Category: North Coast
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Turning Left on Highway 20 East
WordPress, the software that powers this blog, has a small folder called “Drafts.” The drafts folder contains thoughts that got started but were not quite finished. Some of those posts sit days. Some of them sit for months. A few of them sit years. This post sat years. If it had finished on time, I…
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North Coast Loop
After a glorious ride down the Sierra Nevadas, I was ready for a bit more. I spent the middle of the week catching up on life here in the Bay Area and wanted to get one more ride in on my staycation. Larry, a buddy of mine, lives up north on the coast in a…
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Flat Stanley Comes to California!
Background A few weeks ago I got a special package in the mail from my niece. I had been selected for a Flat Stanley project. Flat Stanley is a children’s tale where Stanley gets a new bulletin board for his room. One night as Stanley is asleep the bulletin board falls on top of him…
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ROL Day 3: Shelter Cove to Yreka
At about 3 AM it was just cold. I wasn’t expecting the ride to be on the coast and was duly under prepared for the weather. Given that we had no other option we just toughed it out until morning. A little bit of fog had crept in but it could’ve been a lot wetter…
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ROL Day 1&2: San Jose to Shelter Cove
The Range of Light Gypsy Tour is a ride that every motorcyclist in at least Northern California should do at least once. The premise is pretty simple: all you know at the beginning is the start point. This year it was in Santa Rosa at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds. Given that it always competes with…
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Damn it was cold!
The weather today was Fortuna usual: cold and foggy in the morning with the hope of sun in the afternoon. Looking a the map, there are a a few main options into Garberville: The Lost Coast, Avenue of the Giants with Shelter Cove, and Alderpoint Road. I’d done the other two in years past, so…
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Four Tuna
I needed to see the redwoods. Something was pulling inside of me to go see the stately giants. A few weeks ago I was up in Kings Canyon to see the Sequoias but they don’t have the same effect on me as the redwoods. Redwoods appear (to me) as very gentle giants. Their long, slender…
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US 101: It really doesn’t suck – 169 Miles
This was one of those weekends I just needed to get out of town. I’d not been on a good long road trip alone in a while and my body was telling me it was time to go. I had run club in the morning, and realized how long I’d not been active in the…
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A new gem: Shelter Cove (410 miles)
I spent a fair amount of time milling around town before getting on the road. The breakfast at the inn was really good and with the heavy fog in the area I was tempted to stay in town longer than I should have. I knew it was going to be a longer day but somehow…
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Trinidad Bay B & B
A friend of mine recommended staying in Trinidad a number of years ago. I put it on the “list” but never got up to town. I figured this was the weekend to go see it. I stayed at a place that was a bit, ok a lot, nicer than the usual fare. The inn sits…
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From 100F to 60F in three hours (185 Miles)
I was tired of being in such heat. The Sacramento valley sun was in full force pushing temps over 100F during the day. It was time to find some better weather. My helmet was starting to get a bit of well, funk, in it so it was time to air it out! The air conditioner…
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It Hasta be Shasta! (350 miles)
There was no getting around that it was going to be hot today. The only real escape was elevation. Redding was supposed to be 107 for the high which is just miserable. The big problem with this time of year is that the high comes late in the day so it was worth staying at…
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The 20 year ride
Day 1: 191 miles I got an invite to go on a ride with some of my co workers. It turns out that this ride has been going on for about the last 20 years as the Memorial Day lap around northern California. This year they decided to move it out a week. I am…
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So small in a big place…
I got to meet up with a buddy of mine from the Bay Area who moved up to Eureka about a year ago. Adam was one of the first few folks I met out here that rode bikes whom I had known from the usenet group rec.motorcycles. We had breakfast, kicked some tires, and caught…
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Mini Sabbatical… two years later
Wow… it seemed like the big and little sabbaticals started out right about the same… I left packing to the last minute, got out way later than I wanted to, and rode 101 all the way up to the final point for the night. It’s not the most scenic of routes, but it does have…
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Millitary Servicewomen and Redwood Trees
Since I was up later than I had planned, I decided to sleep in a bit this morning, until 8am :). When I was loading the final items on the bike, random stuff kept coming up that I needed to take care of, ie, putting away the laundry that was in the dryer, emptying my…