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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Dear Santy Claus. This is what I want for Christmas:

…and a few boxes of ammunition in my stocking would be great.

Love,
Two Buck

P.S. Merry Christmas to all my readers out there.

I stumbled across a motorcycle blog the other day where the guy posted an angry screed against another biker who he felt was tailgating him. He started his tale, titled Some People Just Can’t Help It – They’re Dicks! thusly…

I’m riding home in the fast lane and traffic is stop and go and I’m splitting through traffic. Hey A-hole. Yeah you. Quit F***ING tailgating me. I see you and no, I’m not gonna move over for you since you seem to be a jackass! Oh you’re gonna keep riding me huh? (give him the palmed hand to back off) Oh that didn’t work for you? You still like riding your front wheel up my ass. Is that it?

…and went on to talk about how the guy revved and honked and flashed his headlights at him while he refused to move over and gloated about how angry he was making the guy.

I weighed in in the comments, saying that it sounded to me like the blogger-rider was the one being a dick by not moving over. It turns out that I was in the minority — all the other commenters chimed right in with the blogger-rider that the other guy was wrong and generally felt that the blogger-rider had struck a blow for justice by not letting the tailgater go by.

I didn’t want to hijack his blog with my own argument, so I thought I’d try to start a discussion here about who’s right and who’s wrong. So:

Me, I think the blogger-rider came off like an impotent, self-appointed traffic Nazi, the kind of guy who drives his Buick in the fast lane at exactly 55 mph (”Because that’s the speed limit, damn it!”) and refuses to move over even though the flow of traffic is going 75 mph and he’s creating a hazard. He thinks the other guy is an asshole for trying to get him to move over or go faster, but thinks he’s completely in the right in making the other guy move over to pass him or go slower. Accuses the other guy of only thinking of himself while he’s only thinking of himself.

My take on lane-splitting passing is this: If a faster rider comes up behind me, I drop into a gap and let him by. If I overtake a slower rider, I hang back for a little ways and wait for him to drop into a gap. If he doesn’t, I’ll flick my headlights at him because he may not have noticed me. If he still doesn’t let me by, I’ll get closer and flick the lights and rev the engine, maybe give him a beep of the horn. Up to this point it’s all friendly. But if he still doesn’t let me by, then he’s a dick and at the first opportunity I drop over into the next lane, pass him, drop back in in front of him, and give him a taste of his own medicine. Because I can be a dick too.

I’ve written here before about how much I like lane-splitting and how good I think I am at it. I’m usually the guy catching up to slower riders, even though I’m on a Harley bagger. I rarely have to pull over for other bikes, but I’m happy to do it when necessary. I just expect the same courtesy.

So, what do you think? When one rider overtakes another while lane-splitting, should the slower rider let him by or should the faster one adopt the slower speed? Sound off in the comments, please.

On a lot of the biker blogs I read, the riders are closing up shop for the winter. It’s getting too cold to ride, there’s too much ice and snow; so they’re putting Stabil in the gas tank, tucking their bikes in for a long winter’s nap, and counting the days until spring when they can ride again.

But not me. Here in sunny southern California today, I went for a ride wearing just a flannel and my cut, had brunch on a restaurant’s outdoor patio, and when I got home I picked and ate a tangerine from the tree in my back yard. Then I put up Christmas decorations.

68 degrees and sunny on December 21. Southern California is heaven for a biker…

Go to myspace. Search for SAMCRO. Prepare to bust a gut laughing.

There are actually people out there claiming membership in the Sons of Anarchy MC. There are actually people out there claiming to be prospects in this make-believe MC. There are actually people out there who are sewing this shit onto leather vests and playing biker. These are people who are going to get their ass handed to them if they run into the wrong patch holder from a real MC while wearing these bullshit colors.

Ignorance is bliss, but this is just fucking stupid.

