because I’d never thought to ask it. I was relatively caught off-guard and since that night, have been wondering if it’s possible to blog for this long and have never asked yourself why you do it?
Subsequently I’ve wondered if this is in fact the middle life crisis for a blog, when you become self aware and wonder for the first time, why on earth are you posting all of this information about yourself over and on the internet???
I pondered the question while filling up the Duc’s tank at the 76 Station in Ojai proper - the last gas station in sight before you enter the Los Padres National Forest.
As the blog conversation progressed that particular evening my friend described a poll he’d seen recently seen that stated that most bloggers fall into two basic camps; either they write a blog on a given subject because they’re hell bent on having people listen to their opinions or they blog on an subject matter that’s intensely personal to them and one that they wish they could perform or comment on professionally. Now clearly any poll that breaks down the millions of people who are actively blogging has to have several dozen shades of gray, but as I’ve spent the last several days thinking this over, the basic logic seems rather plausible. I doubt most people blog in order ‘not’ to be heard.
I would assume that most people start blogs purely for fun. Maybe they enjoy writing or php scripting, or maybe it’s the possible interaction with other people out on the net. I imagine there are hundreds or maybe even thousands of possible rationales for why people think blogging is enjoyable and I would be amazed if the majority of bloggers would turn down the opportunity to blog professionally. I’d guess that eighty or ninety percent of the blogs that I read tend to be so personal that it’s hard to imagine that someone wouldn’t want to get paid or acknowledged to write what they feel or think or believe. Besides, compared to the real world there’s no evil empire to fight.. There’s no hellacious boss, no manic co-workers to deal with, no real pressure, and certainly little if no deadlines to meet. It’s just you, your website and your opinion. The rest is up to other to judge.
Hitting the initial portion of Route 33 as you head out of Ojai on a motorcycle makes you realize what a charmed life you happen to lead if you’re on two wheels. It’s a challenging combination of corners that swept and tighten and let themselves out all before your eyes in an amazingly rapid succession as you quickly ascend up the Topa Topa Mountain range while you’re constantly forced to orchestrate your bike in harmony with the road.
Few California rides in my opinion offer as much beauty, technical challenge and absolute diversity as this ride. It’s truly one of the great wonders of the world in my book. By the time I swing around the first major switchback I can’t help but be curious as to why I’m the only one out here enjoying the most pristine asphalt playground around..
Twenty minutes later I’m a good portion of the way up the face of the mountain range and the topography has radically shifted. The soft tumbleweed exterior has quickly vanished and been replaced by a pine tree skyline and a much more mountainous façade. Suddenly I’m coming around corners and doing double takes, feeling fairly certain that the same look and feel might well exist on The Angeles Crest or somewhere out by Mammoth.
But then ten minutes later I hit one of the last big straights on what I believe might be the front side of the range and enter a rather hard sweeping left hander. This corner sends me downhill, past several road construction sites, and into a valley of burnt ashes. Trees that used to be living are now charred ruins of what they once where. The scenery quickly dissolves and what had been life vanishes. It’s desolate and yet somehow replenished. I have no idea when the last fire ripped through here, but it’s been awhile and somehow life has started to come back. It’s not a lot, but its there if you look hard enough for it.
A couple of corners later I realize that I may not be as alone as I thought I was. Pickup trucks line the turn offs at several corners and as I enter a gigantic sweeping left hander, I notice two men standing near a white Chevy K series who are holding shotguns and dressed in camouflage gear. This slightly worries me. This seems more hickish than I think I might care to deal with right now. And at this point I’m radically firing through the valley at anywhere between seventy and a hundred miles per hour. From my quick glances at the periphery I’m pretty sure I’m the only moving target and that doesn’t make me feel very secure..
At this point the trip-meter is reading forty miles since I filled up the tank in Ojai and I haven’t seen one green CalTrans signs that states how far away I am from civilization. The little voice in the back of my head starts to shriek. Doing the quick math I figure I’ve got about 10 more miles to figure out how close I am to life before I’ve got to turn around and head back to Ojai. Otherwise I’m pretty sure I’m not going to make it on my tank of gas. These days I’m usually getting around 100 miles per tank. But out in the middle of nowhere I’m pretty sure that if I run out of fuel no one will find me for days. This line of think of course leads me directly to, ‘if I lay the bike down and get hurt, nobody is going to find me either’.. And that makes me wonder why I never had those thoughts on the Beemer.
Ten miles later I head up a major incline and come upon a large dirt turn off area. This seems like a good spot to pull off and regroup. To figure out once and for all where the hell I think I might be and which way I need to go. Of course the nagging voice in the back of my head has shut up and I’m starting to really worry that I might be screwed. I’m standing on the edge of a mountain and surrounded by nothing but natural beauty with no clue where I am or how far it is back to a working gas station pump. To be perfectly blunt, I’m not even sure when I’m going to see another person at this point. That’s how far away from life this place feels.
Peering off the edge of the cliff opens my eyes to new possibilities. There’s not only a valley with more twisting, curving roads, but also an entirely endless vista of valley after valley after valley that all lead up to a horizontal line of asphalt. It’s remarkable. The road sticks out in the countryside view like water in a desert. I can’t help but notice that there’s life on the other side of this ridge! There’s a road! I’m miles away, but somehow liking my odds for survival.
So I go for it. I ride the rest of Route 33. Tank of gas be damned!
Heading down the back portion of 33 is an exercise in controlling my fear of running out of fuel, my internal curiosity towards where I might be headed and my wonder as to where the next most logical location for a gas station might be.
Yet somehow amidst all of this internal strife I still find time to fall in love with the corners. And by corners I mean heart pounding, wide open, just you and the road entanglements where you wonder just how much more spectacular the road can get. This isn’t just a ride; it’s full-blown entertainment for the soul. I have been ripping up the road and cornering like a madman for miles and miles and miles of twisting, curving, amazingly solemn like asphalt. It’s unbelievable. If only racetracks had this sort of visual diversity..
Coming down the backside of 33 the reason why I blog finally dawns on me..
On a very basic level I blog because it’s a scrapbook. Every ride I’ve taken over the past year and three quarters is detailed. It’s described, enjoyed and commented on in a very in the moment manor. I can go back and count them, re-read them, re-live them. I can look at the pictures in context as opposed to simply opening up a photo gallery and trying to recall how a particular day felt.
Yet on a secondary level, I blog because I enjoy the specific activities that are involved, such as riding the Duc, computer scripting, creative writing and still or motion photography. At one point or another I’ve worked at any one of these activities by themselves, yet here with the blog I get to combine them all together. It just happens to be a unique place where they all work in harmony in a very creative way.
One step further back, I suspect I blog because I greatly enjoy the interaction with other riders. I find it fascinating to read or hear about what other riders think or feel on a given subject. I’m not always the best at responding to email – usually because I’m tied up doing something else, but the fact that I can communicate with other riders around the world and never meet them is simply an outright curiosity to me.
Finally there’s the reality that when all is said and done writing about motorcycles is pure fun. The kind that isn’t compromised by work, advertising, higher ups, other people’s opinions, or other requirements. It’s just what it is and that’s somehow enough. I’d say I’d do it for free but I already do so I’m exactly sure what that proves other than to say that there’s something magical for me about writing about what you’re passionate about in life. Now I’m passionate about other things, but this is the ‘one’ if you know what I mean… Whether others find value in the writing is a completely subjective activity and one that I have no control over nor one I really want to have control over. I publish what amounts to a very personal scrapbook on a very public platform and it’s in a very niche genre. Italian Sportbikes. If you’re into American Cruisers I suspect you’ll read other blogs and that’s just fine with me.
This seems to beg the question, am I one of those people in the poll who aspires to blog and/or write professionally? In essence am I kidding myself in the real world, should I simply turn off the blog, print up some resumes and try to work my way into the moto-journalist world?
At the end of Route 33 I hit a crossroads. Two very divergent paths that lead in two altogether different directions. If I head to the right, I’ll eventually hit Interstate-5 and Bakersfield. The magical green CalTrans sign says that I-5 is only 35 miles away. Reading the trip-meter I’m pretty sure I can make it that far and my guess is that I’ll probably hit a gas station there. Of course that means I’m heading East, away from the coast and away from home. That doesn’t sound like such a hot plan. If I head to the left, I head back towards the coast, but the only recognizable town is Taft and it’s 46 miles away. I’ve got no idea how large Taft is, only that it’s 46 miles away from where I am. Looking around there’s not much to see. This is rustic, wide open California cattle country at it’s finest. No homes, no trucks, not people. But I’ve come this far by winging it.. So what the hell, I turn left. There’s got to be a gas station on Route 166, right?
As it turns out riding through the middle of nowhere gives you quite a bit of time to thinking things over – like your future – and the longer the ride goes on the more I realize that I have no desire to try and become a full time moto-journalist. Oh, I enjoy writing reviews for people here and there and dabbling in it, but it’s not my calling.. That lies somewhere else. But I do enjoy the blog. Are those things in contradiction with one another?
Rolling down 166 is a rather unique experience. For the first time all day there’s other traffic. Most of it is large 18-wheeler type trucks. Two bikes pass by heading in the other direction. One is a Beemer, the other some Japanese tourer. Neither seems out of place. The Ducati does. This isn’t what it was built for. Long, relatively straight roads in farm country. Riding 166 I vaguely remember riding here several years back on my old Beemer. Back then this road was a hoot. Now it’s more of a chore to get from one exquisite curvy paradise to another. But the vistas are definitely pretty and it takes little imagination to find yourself thinking of turn of the century California. It’s also windy. Blow you across the lane windy. The kind off wind that makes you wonder if being out on the wild western frontier was really peaceful or just plain dirty with the constant dust.
As I roll past Cuyama, California I’m somehow reminded of an LA Times column I read a few days ago by Michael Hiltzik which was titled, ‘Experiment Starts Now: Call Me a Blogger’. Hiltzik writes the Times Golden State column a couple of times a week and evidently has decided to start his own LA Times supported blog. What caught my eye was Hiltzik’s contention that blogging is headed for a Gawker styled future. Whereby blog labels will pop up – much like music labels – in order to support and promote certain types of blogs because his belief is that the world is simply to big and the blogging universe to large to adequately allow a normal reader to find all the blogs that might be of interest to them.
Personally I find this hypothesis fascinating because if it comes to pass it offers one more example of how when new things pop up - in this case blogs, but in other eras perhaps cars, airplanes, computers or even the plain old cheeseburger – what the end user or consumer really seems to want is some sort of basic standardization that tells them that it’s ok to do, buy or read something. Take Starbucks for example, all sorts of people might criticize them for their uniformity these days, but far more people enjoy the fact that no matter where they are they can order the same cup of coffee with the same muffin and taste the exact same thing. Perhaps all coffee before Starbucks stunk or maybe they just had an amazing marketing campaign when they got started, but for whatever reason people find comfort in their brand name. They don’t call it getting coffee; they call it getting Starbucks.
By 3pm there’s a little voice in the back of my mind telling me that this was a horrible idea.. The Duc’s been running on fumes for the past ten miles and there’s no gas station in sight. Matter of fact there isn’t much in sight. Cuyama has been a big bust as far as I’m concerned. It’s the middle of nowhere that nowhere forgot.
But then I roll on a bit further and hit New Cuyama, California and see the most glorious sight of my life, a bright and not so shinny Mobil station. The weight of weights lifts off my shoulders and I suddenly feel secure in the knowledge that I’ll make it back to the 101.
Unlike the Starbucks in Malibu, when I enter the Mobil the gal behind the counter could absolutely care less that I’m in a full set of racing leathers. All she cares about is continuing her conversation with the gal she’s been talking to on the phone about her weight loss program. How she’s trying to get down to 150 or 125.
By the time I hit Santa Maria and take the 101 South, the day is quickly feeling gray. Even on the Left Coast, Winter still means less light. At this point I have no real idea where I am in relation to Los Angeles. I know I’m North, but have no clue how far up. I could have packed a map, but that would have ruined the surprise. So a couple of miles down the road when I notice a CalTrans sign that rather matter of factly states that Santa Barbara is sixty-seven miles away it finally dawns on me just how far away from my life I am.
It’s funny but these days I’m riding roughly 150 miles a ride through the local canyons. That’s a major increase in usual mileage compared to what I used to consider my ‘normal’ rides. Yet as I’ve grown accustomed to the increased time spent on the bike the feeling of relaxation has changed. It’s not nearly as recharging. Sometimes I almost think it’s like a drug. The effect is somehow limited by a natural resistance. A force in your body that says, ‘Ah ha! You can’t fool me, I’ve done this before’
However on a day like today that sensation of relaxation somehow seems inversely proportional. For every mile over 150 I feel twice as relaxed and refreshed as before. My wrists ache and my back is slightly tweaked, but all in all the extra miles feel better than they normally do. It’s a truly amazing thing.
So when I head down the 101 and notice the sign for Palmer Canyon and somehow vaguely remember that it connects to Foxen Canyon, I feel compelled to make a long ride even longer. It’s a departure from the norm and probably not the smarted deal in the world, but inside I feel overwhelmed with a desire to ride through the Santa Barbara Wine Country. Besides how often do you get the chance to do that? Or to put all your favorite roads together into one gigantically large and fantastically enjoyable loop?
Palmer Canyon and Foxen Canyon Road simply blow me away. At this point I’ve carved a couple hundred amazing corners today, but none like these. The SB Wine Country is a visual treat unlike the rest of the day. It’s uniquely colorful. The leaves filling the landscape with yellows, browns, reds and greens as I rocket past each different winery. Inside I want to stop and take a picture, but the ride is just to good, to enjoyable, too much fun to stop. I can’t help but feel thankful to be here, today, on this bike, riding this ride. It’s that good. The Duc singing it’s own song. From apex to apex it’s a first gear throttle control dance, which starts with one corner and then gradually grows until I’m rocking back and forth from turn to turn in an Italian paradise. A Ducati in Wine country, who would have thought the two would play nicely together?
Sitting here now, with a single malt scotch in my hand I feel emotionally and physically drained. It’s been an amazing day. A glorious day. A day among days, when all seems right in the world and it’s all about the ride. The journey and the unplanned nature of it all. I never set out to ride this much, but I did because the bike begged me to do it and I absolutely loved every minute of it.. Now the only question is when to do it again.
Sunday’s Sport-Touring Sportbike Ride - Part 2
When I last left off it was around noon when MotorMilt and I left Los Olivos on Sunday’s Sport-Touring Sportbike Ride (Part 1).
