Back In The Saddle
Back in the Saddle
The suit feels stiff. The zipper determined not to budge. The protective pads feel awkward. The plastic part of a junior prom gone bad. Yet as I snap the last buckle on the boot and listen to the loud pop which suggests that the strap running across the top of my foot is now locked into place, I can’t help but wish that the rocket scientists who developed thermoplastic had something for a bruised ego. But they don’t, so instead I’m left to my own devices. Left to battle my own demons.
Walking into the garage, it’s hard to imagine that its been just six days since I laid the 999 down for the very first time.
One-hundred and forty-four hours of wildly juxtaposed emotions. On one hand, I continue to feel surprisingly ‘ok’ about the event and relatively at peace about the outcome (I’m ok, it wasn’t a bad crash, life goes on, etc.). Yet on the other hand, as badly as I want to ride this morning and ‘get back on the horse’ so-to-speak, there’s a side of me that feels surprisingly timid. As if last Saturday’s get off is the harbinger of something worse sitting just off the horizon. Something darker. Something scarier. Something more uncontrollable.
Mentally, I keep hearing the insurance broker’s last line on phone replaying over and over, “The first accident isn’t a big deal, but the second will be” and for the first time in my riding-life, I’m conscious of the next time this happens. Wondering when inevitability will strike again. It’s not quite paralyzing but it certainly has my attention. Because now it no longer feels like a potential possibility but rather a certainty. I just don’t know when or where.
Particularly because as I’ve replayed the event in my mind over the past six days, I keep finding myself overcome by the sheer instantaneous of it. It just happened. There was no wiggle, no warning, no moment of concern whether this was a possibility or not. One second I was perpendicular to the road and the next I was sliding parallel to it. In the flash of a heart beat. And try as I might, I can’t shake that idea that when it’s your time, it’s your time. Needless to say as I fire up the F4 and watch the old man pull up to the stop sign on the Beemer, I know that the accident is squarely stuck in my head and I’m struggling to temper it’s effects. Even though it wasn’t a bad ‘get off’, it happened and that has me a bit unnerved to say the least…
Thirty minutes later, we’re rolling down the Pacific Coast Highway as shards of light sparkle atop of the ocean waves and I find myself thankful that my first bit of time spent back on a bike is happening on a ride with the old man. There’s something comforting about his presence, even if in reality it doesn’t mean much in a practical sense. Certainly the fact that he’s rolling down the road just behind me won’t stop the inevitable from happening again, but it’s still nice to know that he’s there. No matter how much I grow up, there’s always a unique sense of security when he’s around. The remnants of childhood parental protection I suppose.
Yet as we pull up to the stoplight before Topanga Canyon and approach the sportier parts of the Malibu Mountains, I can feel a twinge of negative energy traveling down my spine. The fear of falling a second time seems so much more real right now. And I feel forced to wonder if this sentiment will ever, truly, go away.
But then the remarkable happens… The light turns green.
Quickly the F4 revs, the engine howls with a uniquely Italian four-cylinder sound and the traffic disapears. Seconds later I’m pushing the right side of the handlebar and admittedly feeling timid as I counter-steer towards a relatively spartan Topanga Canyon. But then the bike bends. Grips ground and never lets go, as if to say ‘I won’t hurt you on my watch’. The chassis plants itself with such conviction that it seems foolish not to trust it. Not to allow it to roam. The road surface tilts to the right and the bike follows its instincts. Then the asphalt rolls left and without even thinking about it, I’m leaning off to the inside of the corner as the machine maneuvers itself towards the apex. Not a knee down racetrack kind of lean angle mind you, but enough to realize that what was timid is now adventurous. The bike seeming so secure that I feel compelled to forget the fear…
A half dozen corners later life seems so much sweeter, the glory of riding the right bike on the right road pushing everything else to the back burner. Once again I find myself feeling what it is to be alive. To be free of thought and fear. To be focused on one thing and one thing only, the road.
In the end, while the hesitation to get back on the bike post-accident makes perfect sense to me, even though it wasn’t a ‘bad accident’, perhaps the greatest lesson from the last six days is that every so often humanity need a reality check — We need to feel things that are negative in order to remember what actually is positive about a given experience.
The Names of Days
What a difference a day can make. Yesterday I felt unable to shed the workweek, yet today it was easy to become immersed in the canyon life. While I didn’t stay out long, the fifty or so miles were easy, swooping lines of enjoyment and the sensation they’ve left behind is a definite form of relaxation. Since getting back home, I keep wondering what really separates these two days? Is it possible that over the years my mind has simply been trained to understand that there is a difference between a Friday and a Saturday? Fundamentally both words represent identical twenty-four hour periods of time – yet with one there is a mental wall, a dividing line if you will, while the other holds no such distinction. Is that why it is possible to compartmentalize outside issues on one day but not another? Does that wall allow the mind to ‘escape’ or ‘refuel’?
Perhaps I’m looking for logic where none exists or maybe it is as simple as a good nights sleep versus a rockier one – I don’t know… But the idea certainly makes me curious and the more I mull it over, the more I wish I had the ability to mentally make every riding day a Saturday – no matter which actual day it was.
The Sense of Optimism
Every time I throw my leg over a bike and twist the key, I think to myself today is going to be fantastic. There’s greatness in the air and it’s easily within reach. Then a second later when I feel the engine turn over for the first time and hear the first burbled exhaust notes exit the pipes, a lightning like sense of life shoots through my body and suddenly the opportunity to go beyond mere optimism seems not only real but also possible. As if something hidden deep within the actual act of riding has the power to instantly take an average day and reshape it into an excellent one. And as I roll off into the unknown the chance for something special seems less of a question and more of a certainty.
But not today.
At least not when you go riding with a cluttered mind and weakened soul. This morning I set out on the open road with the honest intention to leave the workweek demons behind and yet I couldn’t allow myself to escape. To go beyond the confines of the 9 to 5 life. I couldn’t shake the sense that I was neither up for the challenge of the ride nor able to allow myself to simply enjoy the journey. I had so passionately wanted to get lost in the movement and the motion but somehow that just wasn’t in the cards, which is an utterly depressing thing to realize when you’re rolling through scenic canyons on a quiet morning with little to no traffic. Completely open roads don’t come around all that often and when they do it’s a shame to be unable to take advantage of them, even when you’ve got the time.
An attempt at finding peace
I once read an article in which the author proposed that in a time of chaos they felt it was easier to make wholesale changes that affected every aspect of your life than altering things when everything is working in perfect harmony. I’m not sure if that’s true for me personally – though on some level I think it tends to be realistic - but today was a great example of finding peace when you least expect it. A lot has been going on as of late, much of which I will save for a later date, but suffice to say it’s been a rather turbulent few weeks and I’m ready to move on. When you’re hit with a sense of uncontrollable change it’s sometimes hard to put everything you’re dealing with on the backburner and simply focus on enjoying a few hours of free time. Luckily – almost amazingly – I was able to do that today.
At some point the ride simply took over. I was out with MotorMilt while test riding a new Ducati Multistrada 620. I don’t usually write about bikes before I quote ‘review’ them, but the sensation that I felt today seems hard to ignore – on one hand it’s calming and yet on the almost beyond comprehension.
When you put as much emphasis on riding as I tend to do, it can be hard at times to navigate the tricky waters that lie between what you want and where you’re going. It seems that roads and escapes have moved beyond just being a destination. They are not just conduits for transportation but rather magical avenues for enlightenment. I find myself constantly thinking about how they make me feel and how they alter my life on an almost daily basis. Especially when I’m confronted with the opportunity to change. The concept of change in and of itself is not evil nor it is inherently scary, but rather it forces you to realize that what you take for granted may not be there tomorrow. It’s then up to you to view how you’ll deal with it.
Today what I realized is that for the past several years while I haven’t subscribed to a particular religion, I’ve spent my weekends praying to an asphalt church. Over the course of publishing this blog I’ve tend shy away from evoking the sentiment of holy power, as it seems far to dividing in today’s society, yet I can’t help but come to the conclusion that the things that I hold dear are far outside of the normal religious arenas. I so strongly admire the landscape, the curves, the canyons and the way in which they connect. They way the looks mountains and the climate changes. The feeling that riding these roads leaves you with simply means more to me than any preachers words. I’m not a naturalist by trait nor a member of Greenpeace, but the idea that these places are sacred is something that I simply can not escape. They offer so much and they ask for so little, you’d think they would far more appreciated. It’s such a remarkable place in which to let yourself search for what you want. Undoubtedly everyone who ambles along these paths will find their own meaning and I don’t mean to speak for everyone else who is out there. The only person I can honestly speak to and for is myself. What I see and what I feel is something that goes far beyond what they teach in school. This place offers such a unique opportunity. Such a divergent path from the ‘norm’. I’ve lived in LA for over ten years and while I don’t think of myself as someone who is star struck, I’m certainly road struck. These are special routes that offer so many hobbyists the chance to escape. Whether you’re a hiker, a bicyclist, a motorcyclist, or a passionate sportscar enthusiast, this place is a mecca unto itself. When you stand back and take it all in it’s hard to ignore the power of the roads, the canyons and the views. This is truly one of those unique places on the face of the planet and today that sense of uniqueness took every other aspect of my life and pushed it to the side. It allowed me to feel a sense of peace and it’s that not holy I don’t know what is…
Hunting Corners
The language of visual content is based on a number well proven tenants. One of the most basic of which is the classic construction of building sequences where you start with an establishing wide-shot and then proceed to move in closer and closer to the subject. Traditionally this serves to engage the viewer at first in the scope of the scene and then later to connect the audience with the emotional core of the subject matter. Nowadays this form of visual construction has become so commonplace in our culture that we rarely realize when its happening. Audience members are much quicker to point out when this basic foundation has been altered than to acknowledge or notice its existence.