I was riding up to the clubhouse Friday night for our Christmas party and was saddled up and ready to go before I thought about the weather. It’s been getting cold here lately (well, cold by SoCal standards, at least: in the high 40s) and all I was wearing was a T-shirt, a flannel, and my cut. It occurred to me that it might be nice to have my leather coat on under my cut.

Problem was that I’m a lazy, lazy man and I didn’t feel like going through all the hassle of putting the kickstand down, walking into the house, taking the coat off the hook in the closet, taking off my cut, putting the coat on, putting the cut back on over it, walking back outside, getting back on the bike, and putting the kickstand up again. Yes, I’m that lazy: the effort of putting the kickstand up precluded everything else that followed on that list.

So I thought to myself, Naaaah, I don’t need the leather. I’ve got a windshield and it’s not that far. I can suck it up if it gets cold.

Well. I’m here to tell you that cold is a hard thing to suck up when you’re in the wind living it as opposed to in the garage blowing it off. It gets to ya. I was heading north into the hills at the I-5/CA-14 transition, 10 miles from the clubhouse, when Naaaah, I don’t need the leather echoed, mocking, in my head and the jaw-clenching shivering really set in. I was freezing when I finally got there.

For the ride home, I went old-skool: I punched holes in a garbage bag and wore it under my cut. It really made a difference. Unfortunately, I was still wearing my open-face helmet with a windshield that dumps air right onto my forehead, and worn-out leather gloves with holes between the fingers, so I couldn’t feel my face or hands. And on top of that, I rode home with a hangaround who got confused and took the wrong freeway exit so we ended up on the 5 north into Santa Clarita where it got even colder. He almost earned a new road name with that one: Frosty.

So when I got home, I was pretty well frozen through-and-through and swore that next time I’d make the extra effort to go inside and get my leather. The last thing I did before going in the house was open my saddlebag to get something out of it.

And there in the saddlebag, right on top, just inches from me the whole freezing ride up to the party and back home again, there was my leather jacket.

My MC had a two-fer on surprise birthday parties this weekend — one for me, one for our president.

Mine was Saturday night. Our club has a standing routine of having a barbeque at the clubhouse Saturday nights. If you’re busy you don’t need to show up, but if you’re looking for something to do you can find it there. So Saturday morning my wife said she was going over to her friend’s house to play cards and that I was on my own for the night and that I should go to the barbeque. Well, I was still feeling antisocial, so I told her I’d probably just stay home and watch TV or something. A little while later my club brother Slider emails everyone to say we’re having a barbeque that night and to bring money because he’s going to get a poker game going. I love poker — in fact I taught half the guys how to play Hold Em — so I decided I’d go after all.

I found out later that he and my wife were in cahoots on this. She called him to say I said I wasn’t going, so he sent out the poker email because he knew that would be bait I couldn’t resist.

That evening, my wife leaves for her friend’s house, and a little while later I took off for the clubhouse. When I got there I pulled into my usual parking spot, and while I was taking off my helmet and gloves … my wife comes out. “What are you doing here?” I asked. Even then it took me a minute to figure it out. Not real quick on the uptake, that’s me.

Slider’s wife had made lasagna, they had a big birthday cake for me, and I ended up tripling my money at poker. Happy Birthday to me.

The surprise party for our P happened yesterday. A group of us rode down to San Diego for a poker run one of our chapters was throwing down there. After the run was over our P kept wanting to get going for home, but we kept stalling him. One guy had to get in line for the bathroom. I had to put my chaps on … then take them off because it wasn’t raining anymore … then put them back on because the roads were still wet. One guy invented a problem with his exhaust that needed “fixing.” A prospect wasn’t ready to go. Another guy just flat-out disappeared for about half an hour. We were stalling because one of our guys was busy running around town up here in L.A. picking up barbeque and a birthday cake.

Once we got word we didn’t need to stall anymore, we hit the road for home. Our usual practice on runs like this is to ride in side-by-side formation and each guy peels off along the way where he needs to to get home. This time we all stayed with the P.

