The phone rang at 10:30 Sunday morning. It was one of the guys from my club with a revolutionary and ground-breaking question: Did I want to go riding? Lately we’ve been joking that our MC stands for Meeting Club because we haven’t been doing much riding, so hell yes I wanted to go. I was out the door ten minutes later.
The route we took was a new one for me. We made a big loop of Topanga Canyon to Pacific Coast Highway to Mulholland Highway. I’ve ridden Topanga to the beach dozens of times, been up and down PCH many times, and ridden parts of Mulholland to get to the Rock Store, but I’ve never ridden the whole thing in one non-stop shot like we did yesterday. It was great. It’s my new favorite ride.
It was also one of the most challenging rides I’ve ever done because of a few sections with back-to-back hairpin turns that, while fun, also inspired some serious pucker moments. Scraping my floorboards is nothing new for me, but there were a few points where I went way past floorboard and was scraping my frame, and I knew if I counter-steered any harder I was going to lever my rear wheel into the air and low-side it. I’m still picking my seat out of my ass. Big fun.
As hairy as the turns along the route were, though, the scariest moment of all was this:
$4.29 a gallon for gas. Ouch. We definitely pay a premium for our year-round riding out here. Of course, I got to ride along the coast in beautiful, sunny, 78 degree weather while it was 38 degrees with snow and ice in Akron, so maybe it’s worth it.
Here’s the route we followed in case any of you ten readers are ever out this way and want to try it:
