Weekday Solitude
It starts small. A mere tread of a thought. An idea that floats through your mind amid a day that’s filled with miscellaneous events that need attention. At first you push it aside. You tell yourself that it’s not the responsible thing to do. It’s not the prudent course of action. But every time you turn around the concept haunts you. It’s there. Waiting for you at each turn. Gradually as you finish working on each pile of paper that’s been sitting on your desk the same exact thought keeps running back to the forefront of your mind. You need to ride. Not tomorrow and not this weekend, but right now. Today. While sunlight still fills the canyons and there are open weekday roads left to conquer.
Truth be told I rarely ditch out of work early to get a ride in, but today the voice was just to strong. Conceptually I love the idea of riding while the rest of the world is working, but from a practical standpoint it’s awfully hard to get away. I tend to think about quite a bit, but my track record thus far has been rather suspect. I tend to be one of those folks who always feels like there’s something else that can get done. But today something deep inside needed to get away. It needed to feel alive. Needed to remember what it is that I love.
So around noon I hitched up the leathers and headed outbound towards the canyons. At first I wasn’t sure if this was the right decision, but minutes later while I was weaving my way through the mid-day PCH rush I just knew, this was where I needed to be. This was where I felt at home.
Strikes me that every now and then basic humanity requires some level of personal solitude. Some sort of introspective and disengaged moment of time when you allow yourself to only think about what you’re doing at the exact moment you’re doing it. We live in a world of constant noise; TVs, Radios, Computers, The Internet, Phones, you name it, and they all complicate our lives. Sometimes you just need some space from it all. Some critical distance. A chunk of time where it’s just you, and in this case the road. I suppose at its core this is one of the many beauties of riding. It’s a unique activity that allows you to just get up and go. And today I did.
Because I wasn’t one hundred percent focused, I shoot up Topanga Canyon and then popped over Old Topanga in order to get to Mulholland as I eventually worked my way to the Agoura Deli. It’s a ride that I rarely do anymore, but it was the original loop that started this sportbike fiasco. These were the very first canyon roads that I learned to ride. In a strange way it felt good to be back – almost backtracking - on them this afternoon. There was more traffic than I expected, but that was all right. This wasn’t about speed. It was about the ride. About getting out and going. About setting yourself free when your soul asks you to.
I try to ride a lot – well relatively a lot for me – yet I rarely ride on a whim. Usually I know when I might be able to get a ride in or when I won’t be able to hit the road. But today while heading back home after a late lunch, it occurred to me that riding on a whim is in some ways the most emotionally exciting variant of riding that there is. It’s a very different level of satisfaction. You feel more connected. More inspired. More relaxed. Because being able to just go wherever you want whenever you want conjures the greatest notions of riding. It heightens the experience. Makes you more thankful for it. Forces you recognize that while you wish this was the everyday, it’s the exception and not the rule. There’s something uniquely powerful about that. Something that speaks to me beyond words and emotions and miles of open road. Something that beckons to do it again. Oddly I can already hear the little voice starting to ask about tomorrow.
Fluidity
I woke up Sunday in a bit of a haze which oddly was exactly how I felt on Saturday morning. Emotionally I have felt drained lately. Given everything that’s been going on, it’s little wonder that my batteries need a fair amount of re-charging these days. If I was living in fantasy land I’d head up the coast on a long, twisting voyage for weeks on end - but life isn’t a fantasy, it’s a reality and these days that means something rather divergent than my mental dreamland. So when the alarm went off at 7:30 Sunday morning I slowly rolled out of bed and found a cup of coffee before making my way towards a ride.
Originally when I had made plans to meet up with Lowell, Stazz and David for a Sunday ride it had never occured to me that I might be so whipped that I wouldn’t have the energy to make it. But while sipping my first cup of coffee I felt this strange sense of obligation. Even though my mind and body didn’t feel like riding I felt like I had made a committment. Giving your word to your ridding buddies is a hard thing to break, so off I went.
It didn’t take long as MotorMilt and I made our way up the coast to realize that I wasn’t the only one who seemed to feel like they were sleepwalking. The early morning fog was holding it’s own against the scattered rays of sunlight and the entire beach community scene appeared to be moving in slow motion. The birds weren’t really flying around, the early morning joggers were hanging out in record numbers, the light was misty and the surf sounds were mellow at best. It was just a slow, slow morning in all respects.
