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.
Rails, Part II
Yesterday was a day of days and today was not. Feeling pretty good about life I decided to head up to Ojai and Route 33… To be fair most of my morning was pretty amazing and I suppose at this point I could wax on poetically about my bike but in all honesty I’m not really in the mood. While there are a number of things that I’ve come to accept while owning an Italian beast - namely extreme ergonomics, an extremely hot seat and amazingly imaginative character - reliability and dependability are not among them it seems.
For the second time in less than three weeks on two different bikes I came to a stop light and found the clutch unable to engage. Thus had I not been on the front brakes nothing would have prevented the bike from going on it’s marry way regardless of our modern day traffic laws.
So either, A) In the last three weeks I’ve become completely inept and retarded when it comes to shifting a modern sportbike, B) there is a design flaw on both Milt’s ‘04 and my ‘05, or C) It’s August and as is the case with most of Italy, these bikes simply want to take the month off.
I say this in jest , but in all reality I have no good answer. Just a throbbing wrist and the knowledge that on both my bike and MotorMilt’s I’m unable to shift effectively.
I have to say I’m completely frustrated. While there are certain things on these bikes that clearly have no business being on a racebike - namely the speedo, the mirrors, the gauge cluster, etc. - a transmission and a clutch seem rather required. One would think that of all the parts on the bike that the factory would ensure could work correctly these would be among the top of the list.
Luckily for this blog I’ve had a few beers and enough time to calm down, but come on folks how fuck’n hard it is to build a decent transmission and clutch system? It ain’t like this is new technology here - clutches and tranny’s have been around for quite sometime - and there are no paddle shifters here… In many ways I’m at my wits end… I feel compelled to ride these bikes because when they’re on they’re amazing - more than amazing, they’re astounding - to the point where you simply do not know where fact stops and fiction begins. I truly doubt that a Japanese Inline 4 could do the trick. But when they’re off, like today, you stand in awe that you could so easily fall in love with such a temperamental beast.
All of this makes me wish that I skipped english lit in high school and took autoshop instead.
Sunday’s Sport-Touring Sportbike Ride - Part 2
When I last left off it was around noon when MotorMilt and I left Los Olivos on Sunday’s Sport-Touring Sportbike Ride (Part 1).
We had stopped there for a few minutes to take a quick breather and rest the wrists from what already had become a rather lengthy morning ride for us. At this point we had already rolled up a good 150 to 175 miles and I sort of knew that we were beginning to enter that dangerous territory where we might be getting just a bit to far away for our own good. In many ways what had started out as a slightly longer than usual Sunday ride had more or less morphed into a single day’s adventure that would have felt right at home on one of our week long extending riding vacations. At some point we were simply going to have to turn around and head back…
Leaving Los Olivos I briefly flirted with the idea of just simply continuing North on The San Marcos Pass (Route 154) and getting back to the 101 Freeway heading South… But really what fun would that have been? Sometimes it seems to me that just as you physically and mentally have to push yourself on the track, you have to do the same thing with distance riding. You have to force yourself to break through those self-imposed walls inside your mind that say, ‘whoa… this is to far‘. Logically getting back on the 101 at this point probably would have been the smart choice, but emotionally I just simply couldn’t do it.
So instead of taking the easy way home, I forced MotorMilt to follow me as I took a sharp right hand turn just a few miles outside of Los Olivos and headed up Foxen Canyon Road.
As I had mentioned in part one of this utterly to long riding write up, the previous evening while playing around on the ‘net I had discovered the rather amazing Santa Barbara County based riding site, SBC Rides. The minute I found the site I knew I was either in serious trouble or complete bliss… Ten minutes on the site quickly turned into twenty, then thirty… Soon I was discovering whole new adventures. Sitting right before me on the computer monitor were a whole new collection of roads - most of which I’d never read about or seen on a map…
Of all the routes laid out on the site, the one that kept sticking in my mind was Foxen. The SBC Review was sounded remarkable…
Foxen Canyon Rd is yet another of my favorite rides in Santa Barbara County. It is 31.3 miles long, with a good portion of the ride on excellent road with light traffic. It also takes you through some fantastic scenery, right through the heart of wine country.
Having never really ventured to far off The San Marcos Pass, it seemed like it’d be a shame - if not a waste of the day - to be this close to riding it and not take advantage. So instead of doing the smart thing I pushed MotorMilt to go a little bit further and in retrospect it was the best decision of the day!
It only took a few miles to instantly realize that Foxen Canyon is just one of those super-fantastic California rides that everyone should experience at least once. Right off the bat it shoots you down between several extremely iconic SoCal meets Wild West looking farms before giving way to a series of sweepers that slowly rise you up and above the relatively open valley base. Before you know it civilization vanishes and if you’re like me, you don’t even realize until suddenly it’s all just gone. You’re quite literally surrounded by nothing… More ‘nothing’ exists here than I think I’ve ever felt in my entire life. It is simply an amazingly beautiful no-man’s land that forces you stand in awe of nature and the way I imagine California felt fifty or a hundred years ago. This is truly the land of Gene Autry, John Ford, and John Wayne. It takes little imagination to find yourself visualizing cattle rustlers out on the open range.
Somewhere along the route we stopped to take a breather and I was struck by the fact that the only noise I could hear was from the relatively mellow wind gusts that were intermittently floating across the valley. It was the riding equivalent of getting far enough away from the city lights to see all the stars that are out at night. With no noise, relatively no other traffic to speak of and a completely picturesque valley standing before my feet, I just could help but think how living in a concrete city completely warps your mind. Somehow when you drive everyday in LA you slowly begin to believe that the entire world has been paved over and yet nothing could be further from the truth. This valley is only around two hundred miles away from LA and it’s completely untapped… (Granted I’m sure it’s expensive as hell - but that’s another discussion 
).
