4 Valve Victory in the Canyons
I see the corner coming — the deep bend, the strange camber, the way the road rolls against itself as it tilts right and climbs north. Part of me cringes. Feels out of sorts, as if today isn’t really my day. But the bike doesn’t flinch. It never backs down. It never echos my personal conundrum.
Instead it just settles down.
Then the tires grip. And the chain spins. And before I know it the little bit of lean angle that remains disappears as the throttle rips backwards with vengeance…
Instantly valves open, the heart flutters, and the engine revs… Wildly revs…
And for all the worry in the world, now there is nothing to do but hang on…
Effortlessly, the bike fires — forward — Imposes its own will on the asphalt. Claws its ways up the hill as it rips big, heady chunks of asphalt out of its way. The road surface has no choice but to let go. To surrender. To give in.
The push is incredible. The drive out of the turns sublime. The self-created forward momentum astounding.
Beneath me a battalion of horsepower is on the attack and I can feel its every move. The bike hunkering down, the revs increasing, the exhaust bellowing and by the time I reach the top of the lonely canyon wall, it’s clear that the roadway has been forced into a unique form of submission.
It hasn’t just been defeated, it’s been conquered.
In world where nothing seems secure, and so much suddenly seems fluid, I find myself smirking at the thought that for this one moment in time, on this one particular day, a 4-Valve L-Twin engine seems to have the power to defeat anything and everything in its path. Forward momentum never felt this good.
Head Games in the Canyons
The MV Agusta F4 at the top of Stunt Road
It’s bright. Blindingly bright. So bright in fact that it feels like summer and not spring… Finally… Beneath me the F4 hums. It’s four high mounted organ pipes blasting out a unique overture that seems to scream for world domination — or at least make clear its desire for conquest… Each blip, each twist, each corner exit bring its soul to life… And makes me smile… As the engine continuously itself turns over, I can feel the machines’ unquenchable thirst, no strike that, need, for more… Speed… Lean… Roar… And it feels good… Really good…
But I know it wants more… That it needs more…
Only, I’m not sure I can take it.
The continuous effects from the post moto-crash hangover, which while slowly subsiding still ache… And there’s no Advil in sight. Yet as I shoot up the canyon’s hillside, there’s a determination that’s hanging in the air. A sense of reality that suddenly doesn’t seem quite so snake bitten. For the first time in awhile I feel like I can see the glory beginning to return. That I can feel ‘it’, whatever ‘it’ is, coming back.
Banging into the next bend the bike feels so damn planted. So secure. That without even thinking about it, I find myself sliding a little bit further off the saddle, sticking out my knee just a touch more and tentatively leaning into the turn one more degree at a time… ‘This is what it’s supposed to be like,’ I find myself thinking…
And then I see the thin layer of dirt hovering over the asphalt. A shot of trepidation shoots right through me. Instantly I tense up. Battle the bike. Fight the very thing I love…
But the bike never fails. Just holds its line. Stays calm. Says, ‘don’t worry about it, I’ve got you’… And a deep breath later, I try to ease up…
And so it goes, each corner a fluid interaction between where I want to be and where I am… Yet today there were more steps forward than backwards… Even if they happened only one step at a time…
Awkward Dance Partners - The Ducati ST3 & MV Agusta F4 up The California Coast
California Route 33 above Ojai
At first there’s one. A second later comes another… And then all hell breaks loose, as a cascade of perspiration rolls forward with vengeance. It’s the first real tangible clue that you’re getting close; close to the middle of nowhere and close to California’s Central Valley in the middle of summer.
Coming out of yet another series of contiguous sweeping corners, you feel the slight ache in your wrist - because it’s already been a long day - but instead of falling victim to your inner demons you press on. Ignore the pain. There’s just too much bounty to be had here. The sirens of an empty road are far to captivating as they call out.
So you roll the throttle back. A minuet movement in a landscape of grandeur. Once again feel the bike pick itself up and hustle forward as it shoots up the short straightaway that connects this twist with that twist and a moment later you remember to exhale before getting right back on the brakes, settling the suspension back down and diving into yet another arched asphalt form of serenity.
