Hooligan Weekend

One would think that the car­ful of injured rid­ers who went to Big Sur with us would have served as a sober reminder to slow it down and take it easy. Our chase vehi­cle for the trip con­tained two bro­ken ankles, one bro­ken wrist, was dri­ven by a rid­er whose bike is in the shop after a crash that for­tu­nate­ly left her uninjured.

Sat­ur­day’s ride was sur­pris­ing­ly short: 150 miles from San Fran­cis­co to a camp­ground with cab­ins in the town of Big Sur. We checked in to our respec­tive cab­ins at around 2pm. With the amount of fog, wet roads, and star­tling encoun­ters with the North Amer­i­can Road Snake, I was actu­al­ly pleased to call it a day so ear­ly. An ear­ly din­ner for four­teen fol­lowed at a toney restau­rant with a beau­ti­ful view of the Pacif­ic and a fan­cy name from Greek myth. After din­ner, half the pack went back to camp and the oth­er half turned South to ride the Big Sur coastline.

I stopped to watch the last sliv­er of Sun dis­ap­pear behind the Ocean’s hori­zon, and there­fore became num­ber sev­en of sev­en as the rid­ers I’d passed zipped past my west-fac­ing bike. Not long after I con­tin­ued South again, I saw two of our rid­ers pulled over in a turnout before a men­ac­ing bank of fog that snarled and warned not to pro­ceed fur­ther. I thought that turn­ing back there was a wise choice, but I was asked to ride ahead and let the oth­ers know that the two who had turned back were safe­ly on their way back to camp and should not be wait­ed on. Reluc­tant­ly, I pressed on.

Imme­di­ate­ly I regret­ted hav­ing been con­vinced to keep head­ing South. Not only did I ride into the dark and chilly fog, but just as vis­i­bil­i­ty dropped to about thir­ty-five feet I passed a “rough road” sign, and soon dis­cov­ered that the sign was not kid­ding. I sud­den­ly began to won­der if I had not found myself trans­port­ed into the plot of a very bad hor­ror movie.

If I had skid­ded off the side of the road it would have been about 300 fog­gy feet down to a very abrupt and rocky death and I would­n’t be around to type the report you’re read­ing. Suf­fice it to say that despite the gloom and fear asso­ci­at­ed with the lack of vis­i­bil­i­ty and the road sur­face that just would­n’t stay still, I arrived unharmed at the turnoff to Nacimien­to-Furge­son Road where four faster rid­ers wait­ed for three strag­glers, now reduced to one. I did my duty and informed the four that the oth­ers had turned back and that I as well had seen enough for one day and would be head­ing for the cozy fire of the wood­stove of my cab­in, and per­haps to flirt with the sin­gle women that wait­ed back at camp.

These four men are bril­liant moti­va­tors, how­ev­er, and I can­not be blamed for chang­ing my plans under the psy­cho­log­i­cal manip­u­la­tion of my fel­low rid­ers. Tim aka Sher­iff quot­ed some mag­a­zine that had list­ed this par­tic­u­lar road as one of the Ten Best Motor­cy­cle Roads not in Cal­i­for­nia or in the Unit­ed States but in the entire world. When sit­ting at the foot of a road which could only be beat­en by at most nine oth­er roads on the plan­et, how could I even think of turn­ing up the chance? I looked skep­ti­cal­ly up the moun­tain, at least as far as I could see up through the thick fog after sun­set. As James (nick­named Retread) got ready to head out, he asked me, “are you sure you’ll be OK head­ing back there by yourself?”

My skep­ti­cal eye went back and forth from the “rough road” behind me to the unknown trail that snaked its way up a for­mi­da­ble coastal moun­tain, and final­ly I fol­lowed up, up, up.

Soon we were above the fog. We stopped a short way up to watch the sky and talk about noth­ing and every­thing. Venus was set­ting and the red­woods were sil­hou­et­ted before a sky that start­ed deep blue and fad­ed to green, deep yel­low, then orange and red at the hori­zon. It may have been an hour we stood there with our bikes as the sky dark­ened. When igni­tion keys were turned again we were all blind­ed by our own headlights.

The ride back was sur­re­al. Not being able to see the sud­den drop turned the road into just anoth­er series of curves. We always stick a lot clos­er togeth­er after dark and don’t push the speed as hard, but it was a brisk pace and it was refresh­ing to just drop the bike into a lean and go through the curve with­out being dis­tract­ed by all the stuff at the side of the road, no mat­ter how beau­ti­ful that stuff might have been.

Five of our group got up a lit­tle before six to go for a pre- break­fast ride. Sad­ly, one dropped his bike right out from the dri­ve­way and devel­oped an oil leak that need­ed be fixed. He went down right in front of me, but I was too busy cor­rect­ing my back­wards roll, hav­ing slipped out of gear as I attempt­ed to get out onto the road. I missed see­ing the fall, but was sur­prised to see one of our rid­ers with the best judg­ment of all of us down in the mid­dle of the road, hav­ing high-sided at fif­teen miles per hour right out of the dri­ve­way. Noth­ing injured but his pride, but the cracked clutch cov­er kept him from rid­ing more today. After break­fast the group split into two: the fam­i­ly mem­bers and injured par­ties, with our one mechan­i­cal casu­al­ty tak­ing the more direct route. The group rid­ing back along the scenic route would be seven.

From Big Sur we rode North to Carmel, then South­east past King City. The idea was to take Route 198 over to the South end of Route 25 and North on 25 to Hol­lis­ter. We exit­ed High­way 101 to the sight of the CHP putting some­one’s motor­cy­cle up on a flatbed towtruck. A group of rid­ers was there, and no one looked very hap­py about it. We went past very care­ful­ly. I think that “there but for the grace of God go I” went through each of our minds, or at least some rea­son­able facsimile.

Our East­ward progress stopped as soon as we saw the one fate­ful sign: “No ser­vices for 52 miles.” Some of the bikes just don’t have the range. I might have been able to go anoth­er 52 miles, but my bike has bet­ter range than most that I ride with. So one of our rid­ers went back to the High­way Patrol cars that were back a ways, bat­ted her love­ly eye­lash­es and asked where the near­est gas sta­tion might be.

A lit­tle impa­tient­ly, we final­ly got back on the road, back­track­ing North on 101 to find fuel. I took the lead at first, which might have been a mis­take. I wound the Moto Guzzi up to 110mph, held it for a few sec­onds, and then thought bet­ter of it but did­n’t slow down. I held that lead for, oh, 90 sec­onds or so until my fel­low rid­ers each insist­ed that they would not be left behind by the new­bie on the cruis­er. Still at 110mph I watched as one, then anoth­er, then anoth­er passed me like I were stand­ing still. I eased off the throt­tle and dropped back to a still not sedate 90mph. Three more flashed past, and it was about then I saw the Police car going South­bound on 101 while we sped North. That can’t be a good omen, now can it?

I was still cruis­ing at 90mph when I was passed again, but this time not by one of my fel­low rid­ers. My first thought was shock and anger that any­one in a car would be blow­ing past me quite that fast. A motor­cy­cle hit­ting triple dig­its on the speedome­ter does­n’t scare me quite as much as a four-wheeled zom­biecage haul­ing that much ass.

The sec­ond thought was: “oh shit, that’s a cop.” As he left me in his dust. I dropped my speed by about 25mph and watched what hap­pened up ahead. I had a pret­ty good idea what would hap­pen. He would speed up to the lead bike and then flag the rest of us over. My only hope was to slow down far enough that I would­n’t be asso­ci­at­ed with the rest of the speed­ing hooli­gans. It seemed like quite a long time before I saw the oth­er rid­ers ahead. I saw the cop run out into the road to point at the rid­ers, but the clos­er I got the more I could see and it looked as though only two rid­ers were at the side of the road. When I got there the cop was yelling at the two in front, Retread and Mis­ter Give and Give. The cop did­n’t even look my way as I went past at exact­ly 64.5 miles per hour.

The five that had evad­ed the Cal­i­for­nia High­way Patrol thanks to our two sac­ri­fi­cial lambs met up at the gas sta­tion at the next exit. Rock­er changed his jack­et imme­di­ate­ly in case his descrip­tion had been radioed ahead. The rest of us shook our heads and bewailed how stu­pid it was to have been pulling triple dig­its on a state high­way when we’d seen so many cops out.

We all pon­dered what could hap­pen and whether there were two more bikes to be put up on the flatbed that day. Even­tu­al­ly, who should come rid­ing up the road but our two detainees? Mis­ter Give and Give explained it thus:

It was the world’s most spir­i­tu­al cop. The cop report­ed­ly got out of the car and imme­di­ate­ly start­ed shout­ing. “What were you think­ing?” the exas­per­at­ed cop yelled.

“I guess I just was­n’t think­ing. I don’t have any excus­es, it was just stu­pid of me,” Mis­ter Give and Give said, “You might have just saved my life.”

Turns out that it was­n’t real­ly Mis­ter Give and Give that the cop want­ed, it was the oth­er detained rid­er, who had appar­ent­ly been mea­sured at a rate of 130mph. For the record, he says he thought he was going 140, but the cop might not have got­ten a good sampling.