When we got back on the bikes we were able to only get a couple more miles up the road before my gas light decided to come on. This was perhaps the first of two strategic mistakes that MotorMilt and I made over the course of the day. We had talked about filling up the tanks in Los Olivos but hadn’t, partially due to a bit of laziness I think and partially because when I’d done a rough milage count on the various maps I felt we’d be alright for the roughly thirty miles that Foxen supposed last. Yet here we were riding through what has to truly be God’s country with reserve fuel light now lit up and virtually impossible to miss. Perhaps it’s a bit of target fixation on my part, but few things make me as nervous as the reserve fuel light being on when I’m riding the Duc. To be fair it’s never let me down, I just don’t trust it and I guess I’ve just come to question certain aspects of Italian engineering. Do they go fast - yes. Do they perform well when you ride them for sport - absolutely. But are they built like a BMW - not at all.
After passing a half dozen wineries and dealing with some less than stellar pot-holed parts of the road we came to the intersection of Foxen Canyon and Palmer Road. I hung a left on to Palmer and headed West. This sent us back towards the 101 once again. I had originally planned to have us continue up Foxen until we entered the Eastern side of the city of Santa Maria and have us gas up there. Then I thought we’d head back down South on the 101 so that we could pick up Palmer Road and get back to Foxen for the return trip home. Now what had been planned as the flipside of the trip was becoming our safety value to fuel! Palmer as it turned out was another hoot of a road to ride - but surprisingly slightly different than Foxen even though they’re so close to each other.
Instead of feeling like the almost endless collection of sweepers that rise and fall in elevation on Foxen Canyon, Palmer seemed to hold longer straight aways and higher elevation changes when you hit the corners. It’s a pretty short ride, but in many ways it felt a great deal faster. At one point I looked down and I was doing eighty-five without even knowing it or even trying… Eventually Palmer intersected the 101 - which to my surprise was now a two-lane road. I guess it’s been awhile since I had been this far North and not on Interstate-5.
For some reason I had thought that the more country-road part of the 101 was above Santa Maria, not below it. As it turns out it starts in San Ynez and stays that way all the way until just before Santa Maria. In either case getting on to the 101, we headed North in search of fuel. Luckily it was only a few miles before I saw a tall Chevron sign off in the distance and we were save - so to speak. By the time we hit the station we’d ridden around 125 miles on one tank which is an all-time record for either MotorMilt or myself. So perhaps being that far out in the middle of no-man’s land taught us a bit more about the bikes…
After filling up three or four different people came up to us to ask about the bikes. I have to say it’s one of the unique things about the 999. Not everyone knows what they are, but for some reason they know they’re fast and they’re special. One guy came up to ask if he could take a cell phone picture of the bikes for his buddy. Now that’s a new one for me but hey what the hell… I guess the part that surprises me is not that people have reactions to them. I’m sure a lot of people have reactions - both good and bad - to motorcycles in general when they see them out on the road. But these are the first bikes I’ve ever owned or seen that illicit people to actively engage you in order to talk about them. One older couple came up to us and just wanted to know if they were loud. Another guy walked up and told us that he owned a Goldwing. A third guy just gave a thumbs up from his car. All within five minutes in the same gas station parking lot. Go figure.
Before we got back on the bikes Milt and I had a quick chat about our location. I could tell at this point that we were both starting to hit the lengthy ride wall. I would have had no qualms at this point had this been day 1 of a week long adventure and we were only a few miles away from our hotel for the night, but instead we were now several hundred miles away from home. Knowing all of this we started talking about how to get home. As I mentioned earlier I had sort of planned it out, but perhaps not as well as I should have. This was much more about getting up the coast than getting back down… Now as it turns out Santa Maria sits only a couple of miles away from Route 166 which you can take east to the Northern entrance of Route 33 as a way to get back down South to Ojai. Having ridden it a couple of times, it’s a pretty lengthy ride although usually traffic free and fairly wide open for higher speeds. All told it’s probably 100 to a 120 miles to get back to Ojai that way. Great ride, but just very lengthy. Taking the 101 South to Route 154 and then getting back on the 101 South in Santa Barbara again is a significantly shorter ride and at this point shorter seemed to sound better. I would say that this is where MotorMilt & I probably made our second strategic mistake of the day. We went for the shorter ride instead of thinking about how long we’d been on the bike and what they ment for traffic.
Heading down the 101 past Solvang ( where a very cool motorcycle museums resides ) we hit our first batch of traffic. This probably should have been a sign of things to come, but we ignored it and powered on towards Santa Barbara and Montecito. At this point the new found power of the broken in 999 was worthless and things were starting to get pretty hot under the seat. These bikes just aren’t designed for stop and go. Unless they’re rolling along at sixty or above they just don’t dig it. You can call it a racetrack oriented design or character or just plain hot when you’re stuck on a non-moving freeway. Eventually we navigated our way through Santa Barbara and decided to stop in Montecito for a late lunch.
After lunch is when everything went absolutely crazy. The 101 as it turns out was completely backed up heading out of Santa Barbara - then for brief stretches opened up - and the almost completely suddenly would shut back down to a crawl. By the time we got back to Ventura I thought the worst had to be behind us because from this point forward the 101 has 4 lanes, but as it turns out I was completely wrong. There was traffic everywhere. And it was the kind of late weekend traffic that seems bring out the nuttiness in people. Lane changes without looking. No turn signals. Late braking. I felt like I was stuck in a bad Drivers Ed video production. It almost felt like absolute chaos. So when we hit the PCH and found it to be relatively free of traffic around Point Magu, I was overjoyed. Finally I thought, ‘we can relax a bit’… Again, I was completely mistaken. Turns out in Malibu there was a pretty serious accident. Multiple ambulances and cars facing the wrong direction on the other side of the road. Big mess. Cars were backed up for miles. Luckily - if you can call it that - we must have hit the scene relatively soon after it happened because by the end of the day the PCH was apparently backed up all the way back the 101. That’s like 30 miles. ( I wasn’t there obviously, but this is what I heard fwiw)…
So by the time we got home I felt in many ways lucky to be alive. We had been out on the bikes for over 12 hours over the course of the day. That’s definitely an all-time record for MotorMilt and I. We had ridden somewhere around 340 miles - I think perhaps even a touch more. Again an all-time record for us. We had been out in no-man’s land, carving corners on curvy twisty roads, fighting rush hour traffic, and seeing so much of California. All in one day on the sportiest sportbikes either one of us has ever owned. It was just absolutely amazing.