But then we hit the Chevron at Sunset and the PCH and I realized that there were dozens of different biker groups meeting up for morning jaunts through the canyons. It was an amazing cross-section of cultures and leathers hidden amongst a plethera of people who weren’t in any rush to get anywhere. Within that moment things took a swing and suddenly I felt at ease. It was my space. My time. Moments later we hit the road and even though there was still a thick coastal mist hanging around the day sure seemed a lot brighter.
Coming around the fifth turn in an endless chain of corners it was obvious that there was something particularly fluid about how this morning unfolded. It was fast and it was easy – two things that aren’t always in agreement even though I wish they were. From entrance to exit was not the normally segmented series of adventures or movements but rather one continuous subconscious event that just kept going, corner after corner. An endless stream of micro-events that played out on a macro stage. While there are countless things that I normally find myself pondering while riding, today was just about letting it rip when you don’t feel like you have anything left to lose. I suppose that’s ultimately what seperates us mere mortals from racing legends. They let it rip all the time and those of us who are more human in nature ultimately get held back countless times in a given morning or afternoon by the mere thought of ‘what if’.
Today however was strange in that while it wasn’t my fastest day ever, it was perhaps my most focused. I found myself locked into seeing all those little details that you normally miss; The changes in the asphalt from where they recently repaved it, the morphing colors of the canyons, the dents in the side rails that run along the cliffs, the hawks flying above the roads, the assortment of other bikers heading in the opposite direction, the direction of the breeze, the canyon light, the changes between the scattered spots of sunshine and the packs of mist, and the sounds of the bike as it started each movement. Normally I tend to try and witness the world through a wide-angle lens while I’m on the bike - I try to take it all in and visualize it - but today was very, very condensed in comparison. It was just me attacking the road as it came and there’s something spectacular about how that feels when you can get your head into such a defined place. Such a targeted moment amongst movements.
The ride was also slightly unusual because I was riding in a group of five, which is the largest group I’ve ever ridden with. Yet that too was extremely fluid. Amongst the five of us we had a cross section of motorcycles and riding styles, yet none of that really mattered. The only thing that did was the actual ride and it was just wonderful. Partly because of the space I was in, but perhaps more importantly because of the company I was with. Eveyone who came along for the ride is an unabashed gearhead and even though there could or should have been a million other things running through my head, today’s conversation was purely based in motoroil.
Months ago I probably would have cringed at the thought of a large group ride – well, relatively large for me anyway – yet today was so smooth and so easy it makes it hard for me to justify my previous riding sensibility. Everyone found their own groove and their own speed. Their own pace. There was no sense of ego or a need to push it to prove it. The day just flowed from one canyon road to another one and that strikes me as somewhat special – because the thing that always held me back from group riding was the guy in the second or third spot who pulls out to make the pass because he has to be known as the fast guy. This group doesn’t have that guy. At it’s core it’s just a good group of gearheads hanging out on a Sunday who are there for the journey.
I’m whipped right now, so I think that’s it for now, perhaps I’ll add some more later….Here are some picts from latigo canyon.
Welcoming The Unexpected
I suppose I’ve been procrastinating over the last few days while trying to get my head around Saturday’s ride. To say that it’s been rather tumultuous in my life as of late would be a massive understatement. It seems I currently reside in a state of utter extremes and daily contradictions. Climbing on to the bike Saturday morning I found myself feeling rather certain that this would be one of those rides when the daily life intercepts and supersedes my weekend life. Rather shockingly however I was wrong.
In the past I’ve written at length about how one of the great joys I find in riding a motorcycle is that it’s an activity that requires if not demands a total one hundred percent type of focus and concentration. Up until Saturday I honestly believed that this was of utter importance to any riders survival. Of course believing something and practicing it can be two completely separate things. I doubt any of us who ride truly can give one-perfect total concentration to the sport while we’re riding. There are simply to many real world obligations and issues to ignore.
On this particular day through out the ride I found my mind wandering from an assortment of pertinent daily life topics. Some of which I have the power to control and others of which I simply must allow to play out. None of these issues were completely distracting but they were certainly at the forefront of my mind. Normally this sort of distraction would undoubtedly throw my ride off.
