THE SECOND TO LAST POST

My trip into San Diego from Palm Springs was just terrific. It was in fact stinking hot when I left Palm Springs. To be precise, it was 102 deg at 10 am as my trusty GPS took me out of town via Gene Autrey Boulevarde, and Frank Sinatra Drive, among other streets whose names are not so readily recalled. As soon as I left the valley floor, I climbed pretty much straight up. Past a sign which read "Carry Snow Chains", and another which read  "Turn Off Air Conditioning to Prevent Overheating, Next 11 Miles". Confusing, yes, but  I knew it was going to be steep, and it was. But I got a terrific view of the city as I got near the top, and it was a fairly gnarly ride. And strangely, it got noticeably cooler as I climbed. I could not help wondering where all the water comes from to water all the golf courses, and thousands of lush green lawns in front of the thousands of affluent homes in this veritable and very opulent oasis in a very harsh desert. I have concluded that the weird weather here has a lot to do with the very high mountain ranges, the like of which we simply don't have in Australia.

Times like this, I wish I bought a decent camera. I was actually amazed at the lack of traffic as I headed towards San Diego. Apart from some minor delay due to a truck full of hay which had caught fire, which lead to a roadblock while the flames were extinguished, I just flew along some exceptionally nice bike roads.

 

 In fact, I was beginning to think I was way off track because I could see no signs of San Diego whatsoever. Then it just appeared, and next thing, I was on the freeways dicing with death yet again. I went through one major junction which looked like something from The Jetsons. Multi level spaghetti. I resolved never to speak ill of my GPS again, ever.

Straight to my chosen lodging. When I said it was under the flight path, I wasn't kidding. San Diego airport is right in the middle of town, very close to the CBD. This close, in fact. These were taken from just outside my room.

Just behind the motel, there is a train track, and the trains sound their horn at every level crossing, 24/7. Right now the motel is being refurbished, and of course they are working on the room right next to mine, and there is a big dumpster right outside. I am also right next to the staircase, and also the swimming pool, which is full of Mexicans. This is actually the least desirable motel room on the planet, but very reasonably priced. And I have world class earplugs, and a beer fridge. Fortunately.

The good news is that I sold the bike. After a full day of going over it with a fine tooth comb at Mike Valenti's place, it looked better than new. I had a couple of inquiries from my web ad on CycleTrader.com, and I sold it to a very good home. So everybody is happy. For the record, here is what the right hand pannier looked like. So the bike was sold with instant street cred.

And To Mike and Tina Valenti and family, who didn't know me from a bar of  soap three months ago, yet welcomed me as one of the family, I can only convey my humble and sincere thanks for all your hospitality. I hope I can reciprocate in Australia one day. There are no people like bike people, but I don't have to tell you guys that, do I?

Last night, while I was repacking for the flight home, my trusty gear bag, a veteran of three overseas biking adventures, decided to give up the ghost. The main zipper just detached from the rest of the bag, just as I was squashing it like a woolpress so I could close it. Damn! I was actually going to dump it after this trip, thinking that my bike adventures have probably come to an end. So I went out and bought a new one. And you know what that means!

THE FINISHING TOUCHES.

I've been through the desert* on a horse with no name,
It felt good to be out of the rain,
In the desert, you can remember your name, for there ain't no one for to give you no pain.
La laaa  laa,  la la la la la, la la laa, laa la.

*The Mojave desert, to be precise. A nice little number from the appropriately named group America. Are you picking up my general drift. Carolyn often reckons I should have been a hermit, and she ought to know! This morning I left Bakersfield, at the lower end of the San Joaquin Valley. If not the breadbasket of California, certainly the fruit and veg basket. To get to San Diego from Bakersfield, you have basically two choices. You go through Los Angeles, or you don't. I decided not to, and gave it a wide berth. So wide, in fact, that I went through the Mojave Desert rather than suffer the pain of the LA freeways. So, west on the CA 58 for a hundred and forty miles to Barstow, well into the Mojave, and past Edwards Air Force Base and past one of those plane parks where they keep mothballed airliners, then south down the CA 247 to Yucca Valley. The 58 is indistinguishable from a fast and furious Interstate, or so I thought until I did an unavoidable few miles on the I-15 just before I got into Barstow. That was a reality check. It has to be said that the main road system here does exactly what it is supposed to do. It allows vehicles to get from A to B in a hurry. You can cover over 200 miles in around 3 hours, but I don't reckon its much fun. Especially on a little bike with a lot of luggage. You get about as much respect as an insect.

