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Old 09-09-07, 06:12 AM   #1
walnuts
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Default Slipped over to the darkside

Hey peepl,

It's taken a while, but I did say I'd poke my head in on the .org once in a while during my abscence (I'm living in Canada with my girlfriend for a year for those short in memory).

Glad to see all the usual faces are still around (and a few new ones), and that you're all still in one piece of course. (I can't find any explantion of why Falc is in recovery [again!], what's the story fella?)

Any other big SV news I might have missed?

All is very good indeed with me, after a three week holiday in the US, we arrived in Vancouver and are loving every minute. I'm currently working in a bike shop (push-bike sadly), and living in an apartment in the middle of town. In a couple of months time we should be moving onto the mountains for the winter season (fingers crossed). Can't wait!

Definitely missing the motorbike though, but unable to justify the expense of getting one here.

Bikes are big in Vancouver, particularly Ducati Monsters for some reason, they're everywhere. Also a hell of a lot of 1098's too. The cage drivers make the british look positively competent though, so perhaps I'm better off bikeless for the time being.

I did get to ride a bike while we were in the US though. We rode an Electraglide (I know I know, don't all lynch me at once eh) across California from San Francisco to Yosemite National Park. It was an amazing experience, and I'll admit that a Harley does suit the right kind of road (ie. a long straight one) but rest assured I shall not be buying one on my return!

We've been doing email updates for our families whilst we've been away, here's the first half of what I wrote about the Harley experience. This may entertain you or it may bore you to tears, so feel free to click away now. On the off chance this does prove entertaining, I'll post the second half.

Anyway, ride safe guys, catch you soon.
Marc.

Quote:
Saturday in San Francisco was taken up with seeing the last few sights we hadn’t seen so far and doing some shopping ready for our planned two night stay in Yosemite National Park, as we shopped we happened (somewhat deliberatly on my part) to pass by ‘Dubbelju Motorcycle Rentals’, and I managed to persuade Von to go in - ‘just for a look’ of course. Quietly, I was already really keen to get a bike for a day before we headed over to Yosemite as a more interesting way of taking a look around the San Francisco Bay Area.

Dubbelju is run by a very friendly German guy called Wolfgang who was very helpful, and we started talking about the possibility of a days rental of any bike suitable for a passenger to ride. What he showed us a Harley Davidson Electraglide, which pretty much had an armchair for a pillion seat. After a test-sit suddenly Vonny was a lot more keen. Result!

After some further discussion, and excitement on our part, a day trip around the area gradually turned into a 600 mile trip across Central California to Yosemite National Park, and a one day rental thus became a three day rental. This all seemed perfectly normal at the time, even though the price was about three times the cost of renting a car, but we decided we were already pretty tired of four wheeled travel having covered about 800 miles already over the last couple of weeks.

The following morning we returned to pick up our bike, jackets and helmets. Wolfgang sat me down with a king-size map of California so he could show me an ‘interesting’ route, punctuating his description with phrases like ’stay off this freeway, that’s where all the tourists will be’, ’stop here for lunch’, ‘take this road for sure, it’s my favourite, but look out for rockslides from the cliffs above’ and ‘on the way back try to take a detour to reach the Del Puerto Canyon road, it’s worth it trust me’. I asked him about the ‘position’ on speeding in general, and he said ‘They use helicopters to catch you, and they’ll approach from behind so you won’t even know it when suddenly a patrol car joins the road and pulls you over, but no doubt you’ll speed a bit anyway (wink), so just use your common sense’ He was right too, I couldn’t help but think that being able to say I’d been chased across California by a police helicopter whilst riding a Harley, was worth the cost of a fine.

(See Wolfgangs Route)

So that was that, on Sunday morning the sun was shining, we had three days worth of clothes jammed into two small pannier-boxes, and we were riding a king size Harley Davidson through Central San Francisco. It was a baptism-of-fire way to start. The bike must have weighed three times what my old Suzuki did, and I had city traffic and king-size hill-starts to deal with, but we managed to stay upright (just) and within twenty minutes we were cruising easy-rider style across the Golden Gate Bridge. (Vonny took some great video as we rode, which I’d post right here if only I hadn’t lost the damn camera, aaargh!)

