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[ST] FW: LABiker: So here's the ride report for my NorCal trip to date. [longish]



Thought you folks might be interested. Part II (my 483 mile - with 102 miles
of nontwisty road - trip home) will get written soon...

- -----Original Message-----
From: labiker-admin@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:labiker-admin@xxxxxxxxxxxx]On
Behalf Of Marc Danziger
Sent: Sunday, October 10, 2004 8:03 AM
To: LAB
Subject: LABiker: So here's the ride report for my NorCal trip to date.
[longish]


Rode up a 'compromise' route; 5 > 58 > 33 > 198 > 101 > Carmel Valley. Got
to Monterey about 15 mins after Grace did (33 does allow a fairly rapid
pace); saw about 5 CHP, ALL RUNNING RADAR (thankfully - the Valentine/Legal
Speeding HUD combo works great). Not too warm, not too cold, very Goldilocks
day (which pretty much sums up the weekend to date).

Got to the Bar lunch, and listened to author Scott Turow speak. V. funny,
smart guy. Interestingly, he'd always wanted to be a writer - even went to
grad school in creative writing/lit at Stanford. But decided he didn't want
to be a professor, so went to law school.

Friday was a helper bee for Grace. One of her lawyer's daughters (Mary-Anna)
rides a GS 1150 (we'd met her two years ago, right after she'd totaled her
GS1100 at Burning Man), and we'd planned to do some riding Saturday. I also
pinged a ST lister who lives in the Bay Area (who will be nameless for
reasons we'll explain later), and he was going to come down and join us.

Sat we were supposed to meetup and be ready to go at 10:00. Mary-Anna had
seen 'Black Rider' in SF Friday night (I'm _not_ jealous_!! I'm not!!), so
rode down early Sat; she got to the hotel at 10:00 but needed to eat and
unload her luggage; between that and coffee etc. we didn't hit the road
until almost 11. (me = grumpy)

I was much less grumpy as we hit G16-Carmel Valley Rd. from Laureles Grade.
As soon as we were out of town, the morning dew was heavy enough that the
road was still soaking wet in the shady parts - it would have been faaaar
worse had we left on time. I Safety-Nazi-ed the group from the front, and we
set a brisk (occasional rear-wheel slips coming out of corners) pace and all
proceeded well until we were flagged down by flare-bearing emergency
personnel.

We stopped, and waited, and then were waved through.

*SOMETHING YOU DON'T SEE EVERY DAY*

A Ferrari 360 Spyder on its roof in the ditch by the side of the road.

No ambulance, and no haste on the part of the emergency crews, so I'll
assume the driver got a break (until he gets home and has to explain, that
is...) and a Porsche Turbo pulled over to the side of the road.
Hmmm...wonder what these rich squids were doing? On a road that wet, a
high-horsepower car would be quite a handful...and appears to have been.

I'm kicking myself for not stopping and taking a picture.

*SOMETHING ELSE YOU DON'T SEE EVERY DAY*

Further down the road, as it begins to come out of the trees and into open
ranchland, I caught a glimpse of something to our right. As I come out of
the corner, I looked over - and saw what must have been a 6 - 8 point buck
standing on a small rise, looking down at us unmoving.

Got to the 101, stopped, and agreed that since we needed to get back by 5
for Mary-Anna's dad's reception, we'd cut off the 198, and head straight to
Hunter-Liggett.

Other than one sneaky CHP (a Mini warned us about him) using instant-on
radar, the trip into the fort was uneventful. I asked for directions to the
Hacienda Restaurant, and the guard at the gate told me to go down the road 4
miles and I'd see it on the right. 4 miles + 100 yards, there it
was...pretty good on his part.

There was an Eidelweiss trip stopped there - lots and lots of BMW's.
Seriously, there must have been 30 bikes - when makes the trip seem like
less fun than the smaller Lotus trip we took years ago.