I was bloody glad to get onto the 247, which I had pretty much to myself. Mainly because it doesn't go anywhere in particular, except through more desert. It was warm, but not unpleasant, and I enjoyed the ride, the scenery and the solitude. Even had time to hum a few tunes to myself, as we hermits are prone to do.

I stopped for a break at a nondescript little joint called Lucerne Valley. If anyone could grow lucerne here, that really would be a miracle. I think the main industry is sand. However, at a gas station, I engaged the friendly hispanic looking babe behind the counter in conversation, after she asked me if I was English or German. I responded in my best Spanish that I was an Australian tourist, and had been here for 3 months. She totally ignored that information, and asked me another question, in English. Oops. Sometimes the Mexicanos think you are patronising them if you slip in a bit of espanol, just trying to be friendly. A few minutes later, she told me she was from Morocco. No wonder she missed the Spanish. What a waste. D'oh!
Before I left, another guy came up, said he was a rider, and we just started chatting. You can't beat a small town if you want to meet real people. In a similar small town a little earlier, I spotted a bit of local humour. Or more likely the result of frustration at idiot drivers and lack of action by local officialdom. This house was located on a sharp s-bend on the main street. Clearly the home owner was hispanic, due to the structure of the sentence, as in Spanish the words get the way wrong around put. But who needs as truck in their lounge room?

So I moved on towards Yucca Valley. No issues with nomenclature this time, there were actually yuccas all over the place. I decided to wring the maximum value out of my Parks Pass before I leave, and headed into the Joshua Tree National Park, just a few miles down the road. It was only 95 degrees, but didn't feel too bad if you kept moving. So it was a quick visit, unimpeded as it was by anyone else in the park. Looks like the cover of an Eagles LP, doesn't it?

As you can plainly see, the landscape consists entirely of the so called Joshua Trees, saltbush, and piles of rocks. But it is visually stunning all the same. In the desert, you can.....................etc. Actually, I thought it was pretty neat to have a National Park named after a U2 album. Bono must be really pleased about that. My accommodation for the night was in Palm Springs, and speaking of Bono, you may be aware that Sonny Bono used to be the Mayor of Palm Springs, when he was alive, and there is a Sonny Bono Memorial Highway or some such around here somewhere, I noted on a map. (Like the way I slipped that in?). This is the sort of stuff I think about when I'm riding.

Heading into Palm Springs, the CA 62 drops literally hundreds of metres onto the floor of a wide a valley. The temperature rocketed up to 100 deg, and  the wind picked up. The valley floor is filled with wind turbines, hundreds of the things. And where do they put wind turbines, Einstein?? Next minute I was battling a full-on cross wind that had me freaking out again. Not quite as bad as I got earlier in the trip, but right up there. Once again, the weather gods were making sure I wasn't getting out of this until I paid the full fare. Not too much later, I actually saw a  road sign which read Cross Wind. No shit, I thought as I read it at an angle of 45 degrees to the vertical, with neck muscles bulging. By the time I got into town, the temperature readout was 105.5 degrees and it was blowing fit to rip the roofs off houses. Not as hot as the 120 deg F blast furnaces that Chrispy and I got in Pakistan and Iran, but close enough, especially with the raging wind factor. This was truly the Breath of Hell. As in "who left the doors open, Satan will be really pissed off", and "who the Hell would want to live here?"

But at this juncture, let me quote from (arguably) one of the worst Aussie movies ever, and we've had a few, the 1970's vintage The Adventures of Barry McKenzie. When Bazza meets an expat Aussie living in Paris, namely Col the Frog, Col imparts - with his newly acquired Euro sophistication - some wisdom along the following lines. This must be said with an Australian accent, with no trace of French pronunciation whatsoever, just like the way I pronounce French: "Well mon Baz, i'ts an ill vent that blows nobody any bon."

 You know, sometimes the stuff  floating around in my head really scares me. (And its my head!!)