We then passed over the San Rafael bridge, and were soon on highway 4 heading east. Traffic dimished so that we were alone on the road for much of the time, and the road wove very gently though farmland and low hills, it was actually a lot like riding through a much sunnier version of Brecon Beacons, and we settled in to the journey, both of us rather gobsmacked that we were actually doing what we were doing.

The hills then flattened out and the surroundings then began to alternate between huge sweet-smelling orchards, and scrubland. It was then that Von shouted in my ear ‘This really reminds me of that film ‘Duel’”. She was right too, the sun was scorching, the road was deserted other than the odd hillbilly driving a pickup and once in a while a Truck would loom into view and make me a bit twitchy on the throttle, ‘just in case there was a problem’.

About three or four hours into the journey we stopped for fuel, lunch, and some welcome air-conditioning at a tiny town called Angel Camp. From here we passed through several more tiny stereotypical small American towns, and through a few State Parks which made for some great views of mountains, cliffs, lakes and rivers. The lack of pictures really sucks.
Then came the highlight, the penultimate hour was made up of the best road I’ve ever ridden or driven anywhere, which starts with a sign saying ’severe bends for 31 miles’. The sign was right, the road is cut from the side of a cliff face and is an unrelenting series of tight curves and switchbacks, the road surface is perfect so it’s like riding a very precarious race-track. Best of all, the bends are either open-sighted so you know how tight they are before you enter them, or they have a sign before them with a suggested speed, and I soon figured out that if I did exactly 15mph more than the suggested speed, it was as fast as the Harley could go, with the bike lent right over and sparks flying up as the running boards scraped along the asphalt. With the accompanying soundtrack provided by the blubbing engine (and Von squealing as we teetered along the edge) I was having the time of my life.

We then entered Yosemite National Park, and travelled for another hour between huge giant sequoia trees, boulders, and dramatic cliffs (I’m really not exaggerating here, it’s almost unreal how extraordinary everything looks in Yosemite). We followed the river into the centre of the valley to reach our accomodation just as night fell.
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Old 09-09-07, 06:38 AM   #2
Tara
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Default Re: Slipped over to the darkside

Hiya Marc
Good to hear from you


Glad everything is good with you Falc is in recovery as he had an op on his knee after the crash last year but he's OK and i think he will back on bike soon despite what the docs say
all is well with us other than that.

Enjoy
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Old 09-09-07, 05:38 PM   #3
DanAbnormal
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Default Re: Slipped over to the darkside

Dude!

Glad to hear from you. I too did a trip from San Fran to Yosemite, sadly on a coach. Those mountain roads were just breathtaking!

Enjoy fella, hope to see you soon.

Dan
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Old 09-09-07, 06:58 PM   #4
falc
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Default Re: Slipped over to the darkside

Hey Marc, good to hear from you and glad things are going groovy with you. I went in for my ACL reconstruction, its all fixed up and walking fine on it. Just got the bike left to get on, when that is im not sure...

Dude def. put the second half up, brilliant write up so far, from what i've heard the harley is perfectly suited to the american roads and sounds like a great experience. I've been in that area before but only in a hire car, I can imagine that on a bike its much better and the route does look awesome.

Take it easy over there fella and post up the second part!
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Old 09-09-07, 07:42 PM   #5
Demonz
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Default Re: Slipped over to the darkside

Hey Marc, nice to hear you are having fun. You on a Harley ripping up the twisties... priceless.

Post up the balance - and dont forget the pics!
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Old 09-09-07, 11:58 PM   #6
Law
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Hey Marc,

Thanks for the update. It sounds like a cool experience riding from San Fran to Yosemite.

Enjoy yourself, are you going up into the mountains for some winter sport?
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Old 10-09-07, 11:09 AM   #7
Stu
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Default Re: Slipped over to the darkside

Great write up Marc. Good to hear you're doing well, having a ball - looking forward to more.

Shame about the camera - what happened?
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Old 14-09-07, 11:27 AM   #8
Colby
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Default Re: Slipped over to the darkside

So how much was the rental of the bike then?
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Old 17-09-07, 01:30 AM   #9
walnuts
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Default Re: Slipped over to the darkside

Nice to see you didn't all forget me!

Here's some answers to the questions above, the second part of the story, and a few more pics.

Winter: Yes, going to Whistler for the Winter to indulge in as much snowboarding as possible , so excited about this!

Cost: The cost of the bike for three days with helmets/gloves/jackets, and every kind of insurance available was about £250, so not cheap, but definitely worth every penny.