Forgetting all the late afternoon chaos, I have to say that this was simply one of those wonderful rides that felt almost completely unreal. As if it just couldn’t possible have happened. It should have been to long and to far. Instead it was just right. If could have removed the traffic issues at the end of the day it would have be absolutely perfect, but even with them it was still an amazing adventure that just went on and on and on. Perhaps most remarkable was the fact that after getting out of the BMW sport-touring game I wasn’t sure if I’d ever get to experience that type of riding again while owning a 999 and yet I did. By the end of the day I felt rather beat physically, but emotional it was amazing. To get that far north and feel so much freedom was remarkable. I wish I could bottle that feeling and save it for the rest of the week. By the time the day wrapped up I felt like every issue, every worry, every part of life that I can’t control had vanished because of the sheer power of the ride and the amount of focus it takes to do it safely.
All told this has been one insanely amazing collection of rides for me lately. By my rough count I’ve put around 900 miles on the new Diva over just a ten day stretch. During which I’ve covered the greater LA basin from it’s far Northwestern corner all the way to it’s Eastern Mountain range and a whole bunch of canyons in between. I’ve had the chance to stop at some of the most amazing motorcycle hangouts I can think of - Newcomb’s, The Rockstore and The Cold Spring Tavern - and I’ve had a ton of time to get lost in such a wonderfully good way. And to think early last week I had no idea this was going to happen but in a fantastically organic way it just did and I feel so thankful for that… All I can say is just ‘WOW’….
Sunday’s Sport-Touring Sportbike Ride - Part 1
Sunday morning I woke up around 5:15 AM and I had never even set the alarm clock the night before. Even though it was still dark outside I just knew from the moment I got up that I felt immediately ready to hit the road. It was just one of those morning when you have no need for luxories like coffee or breakfast, you just want to get going. I’m sure this instant desire to get out and ride was in no small part due to a conversation that MotorMilt and I had the previous evening over dinner. Somehow we had both gotten it stuck in our minds that we not only wanted to ride the next morning, but we needed to ride. We needed some stress-free hours on the bike. Not just some fantastic loop through the canyons mind you, but something larger. Something with a little bit more adventure. Maybe even something with a little bit of that unknown wonder that only a road you’ve never traveled can provide.
So Saturday evening I spent a couple hours look at maps and surfing the web. I spent a good hour checking out the often referenced but never equaled Pashnit.com in the hopes of finding a new exciting place to visit. At some point Pashnit bounced me over to SBC-Rides, which it turns out changed my Sunday considerably by opening my eyes to a whole new assortment of roads and route through the Santa Barbara area… So to be honest I wasn’t shocked when I woke Sunday morning in a rush to ride. I already knew it was going to be a grand adventure sort of day… The only person who didn’t was Milt.
Less than an hour after waking up, both MotorMilt and I hit the beginning of the Pacific Coast Highway in Santa Monica. So at roughly 6:30 AM we were already a good fifteen to twenty miles up the coast. By then it was obvious that this was going to be a special day. There was no traffic at that hour. No signs of life actually. It was just blissful being alone on the road that early on a Sunday morning.
Around 7:00 AM we made our first stop of the day at the Starbucks in Malibu, just north of Zuma Beach. At that hour on a Sunday it’s a rather odd crowd that gathers there. Generally speaking a large portion of patrons look either completely hung over from the night before, still extremely wired or so out of it that they’re completely lost. In the first of a series of odd conversations during the course of the day, another rider who was on an Aprilla came up to us while we were sitting outside drinking our first cups of coffee and asked us if it would be alright for him to go look at our bikes in the parking lot. Not to be to sarcastic but when did you have to ask someone if you could do that?
A few minutes later we got back on the bikes and continued to head up the coast, taking the PCH all the way up past Point Magu Naval Base and through the two towering rock formations. At that point none of the early morning fog had burned off yet so even though the incredibly efficient Italian seat heaters had kicked in both MotorMilt & I were freezing our asses off. It’s amazing to me that after all this time riding up and down the coast neither one of us has seemed to grasped that we both much prefer riding when we’re too hot then when we’re too cold. And of course once again we had both forgotten either the top or bottom set of thermals. Go figure.
So when we hit the city of Ventura about half hour later we didn’t want to stop, we had to stop. Just to defrost. It was right around then that Milt first gazed over at me as I was toying around with a small photocopied section of a pocket map and asked where we were headed. In retrospect I suppose I could have been more forthcoming, but instead I just sort offered some off-handed nameless road above Ojai. I don’t know if MotorMilt was completely awake at that point or not, but this rather vague answer seemed good enough for him. So while I wasn’t really trying to lie, I also wasn’t sure that I wanted him to know just how far up the coast I was planning on taking us…
See. the previous evening while looking up roads on the internet I came to the unfortunate conclusion that after riding The Santa Monica Mountains almost exclusively for the past several years there just aren’t any local roads that we’ve have never ridden. All the close ones have been done repeatedly, weekend after weekend. Part of me smiled when I realized that, yet on the other hand there’s something magical about trying out a new road for the first time before you know whether or not you enjoy it. Perhaps it’s the most quintessential of motorcycle experiences when you’re coming up to a fresh corner and know nothing about where it leads. There’s some kind of freedom in that kind of moment when you don’t know where the road is going but you’ve already made the choice to head down it anyway… So with that in mind, this was the magical route for the days adventure…
The 12 Hour Sport-Touring Ride On A Sportbike Route
Approx: 340 miles and about 12 hoursTook the Pacific Coast Highway North to The 101 North at Oxnard From the 101 North shot up to the lower portion of Route 33 towards Ojai Popped up Route 150 and went around Lake Casitas From 150 took the Caltrans Detour to Route 192 North Took 192 from Carpinteria all the way around the backside of Santa Barbara, until we hit Route 154 Took Route 154 North towards Santa Maria Just outside of Los Olivos, took a right on to Foxen Canyon Road Took Foxen Canyon for roughly 25 miles before eventually taking a Left on Palmer Road Palmer eventually intersects the 101, Took that North to Santa Maria Turned around after gassing up in Santa Maria and took the 101 South Just outside of Los Olivos we picked up Route 154 South bound Took 154 all the way back to Santa Barbara Got on the 101 South and then the Pacific Coast Highway (Route 1) South back to The Westside of LA
After we leaving the city of Ventura, we shot up the 101 for a few miles before I motioned for MotorMilt to follow me off the freeway and on to the beginning of Route 33. Part of me had thought about simply taking Route 33 all the way above Ojai and into the foothills of the Central Valley, but seeing as how MotorMilt and I have done that on a number of occasions and I was jonesing for something new, I shook that thought off and simply used 33 to get us to Route 150.