We had stopped there for a few minutes to take a quick breather and rest the wrists from what already had become a rather lengthy morning ride for us. At this point we had already rolled up a good 150 to 175 miles and I sort of knew that we were beginning to enter that dangerous territory where we might be getting just a bit to far away for our own good. In many ways what had started out as a slightly longer than usual Sunday ride had more or less morphed into a single day’s adventure that would have felt right at home on one of our week long extending riding vacations. At some point we were simply going to have to turn around and head back…
Leaving Los Olivos I briefly flirted with the idea of just simply continuing North on The San Marcos Pass (Route 154) and getting back to the 101 Freeway heading South… But really what fun would that have been? Sometimes it seems to me that just as you physically and mentally have to push yourself on the track, you have to do the same thing with distance riding. You have to force yourself to break through those self-imposed walls inside your mind that say, ‘whoa… this is to far‘. Logically getting back on the 101 at this point probably would have been the smart choice, but emotionally I just simply couldn’t do it.
So instead of taking the easy way home, I forced MotorMilt to follow me as I took a sharp right hand turn just a few miles outside of Los Olivos and headed up Foxen Canyon Road.
As I had mentioned in part one of this utterly to long riding write up, the previous evening while playing around on the ‘net I had discovered the rather amazing Santa Barbara County based riding site, SBC Rides. The minute I found the site I knew I was either in serious trouble or complete bliss… Ten minutes on the site quickly turned into twenty, then thirty… Soon I was discovering whole new adventures. Sitting right before me on the computer monitor were a whole new collection of roads - most of which I’d never read about or seen on a map…
Of all the routes laid out on the site, the one that kept sticking in my mind was Foxen. The SBC Review was sounded remarkable…
Foxen Canyon Rd is yet another of my favorite rides in Santa Barbara County. It is 31.3 miles long, with a good portion of the ride on excellent road with light traffic. It also takes you through some fantastic scenery, right through the heart of wine country.
Having never really ventured to far off The San Marcos Pass, it seemed like it’d be a shame - if not a waste of the day - to be this close to riding it and not take advantage. So instead of doing the smart thing I pushed MotorMilt to go a little bit further and in retrospect it was the best decision of the day!
It only took a few miles to instantly realize that Foxen Canyon is just one of those super-fantastic California rides that everyone should experience at least once. Right off the bat it shoots you down between several extremely iconic SoCal meets Wild West looking farms before giving way to a series of sweepers that slowly rise you up and above the relatively open valley base. Before you know it civilization vanishes and if you’re like me, you don’t even realize until suddenly it’s all just gone. You’re quite literally surrounded by nothing… More ‘nothing’ exists here than I think I’ve ever felt in my entire life. It is simply an amazingly beautiful no-man’s land that forces you stand in awe of nature and the way I imagine California felt fifty or a hundred years ago. This is truly the land of Gene Autry, John Ford, and John Wayne. It takes little imagination to find yourself visualizing cattle rustlers out on the open range.
Somewhere along the route we stopped to take a breather and I was struck by the fact that the only noise I could hear was from the relatively mellow wind gusts that were intermittently floating across the valley. It was the riding equivalent of getting far enough away from the city lights to see all the stars that are out at night. With no noise, relatively no other traffic to speak of and a completely picturesque valley standing before my feet, I just could help but think how living in a concrete city completely warps your mind. Somehow when you drive everyday in LA you slowly begin to believe that the entire world has been paved over and yet nothing could be further from the truth. This valley is only around two hundred miles away from LA and it’s completely untapped… (Granted I’m sure it’s expensive as hell - but that’s another discussion 
).
When we got back on the bikes we were able to only get a couple more miles up the road before my gas light decided to come on. This was perhaps the first of two strategic mistakes that MotorMilt and I made over the course of the day. We had talked about filling up the tanks in Los Olivos but hadn’t, partially due to a bit of laziness I think and partially because when I’d done a rough milage count on the various maps I felt we’d be alright for the roughly thirty miles that Foxen supposed last. Yet here we were riding through what has to truly be God’s country with reserve fuel light now lit up and virtually impossible to miss. Perhaps it’s a bit of target fixation on my part, but few things make me as nervous as the reserve fuel light being on when I’m riding the Duc. To be fair it’s never let me down, I just don’t trust it and I guess I’ve just come to question certain aspects of Italian engineering. Do they go fast - yes. Do they perform well when you ride them for sport - absolutely. But are they built like a BMW - not at all.
After passing a half dozen wineries and dealing with some less than stellar pot-holed parts of the road we came to the intersection of Foxen Canyon and Palmer Road. I hung a left on to Palmer and headed West. This sent us back towards the 101 once again. I had originally planned to have us continue up Foxen until we entered the Eastern side of the city of Santa Maria and have us gas up there. Then I thought we’d head back down South on the 101 so that we could pick up Palmer Road and get back to Foxen for the return trip home. Now what had been planned as the flipside of the trip was becoming our safety value to fuel! Palmer as it turned out was another hoot of a road to ride - but surprisingly slightly different than Foxen even though they’re so close to each other.
Instead of feeling like the almost endless collection of sweepers that rise and fall in elevation on Foxen Canyon, Palmer seemed to hold longer straight aways and higher elevation changes when you hit the corners. It’s a pretty short ride, but in many ways it felt a great deal faster. At one point I looked down and I was doing eighty-five without even knowing it or even trying… Eventually Palmer intersected the 101 - which to my surprise was now a two-lane road. I guess it’s been awhile since I had been this far North and not on Interstate-5.
For some reason I had thought that the more country-road part of the 101 was above Santa Maria, not below it. As it turns out it starts in San Ynez and stays that way all the way until just before Santa Maria. In either case getting on to the 101, we headed North in search of fuel. Luckily it was only a few miles before I saw a tall Chevron sign off in the distance and we were save - so to speak. By the time we hit the station we’d ridden around 125 miles on one tank which is an all-time record for either MotorMilt or myself. So perhaps being that far out in the middle of no-man’s land taught us a bit more about the bikes…
After filling up three or four different people came up to us to ask about the bikes. I have to say it’s one of the unique things about the 999. Not everyone knows what they are, but for some reason they know they’re fast and they’re special. One guy came up to ask if he could take a cell phone picture of the bikes for his buddy. Now that’s a new one for me but hey what the hell… I guess the part that surprises me is not that people have reactions to them. I’m sure a lot of people have reactions - both good and bad - to motorcycles in general when they see them out on the road. But these are the first bikes I’ve ever owned or seen that illicit people to actively engage you in order to talk about them. One older couple came up to us and just wanted to know if they were loud. Another guy walked up and told us that he owned a Goldwing. A third guy just gave a thumbs up from his car. All within five minutes in the same gas station parking lot. Go figure.
Before we got back on the bikes Milt and I had a quick chat about our location. I could tell at this point that we were both starting to hit the lengthy ride wall. I would have had no qualms at this point had this been day 1 of a week long adventure and we were only a few miles away from our hotel for the night, but instead we were now several hundred miles away from home. Knowing all of this we started talking about how to get home. As I mentioned earlier I had sort of planned it out, but perhaps not as well as I should have. This was much more about getting up the coast than getting back down… Now as it turns out Santa Maria sits only a couple of miles away from Route 166 which you can take east to the Northern entrance of Route 33 as a way to get back down South to Ojai. Having ridden it a couple of times, it’s a pretty lengthy ride although usually traffic free and fairly wide open for higher speeds. All told it’s probably 100 to a 120 miles to get back to Ojai that way. Great ride, but just very lengthy. Taking the 101 South to Route 154 and then getting back on the 101 South in Santa Barbara again is a significantly shorter ride and at this point shorter seemed to sound better. I would say that this is where MotorMilt & I probably made our second strategic mistake of the day. We went for the shorter ride instead of thinking about how long we’d been on the bike and what they ment for traffic.
Heading down the 101 past Solvang ( where a very cool motorcycle museums resides ) we hit our first batch of traffic. This probably should have been a sign of things to come, but we ignored it and powered on towards Santa Barbara and Montecito. At this point the new found power of the broken in 999 was worthless and things were starting to get pretty hot under the seat. These bikes just aren’t designed for stop and go. Unless they’re rolling along at sixty or above they just don’t dig it. You can call it a racetrack oriented design or character or just plain hot when you’re stuck on a non-moving freeway. Eventually we navigated our way through Santa Barbara and decided to stop in Montecito for a late lunch.
After lunch is when everything went absolutely crazy. The 101 as it turns out was completely backed up heading out of Santa Barbara - then for brief stretches opened up - and the almost completely suddenly would shut back down to a crawl. By the time we got back to Ventura I thought the worst had to be behind us because from this point forward the 101 has 4 lanes, but as it turns out I was completely wrong. There was traffic everywhere. And it was the kind of late weekend traffic that seems bring out the nuttiness in people. Lane changes without looking. No turn signals. Late braking. I felt like I was stuck in a bad Drivers Ed video production. It almost felt like absolute chaos. So when we hit the PCH and found it to be relatively free of traffic around Point Magu, I was overjoyed. Finally I thought, ‘we can relax a bit’… Again, I was completely mistaken. Turns out in Malibu there was a pretty serious accident. Multiple ambulances and cars facing the wrong direction on the other side of the road. Big mess. Cars were backed up for miles. Luckily - if you can call it that - we must have hit the scene relatively soon after it happened because by the end of the day the PCH was apparently backed up all the way back the 101. That’s like 30 miles. ( I wasn’t there obviously, but this is what I heard fwiw)…
So by the time we got home I felt in many ways lucky to be alive. We had been out on the bikes for over 12 hours over the course of the day. That’s definitely an all-time record for MotorMilt and I. We had ridden somewhere around 340 miles - I think perhaps even a touch more. Again an all-time record for us. We had been out in no-man’s land, carving corners on curvy twisty roads, fighting rush hour traffic, and seeing so much of California. All in one day on the sportiest sportbikes either one of us has ever owned. It was just absolutely amazing.
Forgetting all the late afternoon chaos, I have to say that this was simply one of those wonderful rides that felt almost completely unreal. As if it just couldn’t possible have happened. It should have been to long and to far. Instead it was just right. If could have removed the traffic issues at the end of the day it would have be absolutely perfect, but even with them it was still an amazing adventure that just went on and on and on. Perhaps most remarkable was the fact that after getting out of the BMW sport-touring game I wasn’t sure if I’d ever get to experience that type of riding again while owning a 999 and yet I did. By the end of the day I felt rather beat physically, but emotional it was amazing. To get that far north and feel so much freedom was remarkable. I wish I could bottle that feeling and save it for the rest of the week. By the time the day wrapped up I felt like every issue, every worry, every part of life that I can’t control had vanished because of the sheer power of the ride and the amount of focus it takes to do it safely.
All told this has been one insanely amazing collection of rides for me lately. By my rough count I’ve put around 900 miles on the new Diva over just a ten day stretch. During which I’ve covered the greater LA basin from it’s far Northwestern corner all the way to it’s Eastern Mountain range and a whole bunch of canyons in between. I’ve had the chance to stop at some of the most amazing motorcycle hangouts I can think of - Newcomb’s, The Rockstore and The Cold Spring Tavern - and I’ve had a ton of time to get lost in such a wonderfully good way. And to think early last week I had no idea this was going to happen but in a fantastically organic way it just did and I feel so thankful for that… All I can say is just ‘WOW’….
1 Year Later… The best rides
Sunday MotorMilt & I did a monster 340 mile loop, which took us from LA all the way up the coast to Oxnard, over the southern tip of the San Rafael Mountains, through Santa Barbara and Montecito, over the Southwestern edge of the Santa Ynez Mountains, through Los Olivos and eventually into winery laden backcountry roads of the Western Los Padres National Forest. It was a hell of a ride. Perhaps our first sport-touring experience on sportbikes… I’ve diligently been working on a write up and I had hoped to have it finished this evening, but the sheer breadth of the places, people, vistas and roads that we were able to experience have managed to slow the process down just a bit… A full ride entry is coming shortly…
A teaser from Foxen Canyon in the heart of Santa Barbara Wine Country
While on the ride and while working on the entry afterward, I’ve been spending quite a bit of time thinking about Twisting Asphalt. Really ever since I realized that I had been doing this for over a year now I’ve been struck by several things; the most important of which is how much fun its been. I’ve also been struck by the sheer volume of posts over the past year. Some are as fun to read now as the day I wrote them. Other however are less stellar. Subsequently I’ve decided to do some spring cleaning and delete some of the less noteworthy posts.
I’ve also upgraded my Wordpress blogging software which necessitated a small site redesign. That of course morphed from a small update into a complete site overhaul. According to the website logs the vast majority of readers use an RSS feed reader so I suspect few of them will notice the change.
For those of you who visit the actual site regularly things have moved around a bit. As you’ll notice I’ve relocated a number of items to a new menu underneath the header image. Hopefully this will make it easier to find the various parts of the blog. You’ll also notice that some of the post categories have changed. From what I can tell from the website logs it doesn’t appear that many people actually use the broken down categories in the blog sidebar – so I thought that perhaps there was a slightly better way to organize them hence the simplification of the various categories. I’ve also added a category called top rides as a way to highlight various rides and posts that I think are the most interesting or enjoyable.
During the past several days I spent sometime re-reading the blog and during that time I came up with a handful of what I consider to the best or more interesting riding posts over the course of the past year… I had started with the idea of a top ten best ride posts… Somehow that list got a bit longer…
May 20th, 2004:The Lost Coast Expedition of 2004
This was one of the first blog entries about riding that I ever wrote for Twisting Asphalt and whenever I think back about some of my more memorable rides, this particular adventure always rises to the top of the list. I guess 1,200 miles up the California coastline in just under week tends to stick in your mind for quite sometime.
May 27th, 2004:Sunride on a Thursday
It was during the great Lost Coast trip, after a particularly sporty and engaging day that I first brought up the idea of picking up a liter bike to MotorMilt. Never being the types to shy away from making decisions, it was only a week later that we dove into the world of the Ducatistia. This post was written early in the morning on the day we went to pick up our first pair of Ducs.
July 24th, 2004:The Duc Heads North : Route 33
Having a weekend to myself, I ventured up past Ojai, California and hit the magical Route 33 on my first decent length adventure on a Ducati Sportbike. 230 miles later I was physically beat up, but one hell of a happy camper. This post was also memorable as it was one of the first really good uses of my Canon SD-10 digital camera. Some really cool picts imho.
July 24th, 2004:Stolen Ducs - Update
On one of my darkest days the only place I could turn was the blog… This is a point by point chronicle of the first 8 hours after we came home to find that the bikes were missing.
September 18th, 2004:Ikes in The White House & All is well
After a month of screwing around with State Farm, MotorMilt and I were finally able to settle and get back into a pair of bikes. Along the way I came to realize that I had fallen in love with the Ducati sensibility. On this day I wrote;
My heart simply was no longer in the ‘S’ and it was time to move on. If this is starting to sound all together to similar to a relationship, I suspect that’s because for me that’s what riding and owning a motorcycle has become. In so many ways it has become part of me, my identity, my idle thoughts, my vacations, my relaxation, and my soul. Sometimes I think that might not be such a good thing, but then on days like today I’m reminded that maybe, just maybe, it’s okay profess your admiration to an inanimate object because the minute that I fired over the 999 for the first time the most amazing feeling took a hold of me.