Yet Saturday was surprisingly different. The taste of a minor distraction somehow allowed me to just go out and ride and amazingly not think about what I was doing. That space in-between my helmet that’s usually reserved for technical observations, personal criticisms, or even the inevitable sensation of fear was seemingly full. It was being used for something else and all those normal ‘random’ thoughts had nowhere to go. So they simply didn’t exist. And in an odd way that little bit of a distraction made the ride feel more fluid, less reserved and most importantly more enjoyable. It was almost as if there was a greater freedom on this particular ride than I’ve felt as of late.
I suppose the greatest illustration of this unexpected freedom came on the middle portion of Cornell Road, when coming into a tight right hand corner before the road begins to eventually straighten out I managed to put my knee down without even thinking about it. To be honest it was a rather shocking moment since I wasn’t expecting to do it. My sense is that it’s been a good six months since I last touched down and lately I’ve found myself feeling very concerned about road debris, traction, safety and an assortment of other random motorcycle thoughts. But Saturday, with my mind cluttered with other stuff, I simply let go and it just happened. And somehow given everything that’s going on that seems to speak to me.
Here are some more picts from the ride:
Fly by Mind
They say that the brain is the largest and most important sexual organ in the human body. Since sex and motorcycles are so seemingly intertwined I figure it only stands to reason that this means that the brain is also the most important part of our human anatomy when it comes to riding. The past couple of weeks while I’ve been laid up with the flu I’ve spent quite a bit of time reading the newest round of motormags and I’ve been struck by how unavoidable the race for modern technology has become. It’s not a question of what it will be, but rather when. The fact that newest round of Japanese motorcycles are starting to ship with fly-by-wire technology simply blows my mind. Who would have ever thought this sort of Buck Rogers like technology would one day exist in our driveways? Yet today while riding it also occurred to me that no matter how much modern technology these motorcycles may exhibit nothing ever happens without seeing the events that are unfolding on the other side of our helmet visors, processing this information in mere nanoseconds, and then somehow amazingly enough not only recognizing what has to happen but also actually making it happen. Both mentally and physically. The whole process happens rather instantaneously yet if you stop and think about everything that we as riders have to do in these micro-blips of time it’s astonishing. Clearly these new technological achievements were created to help cut down the time it takes to work our way through the entire process of riding yet nothing will ever replace the one piece of hand-me-down technology that we were born with, what’s inside our heads.
Heading up the coast this morning I was very conscious of how cluttered the mind can become during the holiday season. There seems to be so many extraneous thoughts that can creep in during this time of the year. So many dissimilar threads that can range from mere to-do lists and run all the way to engaging reflections about the past year. The focus it takes to work one’s way through this jumbled mess sometimes just feels immense. It amazes me that with all this junk rolling inside you can actually still ride. That the human mind has the capability to actively process what it’s doing right now and somehow shelve these other thoughts for another time and place.
Mulling this over while running up and over Mullholland, I realized for the first time I’m now closer to the guys in the back of the pack who remember the way it used to be than I am to the hot shots with the newest baddest latest greatest two wheeled rocketships. Today, yesterday, the year before, these are the days that I will remember. These are my bits of time to relish. This is the moment in time that I will reflect on years later when someone asks me what it was like to ride when I was younger. That memory won’t be some sort of supercomputer motorcycle but rather a bike built from a tweener generation.
Yet we’re on the cusp of the next generation of riding. A time when bikes will continue to get lighter and faster and ultimately get easier to ride. Soon fly-by-wire technologies will not only be the norm but also just the surface of the next wave of goodies that comes straight out of the box. Things we’re already seeing deployed on a limited scale will become the everyday norm; Bluetooth, Airbags, Electronically controlled suspensions, built in GPS, improved ABS systems, and who knows what else. These days the sky truly seems the limit.
Eventually at some point all of these techno-head gizmos will become so proficient that no one will ever consider going back to the way it used to be. Back to the time I remember. Back to relative modernism and not space-age preflight. For the first time in my life I’m looking over the horizon and realizing that the next mile is probably someone else’s ride to cherish. That while I’ll appreciate everything that these soon to be modern motorcycles will enable me to do, I will only do so because I know how far they’ve evolved during my lifetime.