As I’ve come to learn over the course of my riding adulthood roads that wrap themselves around bodies of water are almost always a blast and Route 150 doesn’t disappoint. Hugging the outskirts of Lake Casitas, 150 starts out relatively softly running you through what feels like the California countryside, but suddenly shoots straight up what feels like the one lone mountain that separates the Ojai Valley from Carpenteria. While not the tightest collection of turns, it’s one of those roads that has a tremendous amount of visibility through almost every corner which enables you to really set yourself up nicely at each entrance.
It was somewhere towards the middle of 150 that it occurred to me that the reason that I so greatly enjoy the Ojai Valley is because it truly reminds me of the East Bay of Northern California. For some reason the topography just strikes such a similar chord with me that every time I’m up that way I feel almost teleported back to my youth. Odd how such completely different areas can feel so connected.
Usually we’d take 150 straight into Carpenteria, but every since the winter rainy season the final few miles of 150 have been shut-down. What had been a nifty side road that connects 150 to Route 192 is now the only way to get back to the coast and into the Santa Barbara region. If you look at the map above you’ll notice that starting in Carpenteria the 1 and the 101 merge together and it stays that way until you’re fairly high above the city of Santa Barbara. Technically the city of Santa Barbara has roughly 90,000 residents, however because it’s Santa Barbara there’s a pretty decent sized workforce and the combined 1/101 is basically the only way in or out going either north or south. Having taken the combined 1/101 several times on a bike and in a car I had no real desire to spend my Sunday morning dealing with it’s high level of traffic, so instead MotorMilt and I continued on up Route 192. It was the first road of the day that neither one of us had ever been on and it turned out to be absolutely amazing…
Starting in Carpenteria, Route 192 works its way up and around the backside of Montecito and Santa Barbara for roughly thirty miles. It’s a sneaky set of roadway that snakes itself past amazing vistas, seriously impressive mega-mansions and small chunks of what feels like the ‘real Santa Barbara’ - not the tourist traps. Since it was early the traffic was still relatively light and that let us swing around corners probably a bit faster than you could once there was more residential traffic on the road. Had it been later and we had to dial it back it would have been an absolute shame. The road just carries you from start to finish with a gigantic smile on your face. How can it not? There are just so many wonderful corners that swing you up and down and side to side and then just as you think the road is drying up, it starts all over again and this swinging sensation repeats itself in such a timeless manor that once you reach the end of the road you feel almost cheated because it stopped to soon.
Somewhere towards the end of Route 192 was when I first realized that I just about to full break in my 999. 1,500 miles had come and gone in lightning quick fashion it seemed and as we started to make the switch from Route 192 to Route 154 - commonly referred to as the San Marcos Pass - it began to dawn on me that I could finally open the bike all the way up.
Rolling on the throttle for the first time my immediate reaction was WOW, this thing is truly a one-of-a-kind rocketship… With the throttle kicked open, the bike just fires forward, right around 7.5k the audible magic of a Ducati becomes entirely apparently to everyone around no matter how much insulation their cars or trucks have. The whole experience just dramatically changes. It’s almost like going from just a passenger on top of the bike to a visceral participant with the bike… Now, maybe it’s just that I’ve been away from a fully broken in bike for awhile now or maybe it was just the kind of day I was having, but the minute I slowly started opening the bike up it just took off. Like never before. More rocketship than I have ever known. Trying not to either kill myself or get a record breaking ticket this early in the morning, I quickly dialed it back before my next most instance reaction hit. ‘Wow, finally, time for another trackday’…. It took me a few minutes to come to grips with the fact that here I was loosing myself during an amazingly pleasurable sport-touring kind of day and yet I was already fantasizing about being somewhere else and getting out on a track again. Amazing how that can happen once you’re jazzed about something…
The San Marcos Pass as it turns out happens to be a pretty decent road to let the bike run itself out on… It’s another roughly thirty mile stretch, which connects the Northern edge of Santa Barbara with a town called Los Olivos yet its claim to fame is that it runs right over the top of the Santa Ynez Mountains. As roads go this one has a pretty interesting history. The route was first used by the Indians and later named for a monk named Fr. Marcos Amestoy who supervised the building of a mission dam, waterworks and filter house between 1804 and 1813. The road stayed in Spanish hands until a Col. John Fremont (as in Fremont, California) marched his troops over the pass in 1846. From that point forward the route became a legendary stagecoach location - including being used by the Wells Fargo Stagecoach Express. Originally the route took 8 hours to tranverse, but in the 1960’s a more mainstream freeway straightened out a great number of the curves and now the trip can take a mere half-hour. If you’re interested Santa Barbara Lifestyles has a more complete history available on their website.
MotorMilt and I had ridden the San Marcos Pass a couple of times before - all of which I believe were on Beemers. This trip was absolutely nothing like those previous adventures. First and foremost because we were just approaching somewhere around 11 AM and the local police enforcement hadn’t come out to spoil the near freeway like speeds that were going on. Secondly the sun was finally starting to break and suddenly I went from feeling pretty cold to almost instantly feeling flush with warmth and loose. Sliding in the saddle just magically felt easier and smoother. Finally because as we hit the summit of the pass, we were pretty close to the Cold Spring Tavern. The Tavern is one of those great almost hidden treasures of a resting stop. Founded in the 1860’s, the place has a rather checkered past - reportedly housing gamblers and unsavory types for quite sometime before turning into a rather upscale restaurant later in life. Nowadays it gives both The Rockstore and Newcomb’s Ranch a run for their money for top billing as best biker bar hangout for Southern California. I strongly encourage anyone who heads through the Santa Barbara region to find the time to stop and check the joint out. It’s really worth the stop.