September 25th, 2004:Early Morning Skies and Way Back Memories.
A week later I wrote one of my lengthiest posts which chronicled my evolution through different bikes and about my emotional guilt every time I handed over the keys from a previous bike.
November 26th, 2004:My Kind of Thanksgiving
When all of society is hanging out with their families, it’s amazing how empty the roads can be… This is one of my favorite posts and one of my favorite set of pictures of the yellow 999.
December 5th, 2004:What’s An Extra 1,000 RPMs Worth?
Some of my favorite canyon pictures… And one of my favorite opening to any post;
When I die, I want to be reincarnated as a 999.
Just give me an open road with lots of curves and no traffic and I promise I’ll be a happy camper. The 999 is just that damn special. That amazing, really… At various parts of our ride today I not only stood in awe of what this bike can do but felt simply amazed at the opportunity to ride it.
December 24th, 2004:A Magnificent Morning
Re-reading this post I’m amazing at how much I enjoyed reliving the ride once again… Some beautiful picts too.
December 26th, 2004:A Glorious Christmas Ride.
The following day, MotorMilt & I went on one of our longest rides up to this point on the Ducs and I got introduced to the amazing Route 23… A fantastic ride, a very enjoyable post (for me anyway) and unequivocally some of the best pictures I’ve ever taken.
March 12th, 2005:A Needed Unwinding
This was a very normal ride for MotorMilt & I… One that I hate to say had run together with so many others before I went back to re-read my previous entries… It was only then that I saw one of the better things I believe I’ve written in the blog;
While swinging around a rather decent sweeper on Encinal Canyon this morning about halfway through the ride I was struck by the thought that over the course of my life the word ‘relaxation’ has continued to evolve in its meaning. Almost to a point where sometimes I think it seems like an organic concept, not a definition in a book. Originally relaxing seemed like such a simple idea - have a day off, go do something you enjoy and feel refreshed afterward. Yet these days, as more and more of ‘the real world’ creeps its way into my personal time, I find it harder and harder to just lose myself and feel mellow when I’m not at work. Perhaps that’s just growing up, I don’t know. When MotorMilt and I were headed up the PCH this morning at the start of our ride I was having a bitch of a time finding a way to let go of all that other stuff… And of course its funny how a motorcycle picks up on your vibe, if you feel a little bit tense the bike suddenly feels that tension and begins to act out which in turn makes you feel even more tense then you were when you started. In many ways it becomes a stackable issue, one thing building on the last. Yet as we got further and further away from the city, the more I found a peaceful groove. By the time we hit the deli for breakfast even though the skies were still covered in a big gray mess of moody clouds, I felt pretty good… Thankfully that carried over to the ride home. I found the journey back an absolute blast. Had you asked me while MotorMilt and I were mounting up on the Ducs at the Agoura Deli in all honesty I probably wouldn’t have thought that a ride back on a cloudy day like today could be so rewarding. For that brief hour or so, everything just felt locked in. Not in a ‘zone’ sort of way, but rather in an at peace with life sort of way.
April 1st, 2005:Trackday : The Adventure Continues
Of course you knew that I’d put my first track day on a Ducati on the list, right? This is a mixed blessing type of blog entry, it was a hell of a day that I will treasure of quite sometime yet it was also the day that yellow 999 first sprung an oil leak. As you can see from the entry I really had no idea how problematic that would become…
May 11th, 2005:Dawn of A New Ducati
I thought about placing the blog entry from the day the yellow diva died next, but to be honest that still bums me out a great deal. So I thought I’d just skip ahead to the good part, getting a new duc! One of my favorite posts, hands down. Also some nice picts and one that I especially dig that MotorMilt took from the front seat of the truck while I was riding next to him on the freeway…
May 13h, 2005:Second Ride : A Santa Paula Loop
A great day of riding which was followed by one of my better posts. Some fun picts too. Oddly I really enjoy the picture of the CalTrans temporary stoplight. Don’t ask me why.
June 20th, 2005:A Day of Days (&Video!)
I have to say that this one is still fresh in my mind, so it’s relatively easy to pick as a great ride and decent entry… Memorable because it was my time out with the helmet camera and frankly because it was just one of those days that just felt endless in both beauty and enjoyment. The kind of day you really want to repeat again and again and again…
June 23th, 2005:A 1 Year Celebration : The Angeles Crest
I had to put this ride on the list. It was just to amazing not to bring back up. 260 miles of pure bliss on a motorcycle. It had roads I knew, roads I’d never been and scenic vistas that just took your breath away…
Illusion vs. Ego
This afternoon I was able to steal a few of hours and get a ride in during the late afternoon and early evening. Heading up the PCH, I was only a few miles into the ride when I started to notice what a difference a few hours can make. On a normal weekend ride I tend to hit the road by 8 am at the latest, but today was unusual because I had to work for a bit during the early morning and I didn’t get to hit the road until around 3 pm.
Immediately it was apparent that the level of traffic was seriously increased at this hour of the day. With more automotive traffic of course comes more people kicking it at the beach. And more beach goers means more cops. Police seemed to be around every corner on the way up the coast. Just about every fifteen to twenty miles it felt like someone was being pulled over on one side of the road or the other. With so many extra bodies hanging around the coast and the increased police attention, it seemed like a pretty good idea to get off the main north-south traffic route and up into the canyons.
So I hit Las Floras as quickly as possible and then shot up and over the mountains on Piuma. I was going at a pretty good clip until I hit Las Virgines on the other side of the hill. Suddenly people were popping out of all sorts of usually empty driveways and just generally making rather stupid driving decisions.
Hanging a left on Mullhulland, I just got this sense that today was not the day to push it - at least at this hour. There just seemed to be to much craziness for me. It was right around then that I noticed a blue blur in my left rear view mirror. Hitting the first right hand sweeper on Mullhulland I wasn’t quite sure if the bike behind me was going that fast or my mirror was just shaking a lot. So at first I didn’t pay much attention to it figuring that if the guy really wanted to go fast he’d pass me on the short straight away before the 180º left hand radius corner that basically begins the fun part of the Mullhulland Highway ( sometimes referred to as ‘The Playground’ ). Seemed like a logical enough thought process. Only the guy didn’t pass me, he just moved into a tailgating position.
At this point the straight away was getting shorter and I just didn’t feel like having him on my rear the whole way up to The Rockstore. So I waved him along and pulled over to the extreme right hand side of the lane. Most of the time this sort of action on my part results in a rather predictable outcome, yet this particular time it seemed to illicit a rather perplexing response from the guy behind me - as if he either didn’t know what to do or he simply never expected me to do this. Perhaps he never expected some guy riding a sportbike to let him get ahead of them. After a brief hesitation and another hand guesture by me the guy finally seemed to get the message and finally, right before the corner he over took me.
When we hit the 180º bowl I watch the guy fight his way around the corner and then really let it out on the exiting straight away. I took the corner rather spirited, but really dialed it down on the exit. Figuring that I wanted to try and keep the day dialed down. Eventually he had a pretty good lead on me. Which in all honesty was just fine by me, I’ve got no ego about how fast I need to be.
A couple of corners later I caught up to the guy because he was now stuck behind an old Ford Pickup Truck that was slowly swooping it’s way through the canyons. I wasn’t very excited about this development, but whatever… We both followed the truck in tandem for about a mile before the guy ahead of me (on what appeared to be a Yamaha Sport Tourer… an FJR maybe?) tucked underneath the truck in a left hand corner with limited visibility and made the pass in the on-coming traffic lane. I held back and a couple of corners later the truck pulled over on the shoulder and let me pass. About three minutes later I pulled up at the intersection of Mullhulland and Cornell only to find bright blue Yamaha guy pulled over by the local county sheriff.
A 1 Year Celebration on The Angeles Crest
Last night I was working on the blog, doing a bit of backend work with the php files, when it suddenly dawned on me that I’ve been blogging quite awhile now. Being more or less the absent minded type when it comes to calendars and important dates, it never registered to me that I’ve been doing this for over a year now. I never thought that it would last this long, get this far or continue to going on. When I started blogging I more or less thought it was something I should try because of my inclination toward technological stuff and because frankly I was curious how html, php and webpages worked. I never imagined that I would so diligently stick with it. At several other times in my life I’ve tried to keep journals before but those were never wildly successful. Inevitably those adventures would cease for a variety of reasons, but mostly because I’d get bored or simply forget to write stuff down. TwistingAsphalt has been the exception it seems, according to the WordPress blogging software this post will actually be the 450th entry since the blog’s inception.
Now there are no longer 450 posts, so don’t bother counting them. Over the course of the past year I’ve deleted several for various reasons, but mostly because over the course of the past twelve or thirteen months I’ve gradually found more and more focus. Originally I had a whole bunch of various categories and divergent topics, but ultimately as time has gone on I’ve only really written about one thing and one thing only.
Motorcycles.
Or more specifically my bikes, my rides and the parts of the motorcycle industry that interest me on either a personal level or because of their gee-whiz nature. In retrospect perhaps this focus or dedication to writing about riding should have been obvious. While there are a few entries I post-dated for the sake of hierarchical organization, the blog started right after MotorMilt & I came back from our six day Lost Coast Expedition of 2004. It was a six day 1,200 mile adventure which when paired with a new digital photo camera made for perfect blogging material. I guess in hindsight I should have seen this mixture as the precursor for the eventual niche nature of this blog, but it took awhile for me to realize that when all is said and done no matter what other interests I’ve got in ‘real life’, only one makes it on to the ‘net…
Motorcycles.
As this its-been-a-year concept fully crystallized, my mind started churning along with visions of riding. The ‘I’ve got to go a ride right now’ itch started almost immediately. It’s the kind of mental exercise that pushes everything else to the back burner except wondering which direction you’ll head off towards. Only other motorcycle riders can probably fully appreciate the power of this feeling and the level of exclusion that has the power to kick any and all other responsibilities to the curb while you find yourself daydreaming about lonely highways and secluded routes with gorgeous vistas.
While thinking about riding I started flipping through the various photographs I’ve taken over the past year that have documented just about every single ride I’ve taken. (What would I do without a digital camera? 
) These photos run the course from local roads all the way to distant locations for adventures up the pacific coast highway. The more I looked them over the more I realized that if I was going to celebrate having blogged for a year now I need to head somewhere new. Somewhere fresh. Somewhere different. Somewhere that wasn’t North! And that’s when I decided that there was only one place to go, The Angeles Crest.
For the past year I’ve thought about and even mentioned my desire to make it across the LA basin and tackle the Crest, but for a variety of very real reasons I’ve always neglected it in favor of The Santa Monica Mountains. It’s hard to usually justify riding an hour or more just to get to the start of the ride when you’ve got the Malibu Canyons right next door. But one year anniversaries don’t come along that often so it only seemed right to give it a shot and see what riding the other side of LA was like.
As it turns out staying on an east coast timezone is really beneficial for LA traffic. I was able to hit the road once again far earlier than I normally do, getting out the door around 7:30 AM. Getting out of Santa Monica was a snap, but the 10 West was a bitch. By 8 AM I was stuck in stop and go, bumper-to-bumper traffic with the Duc heated up to a smacking 230º. Ladies and gentlemen I believe I finally understand the concept of perfs in your leathers. My rear end was roasting while we crawled along. I suppose I could have lane split a bit more, but to be perfectly honest after witnessing some early morning lane changing chaos the idea lost much of it’s appeal. When I hit the 10-110 interchange life got a bit better. The 110 as always was moving pretty good. Why people in LA slow down to get on a fast moving freeway boggles my mind. In any case the 110 to I-5 North to CA-2 was a snap and by the time I Glendale the bike was cooling down and my rear end was feeling a heck of a lot better.
I popped off at Verdugo Blvd - the same exit I take for ProItalia - gassed up and got some coffee. Inside I was tingling with anticipation for a new ride. Even though it was still fairly early in the morning it was already getting pretty hot out. The bike claimed that the air temperature was about 80º.
It only took a short five minute hop down Verdugo Blvd before I reconnected with Route 2 at the base of The Angeles Crest and the foot of the Angeles National Forest. As it turns out the park is a heck of lot older than you’d think. It was established by Executive Order in December 1892 and was the first national forest in California. Covering over 650,000 acres it also one of the largest national parks close to a major metropolitan city. For a more detailed history of the area check out this piece from the Palmdale Public Library.
Oddly enough 1892 was a rather amazing year for the LA Basin because not only was the Angeles National Park founded, but Edward Doheny made the first oil discovery within the City of Los Angeles, The Banning brothers begin developing a small town named Avalon on Santa Catalina Island with the intention of turning it into a summer resort, and a man named Abbot Kinney bought a bunch of swampy coastal land upon which he planned to build a “Temple of Culture.” The location is now called Venice, California.
The history of State Route (SR) 2 or The Angeles Crest as it is commonly called is equally as interesting as it turns out… The highway was originally envisioned in 1912 as “the most scenic and picturesque mountain road in the state”, but the need for a road for fire-fighting was at least equally important. Funds were allocated beginning in 1919, construction began in 1929, continuing piece by piece until 1956, except from 1941 to 1946 during WWII.
I didn’t know any of the history behind the area or the road while I was riding - being there made me curious - but in retrospect the age of the road seems fitting considering how poorly it’s condition is kept. The road peaks at over 6,000 feet and there are two ski resorts near the top, so obvious the road gets a fair amount of snow in the winter. Yet I was amazed at how bumpy the asphalt felt. Granted the 999 has a rather stiff suspension, but it didn’t take long while winding my way up the mountain to wish I had a soft beemer suspension underneath.
To be completely honest the lack of quality in the pavement kind of shocked me since I’ve constantly read about “The Crest” in riding magazine, online publications and sportbike forums. It’s a seriously popular destination for riders - perhaps even more so then The Santa Monica Mountains since it connects two highly populated areas, the LA Basin on the western side and the Antelope Valley on the eastern edge.
The Crest also gets quite a bit of notoriety because it’s considered perhaps one of the most dangerous roads in all of California. From 1995 to 1998 23 motorcycle fatalities were recorded and in June 1999 the California Highway Patrol got a $100,000 grant to police a 38 mile stretch of the roadway. According to Pashnit.com’s description of the Crest by May 2000, 1400 tickets had been written which is a ten-fold increase. While fatalities down, it’d be nice to see some of that income from tickets go to resurfacing the road. Who knows how many accidents have been due to hitting pot-holes at the apex of a corner.
Even though the road surface was rather lacking, the views and vistas were absolutely stunning. Few places in the world feel so out of this world. I felt like I was back in the middle of the Alps. None of the other mountain ranges I’ve ridden in California compare to the width and depth of Angeles National Forest. It’s simply grand in the greatest adventure sensibility. The scale of the area just overwhelms you and the natural beauty seduces you to the point that trying to envision being a mere twenty or thirty miles away from the LA basin seems completely absurd.