Like almost everyone else this time of year seems to bring out these highly reflective thoughts and feelings, yet this year feels quite different than last year. Time it seems continues to move on with or without my blessing. No matter how much I’d like to just be left alone to do my own thing, the clock continues to tick. Certainly it does with bikes, work, personal lives, and my generation as a whole. For the first time that feels like a rather scary thought. The group I came up with is moving on. We’re growing up. We’re immersed in the real world and I suddenly find myself caring about the conversation that’s going on at the grown up’s table. It’s pertinent to my life. To my job. To my existence. The days of feeling carefree and miniscule pressure are gone. Realistically I suppose that those days were left behind quite a long time ago, but when something actually occurs and when you realize that it happened can sometimes be two very different events.
Looking ahead I find myself feeling rather suspicious about it to be honest. I’ve spent my entire life rushing to get to this point and now that I’m here I don’t know what to do with myself. The more I hit the road and ride the greater I feel the divide between the fragments of my life. Some things have turned out exactly the way I wished they had and yet others have not and I find myself wondering what happens next?
Some other pictures from Today’s Ride…
Back in the Saddle
Yesterday MotorMilt & I were fortunate to finally get a ride in after what has felt like a month and half long drenching by mother-nature. Definitely not one of the best rides I’ve ever had nor the most enjoyable. I knew we were in trouble when we passed by the intersection at Topanga Canyon & The PCH, only to see it was still closed down. A friendly neighborhood policeman was making sure of that, his patrol car parked smack dab in the middle of the roadway. For as long as I can remember riding with MotorMilt, we have both preached to each other that ‘any ride is better than no ride’. Well, yesterday that axiom met it’s match. The roads were just filthy, dirty, distant relatives of the roads I know so well. I had fully expected that there’d be debris on the roads - after any decent rain in LA there’s always the seemingly prerequisite rock or two standing in your way - but the level to which the canyon roads have been destroyed it is quite extraordinary. Whole chunks of curb are gone in certain places, mini-mud slides are everywhere and in typical SoCal Caltrans fashion a good portion of two lane roads are now one lane. Stop signs are almost popping up at the mile mark. Yet to be honest, none of that really bothered me. What did was the thin layer of dirt that has coated the road surface. Perhaps it’s me, but the sportier I become in my riding the more time I spend worrying about my contact patch and yesterday given the reddish-brown clear coat that had been applied to the asphalt, I couldn’t help but wonder if the contact patch was in contact with anything other than a misty layer of mud.
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”.
A Magnificent Morning
Today’s ride was absolutely glorious. For much of the morning I felt like I was perpetually stuck in that wonderful moment when you’re slowly waking up after sleeping in on a quiet morning. Strange analogy I know, principally because it sounds greatly unsafe. Yet this morning ebbed and flowed in the most unlikely of manors. I started out feeling rather unsure of myself since I’ve been under the weather for the past few days. It’s funny how when you’ve had a head cold just getting back to normal can feel out of whack.
Unlike most days when MotorMilt & I go for a ride I didn’t feel like pushing it early in the ride. Instead we took a rather roundabout way to breakfast, ambling up the coast much farther then we normally do and then cutting over the Santa Monica Mountains at Latigo Canyon Road. I’ve written a number of times about Latigo before, but almost exclusively from a downhill perspective. That is we rarely take it west to east. The vast majority of our time we’re going in the opposite direction. Yet this morning, by taking going uphill it felt completely new and fresh. It has always fascinated me how a road that you know and love can alter so much simply by turning around and on no day has that been more true then this morning. It simply felt unknown and I don’t know if there’s a better feeling in the world for a motorcyclist.
As we headed up Latigo, I found myself still working my way into the morning. I didn’t feel tired, but I also didn’t feel jazzed. I was simply there on the bike, being proficient but also not out of this world either. Throw in what seemed like a high percentage of bicycle riders swaying into the middle of the lane coupled with an excess of debris and if you had asked at that point whether or not I was going to enjoy the ride, I would have told you that this felt more like a ‘get through it safely’ ride.
Then MotorMilt and I stopped for a break.
After getting off the bike and turning around it was impossible not to see what a glorious day it was. Just what a magnificent morning we had in store for us. The temperature was perfect, not to hot and not to cold. The normally hot running 999 wasn’t making me sweat to death, but rather adding just enough warmth to the ride to make me feel like a BMW heated hand grip was wrapping around my entire body. The sky was brilliantly clear. Not a cloud in the sky. The sun, which at times during Southern California winters can seem to hit at very low angles, for some reason seemed higher. Or atleast less noticable. There just seemed to be to many great elements to not have a wonderful ride.