It’s a fast paced dance done with a mountain top. You throttle up, you throttle down. You duck, you dive, you pick it back up. You brake. Perhaps you even continue breathing.
And as the pace quickens so to does the transformation. Not of riding but rather life.
What had been a scenic route splitting bundled patches of pine tree derivatives quickly evolves. In minutes, or maybe just heartbeats, you rip through another banked corner and crest a 5,160-foot summit of dreams.
On the other side lies a stark and desolate arena. The average visitor might think it far to remote and well past dull to bother with, yet for an actively engaged motorist it is an untroubled paradise full of unique forms of individual adventure and challenge.
Welcome to the Southern edge of California’s Central Valley.
The landscape is harsh and dry, built on brush and cattle, tumbleweeds and water prudent oak trees. A place far removed from the concrete jungle and yet fairly dependant on it for survival. To live or work here is to languish in an alternate version of society, more Steinbeck then Grisham, where the quality of the water pump in your pick-up truck is far more important then the latest magazine cover girl.
It is also a place that time has forgotten and yet still hit hard nonetheless. Where every hundred miles empty retail spaces battle big-box stores for supremacy and conflict runs deep, which somehow encapsulates both the best and the worst of the Golden State all in one place. Everywhere you look the hopes, the dreams, the challenges, the exploration, and even dire hopelessness are blatantly apparent trends.
Yet life still goes on. Moves forward. Boiling upwards, inch by inch, in a thousand degree melting pot of that exists on the fringe of civilization.
A day later I swing the other extreme, subtly freezing as I watch seagulls dance just a short fragment off the coastline and the last drip of coffee tries its best to push past the lingering memories of a long last night. A quick wick the throttle and a different beast fires forward as a bucket of aspirin takes hold. The engine’s suggestive notes find instant traction. On the road and in my mind. Each millimeter of piston movement brings out a louder, deeper, more hideous wailing. A sound so strong it forcibly removes the thumping headache and matter of factly tosses it down on the road. For all to see and hear and trample. It’s the kind of evocative auditory experience that only comes from a bullish inline four cylinder that’s cracking its raw fists on the skull of an open road… And absolutely laughing about it afterwards.
Just like that I’m awake — But better yet, I’m alive.
Thanks in large part to the combination and contradiction of two completely distinctive types of riding – One which elicits sheer passion while the other remotely suggests it. Together they bend the rules of life and their associated meanings; forcing the yellow lines that divide us to vanish as the cool damp early morning fog evaporates in a mere moment.
This is a radical departure from my usual trips up the California Coastline — because I’ve never cruised up the coast on a true thoroughbred before…
Logically I’ve always held the belief that inside every machine is the perfect tool for a particular job and it’s foolish to ask a sportbike to do a touring task. Conceptually the idea of taking a full-blown sportbike up the coast has always seemed rather suicidal at best. The reasons and rationales range from the physical toll they take on a rider all the way to the unforeseen mechanical hiccups that could, and often times do, occur with trackday weapons are used on public roads.
Yet the older I get the less inclined I am to allow logic to infiltrate an arena of passion. If for no other reason then everything else in the day-to-day of the real world is completely and one hundred perfectly logical. And somewhere deep inside I keeping trolling over one basic core thought – If not now, when?
A half hour later while shooting up CA-46, which is an inland oasis of an open road, the traffic is surprisingly light for an upcoming MotoGP weekend that will take place in Monterey. Brilliantly crisp vineyards fly by on both sides as we burn through California’s Central Coast wine country on two rather awkward dancing partners; the old man’s brand new MV Agusta F4 and my trusty Ducati ST3. Neither is the perfect 1,000-mile adventurer yet they might just be the most fun for a joint trip covering a collection of remarkably empty and remote curving roads.
Coming around the next kink in California’s landscape of tarmac armor, I flash backwards eleven days and think how ridiculous this all must seem. A little less then two weeks ago the old man and I hit the track where one might have thought that we would have gotten our fill of getting our rocks off on the fast paced sportbike ethos. Yet we didn’t. Instead a strange thing happened on the way home.
We decided to let go of logic and instead starting formulating a plan entirely designed by passion.