Slowing down while making my way through a solid white sheet of fog this morning on Stunt Road, I realized that I’ve now ridden four out of the past five days and during that time I’ve created my own visual sequence of the Southern Californian canyons and mountains. While today’s ride wasn’t the furthest journey I’ve taken over this time or the most intense, it was perhaps the most centralized to my core. Instead of hiking my way to the far stretches of SoCal galaxy, I stayed closer to home and rambled through the Santa Monica Canyons.
After spending a day riding Route 33 in Ojai and then another traveling through The Angeles Crest, I felt very refreshed back ‘home’ with roads I know inside and out. There was something almost calming about it. It felt very similar to that feeling that comes over you when you land at your local airport after spending a week away.
For all of the faults of Southern California, I’m increasingly becoming convinced that thanks to a substantial National Park system that limits housing developments and the sheer vertical changes that take place in such short geographical distances these roads are the by product of a rather unique set of circumstances that quite possibly may not exist anywhere else. There is truly glory in these roads and riding them is a window through which you can witness such a wonderful blend of nature, speed, curvature, and exhilaration. The other night someone asked me what the ‘best part’ of riding them was and I still haven’t come up with what I consider a decent answer. The reality is that they offer such a tremendous opportunity to both find and lose yourself that it’s hard to quantify what single detail makes them standout.
What I do know is that the last five days have been a remarkable moment in time. A wonderful chance to float from one thought to another while hunting corners and seeking out new straight-aways as prey.
Some more picts from the ride:
Early Morning Fantasy
It was already 71º outside and it was only 7:20 in the morning when I found myself scoring Schueren Road east to west. In minutes - which felt like fractions of a second - I had intersected Saddlepeak Road and swung inland. Beneath me was one hell of a roaring rocketship of a motorcycle and it felt destined to come out to play today.
Overnight it seemed the 999 found its groove. All on its own. Corners that acted cruel yesterday were suddenly rock solid. The bike simply was gliding from corner to corner in one seamless fluid motion. As I made my way across the Santa Monica Mountains it was as if there was nothing I could do to disturb it. Nothing that was going to hold the bike back. By the time I hit the 180º hairpin corner that begins the downhill portion of Saddlepeak it was clear that today was going to be flat out fantastic.
Among the early morning motionless confines of these spectacular canyon walls the bike felt firmly planted in the here and the now. I wish it always felt like this. It was living for one particular moment in time. Today. And it was building it’s own foundation for my personal riding fantasyland. With clear roads and stunning skies this was the day that made up for all the extracurricular non-riding crap that walks among us on a daily basis. For the first time this year I felt in control of where I was headed and more importantly where I wanted to go.
It was simply beautiful.
By the time I hit The Rockstore just before 8 AM the hard early morning sunrise built shadows were just about gone and the world felt like one gigantic playground. I haven’t felt this kind of glory in quite some time. It’s a magical experience when all the various components that make up our riding landscape converge. The kind of fantasy that makes you believe that you can manipulate the bike in any which way and get it to go. And by go I mean, go… (more…)
The Soundtrack of Nature
Perhaps the reason that so many folks associate the word ‘freedom’ with riding is because the vast majority of motorcycles don’t have radios. The lack of these rather commonplace devices tends to force us as riders to not only witness what’s going on but also process the various sounds and sensations that surround us. By virtue of removing the usual noise suddenly you have no choice but to focus on the parts of life that you almost always miss out on during the normal everyday experience.
Coming down Saddlepeak Road this afternoon I was struck by how seldom in today’s world we take a moment to just listen. To just think. To just stand outside of the usual tech-ecosystem and be ourselves in an otherwise completely chaotic world.
Pulling off the road after a soul shuttering collection of left-right-lefts, I found it more than a bit ironic that while the 999 has no true built in audio system I was alternately humming and singing Aerosmith’s 1993 pop breakout “Livin’ On The Edge” for absolutely no discernible reason. Now I’m definitely not the world’s most extreme Aerosmith fan, far from it actually, but I am definitely a classic rock fan. I tend to lean towards more socially relevant song writing such as Springsteen, The Stones or The Beatles. But for some odd reason today this particular song had managed to work its way into my head and it stayed there for the vast majority of the ride.
How the track had gotten lodged in my consciousness is a bit beyond me. It’s not exactly a staple of my iPod playlist – yet somehow I felt like it was speaking directly to me and more importantly to the ride. As I climbed off the bike and lighted up a smoke it occurred to me that I had somehow managed to grossly appropriate the track for my own personal benefit. What it meant to me was not exactly what the song was about. I suspect we all do this sort of thing at some point with any type of art form – we watch it or listen to it or read it and then we process the work within the framework of our own lives. We find the ways in which it’s applicable to our daily experience in order to understand it and perhaps more importantly to understand ourselves. Yet in this case the meaning for the song was morphing. The last time I really remember listening it was back when I was first learning how to drive.
As I stood on the side of the road atop an amazingly quiet and an empty canyon it occurred to me that these days driving is no longer fun. It’s a tiring, annoying hassle that’s filled with a hectic dash and dart mentality. Perhaps this is merely an LA thing, I don’t really know, but it seems like the joy that once was driving has been replaced by a fairly regular aggravation. No matter where I go in this town it’s a sit and wait experience. Just heading to the grocery store is an extraordinary exercise in patience – and it’s only a few blocks away. Yet I can so clearly remember a time when driving wasn’t just fun, but it was also exciting. We didn’t know where the road would lead us – it was all just a grand adventure that was waiting for us to explore it. I don’t know that back then I’d have referred to driving as a personal passion, but it definitely was one of the primary foundations of my world.
Nowadays riding has obviously superseded driving as my personal outlet for this kind of adventurous spirit. And while I might have been humming a song today I’m rather thankful that the 999 doesn’t have a built in stereo system. I never would have considered myself a naturist in the many versions of my previous life, yet today I was very aware that one of the things that I truly enjoy about riding is the chance to become immersed within the world that surrounds us. Whether they’re canyons or country roads, having the opportunity to be able to take a minute to pause and reflect while listening to nothing but natures’ own soundtrack is an absolutely wonderful and special thing.
Memorial Aches
Warm air was filtering down the coast as I was making my way towards the canyons this morning. The sounds and smells of the ocean hanging in the air. It was a rich, almost magical, environment. And when the sun started to break I found myself feeling like summer was finally hitting Los Angeles. When it’s seventy degrees out with clear skies and it’s only eight a.m. you know you’re going to enjoy the ride.
Today was fantastic. It was smooth and easy going, a long ambling trek to nowhere in particular. It was also everything yesterday wasn’t. Today wasn’t about speed or performance, but rather just simply passion. The emotion of just being outside on a wonderfully clean day and enjoying the occasion. The sights and feelings that the coast offered were to luxurious and to energetic to simply blast by and watch from a mirror. They needed to be taken in head-on, examined and then finally cherished. It was the kind of immersion that only happens when you dial it down and just exist.
Of course I suppose I was predisposed to slow it all down a bit since this morning I found myself still feeling the after effects of yesterday’s mega ride. The day after you’ve ridden a lengthy trip on a Ducati never quite unfolds as easily as you’d like it to. Today was no exception even though it was the perfect day to keep going and the perfect moment to soak in – yet physically it was a monumental task just to get on the bike again. Soreness seems to run hand-in-hand with riding a Duc.
Every now and then there are times when I feel haunted by the fact that for brief periods of time I can sometimes find myself feeling older than I actually am. It seems the process of aging is finally beginning to catch up with me on some level. For years I’ve actively tried to ‘grow up’ fast or perhaps faster than I should have. First it was rushing forward in order to get a license, then a race to become old enough to legally buy beer and later the quest transformed into a desire to get a move on with life. But now that all of those young adult milestones have been reached and passed, I find the craving to ‘grow up’ waning. These days I’d rather just enjoy this particular part of life.
Oddly the quest to ride a 999 seems to echo both the desire to move forward at a rapid pace and also the wish to stay right where you are once you get there. It’s a bit of a conundrum no doubt. The bike is both positively youthful when in motion and yet also accelerates the aches and pain once you’re done. Aches and pains I never thought I’d ever feel. As I’ve gotten to know the bike in and out, I’ve come to realize that the day after a long ride on the 9 is never quite as easy of a rebound as I think it should be. Last night I went to bed with visions of yet another spectacularly long adventure. Today I woke up feeling somewhere between sore and exhausted. Thankfully I suppose youthful ignorance never quite leaves you alone. Now that I’m back home again, my wrists are hurting, my knees feel weak and my lower back is definitely got some new kinks in it, but I wouldn’t trade these sensations for anything. They tell the physical tale of two blissful days of riding. Perhaps one day I’ll discover a way to mitigate these sorts of ailments - but today I’d rather bask in the glory of another perfect yet different ride.