I was road captain on this run, and when we got close to where I knew he’d be getting off the freeway, I slowed up and waved him up to the front to take the lead. As we approached his exit he gave us all a big wave goodbye and moved over one lane. We all waved back and changed lanes right behind him. A little further along he gave us another big wave goodbye and changed lanes again. Again, we all waved back and followed him into the next lane. He got to his exit, signaled, waved to us again, and went down the off-ramp. We all waved and followed him off the freeway. At the bottom of the ramp he was bewildered. “Where are you guys going?” he asked. “Your house,” we told him, and we all followed him all the way home, right up his driveway. He didn’t figure it out we got to his house, saw the cake, and we told him what was up. He was about as quick on the uptake as I was.

And I don’t want to brag, but I think I gave him the best gift of all: a glow-in-the-dark Tingler Ring that I got from a vending machine in a bathroom in one of the bars in San Diego. Only 75 cents, but worth every penny.

I saw the coolest Halloween costume ever on the freeway this afternoon. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera with me so I didn’t get a picture. I was tooling down the 101, heading north through the Cahuenga Pass near Hollywood Bowl, when I saw a motorcycle coming up on me in the left hand lane.

White helmet with stars… White jumpsuit… V-neck pattern of white stars on a blue border… Cape flying behind him in the wind… It was Evel Knievel!!!

I stuck my arm out the window and gave him a big thumbs-up as he passed. In return, he gave me a very Evel-esque wave of acknowledgement. It was a cool moment for me — I was in the presence of motorcycling royalty. Well, by proxy, at least. And he was on what I think was a Yamaha rather than a Harley. But still, it was pretty damned cool.

Evel lives! At least on Halloween…

Today is my birthday but I’m not much in the birthday mood, so I decided to celebrate by going for a solo ride. I’ve been wanting to ride through Death Valley for awhile now, but I never can seem to find the right time to do it. Today looked like the day — I’m off work for the next two days, I’m grouchy and anti-social so it’d be doing my friends and family a favor to go off by myself, Death Valley has cooled off enough to where I won’t get completely baked… I decided there’s no time like the present, and what better way to celebrate a birthday than to spend it facing Death?

Here’s the route I planned: Ride northeast to Baker and enter Death Valley from the southern end, ride up past Badwater to Furnace Creek, exit the west side of the park, cut through the pass to Owens Lake and Lone Pine, then ride 395 south to home. 620 miles and almost 13 hours in the saddle, according to Google Maps. Check it out:

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Nice route, eh? I wish I’d done it.

My plan fell apart early. I intended to do it all in one shot, in a single day, and that meant getting an early start. I was going to get up at 6:00 and be on the road by 7:00 … but everyone knows you get to sleep in on your birthday, right? So I didn’t get up until 8:30. And then I screwed around for awhile taking care of some really important tasks, like watching TV and checking my email, so I didn’t get on the road until noon.

I headed east on the 210 and started doing the math as I moved. With my late start I wasn’t going to get to Badwater until at least 5:30, and that was without making any stops for pictures or piss breaks along the way. That would be right around sunset, and I didn’t really want to be traipsing around in the desert at dusk, or riding through the mountains on my way out after dark. And even if I did, I wouldn’t get home until around midnight and I’d spend half the trip in the dark, and I had brought my camera intending to take pictures. Plus which, the further I got from home, the more I realized that as cranky as I’m feeling today, I still wanted to see my daughter and hear her wish me happy birthday.

So I settled on La Verne. That’s where I decided to bag Death Valley, got off the freeway, found a movie theater, slept through Body of Lies, and then rolled for home again. The real totals? About 83 miles and an hour and a half on the road. Here’s the actual route:

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Granted, it’s not nearly as adventurous or picturesque as the first route, but this one ended with dinner with my wife and daughter. That’s pretty cool too.