By the time I hit the top of the range - at around 6,000 feet above sea level - I felt pretty convinced that I had just spent weeks riding to get there. There was basically no sign of life in any direction. The Crest is definitely one of those areas that makes you think, both the good and the bad.
I was pretty sure that if I lost it and laid the bike down, no one would find me for weeks. I couldn’t stop feeling a bit unsafe riding without MotorMilt in tow. At least when he’s behind me I have the illusion of someone watching my back - not that I ever really want to put that into practice. Today that illusion was gone and it was just me and the lonely mountains. The up shot however was that riding alone up in the mountains was one of the most relaxing moments of the past year for precisely that same reason. It was just me and the road. Every time I pulled over for a break, I couldn’t hear anything but a slow soft mountain breeze, birds chirping in the distance and the gentle sounds of life moving on at an incredibly leisurely pace.
Hoping back on the bike after a break, I kept riding east towards the Antelope Valley. Originally I had planned on taking the Crest all the way to Wrightwood and then shooting back towards Palmdale and the 14 Freeway. Turns out this plan didn’t work out so well because about thirty five miles across the Crest the road turned out to be closed. I had seen a few signs that said ‘closed road’ at various points on the way up, but hadn’t paid much attention to them figuring that it’s June and they were probably left over from the winter season. Turns out I was wrong.
So after discovering my ignorance to the local road conditions, I flipped the bike around and headed back towards Newcomb’s Ranch, one of the famed riding hangouts on the west coast. I guess you can’t really be considered a riding paradise without a greasy spoon for riders to hang out in front of…
Along the way up and then back down The Crest I had seen a few folks riding or driving in the other direction - most of these vehicles were park service rangers or service oriented trucks. One of the interesting parts of riding a road both ways is that you get a handle of how other people take to the road. Unlike the coastal canyon roads I regularly ride, on The Crest it didn’t take long to notice that people really hug the yellow line. When I say hug what I really mean is cross. In several corners cars or trucks entered my lane. Normally I’m quite guilty of hugging the yellow line on say Mullhulland or Latigo but it’s rare that people heading the other way are riding or driving ’sporty’. On The Crest everyone does. This is truly a California Raceway. That’s the bottom line. So pretty quickly I started taking the Reg Pridmore approach and hugging the inside of the corners. Even though that left me with less room for an ‘out’ on the inside, it gave me plenty of room to deal with the truck drivers acting like they were Michael Schumacher.
Not so surprisingly for a mid week stop, the ranch turned out to be basically empty. Although I have to say that inside they’re remodeling and from what I could tell it’s a fairly decent joint. Much cleaner and newer than The Rockstore. Not quite sure it has the same charm, but I suspect to truly find that out you have to be there during regular riding periods.
Just a bit South of Newcomb’s, I took a right and got on to Upper Big Tujunga Road. Talk about a completely different experience. In mere seconds the grand vistas that just go on and on endlessly towards the horizon line had completely vanished and disappeared. Suddenly I was riding from sweeper to sweeper through an almost California farmland like area. If you look at the map above you’ll notice that Tujunga runs between The Angeles Crest (SR-2) and The Angeles Forest Highway, so instead of winding up the mountain range the road cuts across in a more Northwest to Southeast orientation. While The Crest felt like a visit to The Alps, riding on Tujunga was more reminiscent of the costal mountain ranges just without the water.
Perhaps the best part about Upper Big Tujunga was that the pavement quality dramatically got better. Instead of battling a constant barrage of filled-in asphalt cracks and relatively wide potholes like on The Crest, Tujunga was felt slick, clean and relatively freshly paved. On a bike like the 999 this raised the enjoyment level ten-fold right off the bat. I felt like the bike was planted to a whole different level because I wasn’t hitting the corners and getting bounced off the pegs.
Upper Big Tujunga isn’t a very long stretch of road and eventually ends at the intersection of Big Tujunga Road and The Angeles Forest Highway (not to be confused with SR-2 The Angeles Crest Highway that I took up from Glendale).
The Angeles Forest Highway is more or less the original Angeles Crest, but it’s significantly older and shorter. At roughly 25 miles long, it’s just about half as long as SR-2 which is roughly 56 miles in length. But just like it’s newer and longer sibling, it was built in order to connect the Antelope Valley to the LA Basin. Approved in 1928 by The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, the Angeles Forest Highway was not completed until 1941.
I started to head down the Forest Highway until I checked my gas level and got a bit nervous about where the closest gas station would be on the Northeastern end of the road (near Pearland fwiw). So instead I took Big Tujunga back down towards Glendale. That turned out to be just a glorious stretch of road. You can tell that I was really enjoying it because I didn’t manage to shoot any pictures! To much open road I guess .
Coming back down the mountain it was approaching elevan or so and quite frankly I just didn’t feel like heading back home. What kind of mini-vacation in LA would a relatively short morning ride be? After a quick fill up I whipped out a mini-sized map and started thinking about my options. At first I considered shooting back up into The Angeles National Forest and trying out some of the other roads, but then it occurred to me that if I did that I’d stand the chance of wrapping up the day of riding just as the beginning of cross town rush hour would be getting started. If you’ve ever tried to get from one side of LA to the other during rush hour in a car you will be able to appreciate just how little appeal the idea of dealing with that mess had for me on a bike that can get up to 230º right beneath your seat.
Peering over the map it then occurred to me that if you take the 210 out of Glendale it drops you off pretty close to the beginning of the 118. Since it was the middle of the day there was basically no traffic so in a matter of minutes I was suddenly heading west down the backside of the Simi Valley on the Ronald Reagan Freeway. If there’s a nicer, newer feeling freeway in California I haven’t found it yet. Just very easy to ride.
I ended up taking the 118 all the way around the valley until it hit Route-23. At this point I half considered heading back down to Thousand Oaks and hitting up some of my normal riding roads, but that didn’t hold the magical feeling that heading over to Ojai did. So once again I shot North up Route-23 towards the gateway to the Ojai Valley.
In just about an hour I had now traveled from a highly wooded mountainous region that’s 6,000 foot above sea level all the way to the doorstep of California’s Central Valley farmlands. Somewhere between five to ten miles up Route-23 orange grooves line the road and you just feel immersed in a sepia-tone colored version of old school California where you can just imagine John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart would feel comfortable sitting on the porch shooting the shit.
Of all the places I’ve ridden in California - and I know there are those of you out there that have logged thousands more miles than I have - I think it says something that I continue to find myself drawn to The Ojai Valley. I can’t explain it nor do I believe I do the area justice, but for some reason it just feels utterly complete as an area. It’s warm, it’s fairly close to the coast, Route-33 is it as far as I’m concerned when it comes to flat out amazing riding, the town is quaint and charming, the people are perhaps some of the most friendly in the LA area and life just moves at a very comfortable pace. It is without a doubt one of those places in the world where the locals have every right to fear that one day the beauty and charm of the area will be run over by flocks of newly minted home owners needing to expand because of urban sprawl. If I had the money to live there I would. And I’d put up a big frigg’n wall to keep everyone else out. It’s that kind of place.
After a short break in the city of Ojai, I got back on the Duc and headed out of town. Instead of taking Route-33 all the way around town, I took the newly discovered MotorMilt short cut of Creek Road. It’s a relatively short jaunt of a road that run oddly enough along a creek that backs the western edge of the town. It literally starts and ends at different points of Route-33, but it’s charm is two-fold. First it cuts all the downtown traffic out and secondly, it’s just a hoot to ride. A very nice collection of sweepers, tight corners and shaded straight away through horse farms and country clubs. I wish it was longer and had less traffic. Just one of those type of rides.
Heading South on Route-33 towards the coast was when my wrists and rear end started to feel the first hints of soreness. At this point I was well over the two hundred mile mark. If I rode a beemer my day would just be getting started - although I doubt I’d be riding as spirited - instead on the Ducati the day needed to start wrapping up. It’s just hard to ride a 999 the way it wants to be ridden and get close to three hundred miles. Anyway who says differently either ain’t leaning over very much or out of their mind.
Feeling the effects of a long day of glorious riding starting to catch up with me, I headed got off the 101 and took Rice Road west towards where it eventually connects to The Pacific Coast Highway just above Point Magu Navel Air Base. The proceeding curves at Pt. Magu were just sweet. With no real traffic to speak of (a reoccurring theme huh?) the coast was just a blast. Seventy-Five in the corners and wide open everywhere else.
Hit the coast also significantly cool me and the bike down. The air temp dropped from 85º in the Simi Valley to around 75º according to the air temp gauge on the bike. Until this bike ten degrees didn’t seem like, now it does. The bike dropped to a mere 167º and I was almost cold at this point. How crazy of a day is that? From 230º on the 10 at 7:30 AM to 167º at 2 PM along the coast.
In the matter of just a couple of hours I’d now ridden from the Mountains to the Farms and now the Beach. Where else in America can you reach and see so much diversity in such a short period of time? And had The Angeles Crest been open all the way I would have also hit the edge of the high desert. That’s four types of climates, regions and viewing pleasures all wrapped up in one day.
How these diverse areas can be so close in proximity to each other and yet so different simply boggles my mind. It just doesn’t seem possible to be so high and far away from civilization and then in such a relatively short period of time make your way to an area that feels so classic in its roots and then wrap up the day looking at the Pacific Ocean. Does it really get any better than that?
For a mid-week mini-vacation I sure don’t think so.
I have to say that this is the most relaxed I’ve felt in ages. Over 260 miles of sportbike riding in one day sure shakes everything loose. Physically I feel pretty beat up, but emotional I wouldn’t trade this feeling in for anything else in the world. As a bonus the Duc now sits at just over 1250 miles as of tonight. That’s just three very average length Malibu rides until it’s fully broken in which strikes me as one heck of a fast break-in. Given my sense of time that’s probably not as true as I think it is and I’m sure I could look it up on the blog, but right now I just find myself enjoying the day of riding to much to care or put in the effort. The fact that the fully 140 horses are almost at my disposal seems unfathomable given everything that’s happened this year with the bikes in my life.
Of course this whole mini-adventure started because it’s a belated one year celebration of the blog on my part - not the strongest excuse to blow off work and go for a very long ride, but I’m sticking with it because it sounds good and well, who doesn’t want to go for a ride in the middle of the week on an absolutely beautiful day?
Over the course of this past year I’ve probably ridden more than at any other time in my life. The blog year started with a 1,200 mile trip on the BMW R1100S. I probably put another 500 miles on that bike before it went away. Maybe more. Then came the 749 which had just about 1,000 miles when it got nabbed. The first 999 had somewhere around 1,800 miles on it before the whole warrenty deal. Now the new 999 has just over 1,250. So in rough math that’s like almost 6,000 miles in about 13 months. Previously I believe I was averaging around 3,500 to 4 thousand miles a year. So I guess there you go, apparently it’s good to blog about motorcycles because it makes you ride more.
I can only hope the coming year will be as grand of a two wheeled adventure…
A Day of Days (& Video!)
Man it’s good to be home. That’s got to be my overriding thought for the weekend. During the past forty eight hours I’ve continually found myself thinking about how getting away sometimes is the only way to remind yourself how much you really enjoy something or in this case, somewhere. Not so much because I dislike other parts of the country, but rather because I truly enjoy the LA experience. It’s a sick satisfaction I know, but flying in to LAX I actually was happy to see traffic on the 405. Somehow that said something to me.
Of course coming home is nice, but having a free weekend to enjoy is much more exciting. Yesterday I once again woke up way to early and ended up hitting the road around 6:15 AM. Normally I’d be annoyed about the lack of sleep, but being out on the road that early turned out to be just glorious. Seldom in LA do you get the PCH all to yourself but yesterday it just opened up when I hit the Santa Monica grade and stayed that way until I hit Las Floras Canyon. Between the early morning light, the cool ocean breeze, the vibrant sea smells and the lack of traffic, there was just to much good karma going around to ignore.
Las Floras Early In The Morning
Sitting here now - about twenty four hours later - I’m still smiling about the ride. After ten straight days of working this weekend was well worth the wait. And yesterday in particular was just one of those magical days when you remember why you enjoy riding. One of those days when you hit the apex of every corner and everything feels supremely planted all the whole way through and when you get on the gas the bike just speaks to you as it stands up and rockets away.
After shooting up Las Floras, I made my way up and over the mountains on Piuma and Saddlepeak. From there I hit Las Virgines and took Mullhulland all the way back to The Rockstore. Because I had hit the road so early in the morning the parking lot was basically all beemers once again. Man those guys ride early! Of course by the time I left a good portion of the sportbike crowd had showed up and filled in the gaps.
(more…)
Second Ride: A Santa Paula Loop
I’m not sure I can adequately describe how much better things seem when you have the ability to wake up in the morning and head out on a ride. Especially when you get to take advantage of the kind of perfect weather we had today in Southern California. It was absolutely beautiful. For the first time in ages it finally feels like SoCal again.
Right now, I’m physically exhausted, so this will probably be one of my shorter ride postings, yet I find myself still sitting in that wonderful afterglow period that occurs right after you have a fantastic ride. The ‘05 is simply an awesome bike. I feel like I write that a lot about Ducati’s, but this time it’s truly different. From the simple pleasure of just looking at the bike all the way to how it reacts on curvy roads, it’s just something else. After covering roughly 200 miles on it today, I feel like I know her. It’s just an amazing experience on two wheels.
Around 7:30 this morning MotorMilt & I headed out towards Ojai - one of our favorite riding areas as many long time reader know. It’s been quite awhile since either one of us had been up that way and although we didn’t make it all the way out to Route 33, we did a really nice loop up that took us from Santa Paula, through Ojai, up around the backside of Lake Casitas to Carpenteria.
The Santa Paula Loop
Took PCH Route 1 North to The 101 North Took 101 North To Highway 126 East Exited at Highway 150 towards Ojai, California Shoot through Santa Paula and got breakfast in Ojai. After getting some eats, we picked up Route 33 out of Ojai - towards the 101 - and then popped off on the remainder of Highway 150 Took Highway 150 all the way until we hit a detour and were forced onto Route 192 towards Carpinteria, CA Hit the 101 & took is South until Rose Avenue in Ventura Got off at Rose Ave and headed towards the PCH PCH Route 1 South, from Point Magu to Santa Monica
Unlike some of our other trips out towards Ojai, this wasn’t the most challenging ride - partly because we never made it to Route 33 and partly because of the remaining rain damage from the winter storms. Just about every route we were on, excluding the freeways, seemed to be under construction at various points. CalTrans seemed to be out in full force. Route 150 between Santa Paula and Ojai was perhaps the worst. There were four or five sections of the road where temporary traffic lights have been set up because the outside lane of the normally two lane road had vanished during the rainy season. During the 2 minutes between traffic light intervals I finally had some time to snap a pict of one of the new temp lights that dot the canyons across SoCal.
According to a few folks we chatted with in Santa Paula, Route 150 just reccently was reopened. So while waiting for the temp lights to turn green was no fun, it was better than having no road to ride at all. If you’ve never had the chance to experience Route 150, it’s a really nice gentile ride. Not nearly as tightly wound as some of the roads in The Santa Monica Mountains, but glorious none the less.
After stopping for quick bite to eat in Ojai, we started to head back towards our neck of the woods on the lower portion (read less exciting because it’s civilized) part of Route 33 that deadends at the 101. Realizing that this didn’t seem very exciting we ventured off and headed North on the remaining part of Route 150 that runs around the backside of Lake Casitas and eventually drops you off in Carpenteria. Outside of today, I believe I’ve only ridden that part of road one other time on a motorcycle. Wow did I forget what a great ride it is. It’s simply a joy. Not the best pave job in the world right now but once you get over that and start to enjoy the scenery and the swooping sweepers it just becomes a blast. We were enjoying it so much I actually forgot to stop and get some picts! From now on I have to remember to add it to my mental list of quality roads that are worth riding in SoCal….
A quick & dirty map of our Santa Paula Loop
Dawn Of A New Ducati
5:00 AM - This Morning
It’s way to early to be awake and I’m a bit out of sorts right now. During the past several hours I simply have been unable to sleep very much. So many random thoughts have been running through my mind it’s hard to imagine that it’s already morning. Just about a week and a half ago the Italian Diva sprang it’s second major oil leak in less than a month. In the ten days or so since then it seems that at least in terms of motorcycles I’ve been on a whirlwind ride encompassing just about every emotional facet.
While watching the bike continue to drip oil as it got towed away I couldn’t help but ask myself what else could possible happen?
It was less than a year ago that I started down the Ducatista road. Just 348 days to be exact. (Yeah, I’m odd enough to go back and look that sort of stuff up… don’t ask). During that time a whole heck of a lot has happened, or so it seems to me… While I’ve been busy falling in love with the bikes, the marque and the experience, I’ve had my heart and soul ripped out when the ‘03 749 was stolen, had two major oil leaks on the ‘04 999, have had the chance to experience a thrilling trackday on the 999 with the CLASS folks, have seen my level and skill skyrocket, and have had the chance to ride both roads I thought I knew and roads I had never seen before. I’ve been filled with equal parts passion, lust, emotional excess, loss, devastation, tragedy, and amazing blood pumping excitement. What other brand could offer such extremes? Longtime Duc owners would probably tell you that this is nothing new. After reading message boards across the ‘net and talking to current and former Ducati owners, there certainly seems to be a distinct love-hate relationship that most folks have with their Ducs.
Yet throughout my journey with the marque - perhaps even love affair - every incident seems to have made the bond between me and the bike stronger. How odd is that?
Whether it’s been a good or bad experience, every moment with the bike has made me feel something. Some sense of emotion or passion. Years of riding BMWs never illicited any sensation on any comparable level. They were absolutely perfect mechanical beasts, but at least for me not nearly as heartfelt. Of course after you spend a few weekends sitting around because your bike is having mechanical issues you logically start to wonder why you should bother with all of this turmoil when you can own a GSXR for less money and in all likely hood have less pitfalls… I suppose it’s only common sense to ask the question. Yet everytime I start to mentally head down that road, I keep coming back to the joy of the Ducati experience. The pure excitement in the way it rides, the way it behaves. It may not be a one-of-a-kind, but it’s certainly not one of several thousand that all look alike. Every time it kicks over something special happens inside me. I don’t know why. It just does. It’s something that feels unique. Perhaps it’s not. Perhaps it is. Yet when I think about it, it works for me. I enjoy it and it means something on a personal level.
I suppose that leads me back to today and this morning in particular. After only ten days, Mike Norman and the folks at Ducati North America along with Jake & the ProItalia boys have pulled off a major miracle as far as I’m concerned. They have managed to get me back on a Ducati… And quickly. Much to my surprise I feel like I’m a six year old waking up on Christmas Day. (Talk about feelings from your youth that you never thought you’d have again…but perhaps that’s for another blog post ) In just a few short hours I’ll be heading off to ProItalia to pick up a brand new ‘05 Ducati 999 to replace the ‘04.
After all the craziness of the past year I honestly can’t believe that this has happened so fast and so friendly. Everyone involved in the process seemed to want to ‘make it right’. The fact that a major brand has the guts to stand behind their product and replace a bike that had a problem with a brand new bike just blows me away. Maybe I’m a bit jaded, but that sort of respect for the customer seems to have been forgotten in big business these days. Case in point during the past two years I’ve had to deal with a couple of computer purchases where the machines wouldn’t boot out of the box. They were fried before I ever plugged them in. Each one of those experiences was far more annoying even though major computer manufacturers build and sell millions more units then Ducati does. I would think that logic would dictate that it should be much easier to replace a cpu than a motorcycle simply based on the differences in scale. Yet from the first phone call to the last, everyone involved in this process has seemed to get where I was coming from, what had happened and how I felt. If only customer service everywhere was as exceptional as my experience with Ducati of North America & ProItalia, the world would be a much better place IMHO. So while it’s a bit insane that I’ll be breaking in my third Duc in less than a year, I’ve never felt so good about my decision to purchase a Ducati or felt like I was in better hands. From this point forward I will always have a Duc in the stable.
10:15 AM
MotorMilt & I arrive at ProItalia just after rush hour dies down. I feel a bit ampped up. On one hand I’m a bit tired of picking up new bikes. On the other hand, does this feeling ever grow old? When we walk into the shop Jake is ready and waiting with all the paperwork. In a way I’ve dreaded this process. After the Insurance fiasco I can’t imagine it’s easy. Turns out I’m wrong. The paperwork gets wrapped up in less than five minutes. No hidden costs or jerking around. I honestly can’t believe that it’s done.
New key in hand, I head over to the parts counter. Spend the next hour and half trying on new helmets. After realizing that I’ve been riding a Ducati for a year now it occurs to me that my current blue & white Arai is around five years old. That seems a touch on the lengthy side from everything I’ve read. So while I don’t really feel like dropping the coin on a new lid, it seems like the prudent thing to do. After a number of attempts with different brands, I decided that even though Arai seems to have altered the RX7 model line it’s probably best to go back into a helmet that I know fits my head shape. Turns out PI only seems to have my size in bright silver. Usually I’m not exactly the most color conscious guy, but the bright silver doesn’t really do much for me. The parts guy (who’s name is either John or Perry but I’m currently blanking on it right now) offers to order whatever color I want.
Testing out the fit of the new lid
Turns out my first two choices are no longer being made. After way too much debate on my part I settle on solid black. Seems safe and easy. I’m also ready to just be done with picking out a helmet. I need a large. PI only has a medium in stock. The part guys (again I aplogize for the lack of the correct name) tells me that the shell size is the same, it’s just the pads inside that are different. I’m a bit uncertain about this, but he offers to swap out the guts of the helmet and custom one up. Ten minutes later I’ve got a new helmet that fits better than my old, feels safer and isn’t giving me a headache. Awesome.
12:00-ish
Helmet in hand, I head outside of the shop and check out the new bike. My heart is beating three times as fast as normal. I can’t believe I’m back on a Duc. It’s awesome and I feel incredibly lucky. In an odd twist of fate the new bike is parked next to the old one. Part of me feels a bit bummed… I feel like I’m cheating on my girlfriend. Perhaps I am because I’m done with yellow.
While I’m not normally the most superstitious person in the world, it just seemed like my luck with yellow wasn’t so hot lately. Two yellow bikes going away for two different reasons just seemed like enough of a hint. I really don’t want that third strike if I can help it. Perhaps that’s insane. Obviously this isn’t the most logical reaction and I’ll be the first to admit that this could be entirely a rationalization inside my head, but Ducati & PI were kind enough to indulge me and let me switch over to red anyway. I suspect it’s not the type of request their customer service folks normally get, but it was very cool of them to understand.
Me and the Duc outside of PI
Sitting on the new bike it’s obvious that things have changed from the ‘04 model to the ‘05. Even though everything is in the same place, the fairing feels substantially larger. I had read that the windscreen was taller, but sitting on the bike for the first time it’s more noticeable than I would have thought. The mirrors feel about an inch or two further out. Visibility seems to be seriously improved over the ‘04 model. Turning the bike over for the first time, the engine roars to life and my heart just kicks into another gear. I knew I missed being on the bike, but I had no idea how much. With the exception of our trackday and two weekends ago, MotorMilt and I haven’t been regularly riding for about two months due to weather and repairs. It’s awesome to finally feel like that’s all in the past.
Leaving ProItalia
12:30-ish
Heading out, it’s clear that more has changed on the ‘05 model than just the fairing. The engine feels very different. I can only open it up to 6,000 rpms (here we go with the break-in stuff again ) but the thing just snaps. Seems much more powerful in perhaps a more meaningful real-world way. The first two thousand rpms are pretty bumpy, but from two to six it’s twice as linear as the ‘04. The bike just pops from two to six almost instantly. Riding home it occurs to me that this must by why people bought the ‘S’ model. I’m not entirely sure how they have managed to make what already felt like a rocketship even faster, but they have. Damn I love Italian engineering.
Around 1:30 PM
We get back to the westside and I’m jonesing for a ‘real’ ride. It’s just way to beautiful of a day in LA to ignore. Way to many stars seem to have aligned today. The weather is perfect. Picking up the bike went super smoothly. Life seems very, very good… And besides who wouldn’t want to rush out to ride their Italian Diva? Doesn’t take much to convince MotorMilt to go along with my half-assed plan. Ten minutes later we’re heading up the coast towards the Santa Monica Mountains. Amazingly I feel instantly comfortable with the bike. It just sings and I feel like I’m one with it. Even though the tires are new and need to be scuffed in, the bike already feels very planted. After reading the Ducati website last night, I know it’s gotten lighter but I’m genuinely shocked at how much nimbler it feels. And that’s just on Highway-1.
When we hit Las Floras Canyon the bike feels twice as quick. Flickability has a new meaning. I jump around between 1st, 2nd and 3rd for most of the way up, constantly trying to keep it around five and half in the rpms. Everything feels very smooth. Out of all three Ducati’s I’ve now broken in during the past year, this one feels the most solid right off the showroom floor. The transmission feels much more certain. Hundreds of times better IMHO. Even though I’m not revving as high as I normally do, I still seem to be going at a pretty good clip. To his credit MotorMilt does a pretty good job of riding his ride, but still keeping up. Course I think the two new stop signs from the winter rain damage help out .
At the top of the hill, MotorMilt says I look very comfortable. I certainly feel that way. He says it looks like the ‘05 has more low end grunt given the way I’m riding. I’m pretty sure I agree with him, but I’m not 100% certain. We hang a right and eventually work our way over to Schueren. While the tires are getting nicely scuffed in, the brakes still don’t feel all the way there. On the last two Ducs they seemed to hit their max power once I had around 150 miles on the bikes. I’m at roughly fifty miles, so as much as I’d like to head down Piuma Canyon that seems a touch tighter than I think I want to deal with until the brakes have a bit more grab in them.
Schueren turns out to be a fantastic idea. It’s a short little jaunt between Las Floras and the intersection of Stunt Road and Saddle Peak. Six or seven corners that aren’t twisties and not quite sweepers. Somewhere in between. The Duc feels incredibly planted as I make my way from one end to the other. At the top of the hill, we take a ten minute breather at the usual pull-off spot. At this point I’m completely floored. Life just does not get better nor does the bike. This is awesome.
While we’re off the bikes, I snap a couple of picts and take a look at the new fairing. Side by side it’s extremely obvious how much has changed. I had assumed that the new fairing simply didn’t have the upper air vents. The new one is much larger and a bit lower in it’s stance. The ‘04 seems more architectural with the extra vents and more angle appearance.
‘The fairings
After the break we head down Stunt. It seems like I haven’t ridden this route in a very long time. The road is ridable, but not exactly clear. There’s a lot of damage from the rainy season and CalTrans has done a pretty poor job of fixing it. In several places I hit bumps that didn’t exists before. The asphalt patch jobs have raised the road surface over the cracks about an inch and a half higher than the rest of the road. I’m doing about fifty or sixty at this point. Pretty sure if it was any faster I’d be airborne after hitting one of these bumps. Get the feeling that while heading up to the top of the mountains is as fast as ever, the way down this summer is going to be a bit slower.
Once we’re down the hill, we make our way through the first half of Mullhulland and hit the Deli for a late lunch. At this point it’s clear that this is just one of those days that has come together in a big way. The weather is fantastic. Warm, but not hot. Little to no wind. Almost empty canyons. Views after every corner. I just feel so fuck’n lucky to be out riding again.
After lunch I ask MotorMilt to switch bikes with me. At first he seems a bit hesitant. Like somehow this will spoil my fun. But I need a reality check. I can’t fathom that the ‘05 feels so different. It must be in my head. After awhile he gives in and agrees. Of course I’m pretty sure that he’s wanted to give it a whirl all day, so this isn’t a tremendous shock. He’s just being a great parent, being happy for his kid.
On the ‘04 I instantly recognize the difference in the engine. It’s nowhere near as linear as the ‘05. I hate to admit this to myself because I already feel guilty enough after having picked up the ‘05 - but from 1 to 6 thousand rpms the ‘04 lugs in comparison. The new power plant is simply a massive improvement on an already awesome motorcycle. Since MotorMilt’s bike is broken in, when we hit Mullhulland I’m able to let it out. Man it’s nice to be able to do that. Hearing the engine kick it up a notch around seven and half on the tach simply makes my soul sing. MotorMilt disappears behind me and the canyons feel as friendly as ever. His new tread has about two hundred and some odd miles on it. I never thought I’d be able to tell the difference between relatively fresh tires, but his have far more grip. Mine are nowhere near scuffed up enough yet. After we cross over Las Virgines, we take another breather at the overlook.
First thing that MotorMilit says to me is that he loves the new engine. Apparently I’m not insane. The bike really does feel different. He seems extremely impressed with how solid it feels. I have to smile. It’s just glorious to be out here today. I tell him that his bike feels really good and he chuckles. “I knew the reason you wanted to ride it was to get above six”.
By the time we get home I’m flat out amazed at how much different and dare I say, better the ‘05 feels. It’s got more power. It feels lighter. It seems faster turning into corners. The red frame and blacked out wheels and exhaust look awesome. The new fairing seems to cut down on the wind resistance while riding… And the mirrors actually seem to work. I feel so fortunate to have had things workout in such a magnificent way. It certainly wasn’t a heck of a lot of fun having to go through the whole oil leak ordeal, but thankfully it has all worked out above and beyond any of my expectations. The Ducati folks simply rock.