It was an ill wind all right, but it did actually blow me some good. Let me explain. A few nights back, I had rocked up to a typical low end motel, to which I find myself attracted these days, just out side Yosemite. I hadn't booked anywhere, as I wasn't sure where I might be when I finished riding. It was too hot to even think about putting the tent up, and I had a long day, and was fairly knackered. So as a walk in, you pay a little more, but I wasn't prepared for the shock of $150 a night, for very ordinary. The town was packed, and that was it. Tourist season, and I was screwed! I took it, but after this reality check, I got back to booking ahead, at my preferred price range. And I only told you that so I could tell you this. I rode into Palm Springs thinking I was looking for the usual dump, sorry, economical lodging. When the GPS guided me to some really flash looking joint, I thought it had gone bunta again, and I was just about to crack a fruity, when the penny finally dropped. Wake up, numb nuts, this is summer, and nobody wants to live here! In other words, my faithful readers, its off season. The pleasure palaces are all empty, so they just about give the rooms away, just so they can pay the power bills and the skeleton staff. As I write these words, I am ensconced in a palatial room with all mod cons, and then some.  Just had a dip in the pool, I have some antipasto and cheese happening, along with a cheeky little pino grigio, (Californian, of course) and the air conditioner is drawing about 100 amps, maybe even 150. In fact, I'm getting a bit cold, better put the monogrammed bathrobe on. It's going to be a wrench to leave here tomorrow. Maybe just another day.

Let me just backtrack a bit. A few days earlier, when I left Merced, I followed a route suggested to me by Steve Linden, which had me doing a loop on the north side of the Yosemite NP, through the Stanislaus National Forest, then entering the Park from the eastern side. I would have been unlikely to have picked this route by myself. And it was a blast. There was hardly any other traffic on the CA 108 through the forest, it crested at the Sondra Pass, at 9,624 ft, then dropped down the other side, past Mono Lake, and into Yosemite via the back door, somewhat.

At one point, I thought I was in a war zone, but it turned out the Marines have a training facility in the forest, and there were humvees everywhere and funny little houses all waiting to be blown up. Down at lower elevations there was a flight line of 6 Chinook helicopters, but signs on the road said no stopping. So no photos, either. But a bloody good ride, so thanks Steve. I took a few more conventional photos in the park, which was, as indicated earlier, chock a block, and the traffic out of the place was painful. But it is summertime, and this is what happens. Nevertheless, it is still very spectacular, but you do have to like rocks.

So there it is, all good things must come to an end. As much as I'd like to just keep on riding till I finally kark it, I now have aches and pains in places I didn't even know belonged to me. Well, at 40 you have to expect these things. Three months of seeing most of the places in the USA and Canada that I have always wanted to see, and a few places I've seen again. I am indeed one lucky, lucky bastard. And tomorrow (if I can tear myself away from this ridiculously priced luxury) I head back into San Diego, but it will be a circuitous route, stretching the journey out as long as possible. I have a cunning plan which will take me through the backblocks, and deposit me at my chosen lodging under a bridge somewhere near the main flightpath, hopefully before the rush hour traffic gets too bad. I then have to clean the battle scarred machine for the last time, this time it gets the full treatment. I have a potential buyer looking at it on the weekend, and you never know your luck in the big city. I might even have time to reflect (blogwise, I mean) on what has been for me, a fantastic, wonderful journey. Otherwise, I'll do it when I get home and get over the jetlag. Or maybe after Carolyn and I get back from a weekend of making up for lost time in our preferred treatment facility, ie a farmhouse in the picture perfect wine country of the Clare Valley in Winter time. I can almost smell the shiraz now. But I will have a wrap up sometime. Friends, thanks for coming with me and sharing once again the highs and lows of bike travel.