Memorial Rejuvenation
The sword, the sea and reincarnation are three fairly basic components of Celtic Mythology that Arthurian legend later weaved together into the notion of rebirth or rejuvenation. Anyone who’s ever seen a modern day retelling of King Arthur or The Knights of the Round Table has undoubtedly witnessed the rather common scene where someone does something rather noble in their last stand before their dead or dying body descends into the depths of an icy cold body of water. It’s one of the primary conventions of classic medieval story telling. For the folks who wrote these tales water held the power to not only wash away ones sins but also bring their soul back to life in its purist form. I have no idea whether these centuries old tales are true, but the idea that a journey to the edge of a body of water can actually cleanse your soul has always fascinated me. Perhaps because on a personal level I tend to believe that riding at its core is a completely rejuvenating experience and on a practical level because the vast majority of my travels happen in a relatively confined space that traverses the California coastline.
I found myself mulling this rather heady conceptual notion over while coming back down the Pacific Coast Highway this afternoon after six hours of introspective rocketship riding throughout the Los Padres National Forrest. Somehow I couldn’t shake the thought that while water might have worked well for the folks who wrote these tales, Route 33 works better.
When I got up at 5:20 this morning I had no idea that today would hold the key to bringing my sense of purpose and desire to live life to the fullest back. Throughout this past week I had dabbled with the idea of heading up to Ojai and Route 33 at some point over this holiday weekend yet the fear of traffic, congestion and other riders’ moronic behavior kept holding me back.
The on Thursday I opened up the Los Angeles Times Calendar Section and found an article titled “Cycle of the Seasons” by Auto columnist Dan Neil a few pages in. It’s a rather odd sensation when you read someone else’s words in such a public publication and realize that this person is telling the masses about what you wish was only a secret held by a few. Reading Dan’s glowing review of a road I certainly know well was yet one more reminder that living requires action. To enjoy the ride you’ve got to experience it.
Dan summed ‘33’ up with this short graph;
This is the sort of Ultimate California road you see in Honda and Yamaha ads: stunning red-rock cornices and forested canyons, valleys of patchwork-green geometries, trees grown together like vaulted ceilings, and through it all an undulating seam of asphalt (and recently paved too) — high-speed straights, hold-your-breath hairpins, perfect sweepers and roller-coaster elevation changes.
Re-reading Dan’s words last night I couldn’t help but think that perhaps this was the weekend to make my semi-annual pilgrimage. You see Route 33 isn’t just a road or simply an adventure; it’s much more than that. It’s a calling. Seldom have I ever experienced anything that quite resembled the urge to conquer and tame such a beast.
Yet even though I knew that I wanted to ride it, logic kept creeping in. I couldn’t decide whether following Dan’s advice and riding 33 today was a fantastic idea or a downright horrible one. I have no doubt that his write up was giving the same idea to a thousand other motorists at the same time. While having my first sip of coffee I decided to just get on the bike and see how it was going. Decide from there.
Forty minutes later I found myself pulling into The Rockstore with the idea still percolating in that Southern slow cooking sort of way. It was only when I got off the bike and popped the kickstand that I realized that this was already an oddly different day.
I was the eighth bike to show up. Since they opened. I don’t know that I’ve ever been out riding so early. Or have arrived at the Rockstore when it was this empty.
The sun hadn’t even broken yet when I walked inside and ordered. As the hot oily coffee slipped down the back of my throat and the four older BMW riders’ idle conversation turned to hybrid engine technology, it seemed way to early to go back home and far to empty to let go of the dream.
As it turns out heading up to Ojai and Route 33 over the Memorial Day Weekend is becoming something of a habit for me. According to the blog last year I made the same trek using a slightly different route. Both trips however served the same purpose. To let go and enjoy. To exist somewhere special. To take in the beauty that too many other folks seem to ignore. But most importantly to refresh and to rejuvenate that small part of me that sits deep inside.
Leaving The Rockstore, I headed North on Mulholland for a bit before swing East on Kanan-Dune. Eventually I hit the 101 and took it North towards Thousand Oaks. I got off on 23 and headed east again. In short order I found my way to the CA-118/23 exit and got off. At this point the relatively simply set of numerical directions becomes much less certain and merely an exercise in mental memory. I could bore you with all the names, but in all honesty it’s not a Mapquest kind of trip. Rather it’s about emersion. At some point the ride takes over and you become more passenger than rider.
Once you’re off the freeway you find yourself beginning to feel lost in an oasis of change. Rolling through Moorpark and later Fillmore it’s hard to tell if you’re in suburbia, farm country or some urban planners mixed up Lego set. This is an area in transition and it’s easy to tell. Chunks of landscape are missing and have been replaced by MegaMall shopping areas. Other sections are classic California single story ranch styled homes. Most of the ride is amazingly beautiful in an oddly classic Californian way – yet it’s very different than the idyllic and easily definable stunning nature of the coast. This is more Central California than Coastal.
Once you hit Fillmore, it’s a quick left at the first stoplight you’ve seen in ages and moments later you find yourself shuttling down Route 126. It’s one of those roads that doesn’t know what it wants to be; is it a freeway or a scenic escape? Eventually you hit Santa Paula and get off at CA 150.
Riding through Santa Paula is something of a history lesson for early California. Like most of the coast the Chumash Native American Indian tribe founded the area approximately 10,000 years ago. They called their city Mupu. The Chumash had little reason to fret when the first Spanish explorers arrived in 1542 and became the first European settlers on the left coast. It took roughly 227 years for Gaspar de Portala, who was the former Spanish governor of Baja California, to explore the area. Yet in 1769, a mere twenty-six years after Portala’s arrival, Mupu got renamed Santa Paula by Spanish and Mexican settlers. The area was incorporated multiple times until eventually it ended up with the name Rancho Santa Paula y Saticoy.
A little over a hundred years later in 1862 the ranch fell into the hands of George Briggs, who promptly got the inspiration to spilt the area up and sell parcels to farmers. The cause and effect of this early attempt at subdivision eventually required Nathan Blanchard and E.L. Bradley to lay out the first urban plan for the area in 1873. One would think that by now this early attempt at planned development would hold little distinction yet it does for one very small and colorful reason. Blanchard planted oranges on the west side of town.
Today Santa Paula has been dubbed the “Citrus Capital of the World.” – though I suspect folks in Florida would find that hard to imagine – yet in 1887 when The Southern Pacific Railroad first arrived Blanchard capitalized on his land by shipping oranges through the west and thus created an identity for the area. Who would have thought a fruit would be so important?
Yet the story doesn’t end there – that same year two men by the names of Wallace Hardison and Lyman Stewart moved to town. Within a short matter of time the two began California’s earliest oil production in the canyons surrounding Santa Paula and together went on to form Unocal, who’s first offices were you guessed it in downtown Santa Paula.
Of course since those early exploits Santa Paula has fallen on hard times. Last year Santa Paula Mayor Mary Ann Krause resorted to a lobbying campaign to have the town declared fictional West Wing Presidential candidate Arnold Vinick’s hometown. Shockingly this did little to boost the self imagine of the area.
Riding up through CA-150 it’s hard to ignore the socioeconomic gap that’s dividing the area. Small enclaves of modern homes dot the landscape while most of the town seems ten years late in applying a new coat of paint. Today this chasm was particularly noticeable due to hundreds of Vote Yes and Vote No ballot measure signs that had been hammered into every other lawn in town. Apparently the area is voting on something called Measure E6, which as it turns out is a community vote to approve building 2,155 new homes in an area called Fagan Canyon.
From outside appearances it seems that many of the residents don’t want the measure to pass because they are concerned about additional traffic congestion. I tend to stay out of the fray when it comes to political issues and since I don’t live there I suppose I ought to keep my mouth shut, but as a fan of the area anything that builds new homes, new parks, new schools and offers more jobs seems like a worthwhile gamble in my opinion.
Once you reach the far end of town, the houses and ballet measure signs vanish just as the road begins to envelope your focus. Suddenly the straight and narrow turns curvy. Part of the road is still damaged from last years rainy season, yet in-between the damage there are some simply spectacular moments. While waiting for the last stoplight to turn green I realized that during previous trips I’ve never taken the time to stop when I was between Santa Paula and Ojai to snap some pictures. So today I held back the urge to open throttle up and pulled off to take a couple of quick picts of the valley floor area between the two cities. Oddly while most of the region is agriculturally based most of this in-between valley is actually comprised of horse and cattle farms. They are some of the most picturesque landscapes I’ve seen in quite some time. After yet another break and a quick smoke, I hopped back on the bike and finally entered the town of Ojai, California.
Of all the towns in the greater Santa Barbara County area, Ojai is my absolute favorite. It’s quiet, it’s charming, it’s artsy and it’s easy to navigate. One main road – that’s it. It’s also the home to what seems like a million bed and breakfast establishments. Clearly I’m not the only one who likes it here. While the area sends off a rather wonderfully rustic Spanish architecture vibe, don’t let the looks fool you. This is pricey land.
Yet it hasn’t always been that way. Ironically while Santa Paula’s early reputation was growing, Ojai’s wasn’t. The land was first settled in 1837 when the Spanish granted deeds to the area to Fernando Tico. He promptly sold the land in 1853 to oil prospectors who apparently didn’t have much success. Evidently the search for oil slowed down and by 1864 the main area of the city was settled. In 1874 settlers decided to officially call their city, Nordhoff. The name stuck until post World War I when folks felt Nordhoff sounded to German. So they went back to the origins of the area and used a Chumash word to rename it. Thus began the rise of Ojai, California.