The F4 was just too enjoyable – and to be honest, probably too new - to leave in the garage… So we left Buttonwillow openly talking about ratcheting up the stakes on our coming California coastal adventure. Could it make it Monterey? Could we survive it if it did?
We had no idea.
But it was a gamble that seemed worth taking. So we did something that even now strikes me as somewhat flawed. We left a perfectly good and capable sport-tourer in the garage, the BMW K1200RS, and instead flew the coop with one full-blown sportbike and one seriously sporty sport-tourer.
Our plan; A multiday escapade over and through some of California’s finest routes, starting with Central Valley staples CA-33 and CA-58, followed by the more coastal CA-41, CA-46, and inland avenues of chance G14 and G17, and then finally the mother of all great California roads, CA-1, which is better known as the Pacific Coast Highway. And that was before we started all over and did it again in reverse.
It’s a journey that over the past few years I’ve had the pleasure to attempt several different times – The old man however hasn’t been as fortunate for a variety of reasons, most of which center around time or the lack thereof. But motorcycles are about more then just tracks and canyons; they’re also about escapism as well. So once we committed to attending the GP races at Laguna this year we decided it was time to take a different kind of journey together – a more mellow, free-flowing amble North, which traversed both dreamlike scenery as well as our collective past.
Entering Lockwood, we stop at the aptly named Lockwood Store for a BSB break (butt-smoke-bathroom) and snap a few pictures. It’s a slightly surreal experience. Because we’re in effect retracing our previous steps. Our first great California road trip adventure rolled right through here and it’s surprisingly odd to stand in exactly the same spot you did eight or nine years ago in a seemingly remote part of the world and realize that while nothing has changed here, everything else in life has.
And then there are the bikes…
Eight or nine years ago we rolled through here on two BMW R1100S sport-tourers. At the time they seemed like the epitome of the perfect riding companions. Looking at the ST3 and the F4 that seems like a long, long time ago.
“This is a very different trip,” MotorMilt says, while running his hand over the tank of the F4, “and we’ve come a long way since then”.
All I can do is acknowledge the sentiment with a smirk as he smiles and says, “These are just a hell of a lot more fun”…
Both bikes offer a more fluid system of travel then the Beemers did; yet when compared to each other they are radically different animals. The ST presents a unique blend of both speed and semi-comfort while pushing the sport side of the sport-touring equation to the forefront of the category’s inherent compromise between the two extremes.
The F4 on the other hand is completely uncompromising to say the least. It’s a full-blown racing bike that just happens to have mirrors and lights. Everything about it is harsh. Hard. And uncomfortable. The footpegs feel like they’re stacked against the exhaust, the seat is the antichrist of plush, and the only seating position that feels remotely comfortable is a completely tuck.
Yet what this bike lacks in creature comforts it more then makes up for in wicked acceleration, awesome exhaust notes and remarkable handling. The bike just feels completely planted. All the time. It’s a freakishly secure feeling that’s night and day different then any of the Ducati Superbikes I’ve ridden, including the 1098S. On the F4 it feels as if you’ve got a holy ghost lingering above and watching your every move as you attack each successive corner. The chassis feels so solid that seems damn near impossible to upset it unless you’ve done something completely idiotic.
Of course the irony of idiocy on this bike is that it’s only a throttle advance away.
Twist your right wrist and you thrust the machine forward so fast that even a GPS enable iPhone accelerometer has trouble keeping up. The bike just hauls. Flat out and with idiocy in tow.
Just in case the warp speed disappearance of the landscape surrounding you confuses your visual sensory perception, there’s also a series of auditory battlefield explosions as well. The four organ-like pipes in the back bellow out such a nasty, evil, downright scary wail that both big and little critters alike flee in fear.
Stacked next to the 1098S it’s a very different riding experience. Far less fluid and far more point and shoot. Where the ’10’ feels torquey, the F4 feels defiant. Making such a loud and demonic noise that it makes mothers across the country to cringe in terror. The 1098S lets you delicately dance into and out of apexes where as the F4 cracks heads like sledgehammer, never losing sight of the fact that it’s got somewhere else to be.
