Well, we made it through our first day unscathed. After madly rushing around for the last few weeks and up to the very moment of our departure, the magnitude of what we are doing finally started to sink in. As I went up to lock the door and say a last goodbye to my cat, the tears just began to roll down my cheeks. Finally, all the emotions that I have steeled for the trip were released and I was now truly ready to go. We hopped on our weighty motorcycles (after a quick photo) and off we went - and only 2.5 hours behind schedule.
We cruised out Highway 99 through Oregon's wine country and hit the coast in Lincoln City. A brisk wind blew us into Newport where we stopped for some hot clam chowder, hot tea and hot garlic bread. brr... chill. I had on four layers, Jeff had three. Pretty much exhaused our cold weather gear and it was only 55-65 degrees. However, the mighty wind probably provided a decent wind chill factor. But, the sun held out and it was a lovely day.
After lunch, we set off for Florence where we planned to take a quick stop in the quaint old town. By now, my back had developed a nice, burny pinched-nerve kind of a pain and I was already looking forward to being finished with riding for the day. Another 70 miles or so and we were in Bandon, or so I thought. Some how we wound up at some swanky golf course where Jeff was trying to convince me that it was a good idea to spend an amount on greens fees and club rentals (the next day) that would by themselves, exceed our daily budget. I was far too cold and hungry to put up a fight. And so it was. He got his tee time and I got a cozy hotel room right on the beautiful coast.
Jeff took off about 7:00 for his tee time and I checked e-mail and went for a long walk on the beach. I can't run these days so walking as fast as I can has to suffice. It was gorgeous out there. Then it was back to the hotel for a little yoga and Sally Jesse Rafael. How anyone watches those shows on a daily basis is beyond me. Anyway, I packed up and barely squeaked out 5 minutes after our 11:00 check out. I zipped over to the grocery store for some sandwiches and then on down to meet Jeff at the swanky golf course.
So, here I sit, in the bar at the swanky golf course, typing away while sipping on iced tea and gazing out into the ocean. On the flip side, I've got all these rich guys sitting around me drinking beer and having inane conversations that are boring me to tears, not that I'm eavesdropping or anything. Ahh, life's little ironies.
Oh, bite my toungue. A nice older man (that was part of the inane conversationlists) just came over to ask what I was doing and told me that he and his 70 year old wife just hiked the Macchu Pichu trail.
Today we head south for the redwoods and maybe a bit further. And to quote my friend John Zell, "Keep your suit wet and your heart rate up" or something like that. Until next time...
He-llo Hollywood! or more specifically, West Hollywood. It's been five days since sitting down to record our trip. I am sitting in my friends' (Jennifer and Rand) groovy apartment, just off the Sunset Strip in LA. Jennifer and I are college buddies and she and her hubby, Rand, have recently become West Coasties and we're finally getting to visit with them. But, I better go in order, so back to LA later.
After leaving "Bandon by the Sea", we sped down the coast with hopes of getting south of Crescent City, which is just south of the Oregon border. We didn't leave Bandon until about 2:30 so we only had about 5 hours of daylight. We decided to stop in the town of Arcata, home of Humbolt State University. We rolled off the freeway and into the downtown to find a quaint town square of shops and restaurants encircling a large grass park with two conspicuously out of place palm trees. As we made a loop around the square, our nostrils were greeted with the hippy smell of pacchouli. It seems that the square is a popular hang out for the dreadlocked, hippily clad Humbolt students (not to be confused with the homeless crowd). This was a good sign to me. It virtually ensured great whole foods and gourmet pizza restaurants. We found a little hotel room just down the street and found ourselves eating fantastic gourmet pizza. Who'd of thunk?
We had decided to get out early the next day with plans to stop for the night in either Napa or, if we were ambitious, make our way to Berkley to visit our friend Sara. We were dressed and loaded up around 8:30 and just as I got ready to mount the bike, we noticed white powdery flakes all of over the bikes and cars. It looked like ashes to me. It was. There were forest fires close by that had not yet been brought under control. Yikes.