Last year over the Memorial Day Weekend, Ojai was a mess. Choppers and Harley’s were coming out of the woodwork and traffic was complete disaster. I’m sure it was equally as congested today, but since I was up early I ended up rolling through town at ten in the morning and thankfully missed the masses. By the time I stopped at the local 76 station to fill up one last time before hitting 33, the sun finally had broken through the mixed assortment of clouds and the temperature had finally risen into that acceptably warm, yet still relatively cool riding range where your hands feel a bit nippy but your body resonates with warmth. It was ideal. And that was before I got to the real adventure.
There are few roads that I have ever ridden that hold the kind of hallowed power that lies among the 56 miles of curves that make up Route 33. Yet the road is defined by more than just merely the sum of its corners. To ride it is to experience something beyond merely entrances and apexes and gargantuan vistas. This is a road of lust. A road to witness everything that you can’t do legally. It’s a unique blend of the metaphysical and the innate human desire to push yourself and your abilities to the maximum. With few legitimate hiding spots and absolute no concrete turnoffs, this road is easy to exploit to its’ fullest. From corner to corner it’s just full out fists of throttle at a time. And unlike the tight canyon roads I normally negotiate with, most of these bends sweep rather than switchback and forth. Yet that’s part of the charm and the excitement. This journey is all about letting yourself go and letting the engine out. This road has the unique ability to both transform your place in life and transcend a single moment in time. Every second forces you to think and react. Scary fast doesn’t even begin to describe the feeling that this road elicits. Riding it well is something that goes beyond a mere trackday or a thousand mile road trip. To conquer this winding, twisting, rollercoaster of an adventure isn’t about connecting dots on a map, but rather about building sequences of smooth flowing transitions from full lean to maximum power and back again.
Seldom if ever have I come back from a trip up through Ojai and Route 33 feeling anything less than spectacular. Today is no exception. If you love to ride this road is unquestionably a Mecca. Because the real bounty here doesn’t lie in the path of the asphalt but rather the journey it takes you on.
Weekday Solitude
It starts small. A mere tread of a thought. An idea that floats through your mind amid a day that’s filled with miscellaneous events that need attention. At first you push it aside. You tell yourself that it’s not the responsible thing to do. It’s not the prudent course of action. But every time you turn around the concept haunts you. It’s there. Waiting for you at each turn. Gradually as you finish working on each pile of paper that’s been sitting on your desk the same exact thought keeps running back to the forefront of your mind. You need to ride. Not tomorrow and not this weekend, but right now. Today. While sunlight still fills the canyons and there are open weekday roads left to conquer.
Truth be told I rarely ditch out of work early to get a ride in, but today the voice was just to strong. Conceptually I love the idea of riding while the rest of the world is working, but from a practical standpoint it’s awfully hard to get away. I tend to think about quite a bit, but my track record thus far has been rather suspect. I tend to be one of those folks who always feels like there’s something else that can get done. But today something deep inside needed to get away. It needed to feel alive. Needed to remember what it is that I love.
So around noon I hitched up the leathers and headed outbound towards the canyons. At first I wasn’t sure if this was the right decision, but minutes later while I was weaving my way through the mid-day PCH rush I just knew, this was where I needed to be. This was where I felt at home.
Strikes me that every now and then basic humanity requires some level of personal solitude. Some sort of introspective and disengaged moment of time when you allow yourself to only think about what you’re doing at the exact moment you’re doing it. We live in a world of constant noise; TVs, Radios, Computers, The Internet, Phones, you name it, and they all complicate our lives. Sometimes you just need some space from it all. Some critical distance. A chunk of time where it’s just you, and in this case the road. I suppose at its core this is one of the many beauties of riding. It’s a unique activity that allows you to just get up and go. And today I did.
Because I wasn’t one hundred percent focused, I shoot up Topanga Canyon and then popped over Old Topanga in order to get to Mulholland as I eventually worked my way to the Agoura Deli. It’s a ride that I rarely do anymore, but it was the original loop that started this sportbike fiasco. These were the very first canyon roads that I learned to ride. In a strange way it felt good to be back – almost backtracking - on them this afternoon. There was more traffic than I expected, but that was all right. This wasn’t about speed. It was about the ride. About getting out and going. About setting yourself free when your soul asks you to.
I try to ride a lot – well relatively a lot for me – yet I rarely ride on a whim. Usually I know when I might be able to get a ride in or when I won’t be able to hit the road. But today while heading back home after a late lunch, it occurred to me that riding on a whim is in some ways the most emotionally exciting variant of riding that there is. It’s a very different level of satisfaction. You feel more connected. More inspired. More relaxed. Because being able to just go wherever you want whenever you want conjures the greatest notions of riding. It heightens the experience. Makes you more thankful for it. Forces you recognize that while you wish this was the everyday, it’s the exception and not the rule. There’s something uniquely powerful about that. Something that speaks to me beyond words and emotions and miles of open road. Something that beckons to do it again. Oddly I can already hear the little voice starting to ask about tomorrow.
Blindspots
Sunday was one of those days when lots of little things added up to a less than stellar ride. I had hoped that the ride would be the culmination of a great weekend worth of riding. But unfortunately it wasn’t. The bad vibe started right away just a few minutes after I got up to speed on to the PCH. A gray Acura decided to do the LA lane swapping dance right ahead of me. Swinging from one lane to the next and finally coming back into my lane right as I was accelerating. In fractions of a second the Acura nearly ran me off the road and while I’ve gotten to the point where most moments of concern on a motorcyle don’t get my heat rate too elevated - this certainly did. It was one of those moments when you realize that most folks in cars (or cages) don’t take note of where a motorcycle is when they’re around. The fellow driving had absolutely no clue where I was or that I was even there in the first place. Luckily the 9 has a tremendous amount of stopping power and fortunately I’ve religiously gotten into the habit of covering the front brake while I’m riding.
The next minor moment was when I realized that the battery in the lipstick camera was dead. I thought I had checked it before I left for the ride, but apparently it had escaped my mind. Thus no wonderful riding footage today even though I hauled the camcorder and the lipstick unit up the coast.
Finally the weather was just spotty at best. The cloud cover was so scattered that I kept popping in and out of sunny spots and into dark gray matter. The weather was decent, but just cool enough to make moving around in the saddle cumbersome rather than smooth.
Being smooth interestingly enough has been a topic that’s been riding surprisingly high on my mental list lately. Having now shot several hours worth of riding footage (and having uploaded only a fraction) I’ve been some what shocked by my reactions to watching it after I wrap up a ride. My inital reaction has been that it’s simply amazing to see and hear how much power the 9 truly has - but the downside, which to be fair I guess I always knew, is that because the bike has such a vast amount of power that’s on hand it seems I tend to shift less often than I would have thought. It’s very apparent that the bike is geared very tall - you can hear it and you almost feel it. Watching the video it seems that I spend most of my time in first or second gear. Popping into third when I’m in an open area and getting on the gas. It’s occured to me that the downside to all this mayhem on demand is that if I were to ride a 600cc high revving sportbike I imagine I’d have to learn how to ride all over in many respects. The upshot however is that having now watched and listened to several of the rides, I get the sense that the 9 does a tremendous job teaching you how to be smooth. You have to be. Otherwise it’s a rocky ride. The bike forces you to become smoother and more adept in two directions. Both in terms of delivering the power to the ground and also stopping the bike. Ultimately I think the bike has made me a much better rider.
Salt & Pepper Ride (w/ Video)
It was oddly gray in LA today and while that affected my riding to a certain extent, it couldn’t stop the 9 from rolling over 5,000 miles. For some reason I can’t quite get over that number. The mere sum of it. As I watched the digital odometer tick over it struck me that the red 9 now has more miles then the lost to circumstance 749 and the ill-fated yellow 999 put together. This both amazes me and surprises me. Obviously I’ve read about other folks with high mileage Ducati’s (high mileage on a Duc being a relative term of course), but after the experiences with the first two bikes I somehow doubted the bike would ever get here. But the bike did. In one piece. So now it’s a mere countdown till the infamous 6,000 mile maintenance and while I’m now so excited about shelling out the cash to get it down, I’m stoked that it’s around the corner. Especially since this 9 has been so relatively trouble free. Other than a few issues with the clutch it’s been an amazingly un-Italian machine when it comes to reliability. Almost Honda-esque if that’s possible for a Duc.
Even more startling, this 9 is about to have its one-year anniversary on May 11th. The timeframe feels both lightning quick and yet almost what-took-so-long slow at the same time. I can’t believe it’s almost here (obviously not that it really means much, but still it’s somewhat shocking to me) but conversely it feels like I’ve had the bike for ages. Amazing how that can happen.
Perhaps more amazing is how different an afternoon ride can be compared to a morning jaunt. Just getting up to the canyons was a traffic nightmare today. Until today I’m not sure I’d ever had to lane-split on the way up. Once I actually got up and into the curvy roads there sure seemed to be a lot of cross traffic, SUVs, bicyclists and other assorted wayward objects to deal with. At times today I felt like I was in the shooting gallery, stuck between the marksman and the target. Objects and automobiles were flying in every direction with seemingly little concern for anything outside of their immediate field of vision. Of course the beauty of riding is that even when it feels like the world’s against you it only takes one good run on a clear road to forget.
