Shit! It’s hard to believe it’s already mid June. Where has the year been going? Life is becoming more and more like “old normal.” Work travel is starting to pick up again. While back east I got to see my family again, which was great!
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do the Monterey GSR ride this year. A buddy of mine is always a big champion of the ride. It wasn’t publicized on the Homoto club calendar and after 10 days back east, I was debating staying home or headed down the coast!
It seems like vacations always accrue a little bit of work debt. I came back to the office on a Wednesday using the flight time to catch up on email and Confluence pages. Thursday and Friday were booked solid full of meetings as I hadn’t seen each member of my team for about two weeks.
I was late getting on the road on Friday – my kickstand wasn’t up until 7 PM. The ride down was fortunately uneventful. Aside from some traffic just outside of Gilroy due to construction, 120 miles was almost exactly 2 hours of rolling time.
After the Tahoe ride a few weeks ago, my elbow definitely let me know I needed a slower ramp back into motorcycling. I wanted this weekend to be significantly less miles. Today was just 80: Pacific Grove to Juliana Piffer Burns State Park.
Juliana Piffer Burns State Park was one of the spots I’d seen from Highway 1 a hundred times. I’ve even seen the brochures which make it look fantastic. The unique feature of this park is a waterfall right on the beach. You think after 20 years of being here, I would’ve stopped by.
The tunnel under Highway 1 looks like a portal into a different world. The photo just doesn’t do it justice. Seeing the deep blue water was awesome. The temperature hovered just above 60 with abundant sunshine all around. The weather couldn’t have been better for motorcycling!
Unfortunately, a good portion of the park was damaged due to the 2020 wildfires. I really wished the hike along the ridge wasn’t closed due to the damage and that there was a way to get down to the beach.
In many ways, this park felt much like a museum. You could see, but not touch. Everything felt beautiful and very high resolution, yet so far from being able to truly experience.
I made a point to stop at the Big Sur Deli as I was looking for something simple at lunch. I was surprised to find a security guard pacing the parking lot aggressively the whole time I was eating lunch by the motorcycle.
His dog, however, couldn’t have been more different. She was happy to sit in the sun yet took more than a few nudges to become friends. She reminded me a lot of Max, one of the neighborhood dogs on the street.
Dinner with the group will be calling soon. Rather than wait three weeks to publish a blog, I figured I’d give The new WordPress iPhone app a try. Hope you enjoy!
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