Trackday : The Adventure Continues
Now that I’ve had a few days to reflect on my trackday experience I find that all kinds of widely divergent thoughts keep crossing my mind. I signed MotorMilt and myself up for our most recent motorcycle adventure several months back. Perhaps as far back as last September. The idea of getting the Ducs out on a track seemed like a great idea. Perhaps even the next logical step in our increasingly sporty outlook on life. Of course since there was a tremendous amount of lead time between when I signed us up and when the actual course was being held at The Streets of Willow, I think we both had almost to much time on our hands to think about what our first track day experience with the Ducati’s would be like.
To be honest, I really had no idea how it all would turn out. Would I enjoy it as much as my previous track experiences? Could I handle a liter bike on a track? Would I feel like a poser hanging out there? More importantly would I get myself in trouble because suddenly any number of the rules of the normal road didn’t apply?
I had no answers for any of these or any number of other questions that crossed my mind. I tend to think I’m a pretty good rider so this way of thinking frankly surprised me, but then I started to remember my first CLASS course experience which was nothing but jitters, nerves and an odd sense of almost ignorant confidence. The entire week building up to that trackday I honestly believed that I was suddenly going to be amazingly fast. I was mesmerized with the idea that I was going to be out on a track… A track!.. Instead what I found was that riding on a track is hard. Hard work, hard concentration, hard physically. Things happen out there in fractions of the time they seem to take on the normal road. From when to brake to where to get on the gas, everything shifted into a higher gear. I happened to be riding an old BMW R1100RS with ABS on that day. Thankfully so, because I wasn’t as good a rider back then and it was raining through out the day. During the fifth or sixth track session I engaged the ABS for my first and only time on that bike heading up the hill before the hard left hander that starts the famous corkscrew. I remember that by the time that the course ended on that day, I felt lucky just to be alive. As I’ve been thinking back on that experience both before and after this Monday’s more recent trackday I’m amazed how even the smallest events - good or bad - seem like biggest deals when you’re first getting the hang of riding.
Fast forward to this past Monday and the days leading up to it… In many ways I felt almost exactly the same heading into this CLASS course as I did the last time. Lots of doubts and concerns counterbalanced by a whole bunch of building excitement and a desire to see how much progress I’ve made as a rider. If you look back at some of the blog entries I wrote leading up to this trackday, I think it’s pretty obvious that I had at least a mild conflict going on about the day.
In retrospect not only have I progressed as a rider in a physical sense, such as how far I’m leaning over or my feel for the brakes, but also in a mental sense. Several times while I was out on the track I had what one of the CLASS instructors named Fred would call ‘a moment of concern’ and this time instead of going in the tank like I did after the ABS engaging entry to the corkscrew, I just went on and let it roll. Moving past whatever happened in whatever distance existed between the last corner and the next one.
The Morning
Having never been to Willow Springs, I had no idea that the temperatures would be so all over the place. MotorMilt & I had spent Sunday night in Lancaster, a small town just down the road from where Willow is located. During the day it was slightly windy and about 65-70º out, but at night it was freezing. Damn near 30º when you added in the wind chill. Dust is everywhere. It’s dry. The locals call it high desert and I don’t really disagree. All in all, a very different climate than the Westside of LA. By the time we woke up, the forecast had changed. We no longer could expect a day filled with sunshine. Instead it was hit or miss rain with lots of wind.
The Arrival
We arrived at Willow Springs at about 7:15am. I thought we were going to be a bit early but as it turned out the FastTrack folks were running (And I do mean running, after watching those folks later in the day, they can fly…fast) on the Big track at Willow and check-in at the main gate took longer than I think anyone anticipated. Once we signed the liability waivers, which has to be one of the better ways to start a morning 
, we headed into the main paddock area at Willow and started looking for the CLASS group. I have to say that of all the racetracks that I’ve been to as either a rider or a spectator, Willow Springs has to have some of the least descriptive signs I’ve ever seen. It took us a good couple of minutes to find the ’small track’ since it was our first time. Luckily we still made it on time, which let us unpack a bit before checking in with Gigi…
It turns out that Willow Springs is one seriously windy place. Through the course of the day it was consistently windy and when it really got going it was nuts. The kind of wind that was knocking helmets off of bikes on a regular basis if you weren’t careful. I was surprised that even though it felt incredibly windy, while we were out on the track it didn’t really bother me that much. Usually I’m not the biggest fan of riding when it’s gusting, but perhaps because I was so focused on the track it didn’t bother me as much…
After we unloaded all the gear, checked the oil and tire pressure and got sorted out it was time for tech-check. When you sign up for the CLASS course they send you a flyer with their technical requirements, which basically amounts to a bike in decent shape and relatively new tires. Truthfully I don’t think it’s much of a tech check. The main concern seems to be that you properly taped up your mirrors and taillights so that you don’t cause any distractions out on the track.
The Start of the Course
Once tech check was over and everyone had registered, Reg ran through a quick set of rules for the day. The most important of which was that passing on the inside wasn’t allowed. This single rule probably is what separates Reg’s school from other more race oriented schools. And while some folks violated it during the day by accident - myself included - it allows you as a rider to know that no matter what the inside is a place you can go safely.
After the rules were out of the way, Reg split the roughly sixty riders into two groups, dubbed ‘A’ and ‘B’. The ‘A’ Group was filled with the fast cats, some of whom could really let it out. Definitely some knee dragging going on when they were on the track. The ‘B’ Group on the other hand had everyone from first time track riders all the way to folks who just wanted to practice at a slower pace. MotorMilt & I decided that the ‘B’ Group was probably the right place to start out.
Twenty Minutes On, Twenty Minutes Off
Once the groups split up, it was time to hit the track. The ‘A’ Group was the first to go out. They did a quick session where they followed instructors around the track in groups of five or so. After one lap around the first rider who was behind the instructor would pull over to the left and allow the rest of the group to move up in line. Then that rider would fall into the line at the back and the whole group would do another lap around the track before repeating the same routine.
While the ‘A’ Group was following the instructors, Reg took the ‘B’ group for a ride and stop tour of the track. In full gear and on our bikes, we followed Reg around the track en mass. Stopping every time Reg felt there was something important to point out. I have to say that seeing thirty plus riders swarm around Reg on their bikes is quite a thing. Luckily the LAPD wasn’t ticketing for traffic violations because there were some really interesting slow speed lane changes going on at this point.
This was really our first bit of instruction for the day. Some of it was track oriented - like where the correct line was in a given corner - while other stops were more applicable to being translated back to the street when we got home - such as throttle control and being smooth.
After Reg had finished taking the ‘B’ group around the track, the ‘A’ group went in for their first classroom session and the ‘B’ group then repeated the same instructor lead exercise around the track. As non race like as this was, I found these first few instructor lead laps around the track invaluable. Since I had never been to Willow Springs, let alone ridden the ‘Streets’ course, every turn was brand new for me. I can’t say that I had mentally nailed the track’s configuration down by the time we wrapped this first track session up, but I certainly had a much better feel for the course than when the day started. I suspect that every motorcycle school out there probably does something similar to introduce their riders to the track and I found it very helpful.
When our session ended we headed into the classroom for the first of several times. I suspect that the first half of the day’s sessions were more valuable for the newer riders or the guys in the crowd who were returning riders just getting back into motorcycling. None of the information that was presented was revolutionary to me - but then I’ve been to Reg’s classes before and also have read and reread his book on better riding technic several times. It was however a great clarification on a number of points. Nothing hammers stuff home like hearing it from an ex-champion. Especially for topics like the importance of being smooth, throttle control, and advanced body steering. That’s all stuff you can certainly write about, but it’s worlds easier to describe in person. Ultimately, perhaps this ability to get a hands on clarification is the greatest value of a school like this, you not only get to go practice what you’re trying to learn but also talk to someone who understands it and ask them questions as you’re doing it.
From that point forward, the rest of the day basically followed a twenty minute on, twenty minute off flip flop of both groups between track time and classroom sessions. The one deviation was a short braking drill right before lunch, but otherwise it was pretty easy to lock into the day’s schedule and find a nice rhythm. There were also a number of times where just as I was starting to feel fatigued and starting to think about pulling myself off of the track that I’d come around turn 9 and see an instructor facing up track with their lights on signaling that the sessions was over. It was just uncanny how often that happened. Obviously I’m not a MotoGP star in training but it just blows my mind how mentally and physically exhausted you can get in twenty minutes while whipping a motorcycle around a racetrack. I have more respect for superbike racers tonight than ever before in my life and I’m not even fast.
The Streets of Willow
The Streets course is clearly the little brother track at Willow and it’s not a particularly fast. I found that for most of the day I was riding in first, second and third gear. There just isn’t any place to really run the bike up higher than that. On one hand this bummed me out a bit because let’s be honest one of the attractions of getting out to a track is speed. On the other hand running a road course in first is quite a trick and a heck of a lot of fun while practicing throttle control and smoothness.
The real pisser was the condition of the actual track. The asphalt on the Streets course is just terrible. There were a number of potholes and cracks that you could really feel unsettle the bike while it was leaned over in a corner. Very quickly I found myself aiming away from ‘the line’ in certain corners just to stay out of the way of some of these areas. I suspect the wet SoCal winter had something to do with it because I can’t fathom that at a place like Willow Springs they’d let this sort of stuff happen. But what do I know?
Lessons From The Day
During the course of the day I heard a great number of tips and pointers. Some were more helpful than others. Yet the real value of the day wasn’t during the group sessions, but when I would approach instructors for individual answers to questions. One specific example was with Reg. For quite sometime now as I’ve gotten more aggressive in sticking my knee out in corners (not dragging it yet!) I’ve had some trouble maintaining a horizontal transition across the tank from one side to the other. Sometimes I have a tendency to pop up a bit in the saddle thus slightly unsettling the bike. Obviously this doesn’t work out so well for traction. After one particular session I realized that my bad habit was being exaggerated while on the track. So I pulled Reg aside and asked him what I could do to reduce this tendancey. His answer was two fold and quite simple. The first was to practice the exaggerated leans on a stationary bike. I’m not so sure how much impact that’ll have, but I’ll give it a shot. Why not right? The other point he made and this I thought was much more valuable, was to be very conscious of have the outside knee up against the tank while the other knee is sticking out towards the inside of the corner. His feeling was that by thinking about that you’d focus less on popping up. During the subsequent session it might have been my imagination, but I honestly felt that this helped me not pop up as much.
The Bottom Line
Obviously I greatly enjoyed the day. I can’t thank the CLASS folks enough, if there is a more relaxed, mellow, personal, educational and fun environment to learn about riding I don’t know what it is. Reg is great and has a wealth of knowledge and humor. Fred is simply a magnificent instructor. And Gigi runs a really smooth ship. All in all it was really worth the $300 bucks to sign up. There are cheaper track days and other schools for right now I can’t say enough about the CLASS group. They’re just outstanding. I have no desire to be a pro-racer nor do I wish to emulate one, what I do want however is to learn how to ride better and faster and safer. All of which happens at CLASS. In my mind they really rock.
The Aftermath
As many readers know, tires win a race. As it turns out I chewed mine up pretty good. Reg and the crew had suggested that both MotorMilt & I lower our psi to 30 front and 30 rear. Usually the Ducs are at 32/36. Since it was such a cool day with rain and wind, I felt that dropping them down for a little bit of extra traction seemed like a good idea. In retrospect I wish I had gone 30/34 because the back tire was done by the end of the day. Of course somehow whenever I’m under what the manufactures suggest I kill my tires and maybe one should just expect that at a track day you’re going to abuse your tread….
As glorious as the day was it ended a bit disasterly. After the course had finished, MotorMilt, Gaz and I chilled out for about a half hour before heading back to our lodging. One the way back My Duc ran beautifully. Once we got off the 14 freeway however I noticed that the bike seemed to get a bit hotter than I would have thought given the weather temperatures. Instead of running at 160º it was now running at about 175º or 180º. Normally I wouldn’t give it a second thought because the Ducs only really run cool when they’re running at fifty miles an hour or more. I have no idea if this little bit of extra heat was at fault or not, but when we got back to where we were staying I slowed down to the park the bike and bam… oil was coming out of the bottom of the bike. Not a gush exactly, but a decent amount. I wish I had taken a pict of it. If there’s a more Ducati experience than oil pouring out of places it shouldn’t be I don’t know what it is… To make an incredibly long story short, ProItalia ended up picking up both bikes the next morning.
I realize that I was running the bike hard at the track, consistently hitting the rev limiter for the first time, but this is a brand new liter racebike. It shouldn’t be spilling oil for no reason after a trackday, it should live for days like this…But such is life I guess. So I’m in a bit of holding pattern for right now.
A Needed Unwinding…
While swinging around a rather decent sweeper on Encinal Canyon this morning about halfway through the ride I was struck by the thought that over the course of my life the word ‘relaxation’ has continued to evolve in its meaning. Almost to a point where sometimes I think it seems like an organic concept, not a definition in a book. Originally relaxing seemed like such a simple idea - have a day off, go do something you enjoy and feel refreshed afterwards. Yet these days, as more and more of ‘the real world’ creeps its way into my personal time, I find it harder and harder to just lose myself and feel mellow when I’m not at work. Perhaps thats just growing up, I don’t know. When MotorMilt and I were headed up the PCH this morning at the start of our ride I was having a bitch of a time finding a way to let go of all that other stuff… And of course its funny how a motorcycle picks up on your vibe, if you feel a little bit tense the bike suddenly feels that tension and begins to act out which in turn makes you feel even more tense then you were when you started. In many ways it becomes a stackable issue, one thing building on the last. Yet as we got further and further away from the city, the more I found a peaceful groove. By the time we hit the deli for breakfast even though the skies were still covered in a big gray mess of moody clouds, I felt pretty good… Thankfully that carried over to the ride home. I found the journey back an absolute blast. Had you asked me while MotorMilt and I were mounting up on the Ducs at the Agoura Deli in all honesty I probably wouldn’t have thought that a ride back on a cloudy day like today could be so rewarding. For that brief hour or so, everything just felt locked in. Not in a ‘zone’ sort of way, but rather in an at peace with life sort of way.
Today’s Ride Itinerary
The Medium Loop ( Approx. Time: 9:30 AM to 2:30 pm )
While we were out riding I happened to cross over 1,600 miles on the 9. Oddly enough watching a digital gauge cluster roll over is no where near as satisfying as the ‘ol analog white wheeled with black numbers odometer where you could progressively watch the final tenth of a mile click away. In the digital era it just happens. Odd thought I know. In other news, it was nice to finally see CalTrans out working on some parts of the canyons. At several locations earthmover’s were hard at work pushing mudslides off the asphalt. Perhaps the roads will finally be clear before the summer hits.
Absolute most random thought of the day: Ford must have a huge hit on their hands with the new Mustang. I don’t write about cars very often because frankly I dig cycles a lot more, but it was hard not to notice a new ’stang no matter where we were riding today. Granted Malibu, Ca. and the surrounding areas are probably statistically a very niche demo sampling, but man there were a lot of them out there today. Almost all of which were black, except for one that was painted in the oddest lime-green color…
A Magnificent Morning
Today’s ride was absolutely glorious. For much of the morning I felt like I was perpetually stuck in that wonderful moment when you’re slowly waking up after sleeping in on a quiet morning. Strange analogy I know, principally because it sounds greatly unsafe. Yet this morning ebbed and flowed in the most unlikely of manors. I started out feeling rather unsure of myself since I’ve been under the weather for the past few days. It’s funny how when you’ve had a head cold just getting back to normal can feel out of whack.