I had hoped to add more video clips to the site this evening, but unfortunately that’s not going to happen. The more tape I shoot with the camcorder in the tankbag and the lipstick on the side of the fairing, the more I’ve come to realize how sensitive the lipstick unit is to lower light conditions. It’s not a particularly fast lens by any means and it certainly seems that unless it’s extremely sunny out the resulting image gets awfully mushy. Thankfully LA is usually pretty sunny, so I’m hoping that as we get closer to summer the footage gets better. The other thing that I’m beginning to realize is that the camera unit does not like it when the road surface gets even remotely bumpy. Today I tried out a new solution and padded the bottom of the tankbag with several sheets of bubble wrap. That seemed to do a better job of reducing the jolts, but I’m fairly certain that the only real legitimate solution is going to be custom carving a piece of foam so that it form fits to the inside of the bag. Of course the downside to that approach is that it more or less defeats the purpose of having the tankbag in the first place. All the extra storage sort of vanishes. Still I tend to think it’s worth a shot to see if I can help reduce the vibrations and jolts that keep wrecking havoc on the camera’s ability to record without breaking the timecode track.
Yet even with the limitations of the set-up, it’s still frigg’n cool to have some video of the rides. I failed to make a fuss about it yesterday, but I really enjoyed following MotorMilt down Latigo Canyon. I have a new found respect for track instructors who use video training tools to teach their students. It took me several turns to get the rhythm of riding behind someone and keeping pace with them as they go in and out of a corner. In the case of MotorMilt, yesterday he tended to get almost all of his breaking done before the corner and hammered the throttle pretty good on the way out once his bike was standing back up at a near vertical point. I on the other hand tend to carry quite a bit more speed into the corner and usually am still braking before I transition into applying the power. So learning how to keep his pace was quite an experience. It was almost a different way to ride. By the time we got to the bottom I was having a blast trying to stay on his quarter panel – figuring that given where the camera was mounted this position would stand the best chance of keeping him full frame in the video. Of course the bonus of the day was being able to replay that brief portion of the ride once we got back home. Very cool indeed and well worth the effort to shoot it.
Here are some more picts from the ride:
A Moment of Passion (w/ Video)
As it turns out I skipped out of work early today in order to get a short afternoon ride in. Given the reaction to the show it somehow only seemed appropriate to get up into the canyons and enjoy life for a little bit. Yet at the same time I felt ridiculously guilty for doing it even though there was nothing going on at work. It’s remarkable how many times during a given week my mind will drift off and start plotting a weekday escape but all to often they never come to pass. I guess the reality is that like most things in life there’s always something else to do or another bit of business to take care and somehow I just intrinsically know that if I push those papers off to the side of the desk they’ll haunt me during the ride. Yet today was different. Today wasn’t about speed or knee dragging or becoming a better rider. Today was about allowing myself to smile.
One of my greatest personal failures in life is that I rarely take the time to enjoy the moment. Somehow they have a way of whisking away before I’m ready for them to leave. My mind is somehow wired to simply move on. There’s a former Hollywood producer that once coined the phrase, ‘Win, lose, next’ and rarely have three words so aptly described my mentality. I look at some of my friends and often times admire their ability to let things sink in. It’s a gift they don’t even know they have. Yet today was different because it was sinking in.
As MotorMilt and I worked our way across The Santa Monica Mountains, I found it easy to just be there. And even though it wasn’t the warmest or the sunniest day, somehow it just felt right to ride. It felt like it was where I was supposed to be at that exact moment in time.
I was by no means at the top of my game and thanks to the recent rainfall around here there was a remarkable amount of debris in the road. So I very consciously dialed it down and allowed myself to take in the sights and the sounds that surround you while you’re riding. There are so many things that I admire about the Malibu Canyons, but perhaps the greatest single attribute that they offer is the solitude of the road. From one corner to the next there are so many different kinds of entrances and exits that it’s hard not to lose yourself in the act of carving your way from one end of the road to the other. And in that moment, it’s just you and your thoughts battling the asphalt.
We spent most of the ride working our way up Las Floras, over Saddlepeak, doing a short jaunt on Las Virgines and then popping across the ‘playground’ section of Mulholland until we eventually made our way to the Agoura Deli for a late lunch. Through the entire episode I kept thinking about the word ‘passion’.
It’s a far more unique attribute then I think people give it credit for being. In my mind it’s a wondrous and remarkable word. Passion is something that I strive for and something that I’d like to believe affects everything I do. I’d like to believe that every action or choice I make is somehow influenced by it or created from it. In many ways, I believe it’s one of the cornerstone tenants of my life and a concept from which I think one can draw inspiration, creativity and determination.
Obviously motorcycles and sportbikes have become the dominant passion in my life. I find it hard to imagine how I would exist without them and more specifically without riding them. I don’t ride because it looks cool or to get chicks. I ride because somehow it’s become the defining characteristic of my soul. It’s how I evolve and how I find peace. It’s a sport that I respect far more than a number of other things in life. Every time I get on the bike I’m keenly aware of how small the difference is between being safe and being stupid. Walking that line and juggling those choices is a thrill and it’s also a skill. Something that one has to practice and something that I’m not sure there is a way to perfect.
And here are some more picts:
Molholland after the Rain (w/ video)
It’s been raining quite a bit in LA lately and oddly enough it usually pours the most on the exact days I have the means and motivation to get a ride in. Some folks out there ride in the inclimate weather and I’d imagine a certain percentage of them actually enjoy it. As a general rule, I don’t however. When dark skies start rolling in all I tend to think about is the losing my traction in the middle of a corner and the puddles of Malibu mud I’ll have to wage war with. Rain also has the particularly wonderful side effect when it’s combined with SoCal canyon roads of producing all sorts of rocky road hazards. As a general rule these sorts of obstacles make leaning a sportbike over a much more exciting adventure than I tend to desire. Give me clear skies and clean roads and I’m a much happy camper…
So last week while it was raining I felt pretty certain that I wouldn’t be getting a ride in this weekend. It had all the trappings of a foul experience in the making. Yet I guess the moral to this story is that you should never say never - even mentally - because sometimes things surprise you and come at you from places you least expect. Saturday night I ended up meeting a group of fellow LA based gearheads and moto-enthusiasts. As it turns out nothing stirs the passion of and more importantly for riding like chatting about it over some cold beer and mexican food. Suddenly, there I was, ready to go. Blood was pumping through my veins and nothing was going to hold me back from hitting the road. It seemed less like an activity to be planned and more like a calling. So come Sunday morning I found myself hitting the road and rolling around the canyons even though earlier in the week I was 99% sure I wouldn’t be out there.
Heading down the PCH and turning up Las Floras Canyon Road, I found myself feeling very aware of how special it felt to be out riding when I didn’t think I would be. It made the morning feel that much sweeter and in some respects I cherished the adventure more - because it shouldn’t have been there. It normally wouldn’t have been. Of course to be fair I suspect that much of this emotion is coming from a variety of places that honestly probably have no business in a motorcycle blog. Lately I’ve been working like crazy, dealing with deadlines and more annoyingly dealing with all the issues that come up in post-production at the last minute. Events that are either preceded or followed by ’should have’ or ‘could have’ and usually are controllable issues that were overlooked or under thought. In Hollywood there’s an age old expression that a production can either be good, fast or cheap but you only get to choose two. At no time in my life have those words rung more true.
Given all the chaos at work it took awhile to truly get ‘into the ride’ - but eventually it came and for once I felt like I was able to push all of the usual noise to the side and just allow myself to enjoy the ride. I wasn’t even close to being 100% ‘on’, but oddly that was really ok with me. Sunday was about just being ‘there’ and feeling alive. It was particularly hard to ignore how magnificent the Santa Monica Mountains felt. During the patches of sunshine the canyons simply came alive. Green and lush with miles and miles of views. It felt like you could see forever.
As you’ll notice from the picts, I picked up a new riding bud - Stazz, who tosses his BMW R1100S around with abandon. The more I find myself riding with other folks the more enjoyable it gets. Truth be told, I’m probably not the best guy to follow around as I imagine I tend to wildly fluctuate between sight-seeing and attacking corners. But Stazz was a good sport about it and eventually we worked our way from Las Floras to Saddlepeak. Headed down to Las Virgines and then shot up Mulholland before grabbing some eats. Afterwards we hit the back half of Mulholland and took it to out to the coast. By the time we pulled off and I grabbed a smoke it was hard to justify heading back south on the PCH. By then it was around 2 in the afternoon and all the sensory inputs of life seemed to point us back in the direction of Mulholland heading East. So we flipped around and head back up through the canyons. It’s amazing how different a road can feel going in the opposite direction. Corners you think you know act like fresh faces and the very places you feel the least comfortable suddenly seem easy.
And for the first time I’m going to be able to actually share the experience. As it turns out one of the bonus side effects of all this rain is that it gave me a ton of time to think about trying to shoot more onboard video. As some of you might recall last year I was offered the chance to try out a Twenty20 Helmet Camera but truth be told I did a pretty piss poor job testing out the unit. The more I mulled the idea of video over the more I came to realize that the mistake that I had made was mounting the unit to my helmet and keeping the record camera in a fanny pack. That particular set up simply didn’t work well for me - perhaps others have had better experiences trying it that way. But the $39 Joe Rocket Tank Bag solved the storage problem and as I’ve grown more accustomed to riding around with it mounted on the bike, the thought to try the video thing again continued to creep into my mind. So this time I stuck the record deck in the tankbag and hard mounted the camera to the upper left side of the fairing. The difference is night and day.