After we had a quick bite at the Tavern, MotorMilt and I continued to head up North. At this point I think Milt was starting to get a bit suspicious about where we were headed exactly, but he went along with it anyway. That turned out to be a great thing because when we got off the bikes in Los Olivos and I had a chance to check my notes from the previous nights’ internet adventures, I made sure that we wouldn’t miss what in many ways was the road I had wanted to find from the outset of the morning, Foxen Canyon Road…. Part II Tomorrow…
update: To Read Part II, click here.
1 Year Later… The best rides
Sunday MotorMilt & I did a monster 340 mile loop, which took us from LA all the way up the coast to Oxnard, over the southern tip of the San Rafael Mountains, through Santa Barbara and Montecito, over the Southwestern edge of the Santa Ynez Mountains, through Los Olivos and eventually into winery laden backcountry roads of the Western Los Padres National Forest. It was a hell of a ride. Perhaps our first sport-touring experience on sportbikes… I’ve diligently been working on a write up and I had hoped to have it finished this evening, but the sheer breadth of the places, people, vistas and roads that we were able to experience have managed to slow the process down just a bit… A full ride entry is coming shortly…
A teaser from Foxen Canyon in the heart of Santa Barbara Wine Country
While on the ride and while working on the entry afterward, I’ve been spending quite a bit of time thinking about Twisting Asphalt. Really ever since I realized that I had been doing this for over a year now I’ve been struck by several things; the most important of which is how much fun its been. I’ve also been struck by the sheer volume of posts over the past year. Some are as fun to read now as the day I wrote them. Other however are less stellar. Subsequently I’ve decided to do some spring cleaning and delete some of the less noteworthy posts.
I’ve also upgraded my Wordpress blogging software which necessitated a small site redesign. That of course morphed from a small update into a complete site overhaul. According to the website logs the vast majority of readers use an RSS feed reader so I suspect few of them will notice the change.
For those of you who visit the actual site regularly things have moved around a bit. As you’ll notice I’ve relocated a number of items to a new menu underneath the header image. Hopefully this will make it easier to find the various parts of the blog. You’ll also notice that some of the post categories have changed. From what I can tell from the website logs it doesn’t appear that many people actually use the broken down categories in the blog sidebar – so I thought that perhaps there was a slightly better way to organize them hence the simplification of the various categories. I’ve also added a category called top rides as a way to highlight various rides and posts that I think are the most interesting or enjoyable.
During the past several days I spent sometime re-reading the blog and during that time I came up with a handful of what I consider to the best or more interesting riding posts over the course of the past year… I had started with the idea of a top ten best ride posts… Somehow that list got a bit longer…
May 20th, 2004:The Lost Coast Expedition of 2004
This was one of the first blog entries about riding that I ever wrote for Twisting Asphalt and whenever I think back about some of my more memorable rides, this particular adventure always rises to the top of the list. I guess 1,200 miles up the California coastline in just under week tends to stick in your mind for quite sometime.
May 27th, 2004:Sunride on a Thursday
It was during the great Lost Coast trip, after a particularly sporty and engaging day that I first brought up the idea of picking up a liter bike to MotorMilt. Never being the types to shy away from making decisions, it was only a week later that we dove into the world of the Ducatistia. This post was written early in the morning on the day we went to pick up our first pair of Ducs.
July 24th, 2004:The Duc Heads North : Route 33
Having a weekend to myself, I ventured up past Ojai, California and hit the magical Route 33 on my first decent length adventure on a Ducati Sportbike. 230 miles later I was physically beat up, but one hell of a happy camper. This post was also memorable as it was one of the first really good uses of my Canon SD-10 digital camera. Some really cool picts imho.
July 24th, 2004:Stolen Ducs - Update
On one of my darkest days the only place I could turn was the blog… This is a point by point chronicle of the first 8 hours after we came home to find that the bikes were missing.
September 18th, 2004:Ikes in The White House & All is well
After a month of screwing around with State Farm, MotorMilt and I were finally able to settle and get back into a pair of bikes. Along the way I came to realize that I had fallen in love with the Ducati sensibility. On this day I wrote;
My heart simply was no longer in the ‘S’ and it was time to move on. If this is starting to sound all together to similar to a relationship, I suspect that’s because for me that’s what riding and owning a motorcycle has become. In so many ways it has become part of me, my identity, my idle thoughts, my vacations, my relaxation, and my soul. Sometimes I think that might not be such a good thing, but then on days like today I’m reminded that maybe, just maybe, it’s okay profess your admiration to an inanimate object because the minute that I fired over the 999 for the first time the most amazing feeling took a hold of me.
September 25th, 2004:Early Morning Skies and Way Back Memories.
A week later I wrote one of my lengthiest posts which chronicled my evolution through different bikes and about my emotional guilt every time I handed over the keys from a previous bike.
November 26th, 2004:My Kind of Thanksgiving
When all of society is hanging out with their families, it’s amazing how empty the roads can be… This is one of my favorite posts and one of my favorite set of pictures of the yellow 999.
December 5th, 2004:What’s An Extra 1,000 RPMs Worth?
Some of my favorite canyon pictures… And one of my favorite opening to any post;
When I die, I want to be reincarnated as a 999.
Just give me an open road with lots of curves and no traffic and I promise I’ll be a happy camper. The 999 is just that damn special. That amazing, really… At various parts of our ride today I not only stood in awe of what this bike can do but felt simply amazed at the opportunity to ride it.
December 24th, 2004:A Magnificent Morning
Re-reading this post I’m amazing at how much I enjoyed reliving the ride once again… Some beautiful picts too.
December 26th, 2004:A Glorious Christmas Ride.
The following day, MotorMilt & I went on one of our longest rides up to this point on the Ducs and I got introduced to the amazing Route 23… A fantastic ride, a very enjoyable post (for me anyway) and unequivocally some of the best pictures I’ve ever taken.
