Up the Pacific Coast Highway

I started off this leg from Caroline’s place.  I had an early breakfast of some trucker meth strength coffee and my third (or fourth) bowl of cereal in 24 hours.  I tried to explain what a treat cereal was, but only someone who has lived on an island and paid $8 for a gallon of milk can really understand.

Mmmmm, gwahhhhh....

There were many treats involved in my detour to Gilroy – all you can eat cereal, seeing an artichoke field, getting to catch up with an old friend, a shower that could strip paint (I am pretty sure the water pressure in that house is illegal in California right now), and In and Out Burger.  As far as motorcycle treats go, Highway 152 from the coast to Gilroy is absolutely beautiful.  You leave the coast, cross over into deciduous forest and wind through a mountain pass.  There was construction that I caught going inland in the afternoon, but heading back to the coast on a Sunday morning it was a breeze.  There was fog and light rain in the pass and I descended back to sunshine and the coastal highway.
 

From Gilroy it is a quick shot straight into San Francisco.  I was bound and determined to ride over the Golden Gate Bridge.  It seemed like a great idea – Highway One merges into the city, crosses the bridge, and then continues north.  Piece of cake, right?
 

I hit traffic heading into San Francisco.  Not all that surprising, but no fun anyway.  It took me an hour and a half to get through the city in stop and go traffic.  My bike was starting to run hot – an omen of things to come – and I was not having this city anymore.  I reached the Golden Gate Bridge viewing area and roared in.  I was hot, the bike was hot, and parking was $10.  I double parked between a taxi and a limo and somehow pulled off a straight line of sight to the Golden Gate.  I snapped a couple of pics on my gimpy smartphone, hopped back on the bike and took off just as a parking attendant was starting to express interest in my illicit maneuvers.
 

See! I was there!

From there, it was smooth sailing out of the city.  Sausalito will always hold a spot in my heart, if only because I got to blow through town at high speed.  I am pretty sure I have my terminology mixed up, but in my mind the area north on San Francisco deserves the name “Pacific Coast Highway”.  Traditionally it is the Big Sur area, but that already has a cool name.  From now on, PCH will be Highway One north of San Fran.  K?  K.
 

Now, I enjoy riding on winding roads.  In fact, it was the part of the trip I was looking most forward to.  I live on Maui.  I rode winding coastal highways all the time.  I have made The Road to Hana my bitch.  I grew up in Idaho, in the heart of the Rocky Mountains.  I was weaned on winding, narrow, patently stupid roads.  I will say right now, right here, in print, that the section of Highway between Sausalito and Leggett is the gnarliest drive I have ever done on asphalt. 
 

Hopping through the Misty Mountains

It isn’t so much the difficulty level.  It is a technical ride, hairpin after hairpin, sudden climbs up two or three hundred feet, followed by immediate descents back down to sea level.  All the technical rides and drives I have been on are similar in that fashion.  What makes this stretch of road so difficult is that it just. Keeps. Going.  The Road to Hana, even if you go through Hana Town and out the backside, is only 50 miles long.  The mountain roads in the Rockies will wind around, but they generally follow natural phenomena like rivers and streams.  Water does its best to take the easiest route. 

One of my few off road detours

The Highway is straight up carved from the rock of the coastline.  It will occasionally straighten out to go through a little vacation town, but you are right back in it on the other side.  It is 218 miles of nonstop winding, twisting, climbing, diving, technical riding.  I averaged just over 30 miles an hour on it, and that is pretty damn good.  Coincidentally, this is also the only day of riding that I didn’t meet my estimated mark.  I did lose 90 minutes in gridlock, but I was on the bike for 10 hours that day and made 290 miles. 
 

It just. never. ends.

Right in the middle of all this I began to experience an unintended consequence of my frugal choices of gear.  All my safety equipment was designed for a motorcycle, but little to nothing else of my gear was.  Most was repurposed camping and hiking equipment.  One thing motorcycle gear does not have is hanging straps.  Everything is secured with tie downs, Velcro, or  some such finaglry.  I was wearing a Coleman knock-off CamelPack filled with gear and water.  I had it all cinched down and was using the chest straps to keep everything in place.  The tail end of the right side of the chest strap was just the right length to flop around in the wind and snap me directly on the right nipple.  Now, this might sound like fun to you.  Don’t get me wrong, I have absolutely nothing against a little slap and tickle.  But getting popped on the nipple every 15 minutes for ten hours was not cool.  At all.  It bruised.  Now, to add injury to insult, I had a bruised chesticle AND I was getting my ass kicked by the road.
 