Unlike most days when MotorMilt & I go for a ride I didn’t feel like pushing it early in the ride. Instead we took a rather roundabout way to breakfast, ambling up the coast much farther then we normally do and then cutting over the Santa Monica Mountains at Latigo Canyon Road. I’ve written a number of times about Latigo before, but almost exclusively from a downhill perspective. That is we rarely take it west to east. The vast majority of our time we’re going in the opposite direction. Yet this morning, by taking going uphill it felt completely new and fresh. It has always fascinated me how a road that you know and love can alter so much simply by turning around and on no day has that been more true then this morning. It simply felt unknown and I don’t know if there’s a better feeling in the world for a motorcyclist.
As we headed up Latigo, I found myself still working my way into the morning. I didn’t feel tired, but I also didn’t feel jazzed. I was simply there on the bike, being proficient but also not out of this world either. Throw in what seemed like a high percentage of bicycle riders swaying into the middle of the lane coupled with an excess of debris and if you had asked at that point whether or not I was going to enjoy the ride, I would have told you that this felt more like a ‘get through it safely’ ride.
Then MotorMilt and I stopped for a break.
After getting off the bike and turning around it was impossible not to see what a glorious day it was. Just what a magnificent morning we had in store for us. The temperature was perfect, not to hot and not to cold. The normally hot running 999 wasn’t making me sweat to death, but rather adding just enough warmth to the ride to make me feel like a BMW heated hand grip was wrapping around my entire body. The sky was brilliantly clear. Not a cloud in the sky. The sun, which at times during Southern California winters can seem to hit at very low angles, for some reason seemed higher. Or atleast less noticable. There just seemed to be to many great elements to not have a wonderful ride.
After we finished our smokes and got back on the bikes, we headed down the rest of Latigo and popped on to Kanan on our way to the Agoura Deli. As most of you know, it’s one of our usual hang outs on the weekends. A couple of cups of coffe later and by the time we got back outside after breakfast I felt like a new person. I drink so much damn coffee on an average day I rarely feel a caffeine kick. Yet from that point forward through the rest of the ride I felt like I was on a riding rush. Don’t know if it was the caffeine or not, but I liked it.
There really aren’t adjective to describe the second half of the ride. Both MotorMilt & I seemed energized in a much different way. We took Kanan over to Encinal where the traffic was extremely light and it felt like we had the entire canyon to ourselves. At the ‘T’ stop sign around the halfway point on Encinal we shoot over to Decker Canyon and took that down to the coast. As the roads kept going and going, we kept riding and riding. I was suddenly becoming more and more intune with the bike. Suddenly shifts were getting smoother, braking was becoming more synchronous with the rest of my actions and the momentum of the ride was picking up. When we got to coast for some reason I just knew that the ride wasn’t over. Normally once we hit the PCH we tend to head back towards LA. However this morning without saying a word, just by looking at MotorMilt I knew that we had to keep riding. Again, there just seemed to be to much good karma to ignore. So in a highly unusual move for us, we then didn’t stick to the PCH, but rather shoot back up the adjacent dogleg part of Encinal. Thus ending up back at the ‘T’ intersection. Peeling off to the right we headed south once again. Right about then I was starting to feel the effects of canyon carving on my right hand wrist. Sportbikes put you in a rather leaned over position after all. So as we were flying down Mullhulland, past the big look out point and through the curvey sections above The Rockstore I realized that since we were heading by it we may as well stop. In all the years that I’ve been riding with Milt, I don’t think we’ve ever stopped at both the Deli and The Rockstore on the same day. Maybe it’s the holiday nature of this weekend or just the fact that we were both warming up, but it almost felt like we were riding our normal canyon speeds at a vaccation pace. I don’t know if that makes any sense or not, but I simply didn’t feel any of the normal time constraints or work related issues at that point. It was all about the ride.
Pulling over at The Rockstore, we picked up another cup of joe (surprising I know) and just hung out for a bit. I suspect they ran out of Bud Light since the six person RUB Harley gang that was drinking in the parking lot bounced pretty quickly after we arrived. Five minutes later the first of about a half dozen Ducati motorcycles showed up for the morning. It didn’t seem like a group, but rather a bunch of small batches of riders. The first one rolled up on a brand new 999R Fila edition - had the whole racing sticker set and the matching leathers. Was quite a bike to see up close. The Fila guy was quickly followed by another race oriented group of two riders. One had a 999S in racing trim with a Ducati Austin sticker set. I’m sorry I didn’t get a pict of the bike because the Ducati Austin racing trim was much cooler looking. Whoever’s bike it was had done a number of mods - new clutch cover, rear sets, mirrors, carbon fibre everywhere, etc. - but the best part was that he had a black coat of paint (or sticker set, I don’t know which) running down the underside of the fairing. Seriously cool with the Ducati Red paint scheme. This of course got me thinking about sticker sets for my bike, but that’s for another blog entry.
After The Rockstore, the rest of Mullhulland was an absolute blast. I feel like I’m repeating myself here, but it really felt like we had the entire canyon to ourselves. There were a few motorcycles heading in the opposite direction, but the roads were basically clear of traffic and very few mountain climbers or hikers walking down the side of the road. It was just so damn empty that at times it felt like we were lost when I knew exactly where we were. Crossing over Las Virgines we continued going on Mullhulland until we hit Old Topanga and then Topanga which we took to the coast.
Once we hit the coast we were ten or at the most fifteen miles from home and yet I couldn’t stop feeling like there was more riding to do. Seldom do we spend almost five hours whipping around in the canyons and shooting the shit at breakfast to end up feeling like the ride has just begun. It was simply one of those days magnificent and glorious days when it all comes together at it’s own pace, in it’s own time. What a wonderful way to spend the holidays.
What’s An Extra 1,000 RPMs Worth?
When I die, I want to be reincarnated as a 999.
Just give me an open road with lots of curves and no traffic and I promise I’ll be a happy camper. The 999 is just that damn special. That amazing, really… At various parts of our ride today I not only stood in awe of what this bike can do but felt simply amazed at the opportunity to ride it. So many thoughts were running through my head while MotorMilt & I were hitting the canyons on what turned out to be a heck of a ride, thanks in no small part to the 600 mile service done at ProItalia and the ability to finally get the engine up above 6,000 RPMs.
I never would have thought that an extra 1,000 RPMs could change so much, but it did and it does. Wow is really all I can say. My bones were tingling while opening up the throttle. Certainly a ‘wow feeling’ is still lingering with me right now, hours after the ride. And in all reality it was just one of our normal length rides, but I almost feel cheated by the fact that I couldn’t rev it up this high before. The last 800+ miles were nothing compared to today. With one service the bike suddenly feels more stable, more linear, and most excitingly, so much more powerful. From 4k to 6k is a great kick, but 6k to 7k is like warp speed. I can’t wait until the entire engine is broken in and we can really crack it up to 10k. Above 6k, the Duc suddenly sounded like a Ducati. The chasis felt like it was holding back a fire breathing monster. Just 1k added 100 times to the experience. And as we were flying up our first canyon of the day, Las Flores Canyon Road, it just hit me that this felt like an entirely new bike when I caught a glance at the speedo and realized that I was in the sixties while still in first gear… That’s just not real.
And as we made our way around the Santa Monica Mountains, I was just struck by how special all of this is and how lucky I feel to be riding this bike at this time in my life. Like any other relationship, it seems that every time out I learn a little bit more about the bike - how it handles, how it feels, how it needs to be treated - and today was just the latest in a number of mind blowing experiences on this bike. At some point it struck me that if I’m going to buy into some sort of corporate branding this may as well be it. Between the history, the passion and the performance nothing else in my life seems to compare. I wish I could ride this machine every day, all day.
My Kind of Thanksgiving
There are rides that you enjoy and rides you take. Rides where your mind wonders uncontrollably, rides that are simply beautiful and rides that get edgy as they go on. Yesterday however was a ride for the ages. I’m still reveling in it now, a day later. My body is sore - especially the wrists and my ankle - but man was it sweet. I had for whatever reason assumed that even though it was Thanksgiving people would be doing their normal weekend morning rides and then going to their respective dinners. Instead it seems that everyone just left. As I told Milt later on, I’ve never felt so alone in our own backyard before. It was as good as any trip up north. As empty as taking 33 our of Ojai or carving central valley canyons. And perhaps that’s why the ride is still lingering with me because it really felt like a vacation ride - not a day trip.
For whatever reason everything just seemed to line up. The world was quiet. My mind was open. The tempurature was decent, being neither to hot nor to cold. The roads were basically empty and traffic was relatively light. There was only a minor amount of winter weather debris leftover from the past several rainy days. And everything seemed bright and clear. Especially the ride.
Perhaps I should backtrack a bit here and mention that on Tuesday Milt discovered that the tire pressure on both our bikes was low - very low as it turned out. We had both been riding the last few rides at about 10 psi under on each tire. Realizing this, we quickly rectified the situation and got the bikes back up to 32/36. Took about a minute and a half as we were pulling out of the driveway on Thursday morning to feel the difference. The bike was back to handling like I remember the 749. It felt nimble and fast and fluid. I’m quickly coming the belief that everything on the Ducatis overreacts in one way or another - this is just the latest example. Seems that unlike other bikes there simply is no middle ground on these guys. And that’s great. Because the second we turned up Las Flores Canyon, off the PCH, flickable became a familure word again. Suddenly the bike felt like it was destined for a racetrack.
Without really thinking about it, I found myself leaning farther over then I have been in quite some time. I still have yet to get my knee down, but I’m becoming more and more convinced that this is only a matter of time. The Duc just wants to go over. It wants to get in a groove and stick there. Just amazing.
Of course if you’ve been reading this blog lately I’ve been bitching for the past several entries about how ackward I’ve felt on the bike. How the weather was shitty and the roads filled with rocks. While much of that has been true, after realizing how under-inflated the tires were and how much of a difference that single change can make on a bike like this, I’m left wondering if perhaps it was never all the peripheral issues or a self created inability to get ‘in to’ the ride - but really a very simple bike set up issue at work. Thinking about it, this is now the second time that I’ve felt ackward on a bike due to low tire pressure - the other time being the great ‘lost coast’ BMW adventure when I actually had to get an emergency tire replacement by Santa Rosa BMW because of a faulty tire gauge. Both times I’ve thought, ‘well it’s got to be me’. From now on it’s check the simple stuff stupid. Just has to be.
Getting back to the ride, once we got up Las Flores, we took Saddlepeak up and over the hill. Again, it was just wonderful. Here’s a couple picts from the top fo the mountain…
Once we got over the hill, we hit Mullhulland between Las Virgines and Kanan. Some folks call it ‘The Raceway’ or ‘The Playground’. On a day like yesterday it’s better than either of those. Just a wonderful stretch of back and forth well cambered corners with no traffic. It was somewhere around then that I realized that this was not only shaping up to be a great day of riding, but a great day of empty landscapes.
After breakfast we took Mullhulland Highway to Encinal Canyon and then did the Decker Canyon jog to get back to Mullhulland. Then took Mullhulland all the way to it’s eventual end at the PCH. After a short break we bounced back, taking Mullhulland back to Encinal and then to Latigo Canyon. All in all, we left at eight in the morning and didn’t get back until two in the afternoon. Not a bad day of riding…
Ike’s In The White House & All Is Well
The saga of motorcycle anguish and despair finally ended this morning and it feels absolutely great to finally ride myself of this awful nightmare once and for all. Thankfully everything worked out in the end and MotorMilt & I are luckily back on Ducati Motorcycles once again.
At 10am this morning we pulled up to ProItalia in Glendale, California. We had been talking to Bill Nation and Jake for the past couple of weeks trying to see if we could pull off a spectacular switch. Taking the insurance payout from the 749’s and trading in our two BMW R1100S bikes on two brand new 2004 999’s. Somewhere along the line I decided that I wouldn’t post anything about it because I just didn’t know if it would happen. I’m not usually a one of those folks who gets worried about this sort of thing, but it just seemed better not to jinx it.
Cutting to the point, Bill & Jake were fantastic. They worked with us, put two magnificent biposto 999’s on hold early on in our conversations and eventually matched a late lower offer from Spectrum Motorsports in Irvine (who’s sales staff called coincidentally after someone from either the insurance company or finance company called them). We were in and out of ProItalia in just a tad over an hour. Jake had most of the paperwork prepped and ready to go and they were more than happy to take the beemers in trade. This was by far the most painless part of this entire bike replacement exercise. So I have to give big props to the PI gang.
After picking up the bikes, we headed out on the 210 West, to the 118 and then the 23. Eventually ending up on the 101 right next to the Malibu Canyons. All in all we put about 130 miles on the new bikes in our first day.
Frankly to be honest I’m not sure exactly where to go from here. I’d like to think that I usually can adequately describe the events and moments in my life, but to be completely fair these bikes almost leave me speechless. They’re special beasts and so completely unlike the 749’s it’s scary… Actually that’s a favorite word for the day, because with every corner and every straight away all I could think to myself underneath my helmet was that these suckers have “Scary Power” and I mean that in a good way. For so long I’ve heard people say that Ducati’s are the motorcycle equivalent to Ferrari super cars, only affordable. After spending most of the day riding an 124 horsepower cruise missile I tend to disagree - at least right now - these things are like Dodge Vipers. They tell you exactly what they’re doing. They feel the road, they sense the corners, they wrap you in such a different level of confidence and they rumble. They’re not nice and they don’t play fair. They run wild. All day it felt like I was taming a bull. They are without a doubt absolutely amazing motorcycles. And I have no doubt that this is true of any of the modern liter bikes…
Thinking back on when we went to pick up the first set of Ducs, I remember feeling a great deal of trepidation and anxious energy over whether or not I would be able to handle a mid-level superbike or even if I would enjoy riding one. Up until that point all I had known as a rider were BMW’s. Things like ABS brakes, saddle bags and sport touring were paramount issues for me. Yet as it turned out little did I know that something deep inside of me had switched and while a part of me still cares about bits and pieces of the beemers, they simply are no longer pushing my soul in the same sort of way that a Ducati does. For all intents and purposes, I have completely fallen in love with true sportbikes and Ducati’s especially.