After we finished our smokes and got back on the bikes, we headed down the rest of Latigo and popped on to Kanan on our way to the Agoura Deli. As most of you know, it’s one of our usual hang outs on the weekends. A couple of cups of coffe later and by the time we got back outside after breakfast I felt like a new person. I drink so much damn coffee on an average day I rarely feel a caffeine kick. Yet from that point forward through the rest of the ride I felt like I was on a riding rush. Don’t know if it was the caffeine or not, but I liked it.
There really aren’t adjective to describe the second half of the ride. Both MotorMilt & I seemed energized in a much different way. We took Kanan over to Encinal where the traffic was extremely light and it felt like we had the entire canyon to ourselves. At the ‘T’ stop sign around the halfway point on Encinal we shoot over to Decker Canyon and took that down to the coast. As the roads kept going and going, we kept riding and riding. I was suddenly becoming more and more intune with the bike. Suddenly shifts were getting smoother, braking was becoming more synchronous with the rest of my actions and the momentum of the ride was picking up. When we got to coast for some reason I just knew that the ride wasn’t over. Normally once we hit the PCH we tend to head back towards LA. However this morning without saying a word, just by looking at MotorMilt I knew that we had to keep riding. Again, there just seemed to be to much good karma to ignore. So in a highly unusual move for us, we then didn’t stick to the PCH, but rather shoot back up the adjacent dogleg part of Encinal. Thus ending up back at the ‘T’ intersection. Peeling off to the right we headed south once again. Right about then I was starting to feel the effects of canyon carving on my right hand wrist. Sportbikes put you in a rather leaned over position after all. So as we were flying down Mullhulland, past the big look out point and through the curvey sections above The Rockstore I realized that since we were heading by it we may as well stop. In all the years that I’ve been riding with Milt, I don’t think we’ve ever stopped at both the Deli and The Rockstore on the same day. Maybe it’s the holiday nature of this weekend or just the fact that we were both warming up, but it almost felt like we were riding our normal canyon speeds at a vaccation pace. I don’t know if that makes any sense or not, but I simply didn’t feel any of the normal time constraints or work related issues at that point. It was all about the ride.
Pulling over at The Rockstore, we picked up another cup of joe (surprising I know) and just hung out for a bit. I suspect they ran out of Bud Light since the six person RUB Harley gang that was drinking in the parking lot bounced pretty quickly after we arrived. Five minutes later the first of about a half dozen Ducati motorcycles showed up for the morning. It didn’t seem like a group, but rather a bunch of small batches of riders. The first one rolled up on a brand new 999R Fila edition - had the whole racing sticker set and the matching leathers. Was quite a bike to see up close. The Fila guy was quickly followed by another race oriented group of two riders. One had a 999S in racing trim with a Ducati Austin sticker set. I’m sorry I didn’t get a pict of the bike because the Ducati Austin racing trim was much cooler looking. Whoever’s bike it was had done a number of mods - new clutch cover, rear sets, mirrors, carbon fibre everywhere, etc. - but the best part was that he had a black coat of paint (or sticker set, I don’t know which) running down the underside of the fairing. Seriously cool with the Ducati Red paint scheme. This of course got me thinking about sticker sets for my bike, but that’s for another blog entry.
After The Rockstore, the rest of Mullhulland was an absolute blast. I feel like I’m repeating myself here, but it really felt like we had the entire canyon to ourselves. There were a few motorcycles heading in the opposite direction, but the roads were basically clear of traffic and very few mountain climbers or hikers walking down the side of the road. It was just so damn empty that at times it felt like we were lost when I knew exactly where we were. Crossing over Las Virgines we continued going on Mullhulland until we hit Old Topanga and then Topanga which we took to the coast.
Once we hit the coast we were ten or at the most fifteen miles from home and yet I couldn’t stop feeling like there was more riding to do. Seldom do we spend almost five hours whipping around in the canyons and shooting the shit at breakfast to end up feeling like the ride has just begun. It was simply one of those days magnificent and glorious days when it all comes together at it’s own pace, in it’s own time. What a wonderful way to spend the holidays.