March 12th, 2005:A Needed Unwinding
This was a very normal ride for MotorMilt & I… One that I hate to say had run together with so many others before I went back to re-read my previous entries… It was only then that I saw one of the better things I believe I’ve written in the blog;
While swinging around a rather decent sweeper on Encinal Canyon this morning about halfway through the ride I was struck by the thought that over the course of my life the word ‘relaxation’ has continued to evolve in its meaning. Almost to a point where sometimes I think it seems like an organic concept, not a definition in a book. Originally relaxing seemed like such a simple idea - have a day off, go do something you enjoy and feel refreshed afterward. Yet these days, as more and more of ‘the real world’ creeps its way into my personal time, I find it harder and harder to just lose myself and feel mellow when I’m not at work. Perhaps that’s just growing up, I don’t know. When MotorMilt and I were headed up the PCH this morning at the start of our ride I was having a bitch of a time finding a way to let go of all that other stuff… And of course its funny how a motorcycle picks up on your vibe, if you feel a little bit tense the bike suddenly feels that tension and begins to act out which in turn makes you feel even more tense then you were when you started. In many ways it becomes a stackable issue, one thing building on the last. Yet as we got further and further away from the city, the more I found a peaceful groove. By the time we hit the deli for breakfast even though the skies were still covered in a big gray mess of moody clouds, I felt pretty good… Thankfully that carried over to the ride home. I found the journey back an absolute blast. Had you asked me while MotorMilt and I were mounting up on the Ducs at the Agoura Deli in all honesty I probably wouldn’t have thought that a ride back on a cloudy day like today could be so rewarding. For that brief hour or so, everything just felt locked in. Not in a ‘zone’ sort of way, but rather in an at peace with life sort of way.
April 1st, 2005:Trackday : The Adventure Continues
Of course you knew that I’d put my first track day on a Ducati on the list, right? This is a mixed blessing type of blog entry, it was a hell of a day that I will treasure of quite sometime yet it was also the day that yellow 999 first sprung an oil leak. As you can see from the entry I really had no idea how problematic that would become…
May 11th, 2005:Dawn of A New Ducati
I thought about placing the blog entry from the day the yellow diva died next, but to be honest that still bums me out a great deal. So I thought I’d just skip ahead to the good part, getting a new duc! One of my favorite posts, hands down. Also some nice picts and one that I especially dig that MotorMilt took from the front seat of the truck while I was riding next to him on the freeway…
May 13h, 2005:Second Ride : A Santa Paula Loop
A great day of riding which was followed by one of my better posts. Some fun picts too. Oddly I really enjoy the picture of the CalTrans temporary stoplight. Don’t ask me why.
June 20th, 2005:A Day of Days (&Video!)
I have to say that this one is still fresh in my mind, so it’s relatively easy to pick as a great ride and decent entry… Memorable because it was my time out with the helmet camera and frankly because it was just one of those days that just felt endless in both beauty and enjoyment. The kind of day you really want to repeat again and again and again…
June 23th, 2005:A 1 Year Celebration : The Angeles Crest
I had to put this ride on the list. It was just to amazing not to bring back up. 260 miles of pure bliss on a motorcycle. It had roads I knew, roads I’d never been and scenic vistas that just took your breath away…
Second Ride: A Santa Paula Loop
I’m not sure I can adequately describe how much better things seem when you have the ability to wake up in the morning and head out on a ride. Especially when you get to take advantage of the kind of perfect weather we had today in Southern California. It was absolutely beautiful. For the first time in ages it finally feels like SoCal again.
Right now, I’m physically exhausted, so this will probably be one of my shorter ride postings, yet I find myself still sitting in that wonderful afterglow period that occurs right after you have a fantastic ride. The ‘05 is simply an awesome bike. I feel like I write that a lot about Ducati’s, but this time it’s truly different. From the simple pleasure of just looking at the bike all the way to how it reacts on curvy roads, it’s just something else. After covering roughly 200 miles on it today, I feel like I know her. It’s just an amazing experience on two wheels.
Around 7:30 this morning MotorMilt & I headed out towards Ojai - one of our favorite riding areas as many long time reader know. It’s been quite awhile since either one of us had been up that way and although we didn’t make it all the way out to Route 33, we did a really nice loop up that took us from Santa Paula, through Ojai, up around the backside of Lake Casitas to Carpenteria.
The Santa Paula Loop
Took PCH Route 1 North to The 101 North Took 101 North To Highway 126 East Exited at Highway 150 towards Ojai, California Shoot through Santa Paula and got breakfast in Ojai. After getting some eats, we picked up Route 33 out of Ojai - towards the 101 - and then popped off on the remainder of Highway 150 Took Highway 150 all the way until we hit a detour and were forced onto Route 192 towards Carpinteria, CA Hit the 101 & took is South until Rose Avenue in Ventura Got off at Rose Ave and headed towards the PCH PCH Route 1 South, from Point Magu to Santa Monica
Unlike some of our other trips out towards Ojai, this wasn’t the most challenging ride - partly because we never made it to Route 33 and partly because of the remaining rain damage from the winter storms. Just about every route we were on, excluding the freeways, seemed to be under construction at various points. CalTrans seemed to be out in full force. Route 150 between Santa Paula and Ojai was perhaps the worst. There were four or five sections of the road where temporary traffic lights have been set up because the outside lane of the normally two lane road had vanished during the rainy season. During the 2 minutes between traffic light intervals I finally had some time to snap a pict of one of the new temp lights that dot the canyons across SoCal.
According to a few folks we chatted with in Santa Paula, Route 150 just reccently was reopened. So while waiting for the temp lights to turn green was no fun, it was better than having no road to ride at all. If you’ve never had the chance to experience Route 150, it’s a really nice gentile ride. Not nearly as tightly wound as some of the roads in The Santa Monica Mountains, but glorious none the less.