Well, off we went on what innocently seemed like a nice day. It was 41 degrees (F) at our departure. We decided to head down the Avenue of the Giants (redwood forest). It was a beautiful road but we were freezing. We stopped for a mocha and homemade hot chocolate and started off again. I was already beginning to fall behind Jeff and the winding redwood roads when we stopped for a bathroom break just before the turn off to Highway 1. When I pulled in to the slanted parking lot, I lost my balance and toppled the bike. You might call this foreshadowing for the day to come. Feeling a little frazzled, we set off again for what turned out to be 22 miles of "twisties". (For motorcyclists, these are supposedly the essence of riding - windy roads where you can lean the bike way over and see how close you can come to scraping the foot pegs. That's my take). Well, this turned out to be a very difficult and scary section for me and I began to seriouly question whether I would ever enjoy this motorcycling thing. Beyond that, Jeff was miles ahead of me. Finally, we broke through to the coast and I was grateful to be in one piece. Unfortunately, my fear had gotten the best of me and and I spent the next half hour filling my helmet with tears. Meanwhile, Jeff had met a guy on a BMW and had planned to have lunch with him. I finally arrived to our dining destination to find them waiting for me in the parking lot. I should mention that it was now 1:30 and we had only eaten some fruit since waking at 6:30 - which I would like to think contributed to my, shall we say, break down.
I told Jeff I had had enough for the day and we decided we would stay in Fort Bragg, seriously shy of our goal of Napa. But, after eating, the world seemed friendly again and I agreed to shake hands with Suzi and start anew. And so we headed off towards Napa down Highway 128. Much to my chagrin, the twisties didn't end for another 45 miles or so, but I survived. We stopped for gas at 4:30 and decided to call Sara in Berkley and see if we could still stay with her. It was now about 95 degrees. We decided to go ahead and make the push into Berkley, having 3 more hours of daylight. Uh oh. More problems. Just as we were ready to depart, Jeff dropped his helmet and broke the side of the shield. This is a job for Super glue!,we cried. And the magical goo quickly remedied the broken helmet.
When will this day end, you might ask? I know I kept asking. A long 12 hours (and only 325 miles!) after our departure, we were zipping through night time San Fran traffic on route to Berkley. More stress for me. My first big city traffic and it was dark and I was completely exhausted. Nevertheless, we arrived at Sara's only a little worse for wear. I made Jeff promise me that we wouldn't have another day like this for atleast a few days. We had to push the miles though, because we were trying to get to LA by Thursday to catch Jen and Rand before they had to go out of town on Saturday.
The next morning we headed off for another 250 mile day with the goal of getting to San Luis Obispo. In need of a low stress day, Jeff promised we'd take the straight as an arrow highway to SLO. But there's no rest for the weary and somehow he convinced me to go down the coast again. This day I was on and I handled the twisties much better. We arrived in SLO around 6:00. What a great little town. We got a cheap hotel and took a nice long walk to the downtown to visit SLO Brewing Company and have some dinner. A very nice day all around.
The next morning we went walking/running (Linda/Jeff, respectively) and knowing Jennifer and Rand wouldn't be home until late, decided not to leave SLO until about 1. That gave us an excuse to hop in for a swim with the local Masters group at the outdoor pool. Boy was that nice. After a few sandwiches, we were off to the big city!
On down we went and hit the searing heat of the inland deserts. It was well over 100 and we were decked out in riding pants and jackets. We stopped for water and gatorade and both of our hands were tingling. Nothing a little gatorade can't cure though. We continued our decent back to the coastline in hopes of cooler temperatures. As we made our final drop to the beach, the cold coast air met the hot desert air and created some very turbulent winds. We were getting gusted all over the road with what I think were about 40 - 50 mph blasts. Once again, I freaked out. However, the gusts ended and on we rode towards a break in Santa Barbara - yet another beautiful Cali coastal town. Only 80 miles to go for this day!
Once again, we arrived in my second big city in darkness. But we sure got a warm and sunny welcome from Jennifer and Rand when we arrived and all was right with the world once again.To Be Continued...