An hour later I am somewhere else, as I take a slow drag from the smoke and suck down my eighth vitamin enriched energy drink of the day. Glancing at the digital clock in the dash it’s hard to fathom that it’s not even noon yet — Already my sense of time and space has been lost, much like contemporary society’s awareness of the true roots of California.
Looking out at a collection of wide-open fields surrounded by rolling hills and mammoth mountains in the distance, the old man smirks, “It always amazes me how empty most of California is,” he says before matching my puff of smoke with his own, “I think we tend to forget about that sometimes”…
He’s right; the enduring legacy of California isn’t the marvelous technological advancements, the Disneyland theme parks or the beacon like draw of the Hollywood scene that continually draws thousands of young dreams each year, rather the permanent fixture of the State is what’s missing in a pristine undisturbed landscapes. There are no hands-free gizmos sprouting out of anyone’s ear nor the rushed sensibility to trade your gas guzzler in for a hybrid so you can sleep better at night, instead just an honest panorama that’s not all that far removed from our pre-technology existence.
California’s Central Valley isn’t just physically at the state’s core but emotionally as well. This is the land of classic California virtue. Where dreams drift in the soft summer breeze and potential is allowed to amble undisturbed until it’s ready to come to fruitarian. What exists here today is completely indicative of what used to exist everywhere and the more you peer over the landscape, the clearer it becomes that something tragically got lost in our society’s evolution from the past to the present.
I’m not completely sure what that exactly is but each time I step foot in this Valley there is a sense of peacefulness and comfort that you could spend a lifetime searching for in the big cities and never find. A sensibility of hard work and determination scratched on people’s faces that echo’s the founding of this great nation not the current sense of elite entitlement broadcast nightly on E!
Six days after setting out I’m flush with fear when entering LA County again. While I’m still physically on the bike, I’m no longer not actually riding it. Instead I’ve already made the mental leap towards re-entering the ‘real world’. Something I feel inherently loath to do right now, but I know I must. Because that’s the way it works when you grow up. When you have bills to pay and tasks to do.
As the traffic thickens, I feel my lower back start to tighten up. The muscles squeezing the nerves for all there net worth. It’s not a comfortable sensation by any means, but then the last leg of a thousand mile adventure almost always ends in some sort of ailment.
Yet today the physical toll that the trip has taken is the least of my worries.
Rather it’s the never-ending game of mental catch up that I’m frantically playing that’s drawing my attention as I try to deduce what I’ve now got to get done while still expressively coming to grips with where I’ve just been. What I’ve just seen. Who I might be.
It’s an inherently unstable moment to say the least and one that leaves me wondering why the ride home always feels both completely premature in its arrival and yet long over due at the same time?
But then I suppose all great rides ultimately are comprised of a mixed bag of emotions. On one hand, you never want to see them end and yet on the other hand there’s definitely a physical and mental ceiling that you hit. Especially when one of the bikes you’ve chosen for the particular task is the completely wrong tool for the job from a logical standpoint.
Of course common sense only gets you so far in this world and in the space of the past eleven days, from the trackday at Buttonwillow to this trip up the coast, the old man and I have gone from one extreme of the motorcycle persona to the other, battling and conquering the vast differences between logic and insanity.
Without a doubt my non-riding friends would say that taking a bike, any bike, to a track is an insane endeavor. Yet my guess is that they would completely understand the appeal of a good ol’fashion road trip – even if it is on a bike.
Yet as the road buckles down and the traffic comes to a halt, it occurs to me that these two divergent extremes of the motorcycle experience are exactly the opposite. The time we spent at Buttonwillow was all about the application of logic. Perfecting the art form of proficient riding. Taking two Italian motorcycles on a thousand mile journey up and down the coast on the other hand isn’t just an adventure – It’s also just plain nuts.
And it’s also a personal fantasy come to life.
For all the times I’ve ridden up and down the coastline, I never done it the way I’ve really wanted to – on a full blown sportbike that has a wicked engine, killer brakes and instinctive handling. Instead I’ve always bent to convention or at least logic and taken a sport-tourer of one kind or another. To finally make this sort of fantastical mental image come to life is something that’s worth any and all residual back pain and leaves me thinking that perhaps the axiom of the right tool for the right job is incorrect at its core. Maybe, just maybe, sometimes we need to choose the wrong tool for the right job in order to make dreams come true.