After stopping for quick bite to eat in Ojai, we started to head back towards our neck of the woods on the lower portion (read less exciting because it’s civilized) part of Route 33 that deadends at the 101. Realizing that this didn’t seem very exciting we ventured off and headed North on the remaining part of Route 150 that runs around the backside of Lake Casitas and eventually drops you off in Carpenteria. Outside of today, I believe I’ve only ridden that part of road one other time on a motorcycle. Wow did I forget what a great ride it is. It’s simply a joy. Not the best pave job in the world right now but once you get over that and start to enjoy the scenery and the swooping sweepers it just becomes a blast. We were enjoying it so much I actually forgot to stop and get some picts! From now on I have to remember to add it to my mental list of quality roads that are worth riding in SoCal….
A quick & dirty map of our Santa Paula Loop
A Glorious Christmas Ride
8. 23. 33. 126. 128. 150. 227. 999. 1340. These are the numbers that continue to roll around in my head tonight. It has simply been such an amazing day that right now as I sit here typing this blog entry and aching all over, I’m blown away with how special and unique the last twenty four hours have been. It all started yesterday with a magnificent ride through the Santa Monica Mountains. Going into this weekend I didn’t frankly know what to expect, but after yesterday’s ride it was clear that we had to take advantage of today. And in unbelievable fashion we did.
For 8 hours we rode the Ducatis from here to there and everywhere in between. According to the clock it seems like a long time and if you knew how my body felt right now you’d believe it, but for those eight hours it felt like one wonderous corner after another planted throughout a collection of diverse settings with amazing views that simply put an ear to ear grin on my face all day. It felt so incredibly special. First and foremost because it was Christmas Day and while the world was unwrapping presents, we were leaning the bikes over in corners with little to no traffic. It truly felt like the world was sleeping while we were out playing. Just good, good stuff.
Today’s Ride Itinerary
Christmas in Ojai ( Approx. Time: 9 AM to 5 pm )
While riding today it occurred to me that perhaps it would be a good idea if I started detailing which roads MotorMilt & I are riding on any given day. As you can see above, I’ve started a short bullet point listed itinerary. I don’t know if this will really work or not, but I thought it couldn’t hurt…
Back to today. Milt and I got ready to leave for the ride at 8am, but thankfully Milt suggested that I check my tire pressure. Turns out that I was running seven psi low in my rear tire. Either the Ducati is eating air pressure for breakfast or I’ve got a slow, small leak back there. The only other explanation I can think of - and this is a stretch - is that when we get rolling in the canyons perhaps the tires heat up more than the Beemers did and that somehow effects how much air stays in there. An Expansion-Contraction theory perhaps, I don’t know.
Once we got that out of the way, we hit the road and did one of our usual morning loops. The PCH to Las Floras to Piuma and eventually to Mullhulland and then breakfast. At that point the greatness of the day was still in its infancy and I was a bit more concerned with the lack of heat. As it turns out Christmas mornings in LA take awhile to warm up. By the time we hit Agoura for some food the outside temperature was finally starting to wake up and hovering around seventy-five. Not to shabby for December 
It was after breakfast that Milt & I decided to try and get up to Ojai. We had talked about it briefly after the ride yesterday, thinking that it might make a good Christmas activity (it did!), but I always figure given how much energy riding the Ducs take it’s a better idea to see how we’re both feeling once we’ve had some food and coffee. Once our destination was decided, we then had to come up with a plan for how to get there. Standing in the parking lot Milt suggested a different route to Ojai, one that I’d never taken or even heard about for that matter. This folks was an all-time first. MotorMilt isn’t called NavigatorMilt for a reason… Usually we take the 101 Freeway from Agoura to the more civilized part of Route 33, however MotorMilt’s suggestion was to head up the 101 but cross over on Highway 23, shoot through Fillmore, pop on to Highway 126 and run that into Highway 150. This essentially back doors you into Santa Paula and subsequently Ojai since they’re almost neighboring towns.
When we got on 23, I had my doubts. It starts as a mega freeway that’s an off-shoot of the 101. But once you get past the Ronald Reagan Library and head down into the beginning of the Simi Valley, the road starts to change. Not fast mind you, but slowly. Slow enough that when it hits you that the road has changed, well, it has. Then just as you’re getting your bearing straight, the road splits. 23 goes North via a decidedly un-highway like off-ramp, while the 118 continues looking like a freeway while wrapping around the backside of the valley. To be honest I’ve never spent all that much time in “The Valley”. Not out of any LA styled disgust for “The Valley”, which I know a number of people around here have, but rather it just wasn’t really on my radar. So I was sort of surprised once we ended up on the post-split part of 23 to find that what exists out there was starting to look almost farm like. There were wooden fences where I expected to see walls and walls of track homes. After a funky jog through what I believe was Fillmore - where there was some really interesting classic Californian architexture going on that I wish I got a picture of - we ended up heading up this oddly rising hill while heading out of town. When we got to top of it, suddenly there was another one. Then some farms and oak lined parks and then suddenly there was another hill. And so it went, hill after hill, slowly growing into mountains. Watching the hills begin to rise and gradually grow up, was almost like seeing a mountain range born before your eyes. It was a real visual treat.
The whole time I felt like I was on vacation. It wasn’t coastal and it wasn’t desert. Not exactly woody, but definitely not flat and definitely filled with a fair amount of vegatation. In many ways 23 started to feel more like an east coast road as we carved our way through the hillside. If there had been falling Autumn leaves it wouldn’t have been out of place. This couldn’t be LA, could it?
23 then lead us directly into the path Highway 126, which if you’ve never been on is a trip of it’s own. Running from the super slab I-5 near Santa Clarita all the way to the ocean and the 101. The road covers quite a bit of mileage if you go start to finish and whole bunch of folks live at each end, yet you’d never know it if you catch up with it somewhere near the middle. Instead of tons of people and tons of traffic, it’s a two lane road - sometimes four - that cuts through farm country. The kind of countryside that was seem more at home in the central valley or up the coast near Cambria. Think lots of green, lots of orange grooves and lots of mountain ranges and little hills splattered throughout.
As we headed west on 126, I was just blown away with how many farms were surrounding us. And while the road isn’t a canyon carver by any stretch of the imagination, it’s got some nice sweepers and thankfully a few decent elevation changes. Nothing major, but nice stuff anyway. The sort of road that lets you dial it back a bit and just enjoy the journey with no sense of guilt for not attacking the road more vigorously. In the moments when the ebb and flow of traffic died down, I kept looking out at these two fantastic mini-mountain ranges that were running along side of the highway and seeing what appeared to be some nicely carved out asphalt roads. Have to remember to check a map and see what exists back there.