I suppose that’s not such a shocker since if you look back on this very blog which happened to start coincidentally just about the same time that the idea of picking up a pair of Duc’s struck, you’ll see what basically amounts to a change of heart and a love letter all wrapped in one. I hadn’t quite realized my mind had solidified this much until a good friend pointed it out to me the other day while I was fuming about the State Farm claim adjuster and my motorcycle situation. Up until that point I had felt more than a little bit uncomfortable with the idea of trading in the R1100S, but once I sat down and re-read all the motorcycle posts that I had written about riding, I realized that he was right. My heart simply was no longer in the ‘S’ and it was time to move on. If this is starting to sound all together to similar to a relationship, I suspect that’s because for me that’s what riding and owning a motorcycle has become. In so many ways it has become part of me, my identity, my idle thoughts, my vacations, my relaxation, and my soul. Sometimes I think that might not be such a good thing, but then on days like today I’m reminded that maybe, just maybe, it’s okay profess your admiration to an inanimate object because the minute that I fired over the 999 for the first time the most amazing feeling took a hold of me. From that point forward no matter what I tried to do I couldn’t shake it. This bike feels more alive than any other motorcycle that I’ve ever ridden. It shakes and screams and begs you to let it lose. It might be all in my head, but the sound reverberates differently than the 749. It echoes. It stirs. There more there, there if you know what I mean.
Towards the end of Mullhulland Highway, near Neptune’s Net on the PCH
Veering back towards reality, a couple of instant reactions from the ride today. While on paper the 749 and the 999 seem amazingly similar - just about everything is the same except the suspension and the motor - they are not the same at all. The clutch on a 999 seems to engage much further out and seems to take a heck of a lot more throttle to be smooth. Although to be fair, as the day went on the clutch seemed to break in a bit and get a little less stiff. The brakes feel remarkably similar which is a good thing in my eyes. However the ride is much stiffer. It hadn’t dawned on me until today’s first ride that when a Ducati dealer or message board member says that the 999 has a “better suspension” then the 749, they mean better racetrack suspension not ride comfort… At the 600 mile service I’m thinking that I’ll have the ProItalia techs soften it a bit. On city streets and freeways at high speeds the bike feels a bit less dexterous than the 749, but once in the canyons it feels more nimble. And the engine… It roars. Every RPM is more linear. From 1k to 5k it pulls as well as the 749 did from 7k to 8k. Above 5k it fly’s. I greatly understand now why motorcycle mag editors suggest that people start off on 600s and not liter bikes. It takes much less effort and perhaps even skill to make this rocket ship blast off while the 749 towards the end was just making aware that the real power lied at the end of the spectrum. The 999 starts right away and just gets better and better. There’s just a different sort of grin factor here. And I’m pretty sure that none of it is street legal. If I have one reservation it’s the fact that a fair amount of the powerband seems greatly unusable on city streets. On the 118 freeway I was at 6k in 6th gear and hitting 99 miles an hour. That leaves 4k or 4.5k available? Like I said, Scary Power…
Coming around the bend, today’s ride was fantastic. It’s been awhile since I was on any bike and really felt alive. This whole stolen bike ordeal has hung over my head like I never thought possible, so it was wonderful to finally be able to let that one go. After we hit the usual Deli breakfast spot, we took Kanan Rd to Mullhulland Highway and proceeded to head all the way to the PCH near Neptune’s Net. From there we put our first fresh tank of gas in the new bikes and then backtracked (slightly unusual for us, but it was a special day I guess) to Encinel Canyon Road. Took that all the way until it became Mullhulland. Along the way we stopped at the Rock Store, where we stopped for some water and a smoke. Out of nowhere the lady who owns it and two of the waitresses ask where we’ve been. Apparently without realizing it MotorMilt & I have become noticeable at The Rock Store… How odd is that?
Anyway after getting back on the bikes, we shot down Mullhulland and did the portion commonly called “The Speedway” and then ended up taking Mullhulland all the way to Old Topanga Canyon and back to the PCH. All in all it was around 130 miles for the day. So we’re more than 1/6th of the way towards the first break in point. Pretty sure that I’m going to be sore in the morning…
Stolen Ducs - Update
So this afternoon and this evening have been a not so fun adventure lesson in how you feel when your bike gets stolen. Here’s a brief run down of what’s gone on so far (most of which I’ve posted on the Ducati.ms forum - so if it looks familiar, that’s why).
1:49 pm - Now this really sucks, but MotorMilt & I just got home after a two week long trip for work only to turn the corner in our now not-so-beloved parking garage and notice that both of our basically brand new 749’s were gone. Vanished into thin air. The only trace of their existence was one baxeley bike stand turned on its end. The covers, locks, bike lock chains, and everything else was completely missing. Forgive me for the rant, but I have never in my entire life felt so violated. Granted we live in LA and it’s a big city and all that jazz, but seriously this is the worst feeling. And to add insult to the lose, everyone we call is taking their sweet time to call back (insurance agent, police department, etc.)… If anyone’s got any advice on what we should or should not say to the insurance agent, I’m all ears. I’ve never had anything stole like this so this is a completely new experience to say the least…
approx. 3:00 pm - 2 police officers showed up to take down our information on the stolen Ducs. Didn’t exactly get the sense that they held out much hope for finding the fellows who took them, but who knows. As awful as I feel about losing the bikes, my bigger concern is with the insurance. I really don’t want to find out that my basically brand new bike is now not worth what I paid for it. That would really tick me off.
I’m trying my best to keep all of this in perspective. Obviously it would be much worse if T (i.e. the dog) ran away while we were gone or god forbid someone got seriously hurt - at least motorcycles can be replaced. I’m just annoyed that I have to deal with it. Especially since the engines were just about to be fully broken in…
5:15 pm - Here’s the deal as it stands now, the police (god bless them) ran the plates of our two missing bikes and called to tell us that they found my bike stripped in Carson, CA. Maybe 15 miles away, or there abouts. MotorMilt’s 749 is still MIA. Don’t know yet how my 749 was found (i.e. could have been a raid on a shop or maybe someone just the frame tossed away on the side of the road, I don’t know)…
It’s obvious to me that whomever stole the two bikes clearly was a pro at it. Milt & I kept the 2 ducs locked up to their respective baxeley wheel stands and then ran a second set of kryptonite NYC locks threw the back rims with a kryptonite chain connecting the two. Our two Beemers are locked up in the same fashion sans the wheel stands & locks on the front wheels, sitting right next to them and they were not touched. Nor for that matter was the BMW R1100RT owned by a guy down the hall that parks a few spaces away with no locks. (To give you some background we live in a decent apartment building in marina del rey - not exactly a bad part of town, not the greatest either - the structure has one main garage for all the tenants. You need to key fob to get access, but apparently there is only video cameras on the front door to the building).
The really scary part in all of this is that we take locking the bikes up very seriously and since we only ride them on the weekends, they’re covered the rest of the time in non-descriptive covers. So for someone in the building to know that they are Ducs they would either need to see us take the covers off - usually 5 minutes before we start a ride - or when the bikes are cooling off afterwords. Otherwise they look very bland to the average eye. Obviously these guys had much better vision as they not only didn’t touch the beemers, but left no traces of their visit. No scraps from cutting a chain, no dings or dents on the beemers, nothing. The scene of the crime was spotless. The cops couldn’t believe anyone could be so neat… Personally I didn’t find that fact nearly as fascinating, but I digress…
Maybe it’s the way your mind deals with things like this, but Milt & I have been spending the afternoon trying to figure out how to a) make owning a duc safer and more secure and b) trying to come up with some idea who might have taken them.
On the first point, if anyone has any ideas beyond mass kryptonite locks we’re all ears… Right now every option I come up with seems to involve some sort of lock, which because of this afternoons developments seems like an entirely too easy to break system.
As for the second of those two points, I find myself quickly rationalizing that either someone caught us riding out of the garage on the last weekend we were here in LA and then scoped out the place so they could nab the bikes or they already knew we had the bikes here. Now none of our friends here ride and we really only ride together, so I doubt it was someone within the circle, shall we say… And there are no ex wives or girlfriends or otherwise angry folks pounding down our doors that could be coming back to haunt us either, so that leaves me with the sinking thought that on July 15th when Milt & I dropped our bikes off for 600 mile services someone at the local dealership tossed our address towards one of their friends on the side. Maybe I’m being emotionally vindictive, but it’s the best explanation I can come up with as of right now.
6:30 pm - We’re waiting on our insurance agent to see what happens next. We use State Farm for everything (cars, bikes, office, home, etc.) and have been with them for quite some time with no incidents, of course today’s the first time anything been lifted. We’ve been very clear with our agent that we didn’t do anything negligent… What worries me about this deal is the potential for depreciation. Both Milt & I picked up left over ‘03 749’s for well over what Kelly Blue Book seems to think that a low mileage one goes for. Obviously it’s a bit of an apple’s to orange’s discussion because what KBB is offering is not a low mileage, full factory warranty, basically brand new comparison - rather a used 2003 model. Right now I’m worrying that someone at State Farm will say here’s the KBB price, you come up with the rest… That would really suck.
7:15 pm - Doug K from forty years on two wheels (www.40on2.blogspot.com) shoots me a note suggesting that perhaps this is the chance for Milt & I to move up to 999’s. Nice to get the note, definitely an idea that’s been kicked around, note sure if it’s financially feasible, but working on a plan…
8:55 pm - The latest update in this continuing saga - which btw is starting to feel like a murder mystery getting pieced together - is that Milt just got off the phone with the West Covina police department. Seems that the original police report was a bit off as my bike was found in West Covina not Carson… They found the bike at 12:01 on the morning of August 14th, frame and engine only. Everything else stripped. Apparently when they entered the police report today the VIN popped up… I have to give the police some serious props because they apparently have already sent out letters to the loan company and myself since the bike wasn’t immediately reported as missing… Not a bad turn around IMHO… Still no word on Milt’s bike.
The Duc Heads North : Route 33
Today was one of those days that I dream about; the roads were clear, the traffic light and the coastal temperatures very mellow. I was heading up the Pacfic Coast Highway trying to decide which of the normal loops to take, when it occured to me that I didn’t have any obligations that required me to be back home at any specific time. I can’t remember the last time I felt so free in terms of time. Realizing this, I decided to take the still-nameless 749 up to Ojai on a short day trip…
In retrospection the choice seems decidedly contradictory, I was feeling ‘free’ from time and yet I took the most physically draning and tiring of the two bikes I own out. Go figure. Makes little sense to me now as I think back on it, yet at the time it seemed rather logical…I guess somewhere deep inside I was just so damn curious how the Duc would handle ‘33′ - perhaps the longest, most glorious, most forgotten road in what I’ll call our local riding region. That might be a stretch, since ‘33′ is a bit of a haul to get to and on any given day the temp and condition changes between Santa Monica and Ojai can be total opposites.
230 miles later, I’m so glad I did it. I’m still grinning ear to ear, although feeling physically pretty beat up…
Sitting here now, it’s a bit hard to explain why this was such a great ride. The specific route taken seems a bit bland when I think about it;
The PCH all the way up past Point Magu Navel base, to the 101 The 101 to Carpinteria, Getting off at Route 152 Route 152 past Lake Castaic until it intersects with Route 33 Route 33 through the beginning of Ojai and out the northern end towards Taft Turn around @ Wolf’s (the local watering hole) Ride 33 again the otherway, back through Ojai, until it hits the 101 The 101 South to Rice Ave in Oxnard, which turns into the PCH, then back home
Perhaps it’s because the names of the roads simply don’t do the journey justice. 152 sounds like a bad interstate running through New Jersey, yet it’s not. It’s a flat out hoot - I hadn’t explored it before and I’m so glad I took the chance today… Once you get off the 101 Freeway and turn right on 152, it pops you up and down and spins you around the northern end of Lake Castaic in a series of swooping corners that offer lake side vistas that seem to run for miles. It’s not a hooligan road by any means, however by the time you hit ‘33′ and head towards Ojai, it seems like a tasty appietizer from a ten course meal.
Of course 33 is the reason I went up to Ojai and I’m convinced it’s a road unlike any other in Southern California. I suspect part of the reason is because it straddles both the coastal region and the central valley. Parts of it remind you of the Santa Monica Mountains while other corners make you feel like you’re in Death Valley. And yet other parts seem entirely different than either one of those, almost like a strange combination of a desert forrest - complete with pine trees… And the road is just endless, going on and on forever. Whenever you ask yourself where the great roads lie, this is it…
So now, I’m back home and feeling emotional and physically spent. My wrists are killing me and my body feels decidedly beat up. Yet I’m left replaying the ride over and over in my mind and feeling so thankful for hidden wonderlands like Route 33 and 152. What would life be without avenues for adventure and relaxation?
Sunrise on a Thursday
Well, it’s 5:32 AM as I start this post and I’m finding it rather hard to sleep… This by itself wouldn’t be news, except for the fact that later today I will become the proud owner of a brand new Yellow Ducati 749…
It is quite a thing and one that I’m not sure I can accurately describe. While there are many sportbikes and racebikes out there, there is only one Ducati. It is unquestionably the closest thing that the sportbike category has to the Harley Davidson ethos trapped in race paddock sensibility and a Madsen Avenue mindset.
People don’t just ride a Ducati, they love them. The brand loyalty is amazingly high, over 70% in fact, the most among modern motorcycle manufactures. It is not just a bike, but a lifestyle choice. The Italians call the faithful, “Ducatisti” and they are known to be passionate, insane, fast, sexy and styled.
Owning a Ducati has been a dream of mine for longer than I can grasp. It was quite literally the bike that brought me in to motorcycling.
The 916 body-style was the bike for my generation. It redefined the styling of motorcycles and at the same time won over 115 races and, I believe, 5 world superbike titles over the better part of a decade.
But winning races is only part of the picture. The 916 body style, which morphed into the 996 and then later the 998, was the icon of what was and is ‘cool’. It has appeared in countless movies (the most obvious reference being the freeway chase sequence in “The Matrix”), television shows and fashion mags (GQ did one of the first motorcycle spreads using nothing but a Ducati) over the course of its tenure.
As far as bikes go, the 916 was a revolution. It altered public style, the entire liter bike category, and the definition of sex and speed?
Fast forwarding until today and the 916 body style is still a stunning motorcycle, but it is not the king of the hill in terms of performance anymore. It has been eclipsed by the 999, Ducati?s newest line of superbikes. Unlike the previous reincarnations of the same basic technology, the jump from the last of the 916 line, the 998, to the 999 is nothing short of spectacular. The difference between the two styles is so defined that the 916 which once seemed like a killer sport bike, now feels like a sedan in comparison to the faster, lighter, nimbler 999.
By now if you?re still with me, I’m sure you?re asking what does all this 916 versus 999 talk have to do with a 749? Well, Ducati for the past decade has produced two lines of bikes from the same platform; a liter bike (i.e. anything with an engine displacement over 900cc) and a 700cc superbike. While the 916 through 999 lines excel at the racetrack, many motorcycle writers consider the lighter, smaller, 749 a better canyon bike.
So later today I will join the millions of Ducatisti across the world in celebrating the passion of the most incredible Italian Motorcycle Company ? if not the world ? when I pick up my new 749.