WINE, WOMEN AND SONG. (AND TRAFFIC)

I wish! There are no women involved, and I'm not a singer. However, that still leaves one. I stayed the night in Santa Rosa, about 40 miles north of San Francisco. The direction from which I approached town had me thinking the joint was a bit of a dump. The motel I stayed in did nothing to dispel that impression. My fellow guests were a decidedly dodgy looking lot, real pond life types. I did pass through some nicer suburbs on the way out, but I would not want to live in a joint like this. I detoured via Sonoma, through some very nice wine country, and Sonoma looked much more agreeable. By this time the weather was actually hot, and not the least bit conducive towards wine tasting, but I had a look around. Then I hit the US101 again, and played lotto at 75 mph towards San Francisco. The traffic was frantic, all five lanes of it in each direction at one stage. My GPS started to go a bit funny, and I thought "Oh no, not now", but it seems to be ok now. Before I knew it, I could see that familiar skyline, I felt the temperature drop as the wind came in off the bay, and next thing I was on the Golden Gate Bridge. I have walked out onto it before, with my eldest lad David, but had not crossed it in a vehicle before. TICK. I had forgotten how huge the thing is. Its just awesome. The struggle to find $6 to pay the toll on the exit side was a hassle I could have done without.
Then it was straight around to SF BMW to have my brakes checked. They have been feeling squishy for a while, so I wanted them checked out. They checked out ok, but I still reckon they feel a bit funny.

All four of my visits to the US have included San Francisco. At first, Carolyn and I loved the place, but I have become less impressed with each visit. There is a real problem with homeless people, and it is very in your face in the touristy precincts, and I reckon its getting steadily worse. There is a lot more aggro now. You can't walk down the street without being accosted by some panhandler, and being mobile on the bike, I rode through a couple of areas which I would not be prepared to walk into. From my $200 a night hotel room just off Market St, I could see four people sleeping out all night on the steps of  the building right across the street. The hotel cafe faces onto a street corner, and there are always derros stopping to look in the windows. Its hard to ignore. Earlier in the day I was walking down the street 100 yards from the hotel when a plastic bag of garbage hit the footpath about 6 feet from me. I looked up, but saw nothing. Someone had tossed it out the window from above. Within a minute, there were 4 cop cars in the street at the back of the building, so I reckon it was a domestic. I saw a similar incident a few blocks away a bit later, with some guy getting handcuffed by several cops after a fight in the street. One night here was plenty, and I had already planned to vacate asap. Fortunately, next day was Sunday, and I thought that might cut me some slack with the traffic. It did, and I just headed west from the hotel until I hit the coast.

I just can't figure the weather here at all. I left the hotel in hot weather mode, sunscreen and all. This morning there was a fog along the coast, and it was cold. I rode on thinking it would blow away or burn off soon enough. After about 30 miles, I was too cold, so had to stop to reorganise myself. The plan was to ride down the coast to check out Monterey, Carmel, and Big Sur, then cut inland to visit Yosemite and some other parks, which would mean a little backtracking. For quite a few miles, I was behind some lucky bastard in a Porsche Carrera S model, looking into four big exhausts, and listening to the sweet crescendo emanating from same. That's my kind of music. Yes, but is he really happy? You bet he is. By the time I had done about 100 miles, it was still cold and foggy, then just after Santa Cruz, the road had turned into a freeway, but traffic ground to a halt. It was backed up for about 5 miles. When it eventually got moving freely again, I had sore hands from riding the clutch and brakes. Stuff this. So I headed inland right then, via Watsonville, and headed towards Yosemite. Too bad, I would have liked to see that section of coast, I have heard its worth it, but not today. So no getting "Down in Monterey", and no chat with Clint Eastwood in Carmel, but I did go "somewhere near Salinas" to pinch a line from Janis Joplin.

This route took me over the Coast Range, and over then the Diablo Range, and into the San Joaquin Valley. As soon as I got away from the coast, the skies cleared and the temperature rose. But I have never seen anything like what I was about to experience. Crossing the Diablo Range, I thought it was getting not just warm, but hot. The readout said 80 deg F already. Wow, that was quick, I thought to myself. Then before my very eyes, the readout went ballistic and climbed steadily, topping out at 101.7 deg. I thought there was something wrong with it. It was actually changing digits faster than the tripmeter, and in the space of about a mile and a half!! And I'm still wearing heavy gloves, a neckwarmer, and have all the vents closed!  A quick stop when I could find some shade to reorganise again. Unbelievable, but true. Well, at least it finally stopped raining.