Buttonwillow The Italian Contingent Arrives
The 1098S at Buttonwillow
The clock says 3 when I wish it said 4…
It’s amazing how missing one hour of possible sleep seems like such a missed opportunity when you’re just a few hours away from setting out for the next great adventure to test yourself and your soul…
Rest after all is a weapon, as they say. Yet right now I’m feeling like the guy who brought a knife to a gun fight while laying in bed and listening to the void of silence that city life creates this early.
If it weren’t for the trash trucks and transit authority, I’m not even sure I’d know I was awake. Yet I am…
Rolling out of the bed, the dog slowly raises his head and quizzically looks at me, as if to say, ‘I know you’re totally insane and all, but this is nuts’.
I’d like to think it’s the only time this thought will cross my mind this morning but instead it’s just the first salvo of the day. Because to some extent anyone who signs up for a trackday and finds intrigue in seeing the bleeding edge of their skill set probably qualifies as slightly mad.
On one hand it’s a completely beautiful thing; when you can match the right bike with the right environment and take a purely mechanical object and transform into a magical creature that fulfills a fantasy. Yet you’re also taking your prized possession directly into an utterly combustible atmosphere that has dozens of both real and imagined landmines that you’ve got to navigate successfully in order to survive.
Perhaps at its core it’s exactly because of this conflicting duality that tracks provide such an intense draw and offer such challenge and intrigue. Or maybe as the dog seems to be suggesting perhaps I’m just somewhat nuts. Hard to tell when the even the coffee pot shrieks in disbelief when you fire it up before it’s timer has gone off.
photo by vanhap
A dozen tie-down straps later, I’m losing layers of clothing at a surprisingly rapid rate. Sweating in chunks in the back of the pick up truck bed as the mildly stifling heat of an empty and pitch-black neighborhood works its way over me when the local paperboy shows up.
No more then fourteen, the kid makes eye contact as I tighten the tensile strength of a hand built synthetic strap derived spider web. Disbelief scrolls across his face while he feigns indifference. No doubt he’s wondering who in their right mind would choose to not only get up this early but also start hustling when they don’t have to? It seems counter intuitive to say the least and at this point I’m not entirely sure I disagree with him. The idea of sliding back under the covers seems like a noble thought indeed. But then to do so would remove the possibility of today’s scheduled enjoyment.
A second later the kid tosses yet another paper, which lands with a unexpectedly loud thud, while I light my first smoke of morning and give into today’s temptation — The idea that in just a few hours I’ll be surveying a pristine track on a causal California Monday with my own weapon of choice.
It’s time to finally let the 1098S out to play again.
I suppose we all buy the bikes we do with certain images in mind; perhaps it’s a great sport-touring journey up a virgin coastline or an ever gaining adventure across a desolate landscape. Maybe it’s the crystallized picture of dirt flying over the front fender as you whack the throttle in between the dunes or a collection of pixels that showcase a grinding puck going down in the perfect canyon corner. Or perhaps it’s something simpler; the image of your own two hands wrenching on your beloved beast in the garage. I suppose I’m no different. (more…)
MotorMilt’s Birthday Surprise
Every so often those random cogitators and somewhat divergent particulars swimming around inside your head can come together in such a way that you stumble on to an idea that seems so right, so timely, so true, and so unequivocally correct, that no matter what might stand in your way you just know deep down in the soul of your soul that it not only makes sense but is something that you’ve just got to do…
Several weeks back while rolling around in bed at 2 AM, with a mind full of a thousand different thoughts running in a million different directions, I found myself replaying all the various bits from the day and in the darkness of the night it dawned on me that it was time to set the ultimate secret-ops plan in motion — to surprise the old man, MotorMilt, with a once in a lifetime kind of birthday present. The kind of out-of-left field shocker that on one hand doesn’t seem real (nor necessary but that is another thought for a different day) and yet on the other hand crystallizes in a tangible form all the words one wishes to express to someone else about their lifetime of selflessness, security and compassion.