Here are some picts from the ride
A Red Posse
Once again I’ve been slacking on the ‘ol posting front. Somehow this week sort of snuck up and engulfed me, but even while dealing with the chaotic nature of the workweek I keep finding myself being reflectively drawn back to Sunday’s wondrous ride. Over the course of the past few days whiling I’ve been sitting in the office I keep finding myself replaying various moments of the ride over and over. It was that good…And each time relive the sequence of events in a daydream like haze I keep trying to find the right word to describe how the ride felt.
Thus far the only word that seems to suit is remarkable.
Remarkable because Sunday’s ride was a marvelous five-hour adventure that simply just went on. It was the kind of ride that held the sort of smoothness that I sometime struggle to find. There was no looking at the clock or wondering about time, it was rather just a series of brief rides and welcome breaks that added up to a wonderfully free flowing event that was just what I needed. It was relaxing, it was special and it was immersive. When I sit back and think about the totality of the event, it’s hard not to shake my head and wonder why every weekend ride can’t feel this way.
It was just remarkable.
I’m sure there are better adjectives out there that a true wordsmith might employ, but after weeks of on and off SoCal rain, lots of time spent at work till the late hours of the night and a mixed bag of emotional turmoil, the word somehow fits for me. No matter how much I try to think of something else, I keep finding myself ponder the ride and internally commenting to myself how ‘remarkable’ it was. In many ways it’s a simple word. But it’s also clear and hopefully it conveys the extreme awe the day offered. Because when you find yourself lost in a daylong ride while making laps around the largest urban national park in the country it’s hard to not feel a twinge of the extraordinary run through your veins.
There’s something special about that sort of spellbound moment. It’s an automotive trance that captures your soul and blocks out so many other bits of noise that float around in your head. At least they do in mine. Having that peace and quiet is amazing.
If you look at a National Park Guide Map you find that The Santa Monica Mountains are comprised of 153,075 acres. That’s big. To put it into perspective, it’s roughly 153 football fields (without their endzones of course) strung together. That’s a massive chunk of land. If anything hits that home in LA, it’s the fact that the Santa Monica Mountains run through five area codes and roll over twenty six different zip codes. The area includes an incredible amount of biosystem diversity and a number of endangered species. I’d imagine if you were a biologist it’d be as close to heaven as you could get this side of an Amazon rain forest.
Of course I’m not a biologist, but rather a gearhead and yet this land is just as holy for me. Not because I’m some kind of spiritual wizard, but rather because in a world where the best roads continue to get straightened out for new subdivisions and supermarkets, this place is continues to exist. It’s unique and it’s immense. In LA terms these roads are rare. One day I have no doubt that we’ll call them ‘endangered’ just like some of the animals that run through the brush.
I wonder if the folks who first paved these stretches of asphalt had any idea what they were creating. The online DMV and LA transit history is a bit sketchy to say the least but at some point someone obviously had a plan. Someone thought it through. Said to themselves, hey this place needs a curvy emotionally gripping rollercoaster of a road. Right here! In the middle of a barely habitable canyon. This week I’ve wondered who that person was because it’s a legacy that ought to be recognized. It ought to be remembered. Yet all that stands these days are the roads.
Wonderfully winding, curving, soul searching routes that the legions of faux LA car aficionados surprisingly don’t pay attention to. Frankly it amazes me. This is a city of cars and car culture. The hot-rod was invented here. People drag raced up and down Ventura Boulevard in tricked out muscle cars. The tastes of this region influence automakers worldwide. Every major car company has a design studio here. Even the average garages in this city are a loaded with brand new heavy metal rides. People here treat their automobiles differently. Folks here may not own their own homes but for damn sure they’re going to travel in style everywhere they go. To some I’m sure this seems sick or twisted or maybe even quite silly, but this city forces different priorities on its inhabitants. Cars here are part style, part substance, and part livelihood. Yet for all that hype and the inevitable commercialism of the various imported rides, few folks here use their wheels. Nowhere is that more readily apparent than the Santa Monica Mountains. These canyon roads are forgotten lands. They straddle suburbia, city life and the beach scene and yet none of these groups use these roads to their fullest.
Ironically only two groups really push these asphalt raceways; cyclists and motorcyclists. Perhaps it takes a two-wheel mindset to appreciate what’s here. I don’t really know. What I do know is that Sunday was remarkable because of how empty it was. There were hundreds of two wheeled folks running around, but seldom did I see a car or truck heading the other way. On a day when all I wanted to do was lose myself in the ride, it was fantastic to find these magical roads empty and open. Ready for riding.
My day started off roughly around 9 am when I met up with my buddy Lowell and longtime Twisting Asphalt reader Avi. Both are fellow Ducatisti and avid riders. Lowell rides a Multistrada 1000DS and Avi runs around on a ’05 749. As I’ve mentioned before I usually tend to shun group riding, as it’s something that I’ve often felt uncomfortable with. When I’m riding up and down the coast on a typical weekend morning it’s not unusual to see packs of riders flying around but from my perspective most of these groups tend to have a very different definition of pace than I do.
One of the remarkable things about this particular ride was that Lowell, Avi and I comprised a small but nicely wound group that rode with a wonderful pace. It was fast when it could be and safe when it had to be. I never felt that as a group we were pushing beyond what was prudent or secure. In many ways it felt just right. Everyone rode within their own comfort level and at their own speed.
The ride was also remarkable because for a short stretch on Latigo Canyon I found myself following Lowell while he was wickedly countersteering his Multistrada in and out of a series of tightly wound corners. Reaching back on the throttle I started to smoothly apply more and more power and at some point we found this fantastic groove where we were hauling pretty good but far enough apart to react independently to each other. And it was during that moment that I found myself breaking through my recent hang-up with the new tires. As I’ve mentioned in previous entries the new Michelin Pilot Powers are wearing in nicely, but between the recent rains, the light dirt covering the roads and my mental inability to trust the rubber, I’ve found it hard to find the sort of faith and rhythm that you need to really lean the bike over at or near the apex.
For the past several rides I’ve felt rusty and unsure of myself. Internally I’ve found myself dialing it back several notches below my normal comfort level because it just didn’t feel right to push it. Yet here I was flipping around, corner to corner, following Lowell and somewhere in the middle of this glorious canyon road it hit me that I was no longer thinking about grip or contact patches or dirt in the middle of lane. I was just there, in the middle of this fantastically fluid moment where the bike and I were acting as one. We were gliding through each corner and it wasn’t a race, but rather this easy and comfortable pace that was taking my mind off of my recent hang-ups. It was a marvelous realization and I can only hope that the sentiment continues on the next ride.
But one moment doesn’t make a five hour ride glorious, it take several to do that and this particular day had a number of great rides within it. Remarkably Avi, Lowell and I found the time and had the energy for a number of laps around the canyons. We shoot up from Latigo Canyon and fired right through the back half of Mulholland until we looped back on Encinal Canyon. After a brief, but very LA at the beach type stop at the Starbucks in Malibu we found our way back through the lower portion of Mulholland before hitting Saddlepeak Canyon.
If you asked me to rank the Santa Monica Canyon roads, Saddlepeak Canyon would be at or near the top of the list. It’s one of those amazing routes that offers two very distinct types of riding depending on where you are. The eastern portion of the road is technical and very tight, but once you hit the one-hundred and eighty degree turn about half way up and cross over to the western portion of the road it all changes. The lanes open up into a very fast, sweeping ride that shoots you up and above everything else. The views up there are fantastic, the road tends to be empty regardless of the time of day and the actual asphalt is pretty good as a general rule. There’s quite a bit of grip up there. On most weekends I tend to ride from the coast to the valley which puts me in the lane that boarders on the edge of the cliff, but here we were heading in the opposite direction and suddenly I bracketed between the mountain and the other lane. Even though I got over my fear of riding on a road next a cliff a very long time ago, there’s still nothing quite like having that extra lane of protection. All that extra room was yet another astonishing revelation for the day. Sometimes I think I tend to forget how different a road can feel going the other way.
About three-fourths up the road Lowell and I switched bikes for a bit. In the near future I’ll be doing a full write up of a new Multistrada and I’m sure I’ll have plenty to say about the bike as I found Lowell’s 1000DS to be quite a hoot. It’s definitely not a knee dragger, but once I got used to the extremely different seating position – as in massively higher - and wide handlebars I had an absolute blast hauling around the canyons. It was wild to feel so much leverage each time you turned into a corner. Especially when I combined it with some good old fashion bodysteering. Who would have thought that Ducati would ever build a bike that can actually be muscled around by pressing down on the pegs. The last bike I could move around like that was my first BMW R1100RS and that bike was not exactly a bastion of sportbike heritage. The Multistrada on the other hand is surprisingly aggressive for what it is. Outside of the SuperDuke, which I believe KTM is still not importing into this country, the Multistrada has to be the most street oriented endostyle bike on American soil. Perhaps I’m over stating things a bit here, but it’s hard not wax on about the Multistrada when you get off a 999 and hop on to a Strada thinking you’re not quite sure you want to and in mere minutes find yourself ridiculously attracted to the bike. It’s oddly addictive and it’s not even funny. Few bikes I’ve ever ridden have so starkly reminded me of riding a 92 horsepower Hot-Wheels three-wheeler. Only this bike has got some serious hops. I ended up stealing Lowell ride from roughly the top of Saddlepeak, through Piuma and Stunt Road and then all the way back down Mulholland until we took a break at The Rockstore. All told, it’s a remarkably easy bike to get comfortable on and it took little to no time to get up to speed and beyond. By the time we were heading down Stunt I was running around at seventy plus mph with a gigantic grin. I never would have thought I would have enjoyed such a ride. Who knew Dylan like’s leverage and comfy seats…(Shhhhhh don’t tell the sportbike crowd 
)….