Shortly after this, on the opposite side of the freeway, I came upon a bad accident, at the Patcheco State Park. It looked like a rear end shunt at high speed (of course!). One car was down an embankment, badly messed up, and another had its front properly smashed in. I would not be surprised if it was a fatal. The cops and all the emergency services were all there, but the road was still blocked. The traffic on the other side, all three lanes of it, was backed up for I reckon about 7 miles, in 100 degree heat, and going nowhere. The queue was growing at an exponential rate, and some cars were overheating, with people parking on the median to deal with  problems, or trying to turn around. A quick look at the map showed there were no nearby alternative routes for westbound traffic. What a shambles.

By 3.30, I'd had enough, and bailed up in a motel in Merced. An interesting, eventful few days, but I'm already thinking the trip from here onwards is going to be bad news. Apart from right at the start of this trip, when I was learning the ropes, I have dutifully avoided large cities and heavy traffic in favour of the roads less travelled, with a couple of exceptions. That is going to be a lot harder to do from here on. There is a whole lot of people packed into California.

CALIFORNIA DREAMING

My favourite Mamas and Papas song, right there. I had a great ride today, a real highlight. After making it yesterday to a place called Eureka, a word which has deep Australian cultural connotations, my American readers, I headed off along the US101 South, and almost immediately I was offered a detour into the Valley of the Giants. I took it, of course. This refers to the remnant forests of giant redwoods. For about 25 miles or so, you can just wend your way through the forest. Occasionally you pop back into civilisation for a bit, then back into the awesome peace and quiet of these majestic trees. In a few places, I got off the bike and walked into the forest and just sat for a while. At times, there was the faint hum of freeway traffic or other noise, but mostly there was just silence. To just sit quietly amongst these beautiful, wonderful trees was a time to savour. To imagine that some of these were over 2000 years old. To imagine that some of them were growing since before Jesus himself had learned how to make a mortice and tenon joint. To imagine that throughout all the recorded history of the last 2000 years, the oldest of these trees had just sat right here in the same place, quietly growing, just being trees. Wow, I was stoked.

Oddly enough, at one point all I could think of was some dialogue from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, when King Arthur encountered the Knights Who Say Nyiit in a forest. It goes something like this:

KNIGHTS:   "We are the Knight Who Say Nyiit, and we will say Nyiit to you again if you do not appease us."

ARTHUR:     "What is it you want me to do?"

KNIGHTS: "You must cut down the mightiest tree in the forest wiiiiith.........a herring!"

ARTHUR:     I"ll do no such thing"

KNIGHTS:   "Aw,  please"

But I was always being distracted like Bart Simpson when I was a kid in Church anyway. Yet by the time I left the forest, I felt relaxed, and kind of connected to the planet, if that isn't being too weird. And if trees can do that to a cynical bastard like me, then they're well worth keeping. I think I read there are only some 4% of the original redwood forests left, but they are slowly being replanted. Good. Plant faster.

 And that's just the bottom half. Some of these get to 400 ft high, that's more than 30 stories high.

I couldn't help myself when I saw this sawmill en route. A sawmill struck me as a strange thing to find in a tree museum, but then again, it wasn't always a museum, was it. The mill looked like it was decommissioned, but clearly they had their differences of opinion with the tree huggers. Sound familiar? And with that,  I was out of the forest and guess what? Right on cue, there was no cloud, nothing but blue sky, and I noted the temperature had shot up to about 80 deg F. Welcome to California!

Of course, there has to be a bit of comic relief. I can truthfully say I have actually ridden over the odd log or two, out on a trail, but until today I had never ridden through one. I hope if I ever hit one, it has a nice big hollow spot in it, just like this specimen. Right, lets ride. Back out onto the main road. The 101 is a bit funny in this area, it goes from divided road, back to narrow one lane winding through the trees, back to freeway. I just took it as it came, but I couldn't figure it out. Maybe Caltrans ran out of dough. But from the minute I left the 101 at Leggett, and took the State Route 1, the fun began. There was very little traffic for the first 100 miles. Initially the road wound through thick forest, about 20 miles of tight twisties. That was just terrific. Every so often I got stuck behind another vehicle, which probably saved me from myself, because I did push the envelope a bit. No chicken strips on my tyres now, and a few new scratches on the boots. Then all of a sudden the road broke out onto the coast.