The Continuation:
Upon our arrival at Jennifer and Rands's (at 8:30 pm) we saw Jennifer at the front door just getting home from work. She informs us that Rand is still at work. Jennifer works in movie/tv and Rand is a web designer for a local high tech company. They work boatloads of hours. Anyway, we were all hungry so we went over to Jennifer and Rand's favorite little Italian spot for a relaxing dinner and a little catching up time for me and Jen. Rand was still working and didn't catch up with us until 10:30. Wow, and I thought I had a long day!
On Friday, we had planned to sleep in, catch up on e-mail and get my FTP software problem worked out. Later in the day we planned to meet Jennifer at work (the studios where they film Ally McBeal, The Practice and Snoops, the show Jennifer is working on). I needed to buy some new FTP software and wound up needing a PC to pull down the software (to then transfer to my handheld). Rand offered that we could come over to his work and borrow one. So, on the way to Jennifer's office, we scooted over to Rand's work and inside of about 25 minutes, I was able to buy and install the new FTP software. Off we went to Manhattan Beach and met Jennifer. We were in for a treat and got to tour the sets of the 3 shows listed above. This was really fun, especially to see the Ally set, one of our favorite shows. See the pictures we took for Oregon and California. After touring the sets, Jennifer took us over to a live filming of a Snoops episode. It was kind of a special scene and they were using someone's house in Venice Beach as the "location". We got to watch a couple of takes of the scene. Truly an amazing business. It's incredibly resource intensive - it takes a lot of people to make it all happen.
That night we went to a supposed LA hot spot - a Japanese restaurant overlooking the city lights (Yamashiro) and then went for a brief tour of Hollywood. The next morning, Jennifer and Rand had to fly off to San Francisco to visit Jennifer's sister. They graciously allowed us to stay an extra day in their way cool pad. We decided to rent some bikes and bike up and down all the LA beaches. It was my first visit to Venice Beach and it was really fun to see "Muscle Beach" and the gymnastics center. We rode for about 3.5 hours and came back to relax at the apartment. We went for a walk later on the Sunset Strip to get something to eat and had our one and only "celebrity sighting" (this is a fun past time of Jennifer and Rand). We saw Tom Green coming out of store about a block from the apartment. We called it an early night and planned to head out in the morning for Fallbrook, just north of San Diego.
We took off from West Hollywood mid-morning and headed down the coastline through the many beach towns. We stopped for a quick lunch in Huntington Beach and headed on down to Oceanside, where we would turn off for Fallbrook. We were going to visit our friend Bob's dad - Ken.(see Ellen and Bob in the EQ swimsuit write up). We were searching for our turn off and thought we might have missed it so Jeff pulled in to a parking lot on the side of the road. I was stopped on an angled, up hill slope. I pulled up next to him, put my feet down, but didn't lean up hill. WHOA.A.A, the bike was on it's side again. Rats. This time the boxes were a little bit bent. After a brief lecture on stopping on hills and a few tears, we were off for Ken's place. Ken has a beautiful house in the hills of Fallbrook, which is a pretty rural community with lots of groves - lime, orange, olive, etc. Ken left a key for us as he was in LA for the day and would return around 5:00. We got there about 5:00 also, just before Ken arrived and were immediately enchanted with the Tuscany like vistas that we got from Ken's back porch. We want for a walk/run and then Ken took us to a wonderful Japanese dinner in the little town of Fallbrook.
The next day I planned to work on the web site, e-mail, etc. all day and Jeff was going to do last minute motorcycle maintenance and spare part shopping. We woke to freshly made scones, orange juice and tea (Ken is an awesome cook). The day flew by in our final preparation for crossing the border. While Jeff was going through our documents, he realized we had left our original motorcycle titles at home. After a few e-mails and phone calls to our friend Thuc, whom is staying in our apartment, it was decided that Thuc would mail them to the post office in La Paz, Mexico for us. We have color copies that we got notarized that look pretty official so we might be o.k. anyway. Anyway, that evening Ken invited the neighbors over and we cooked out on the grill. It was a nice going away dinner, both from Ken's house and the U.S. We planned to get an early start the next morning so that we could get to the border crossing as soon as possible. See week 2 for Baja California, Mexico.