Welcome to the Ojai Valley
From that point forward the rest of the ride was as MotorMilt later put it, “simply glorious”. From the 126 we hit Santa Paula and picked up Highway 150 which is just fantastic. An absolute outright frigg’n blast. Once the road got going it was truly an inspirational snaking path of asphalt, rolling up and over a collection of odd if not Classic California looking farmland before shooting through a great section of twisties. Eventually the road peaks and the entire Ojai valley appears right before your eyes and on a day like today it was just magical. Not a cloud in the sky and you could see for miles. No haze, no fog, no smog, nothing but drop dead gorgeous mountain hillsides surrounding a wonderfully green valley filled with fruit. Oranges as it turns out. Once we got down the backside of the mountain, there were orange grooves for miles on end. If I had to guess what LA looked like in the 1950s, this was it. How I had managed to never look at a map and see this amazing squiggly line given all the times I’ve treked up to Ojai is simply beyond me. It was wonderful.
Looking out over the edge
The pre-requisite shot of Route 33
MotorMilt in Action
Once we got into town I started to think about how I’m sure that there are a whole host of reasons why people go to Ojai, California. I on the other hand go for Route 33 and Route 33 only. That simple. If the town went away tomorrow, I’d still go just for this road. It is literally miles and miles of twisting mountain road that cuts back and forth with everything from gentile sweepers you can see from end to end to tightly wound almost decreasing radius corners that have elevation changes. Almost feels as if someone holy put 33 there exclusively for motorcyclists. I know that’s not really true since they built the road to get from the Central Valley to Ojai, but it sure feels that way. I’ve written about Route 33 before after I took the ill-fated 749 through it.
In comparison, the 999 was entirely different beast on 33. The more linear ability of the larger engine simply made getting on the gas coming out of the corners so much more intense and really so much more rewarding. The fact that the engine is almost broken in allowed me to have far more rpm activity, which in turn allowed me to have a bit more fun with my down shifts. And perhaps it’s because I’ve got a track day coming up or because when you add up all the miles I’ve now spent riding both the 749 and the 999 I’m really starting to get comfortable, but I found myself very focused on using both my front and rear brake in conjunction today. I’ve probably mentioned it before, but usually I rarely use the rear brake. Today I found myself very actively engaging it to keep the front end from coming up and on a road like 33 you really notice the difference.
Throughout the first half of 33 everything seemed like it was in slow motion - in a good way - the art of riding was simply happening for me. Corners came up and my reactions felt less like mental exercises and more like habit. On the back half of 33 that all changed.
Suddenly the road dropped down into the valley and any and all signs of life or civilization ended. The road morphs from a canyon pass into a wonderful stretch of long straight aways and giant sweepers that just seem to keep coming at you. And that’s where the power of the 999 shined. A 128 mph shine to be exact. At least that’s what the speedo said I was doing when I finally got a chance to look down on one of the straight aways. Now, I don’t mean to sound like a complete daredevil here but with no cross traffic to worry about or school zones it just seemed like the perfect place to let it rip. And Wowzer, what a sensation. An absolute thrill. I can’t wait to get to the track. Instantly everything was flying by and the difference between going 100 miles per hour and 120 was absolutely incredible. At 120 my helmet was pushing back on my face, the wind was howling and I was just on a complete roll. Until today I’d never gone that fast in my life. And yet the bike felt 100% stable. Almost like it was just getting started. I reached down and twisted my wrist, fully expected to feel topped out - only I it wasn’t. There was plently more to go. The only word that can begin to describe how much power this bike has is endless. It just keeps going and going and going and when you get to that point when it just doesn’t seem possible that there could be anything left, it keeps letting more out.
The 999 at the beginning of the back half of Route 33
Route 33 - Same Location - Looking West
Between goosing it to 128, seeing endless vista after endless vista and ripping through these magnificent endless roads, it’s hard for me not to feel like it was a truly unique and utterly inspiring day. Of course not as hard as sitting here now and thinking about it. I just want to continue to relive it. Again and again and again. Other than feeling physically sore, if I could get back on the bike right now, I would. It was the sort of day that felt so spectacular that I didn’t want it to end. How often do you ride for 8 hours and not want to see it conclude?
Perhaps the part that best sums it up is one particular right hand corner that lies towards the beginning part the of the mountain section on 33 (as you’re heading west). You’re flying down a relatively long straight, hit a hard left hand corner which opens up into a mini straight away that leads directly into this particular right hander. Only the right hander is cambered slightly odd and it has this enormous Tim Burton looking tree lying squarely right down the yellow line. When you’re looking into this corner and prepping for the turn, this tree just looms over you. As if it’s competely unavoidable. I have continued to blow this corner every time I’ve ever ridden 33 since I first started riding it. I suspect this is largely due to the fact that the first time I took 33, on a BMW R1100RS, I fixated on this tree and had a major ‘moment of concern’. Unlike previous days, today while whipping around these same corners I didn’t even see the tree until I was already almost through the corner. It just happened in whirlwind of activity.
The end of a glorious day
For the rest of the ride I was firmly planet with a perma-grin and this undeniable feeling that today was incredibly special. All told, we did about 227 Miles, which puts me at 1340 out of approximately 1550 for a full engine break in. That’s pretty cool. Because even as fast as I was going today, I still didn’t get over 8,000 rpms…
As I think about the ride now, I can’t help but think that for all the local rides we take in a given month, none have been this rewarding and this awe inspiring. For 8 hours I was able to think of nothing but the ride, the bike, and the road. I can’t imagine a better way to spend the holiday. No grief, no commitments, no family chaos, just a physically and mentally challenging ride that seemed to go on for ever. Up until today there was a gulf in how I viewed the local rides we take versus how I’ve felt when we go for six or seven day adventures. A difference in how much relaxation was possible. After today that has completely changed… As Milt said, “It was a glorious ride”.