Still hardly any traffic, the road opened up and the speed went up accordingly. I had an absolute ball for the next 80 odd miles, I was just right in the groove. As noted previously, I just love this bike in the mid range, and I gave it a flogging. I could not believe my luck, this just has to be one of the world's greatest bike rides. Not only was it twisty, but it climbed, then descended repeatedly, with fast sections and tight sections all mixed in. And the scenery wasn't too bad either. Reminiscent of the Mediterranean coast of Turkey (but with better road surface) or the Great Ocean Road in Victoria (minus the traffic), or the Cook Highway north of Cairns (in the old days, before every other bastard found out about it). Why does there always have to be a proviso??  The last 100 miles or so was slower, because there was more traffic on it, but I deem that today was one of the most exhilarating rides I have ever had, period. Two hundred and fifty miles of motorcycling  nirvana.

I finished up by going through Bodega Bay, which film buffs may recall was the setting for Alfred Hitchcock's legendary movie The Birds. Looks like the town has recovered ok. Whatever happened to the dashing Rod Taylor, and the delightful Tippi Hendren anyway? I then headed across to Santa Rosa, from where I will head to Sonoma, Petaluma and maybe Napa tomorrow. Wine country. At last. The promised land!

THE OREGON TRAIL

Dramatic caption isn't it? It was also a dramatic entry into Oregon for me, that's one big bridge across one big river. Actually its a mix of several types of structure, and it drops you right into Astoria, Oregon. The covers are for  protection. The bridge is being grit blasted and repainted. There is a neat collection system in place on the sides and under the deck to prevent the grit and the old paint from ending up in the river. I supervised two similar projects in Adelaide once upon a time, on a much smaller scale admittedly, but the principle and the problems are the same. What fun we have.

I didn't hang around, and continued my journey southwards along the coast. It was true to form, cold and misty. The weird thing about this area is the way the mist rolls in from the sea (didn't mean to get into Mull of Kintyre there, but I felt it happen). It really does, then it hangs around like a fart in a phone box, especially on the hillier sections of the highway. This coast typically has heaps of offshore sea stacks. They are generally dome shaped islands of various sizes, of quite different appearance to the N Apostles on Victoria's coastline at home, (where N used to = 12, but is now an integer <12) and they loom eerily out of the mist. Many have trees growing on them. I'd like to get a good look at the bloody things, but I guess it all adds to the mystique.

Nice riding all the same, lots of twists and turns, generally through the forests which stretch right down to the sea, and also a few sections of sand dunes in places. Well, it is a coast, isn't it.

 I went through a place called Tillamook, which sounds like it should be in Australia, and which is nice dairy country, and so there is a big cheese factory there. I could really use a little of the fermented curd, so I thought about a stop to sample the wares, but the car park was the size of the one at Disneyland, and it was chokkas, so I moved on. I mused on the fact that if it was in Oz, you might find twenty or thirty cars at a very popular cheese factory somewhere.  Here, you get a few hundred!

The other thing I noticed was the terrific sense of smell you get on a bike. From Washington, all the way to California, the olefactories really get a workout. First its the smell of the wet forest, then the smell of the fog, and the salty tang of the sea, and through it all for most of the way, the beautiful smell of fresh cut timber. Because this is first and foremost logging territory.  Ok, so occasionally you get the stench of fish at the same time, but I can tune it out. Then, before I knew it, I passed a sign that welcomed me to California. Before I leave Oregon, let me inform you that it is, I am advised, the only state where they still have someone dispense petrol for you. You are not allowed to do it yourself. Go figure! It suits me, because I have had it up to here with the crappy system of getting petrol pumps to work here. The minute I put in a credit card, it asks me for a zipcode. Game, set and match, right there. I then have to go inside, hand over the card or the cash, go back and pump the gas, go back again and sign the slip or authorise more credit, or pay more cash, or get change, whatever. And each time, back on the end of the queue. It really sucks. So hooray for Oregon. If I'd known that before I started, I might have spent the whole trip riding around Oregon, even though I might not have been able to actually see anything.

Just before I crossed into California, I began to notice the big redwoods. Oregon has them too, but I think California gets all the publicity. Just to go back to the Oregon Trail for a minute, it seems to me that if those pioneers didn't get here by covered wagons from back east, lets say they tried to get here from the Pacific, by ship, I reckon there's a good chance they may never have been able to find the bloody place. I'm stuffed if I know how the Spanish managed to find any land here, unless they crashed into it in the fog.