The Rockstore turned out to be remarkable for an entirely different reason. As fate would have it we arrive between crowds. That is to say it wasn’t packed and it wasn’t empty, however it was mass idiocy on display. Outside of a stunter vid I’ve never seem more wheelies and burnouts in such a brief period of time in my life. If burning rubber in front of a hundred plus other riders is cool, then I’m about as far away from coolness as you can get.
After our stop at The Rockstore we looped back to Latigo Canyon and carved our way back to the coast. As the ride started coming to a close I found myself in awe of how magnificent the day had become. In many ways my continuing education into group riding is opening my eyes to a whole new level of the riding experience. The journey of riding has always been a very personal activity for me. A place to go where I can get away by focusing my attention on the road and the bike. It’s a journey for peace and quiet. Yet now I’m beginning to understand that there’s an additional level out there. The ride can be personal and yet at the same time have an added social component. What Sunday ultimately highlighted to me is that with the right group there’s something beyond just an escape. There’s a mutual adventure and that’s pretty cool. I’m seriously looking forward to the next round.
Riding for My Soul
I’m not sure where our personal character traits evolve from but over the course of my life I’ve grown to learn that somehow I got wired with a very focused and often times exclusionary field of vision. For the past nineteen days my life has revolved around work. It’s felt like one long unremitting moment where the calendar continues to change but the day never ceases. I’ve simply been ‘there’ and somehow all the other pieces of my life have been pushed to the margins. Groceries, laundry, phone calls, emails, you name it, they’ve all been put on hold. Especially riding.
So this morning when I turned the bike over for the first time in three weeks it almost felt shocking. As if it weren’t real. Then I was hit by this odd sensation of guilt. Should I even be on the bike? Do I have the time? Is there something else that needs to get done? Can I get a ride in and still hit my deadline? It was a wave of ‘responsible questions’ rolling over me and yet the none-pragmatic side of my brain said, ‘screw it, you need a break’. So once the bike warmed up, I hit the road and headed up the coast and finally found myself breathing.
A few miles later I headed up into the canyons and suddenly felt oddly peaceful even though I felt incredibly vulnerable. Rust doesn’t even begin to describe how awkward I felt on the bike at times. I simply did not have that suspension of disbelief that one needs in the middle of the corner while leaning over. And even though I kept trying corner after corner to will myself into having faith I just couldn’t get there. It was almost as if the bike and I were speaking to very different languages and I desperately needed a google translator.
Yet standing back my inability to lock into the bike didn’t really matter to me today. Three weeks from now perhaps it would, but not today. One of the great joys of the California canyon experience is that even when you’re having a bad day you’re still having a good one. Somewhere between the curves and the vistas and the magnificent sensation of life it’s hard not to lose yourself. It’s an amazingly peaceful and secluded environment that feels so contrary to the state of permanent exhaustion that I’ve been working with over the past several weeks. There’s a glory up there that is just simply magical. A feeling that’s easy for me to dismiss or forget when I’m focused on work, but one that somehow intrinsically linked to my soul. When I’m up there everything is worthwhile and when I’m down here it’s just ordinary.
Junkie
Today was not my best day on a motorcycle by far - yet somehow I still feel better off for having ridden. I suppose part of me right now thinks that maybe I just should have rolled over in bed this morning, said ‘fuck it’ and stayed away from the canyons. But then the rest of me doesn’t quite agree. Getting on the bike today - even though far from perfect - was still better than just about anything else I can imagine doing with my time.
Odd how that works.
I suppose it’s one of the more quirky things that happens to all of us as riders. At some point the act of riding transforms from simply being an activity into what I can only describe as a life-force. It surrounds you, it envelops you, and it becomes you. One day you wake up and find yourself incessantly thinking about it and dreaming about it and god knows, reading about it. Constantly. Every chance you get. Always aware that there’s more knowledge out there, more information you can absorb, more roads to travel, more things to see, more places to stop and enjoy.
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Thwack Control
Coming around the fourth corner on Las Floras Canyon, I slightly tug the clutch lever while sliding my left foot under the shifter and with a sense of certainty lift my toes up. Less than a moment later I hear that marvelous ‘thwack’ that comes from the fingers on the gears engaging and I find myself smiling.
As a general rule motorcycles make all sorts of noises. They rumble. They rev. Some even squeal. Yet there are few sounds that I’ve missed over the past few weeks quite as much as that ‘thwack’… Because it’s not just a sound but rather the beginning of a sensation of control – the word ‘solid’ comes to mind - on one hand it’s a sound that lets you know that the bike is ready to get moving yet it’s also a noise that sits on the edge of ‘feeling in control’. First you hear the bike, then you feel the bike. And feeling in control of anything, let alone a motorcycle is a great thing. A confidence inspiring emotion to say the least.
Not so surprisingly the sportier the bike, the more it reacts to you. To what’s going on inside your head. All those little things that you bring to the table that have absolutely nothing to do with riding. When I set out this morning I was convinced that all of these thoughts would co-opt the ride and yet I was one-hundred percent wrong. All it took was that ‘thwack’ on the fourth corner of the day to remind me how awe-inspiring it is to manipulate a motorcycle through twisting canyon roads when you feel so totally in control of the bike that you’re absolutely sure that you have the power to make the motorcycle do whatever you want, whenever you want.
It’s been a couple of weeks since I last got a ride in and to be perfectly honest, months since I felt the confidence that comes from feeling in control of the bike. Undoubtedly several things lined up today; better weather, freshly broken in tires, maybe even a better sense of self relaxation. Yet sitting here now I can’t shake the glow of control. The smile that comes from being able to duck into a corner, look up and through the turn, see the danger ahead and be able to make instant decisions to tighten or loosen the line and then find myself just doing it. As if it was automatic and thoughtless. Whether it was rocks or cars or people or even other motorcycles who were swinging to wide, today was fantastic because I had the perverse pleasure of being able to see, process and react with no doubt and no hesitation. Just movements. Fluid, graceful movements that went from corner to corner. Man have I missed that… It’s nice to be back…
Here are some more picts from the day…
The Old Man Grows Younger
Today’s ride was quite remarkable on a number of fronts – but mostly because it was the ultimate flip-flop in my father-son relationship with MotorMilt. When I first started riding, MM was the definitive voice that I went to for information on how to do it better. He’d already been to the MSF course, a couple of CLASS courses and had been riding for almost twenty years. It seemed like a good source for information. Back then we’d ride up the coast to grab some breakfast – rarely touching the canyon roads because they were to intense and to scary for either of us – and during the course of the meal I’d pull as much knowledge out of him as I could.
Yet today we both found ourselves very aware that the tables had turned. Now he was asking me how to do it better. How to get faster. I’m sure there are other activities in life that offer this sort of father-son relationship reversal, but sitting in here now I can’t quite put my finger on one. That’s obviously not to say they don’t exist, I’m sure they do, but for me this was an utterly unique experience. Somewhat strange and yet also extremely special because the shared experience continues to grow.
I’m 28 years old and soon to turn 29. When I get up in the morning it sounds like a machine gun is going off. Things snap, crackle and pop in places that I didn’t even know had joints. After years of playing football in high school and in college, my body is a collection of former injuries and doctor visits. I mention this because while talking to MM about how to ride better and then watching him actually ride the canyons while trying things out, I found myself both surprised and somewhat in awe. He has every right not to push himself, yet there he was trying to.
As long time readers of this blog will undoubtedly know by now, MM has had a heck of a rollercoaster these past twelve months. Mostly highlighted by a protracted absence from riding due to arthroscopic knee surgery that went somewhat sideways.
Yet today he was riding a spirited ride and actively trying to listen to my advice on how to get better - not in a clinical or medical sense but rather in the sportiest sense possible. He’s almost twice my age and yet while I was riding behind him I couldn’t help but notice how much more active he’s gotten over the course of my riding timeline and my life.
This is a man who ten years ago wouldn’t have known what a knee puck was and yet today he was actively getting a step closer to using one. Watching him swing through the turns with a remarkable amount of passion and aggression, I couldn’t help but smile. I know a number of people his age who have simply stopped pushing themselves. People who just live on their past accomplishments. Now there’s nothing wrong with that and obviously it’s a personal choice, but I was so proud to watch him enter and exit corners at speed because it’s the furthest extrapolation of growing younger. He could be trading his bike in for a more plush ride, a more upright riding position, a less extreme machine and yet he’s not. He’s trying to challenge himself to fit the bike. To actively grow as a rider and to get better. Granted he’s not getting his knee down yet – but for the first time I find myself thinking it’s a distinct possibility. And something that without a doubt he would or could have never done at twenty or thirty or even forty.
Riding behind him made me very aware that for all of my supposition towards my future I sometimes forget that each of us has the power to visit and revisit our lives whenever we chose and that what stops us tends to be
ourselves – not our age. It’s a magical thing to see someone nearing sixty and to know that they are faster today than they ever have been in their life.
A New Gizmo - Joe Rocket Tank Bag
You’ll notice in the pictures a new addition to the Twisting Asphalt riding gear – Tank Bags! I had been thinking of picking one up for quite sometime – but never did because I was fearful of how it would feel riding with one. Most are abnormally large, yet MM stumbled onto a Joe Rocket magnetic bag that works remarkably well. Today was the first day I’d ridden with it and I was absolutely shocked. For $39 bucks the thing is rock solid on the bike, barely gets ini your way and is extremely easy to use. The Ducati version is enormous and costs $200+… I’m not sure I’ll always ride with it, but for carrying a cell phone, wallet, pack of smokes and camera it’s a fantastic little gizmo that gets all the crap out of my leathers… Thumbs up!
MM’s new Alpinestar Suit
You’ll also probably notice that MM has a new set of riding leathers. Given that he’s finally come back from his knee injury it simply seemed like time to get him a set of more protective leathers. Nothing against the Bates set that he had been wearing but I think both he and I have simply come to a point where safety and having the right gear is as important as the bikes we ride.
Having Grip…
There’s so much I should write down tonight and yet this is probably the tenth different draft of this particular post. It is one of those rare nights when the words just don’t seem to be flowing and the thoughts seem surprisingly jumbled - and yet neither really should be. Today was wonderful. It was the perfect Sunday Ride because it was a Sunday Ride. It was easy and relaxing and just ambling in this very organically meandering way that felt like exactly what I needed today. It was simplistic and yet utterly fulfilling at the same time. Not because I was fast or fluid on the bike – I really wasn’t - but because I was just out and in the moment and relaxing while riding through the canyons. Granted it wasn’t the longest trip MotorMilt and I ever ridden nor even the most challenging, yet surprisingly that didn’t bother me - for some reason it was just one of those rides where I found myself becoming increasingly aware with each passing mile of how wonderful it felt just being on the road while surrounded by so much beauty. (more…)
A Canyon Quorum
It all started out with an email early last week. Sitting in a hotel room on the East Coast I found myself in dire need of a ride. Then I opened up email client only to find a note sitting in my inbox from Lowell, the web guru for ProItalia, suggesting that we hook up for a ride. After trading a few messages back and forth, we settled on riding some of Malibu’s finest Sunday morning.
Fast forward to this morning and I found myself feeling just a tad different than I normally do on a weekend when I know I’m going to ride. Today there was a sense of excitement, a bit of pressure because I didn’t want to be late and a touch of trepidation since riding in a group is simply something that I’m not all that well versed in. An hour and a half later MotorMilt and I rolled into the Chevron Station at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and the Pacific Coast Highway and met up with Bill and Lowell.
Usually I tend to ride one of two ways; either by myself or with MotorMilt in tow behind me. Both styles of riding have their own benefits to be sure, but neither requires a great deal of thought on my part because in both cases there’s a learned response attached to the event. I’m either in control of my own journey or leading someone who I’ve spent enough miles riding with to know when they have had enough or want to go on. Today was a very different dynamic. It was unknown territory. Suddenly I was leading us up the coast wondering which roads to take and if the group would enjoy them.
As we headed shot up Las Floras Canyon I found myself trying to enjoy my own ride but also being very conscious of setting a decent, but safe pace. To be honest group riding has always scared me because when you ride the canyons as often as I do you tend to see a lot of stupid decisions being made by packs of riders. On the other hand I rarely see solo riders engaging in moronic behavior. Obviously I don’t mean to put down everyone who rides with their friends. There are obviously safe groups who ride. Rather it’s simply a bit of a canyon observation. My limited sense is that there are certain groups of riders who tend to push it more when they’re together. Maybe they feel a competitive rush to race each other or maybe they’d make the same poor decisions if they were riding solo. I don’t really know. But the more I ride the canyon roads the more legitimate this feeling tends to be.
Today however was not riddled with the chaos that I had worried about, but instead was purely fun. I found myself surrounded by riders who left each other space, didn’t seem hell bent on chasing each other, and were simply out enjoying a Sunday in the canyons together. It was a marvelous experience and a real eye opener. I find myself questioning how and why one perceives the things they do when they’re on the outside looking in.
A few miles later we were headed down Saddlepeak and making our way up through Mulholland towards the Rockstore when it occurred to me just how much fun I was really having. This was turning out to be one heck of a ride and a whole lot of red in a row.
By the time we actually got to the Rockstore the roads were a bit of a mad house, bikes and cars seemingly popping out of every driveway, which was a shame because four red Italian bikes deserve a motorcycle haunt not a causal location for a break. So we headed all the way out on Mulholland to Neptune’s Net. It’s the other major SoCal Ocean Motorcycle hangout and one that I rarely hit. Today it turned out to be the perfect spot to shoot the shit and talk about bikes. The parking lot was a mecca for all sorts of motorheads. Harley’s, Norton’s, Triumphs, Ducati’s, you name it. Everything was represented. A virtual junkyard in real life and sitting just a few feet away from the ocean.
Heading back down coast after grabbing some eats, we carved our way around the canyons, hitting Mulholland, Decker, Encinel, Old Topanga and eventually Topanga Canyon. On a glorious January morning it’s hard to beat snaking your way around such an astonishing collection of canyon roads one by one. They just bend back and forth in every direction for miles on end and by the time you stop to take a break you find yourself having to actually catch your breath because it’s been such a moving experience on so many different levels. Riding with other gearheads whose company you enjoy only heightens the adventure.
Returning To A Ride
It was fantastic to finally get back home and ride the canyons once again after having spent a long and rather cold week on the East Coast. Truth be told the past seven days were filled with all kinds of dramatic ups and downs in a very short period of time. If there were a Richter scale for emotional highs and lows the last week of my life would show a very scattered existence. But then I suspect that shouldn’t be much of a surprise since it simply mirrors the general state of how this month seems to be shaking out. There’s been lots of work, lots of excitement, lots of annoyance, lots of chatter and just about every other emotive feeling in between.
But thankfully there are days like today, when the roads and the bike form a wonderful union that has that knack to take your mind away. It’s a combination that manages to allow you to drift from the everyday. Even though I wasn’t one hundred percent dialed in to the ride because of jet lag, sleep deprivation and mental fatigue, the mere fact that I was even on the bike and out in the open somehow leveled all so many things inside.
Of course coming back to LA after you’ve been away for a little while has always struck me as an odd sensation all its own. Perhaps because when you’re outside of California and people find out where you’re from, they tend to talk to you about it. Someone inevitably seem ask what’s the best part of living there? I’m never quite sure what these folks want to hear and mysteriously they don’t seem to understand when I tell them that for me it’s simply coming back home. It’s when you get off the plane all bundled up in a winter coat and suddenly realize you don’t need it anymore. When you head down the PCH and smell the ocean for the first time after days of looking at barren trees or cornfields or other distinct landscapes. It’s seeing the vibrancy of the city again. Witnessing the Santa Monica streets painted in a hundred different colors. It’s all the little things that I take for granted and seldom remember when I’m here.
It’s a sensation that’s powerful in its own right, but one that only seem to get heightened when you rip through a couple of corners mere hours after arriving at LAX. Shifting side to side on the bike and feeling like you’re connected to the asphalt brings out the best in this town. It makes you aware of what you missed. And then boom, you twist the throttle one more time and hit that next turn and there it is. The whole canyon experience in a corner. The asphalt, the apex, the ocean, the hills, the brilliant blue sky, the pavement that’s laying before your eyes, and the rumbling bike beneath you. And right there in that moment you understand that somehow all of those ups and downs you’ve felt all week aren’t as important as you thought. That the mental energy you spent will come back. That life is ok. And then you realize that you believe. That everything that you’ve been building towards is worth it. That there is something out there to reach for and it is possible after all.
First Ride of The New Year
It took a few more days than I had hoped but I finally got a ride in now that it’s 2006. I was hoping to come back and write a wonderfully witty and well though out post about how charming it was to be out riding in early January in 80º heat, but to be honest the lengthy workdays I’ve been pulling the last week and a half seem to have caught up with me on a mental level. If MotorMilt hadn’t been around today I’m not sure I would have even hit the canyons. I just as easily could have hit snooze on the alarm and gone back to bed. It was one of those kind of days. Mindless might be a good word for it and I suspect that after you spend seven or eight twelve to sixteen hour days stairing at a computer monitor it only stands to reason that your body needs some time to decompress a bit. Today was that day. So even though I greatly enjoyed being out on the bike and hitting up the canyons with MM, the realities of what I’ve got to get done tomorrow and in the days following have managed to sneek inside and snake away some of the afterglow excitement. Here’s to hoping next weekend is a bit more engaging…
Head Games
It’s been a strange few days for me. On hand it’s been a needed break from the ho-hum, yet on the other hand it’s been – dare I say it – too much time to lose myself within the vast cauldron of my soul. I’ve felt lost and unable to find what it is exactly that I’m supposed to be doing. Bored is to simplistic a concept for this kind of ache. It’s not dullness that I’m feeling, but rather pointlessness. I find myself challenged by everything I wanted to know and everything I wish I did. Today only highlighted that cause – there’s a certain lose of inspiration that’s plaguing me. A year ago at this time MotorMilt and I rode for hours on end on A Glorious Christmas Ride and when it was over I felt refreshed. Almost reborn. This year the holiday ride came at me more like contradiction. Perhaps laced with confusion. While it was physically just me and the Duc hauling ass through canyons, mentally I found myself unable to let go. Unable to resolve whatever issues plague me right now. The very roads that I know so well seemed so uneventful. So plain. So ordinary. And yet I know they are anything but dull. In all fairness I suppose I should feel lucky – perhaps even grateful - to even be out riding on Christmas day, yet even though I’m intelligent to enough to understand this I still felt somehow incomplete. Somehow confused and contradicted by my own mind. By my own soul. (more…)
