The Ride Report

Selling my bike is still high up on my list of possible short-term solutions to my current money crunch, so I didn’t let the rain that was threatening on Sunday keep me off the road. I’m trying to get as many miles in as I can while I have it, because I’m going to miss it like a second child once its gone.

I usually ride up through the hills north of L.A. in Canyon Country or down along Pacific Coast Highway to Neptune’s Net, but I felt like something different today, so I decided to swing by the Rock Store in the hills above Malibu. It’s one of the more famous biker hangouts out here, but I don’t get over there too much. It’s a see-and-be seen place, where half the point of being there is to ooh and aah over the bikes and hope people ooh and aah over yours, not to mention being a tourist destination where the starstruck scope out which celebs showed up that day. In short, not my kind of scene, but like I said: I felt like something different.

It’s usually so crowded there that you have to park your bike down the road and it’s standing room only on the patio, but the crowd today was pretty sparse. There were maybe 20 bikes in the parking lot, the patio was closed, and the lookie-loos and la turistas were nowhere to be seen. I suddenly found myself liking the place a whole lot better — but not enough to eat lunch there or buy a coke — their prices are insane. Instead I filled up a urinal and hung out for a few minutes, then I hit the road again.

The roads near the Rock Store were the real reason I was there in the first place. I hooked a left out of the parking lot and headed up the stretch of Mulholland Highway that I just learned tonight that some people call “The Snake,” and I remembered what I had forgotten: this is a great stretch of road! Really tight switchbacks, off-camber turns, climbing hairpins — I had forgotten how much fun this road is! It’s tight and twisty and challenging and just a ton of fun. It’s become my new favorite.

As I wound my way up into the hills I came around a long sweeper and found a photographer set up snapping pictures of everyone who went by, me included. I was immediately reminded of killboy.com and realized this must be a similar setup. When I got home I did a little googling and found that I was right: check out RockStorePhotos.com. Killboy has The Dragon, RockStorePhotos has The Snake. I went through his pix and sure enough, I was in there. Not a bad picture, either.

I eventually ended up on Pacific Coast Highway and headed south to Topanga Canyon, then took Topanga back into the valley and back towards home. I’ll definitely be riding that loop again in the future — if I still have a bike.