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.
MV Agusta Brutale 910 : Show Me, Don’t Tell Me
It’s late in the afternoon on a Friday, a mere hour before dusk and I’m ripping through the Malibu Canyons listening to the one of the most evocative sounds I’ve ever heard while on a motorcycle when I’m reminded of the mantra, “show me, don’t tell me”. Oddly enough because this bike does both; it’s hot, it’s stunning and it also happens to fly.
And by fly, I mean it rips up the road in front of you with such a wild ferocity that you are fairly certain that even the speedo can’t keep up.
Whipping around each successive corner I feel like a kid again. I’m mesmerized by the same sensation that I remember having on dirtbikes as a child – only now I’m an adult who’s riding on the street and enjoying breathtaking scenery that I’ve witnessed a million times before fly past me in a whole new way.
Like most riders, I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on the sensation that comes from going fast. It’s one of the reasons why people ride in the first place because on some level we like to thrill ourselves. But then you get on a bike like the new MV Augusta Brutale 910 and you realize that whatever physical reaction you’ve felt from going fast is nothing compared to what you feel on this bike when you come out of a corner and get on it hard.
Without hesitation, the second you begin to twist the throttle the Brutale fires you straight ahead and by the time your mind catches up with the bike you find yourself half a mile down the road smiling inside your helmet. It’s amazing. As sensations go, I’m sorry you can’t bottle this sort of emotional and physical excess. It’s that much fun.
To be perfectly honest this all started out innocently enough, I was hanging out at ProItalia before I headed up to Willow Springs and had some time to kill. So I did what any self-respecting gearhead would do, I spent some time kicking tires. This as it turns out is a much more dangerous activity than heading to a track.
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