The Ride Report

The last day of the year calls for a last ride of the year, so that’s what I did today with my pal Greg and one of my club brothers, E.

Greg and I took the 101 freeway across the valley to meet E, then we took Kanaan Road to the coast. It was pretty comfortable in the valley, but as we dropped down to the coast it got chilly fast. E was wearing just a flannel under his cut and put his leather coat on as soon as we stopped.

Our first stop was at the Leo Carrillo campground. My club is planning a campout in the summer, so we were scouting potential places to do it. We rode our bikes through the campground, drawing lots of stares from the people already camping there, and there were several little kids who waved excitedly as we passed.

We rolled a little further north up PCH to our second stop, Neptune’s Net. We hung out there for awhile, making idle conversation with a couple of guys from a MM club, then we crossed the street to sit on a bench overlooking the ocean, think deep thoughts, and watch the surfers and dogs play in the water. I whipped out my camera while I was at it and took a few pictures.

I took this one as we crossed the street, looking south on PCH right in front of Neptune’s:

I took these two from the bench. This is the shoreline across from Neptune’s parking lot:

…and this is the surf break right in front of the bench across from Neptune’s itself:

It was a pretty gloomy, chilly day down on PCH today. Just for comparison, here’s what that shoreline view looks like on a nice, sunny day:

…and this picture was taken on my New Year’s Eve ride along the coast last year:

Last year it was clear and warm and beautiful. This year… not so much. But I’m not complaining. You can’t beat a ride along the coast anytime, especially on New Year’s Eve.

After Neptune’s Net, we headed inland to one of my favorite places to have lunch on a ride: the Somis Market in, well, Somis, just outside of Camarillo. It’s a little Mexican cafe where they serve the best chili verde and menudo I’ve ever had. I had the chili verde today. Dump in some homemade salsa and diced jalapenos to make it even hotter, tear up and dip the fresh flour tortillas, keep a handful of napkins handy to mop the sweat off your brow and slurp it up faster than your metal spoon can melt… That’s some good eatin’, boy.

We needed coffee after lunch, so we headed north to Moorpark and stopped at a Starbucks along the way. I usually just order a medium coffee (that’s right: “Medium coffee” — I don’t have time for that whole venti/grande/whatever bullshit), but today I needed something … different. I’m not usually into the whole hot & sweet thing, but I ended up going with something that sounded disgusting anyway: a Peppermint White Chocolate Mocha. It turned out to be the perfect choice; it was exactly what I wanted, even though I had no idea what it was.

After sitting around and bullshitting for awhile, we hit the road for home. E split off for his place along the way and Greg rode most of the way back to my place with me.

I say “most of the way” because he had another Wrong Way Corrigan moment when we got to Burbank, the exit I wanted to take. He was riding on my right and looked over to me as if to say “Are we getting off here?” I nodded “Yes” and he started to exit … then wavered and started to pull back into my lane … then started to exit again but didn’t actually move all the way into the exit lane until the last second. End result being that he made the exit but I was left hanging on the 405 alone. So I had no choice but to go to the next exit, which was the transition to the 101 North.

I jumped on the 101 — and ran smack into bumper-to-bumper traffic. I didn’t mind, though; I got to fulfill my Recommended Daily Allowance of lanesplitting. It wouldn’t have felt right to close out the year without one more white-line session. So I did my thing for the next couple of exits, and ended up living the dilemma from my Split or get off the Botts entry (I’m inordinately proud of that title, by the way). I was doing my thing when I caught up to a guy on a Honda CBR who was also lanesplitting — or I should say trying to lanesplit. He was so bad at it, it hurt me to follow behind him and watch. I followed him for a hundred yards or so and then didn’t have the patience to wait for him to figure it out, so I dropped over into the next lane gap and passed him like he was standing still.

I’m on a Road Glide with full fairing and saddlebags, he’s on a crotch rocket with full leathers, and I’m the one putting on a lanesplitting clinic? Sad. On that CBR he should have been riding rings around me. Dude needs to retire before he winds up on the pavement as traction.

I pulled into my garage about five minutes behind Greg and shut her down for the last time this year. I clocked about 110 miles on the ride today and almost 12,000 miles on the year. Not bad, but I’ll do better in 2009.

Happy New Year!

1/1/08 Mileage

1/1/09 Mileage

Today’s route:

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