You see the old man is not only my father but also my best friend — It is a relationship that I thank my lucky stars for on a daily basis and one which transcended the more typical parental-child logic or rational quite sometime ago. If every action has a reaction, then every act I’ve taken through out my life is directly based on a concrete foundation of logic and love that he helped mold. When I look in the mirror or perhaps more importantly backwards in the past, I cringe at the thought of what it would have been like to pedal up the hill of life without him — not that I couldn’t have but rather I wince at all the memories that would have been lost, the life lessons that I would have had to learn the hard way and the core, basic human interaction that I would have missed out on. Our lives, individually and collectively, have not been all spades all the time by any stretch of the imagination, but rather as I believe is true for the vast majority of folks, a series of staggered ups and downs that together represent what life is really about — the gradual up tick on the timeline of life.
Of course the irony is that up until my teenage years I barely knew the man. He was a ghost for all practical purposes, running around the world at the Network News level, traveling to far off destinations for world changing events that a child simply can’t comprehend. While I was screwing around in middle school or the like, he was watching the Berlin Wall fall as it happened, broadcasting bits of information from then closed-societies such as Russia, Cuba, Manila and the Philippines. In an era when domestic threats were easily definable and the news was still seemingly important appointment viewing television, he was part of a unique group that dropped what they were doing at a moments notice to chase the adrenaline kick that comes from being a witness to history. Of course to do that successfully one has to put everything else on the backburner - that’s how it works and that’s the lifestyle you lead - you know it going in when you get the gig. Yet somewhere along the line the old man broke from the mold, so-to-speak, and stepped back. Making a conscious decision to pull out and put his dreams on hold for mine — it’s a basic philosophy and one which has never wavered from that day forward, which in an era when personal ego rules I find rather incredible.
With the hustle and bustle of the rat race now squarely in the rear view mirror he set his attention towards me, not only helping in every way imaginable to give my dreams the chance to succeed but also setting a love for things with engines in motion. He consciously devised a gearhead-based strategy to bring us together, which not only taught me valuable life lessons for then and now but also cleverly created common ground between us. It was in many ways the beginning of the shorthand instinctive language that we share together and it’s amazing to me just how strong you can forge a friendship when you’re wrenching under an oil dripping straight-six with someone else.
Yet creating a motor-based playground was just the start. One of MotorMilt’s more magnanimous acts was always letting me do the actual wrenching. Much like today, he was there to support the task but not take it over. Teaching as opposed to ‘doing’ has been just one of Milt’s trademarks over the span of my life, yet I think it speaks to a fundamental truth about him. He always seems to put others ahead of himself. Sometimes, as happens in life, you begin to take brilliant attributes like this for granted and while I consider myself a thoughtful individual, I feel fairly certain that I pale in comparison to the altruistic standard that he’s set.
When you really get to it, he is the rock that I depend on every single day and while at times we have our arguments or disagreements, they never linger. They never twist from one subject to another or infiltrate other parts of life. There are no head games or hidden meanings. No darkness where there should only be light. Yet words, whether spoken or written, can’t adequately describe or detail what he means to me, what he’s done for me, who he is or what he stands for. These are the big ticket issues and they’re always paid on time and in full.
So with the old man’s birthday approaching, I thought if ever there was a time to condense all the thoughts and feelings one can’t easily say into the personification of a dream — his dream — now was the time.
Ever since we got back from the Italian portion of the Twist The Throttle shoot, whenever we’d shoot the shit or have an ad hoc bike discussion, Milt’s mind would seemingly drift to the MV Agusta F41000R. He’d talk about the craftsmanship, the details they got right, the emotions the bike presents, the way it felt like to ride. Time and again it felt like he was not describing a mere sportbike but rather the gal of your dreams that got away. And it was also something I knew he’d never get for himself. That’s simply not how he was wired. And while neither one of us needs a new motorcycle at the moment that’s not really the point. Rather it was time to help him live one of his fantasies… So happy birthday old man, may this be your golden chariot…
* Before I sign off the night, I’d like to throw a big shout out to Bill Nation and the boys at ProItalia — they got it on this one, understanding the situation, keeping the surprise and making everything easy. Thank you.