The cop shout­ed, cursed, and even jumped up and down. “Did­n’t you think I’d hear you wind up from the exit?” Turns out it was the same CHP offi­cer who had been pre­vi­ous­ly asked for direc­tions to a gas sta­tion. Yes, some of our bikes do get loud. Not mine, but some of the oth­ers. Espe­cial­ly when they pass 9000rpm.

Pos­si­bly because our two rid­ers were so calm and did­n’t rise to the bait of being shout­ed down, and pos­si­bly because the offi­cer was embar­rassed by hav­ing lost his cool, the CHP offi­cer fin­ished with, “I’m going home,” got in his patrol car, and left with­out cit­ing either rid­er with even a writ­ten warning.

At the gas sta­tion, the mood was incred­u­lous and grate­ful. And we were pen­i­tent. We all said we’d take it easy the rest of the ride. No more speed­ing for us, after such a nar­row escape.

Of course, that last­ed about a minute after we head­ed out of the sta­tion. Route 25 is every­thing it’s reput­ed to be. Wide, sweep­ing curves, long straight­aways, no traf­fic, smooth pave­ment. No chal­leng­ing cor­ners unless you’re going more than dou­ble the speed lim­it, great scenery. This is tru­ly a road that was made for motor­cy­cling. And I did­n’t see a sin­gle cop.

One thing I learned from Route 25 today only proves that I’m an idiot that can’t recall the lessons of a few min­utes ear­li­er: at 125mph my hel­met press­es against my face and the col­lar of my jack­et push­es on my adams apple, mak­ing it very very dif­fi­cult to breathe. I’m a lit­tle embar­rassed to admit that I took the bike up to 125mph today after the close scrape with John Law. I’m even more embar­rassed to report that I can’t get the Moto Guzzi to go any faster than that. I still haven’t fig­ured out what fifth gear is for, because in fourth I was just in my pow­er band at 125mph. Kick­ing up to fifth would cer­tain­ly have made the motor start lug­ging and I’d have dropped my speed. I just was­n’t get­ting it going fast enough to upshift. So what is the point of fifth gear?

And, y’know, 125mph is pret­ty darn fast to be going with­out a wind­screen. I was the only rid­er on this week­end’s trip with no wind­shield or fairings.

Four of us ate at a Chi­nese-owned Mex­i­can restau­rant in Hol­lis­ter, which I thought was actu­al­ly pret­ty good. The oth­er three went straight back to San Fran­cis­co with­out stop­ping for din­ner. I was sad to see our group get pared down, but I under­stood the desire to get home before dark.

The sun had set when we left the restau­rant and we took a pret­ty direct route the rest of the way. It was all free­way and all bor­ing. I enjoyed watch­ing the reflec­tive bits on the jack­ets in front of me. Each jack­et mod­el has a some­times slight­ly and some­times dra­mat­i­cal­ly unique pat­tern of reflec­tive strips. I had a shop sew strips into my jack­et recent­ly because it did­n’t come with any, an over­sight I think is irre­spon­si­ble for a motor­cy­cle jack­et. Vis­i­bil­i­ty is key. Safe­ty fac­tors aside, it’s help­ful to be iden­ti­fy fel­low rid­ers by their reflec­tive parts.

In the final stretch on 280, we passed an acci­dent. Flares marked off all but the right­most two lanes. Two fire engines were on the scene, plus a num­ber of oth­er res­cue and safe­ty vehi­cles. I only saw one vehi­cle at the scene, but it was upside-down.

See­ing the car on its roof did cause me some reflec­tion. How does a sin­gle vehi­cle end up upside-down with­out anoth­er vehi­cle in the acci­dent? I ran through sev­er­al sce­nar­ios in my head and came upon two answers. The first is prob­a­bly the most gen­er­al­ly fright­en­ing: prob­a­bly no one did any­thing wrong, or at least not very wrong. But each dri­ver involved could have cut some cor­ner and skimped on safe­ty in some way that the dri­ve thought utter­ly insignif­i­cant. Per­haps one was chang­ing the sta­tion on the radio, per­haps one was dri­ving with­out hands at the “10 and 2” o’clock posi­tions. Per­haps one was dri­ving while sleepy. Per­haps they were all mov­ing at an exces­sive rate of speed. Per­haps one sim­ple hit the brakes a lit­tle too soon, and per­haps anoth­er pan­icked in anoth­er way. Next thing you know, no one has done any­thing wrong and peo­ple end up dead.

I don’t think I need to explain why I find that a chill­ing pos­si­bil­i­ty hav­ing spent the week­end dis­re­gard­ing a great many traf­fic regulations.

The oth­er way that a car might end up on its roof with­out col­lid­ing with anoth­er vehi­cle? Exces­sive speed. Dit­to my oth­er com­ments here.

I rode about 550 miles this week­end, had a real­ly won­der­ful time with good friends, and I got to see the stars again.