About 50 miles south of Fort Bragg where I stopped for the night, the bike started making some crazy sounds.  It went from a very quiet 650cc to sounding like a Harley with the exhaust baffles removed and was backfiring from the engine block when I decelerated.  I was also losing power at 4000 rpm, which is dead center of the bike’s power band.  All of this was very disconcerting at 240 miles into an already long day. 

Field Strip at the Motel

 

I limped the bike into Fort Bragg and called it a night.  The motel had no cell service (or in room phone for that matter) but it was four walls, a bed, and an excellent Wi-Fi connection.  I was able to do some research on what was happening with the bike.  Turns out I had blown out the exhaust gaskets.  They are not an immediately vital piece of equipment, but they do affect volume, gas mileage and performance.  In addition, if you ride the bike without them for too long, you can scorch the engine cylinder.  So you know, not a good thing to be missing in the middle of F-ing nowhere. 
 

Fortunately, there is a BMW F650 FAQ website that has everything you would ever need to know about these bikes.  And I mean everything.  If you drop your bike off a cliff into the ocean and the tide pulls it to Japan, dumps it in Fukushima radioactive waste bay and you are now missing a wheel and the exhaust sounds like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Theme song, someone on this website will have already done it and can tell you how to fix it with a set of allen wrenches, some household supplies and a willingness to injure yourself for the sake of fixing the bike.

Beemer gets a Tin Foil Hat

 

The suggested repair was to insulate the cylinder head with layers of aluminum foil to keep cold air and dirt out of the engine.  Now, this may sound easy.  Let the bike cool off, layer in some foil and you are off to the races, right?  No dice.  There is very limited room to work without disassembling the bike (which you do NOT want to do until you have the proper parts to fix it) and foil sucks to work with in general.  I finally got things somewhat situated and fired up the bike to check my repair.  The exhaust blew through what I thought was sufficient and I got to start over.  Except now everything is hot.  I triple layered what I had previously thought was good and that seemed to work.  I popped all the body panels back on and headed north. 
 

Just a quick sto... Wow.

I was very excited about this leg of the trip.  I have been near The Redwoods, both north and south, but have never been.  I am not sure what I pictured, but reality was completely different.  For me, I had always heard about particular famous trees.  There’s the Chandelier Tree, which is the one you can drive through.  What I didn’t realize is that there isn’t one or two or even nine or ten of these enormous trees.  There are hundreds.  Thousands.  I was so geared up to reach Leggett, “The Gateway to the Redwoods”, that I didn’t really see that I was constantly surrounded by the trees the whole ride in.  I couldn’t see the trees for the forest.  I was so focused on where I thought they would be, it never occurred to me that they were everywhere and it blew my mind when I finally caught on.  It didn’t help that I was playing David Bowie on the Ipod – I tend to go fast when Bowie’s playing.  In fact, I was going so fast that I missed a turn.  See the post “What We Don’t Talk About…” for more on that!

I stopped to listen to something else, looked up and sure enough, there was a tree wider than the length of my bike just chilling at the edge of the turnout.  I’m not one to turn down an opportunity, so I took a bunch of pictures, still not quite comprehending what was going on.  When I did reach Leggett, I knew I had to drive through the Chandelier tree.  The very helpful billboards directed me to the area, where I paid $5 for the privilege of riding a motorcycle through a tree.  As I was paying, I saw another enormous tree about a hundred yards up.  I stopped and took a bunch of pictures and finally really looked around.  There were dozens of ancient, enormous trees just in the area I was in.  So I took more pictures.  The pictures turned out well, but without something in front of them, all sense of perspective is lost.  At this point, I got my head together and went and rode through a tree.  And yes, it was cool.

Hey, look!  A Redwood!

As I was leaving Leggett, Highway One and Highway 101 reconnected and Highway One officially ended.  From Leggett north, it was primarily freeway and the miles flew by.  The ride up to Crescent City was smooth and I cut northeast on Highway 199 to Grants Pass.  Highway 199 was very similar to the beautiful pass that I road on just a day earlier out of Gilroy.

Don't mind if I do!

 

Up until this point, the entire journey had been in California.  And the roads were fantastic.  If I had any issues, they were very minor.  Things like lines of road sealant running down the middle of the lane.  Not a huge deal, but road sealant can get slippery when wet (intentional Bon Jovi reference).  But by and large, the roads were beautiful, pristine asphalt.  Not even much of that concrete nonsense.  And then there’s Oregon.