Camera: Ah yes, I forgot to explain that bit. We took loads of pictures and videos on the way there, but then the following day we were out hiking in Yosemite and I accidentally left the camera on the ground when we took a short break. I realised about 20 minutes later and ran back, but the the camera had gone. We checked with all the lost property offices around the area, but none of them had seen or heard about the camera, so we had no choice but to use a disposable camera to get some pics on the way back to San Francisco.
Then, three weeks later, I got an email from my Dad back in the UK telling me that my camera had just arrived in the post courtesy of Yosemite National Park! Unbeleivable!
My Dad was able to send me all the pictures and videos over the internet, I can't tell you how chuffed I was to get them back

Part 2:
Quote:
Having spent a couple of hours on a wild goose chase around Yosemite Valley’s seemingly countless Lost Property offices looking for the stupid camera we finally got geared up (helmet, jacket, trousers, boots, gloves ) in the 94 degree heat (the americans who saw us looked gobsmacked), got back on the bike and headed west aiming for San Francisco.

Von was armed with a disposable camera so we might be able to get a few snaps after all.

Our man in San Fran, Wolfgang, had given us an alternate route back to SF, so after the first hour we were on new roads, following a highway overlooking a valley for some 60 miles or so. Very pretty, but less impressive now that we had seen Yosemite. Then we crossed North onto Freeway 99 for an hour, traffic was the heaviest we had seen, but I was now more confident on the bike and it was clear that car drivers are a lot more polite out here than in the UK so I was happily dodging in and out of the traffic to keep our speed high (giving us some much appreciated natural air conditioning).

We had a 30 minute pit-stop in a Supermarket (not glamorous, but nice and cool, and they stock plenty of cold drinks), and then joined highway 7. The road flattened out and was endlessly straight as we passed through farmland for another hour or so.

Once we reached a town called Patterson, we had to find the Del Puerto Canyon Road (as mentioned in part 1). I was already concerned about how we’d find it, particularly since Wolfgang had needed to draw it in biro on the map for us as the cartographers had not deemed it a “real” road apparently. After an hour of going around in circles, and fifteen miles of being lost in a private golfing estate, we finally found the road in a deserted area of brown rolling hills. It began with my new favourite road sign “Severe bends for 27 miles”, brilliant I thought, but how wrong I was.

The road had all the bends and switchbacks that I’d enjoyed two days before, but rather than being a pristine example of road laying, this road was dire. The surface was like a patchwork quilt where all the cracks from the suns heat had been hastily repaired, there was loose gravel and pebbles everywhere from rockfalls from the cliffs and hills above. The road would lean the wrong way in the corners as if it were deliberatly designed to throw us off down the hillside. Oh, and it was getting late in the day, so we were riding into the sun, and I couldn’t see anything.

For the next 27 miles we wobbled along, through a completely deserted area, passing just two pickup trucks in forty minutes! (both driven by very stereotypical hillbillys) We eventually arrived in a tiny deserted town, called Hicksville (OK, I made the name up but it looked like it should be called that), all the town had was a bar and a fencepost with about twenty letterboxes nailed to it. The only reason I could think of that all the letterboxes were together rather than being at each individual farmhouse was that the townsfolk were in-breeding so much the postman could never be sure who lived at what house.

The petrol light had been on for ages, so it was not reassuring to see a big blue sign “No Gas for 31 miles”. Especially when Von said “I keep thinking of that film, Deliverance”, and starting humming Duelling Banjos. With that we jumped swiftly back on the bike and joined the next road “31 miles of severe bends”.

On the plus-side, even though I was trying desperately to conserve fuel, the road improved markedly and we were moving much quicker and scraping the running boards once again, woo! However on the minus-side, I was really starting to panic about the petrol-situation, Duelling Banjos got louder in my head each time I glanced at the fuel gauge.

Along the way we passed another two pickups, both being driven by hillbillys. Another hillbilly relieving himself right in the middle of the road. And two hillbillys leaning against a fence drinking beer. Oh and it was now getting dark.

Then, literally as we could just see the petrol station about a mile in the distance as we waited at a red light, the engine spluttered. Gaagh, the Banjos were deafening!

But the trusty Harley didn’t let us down, another two splutters later and we limped in the the petrol station just as it got dark.

So after refueling, we just had 45 minutes on the main Freeway and then we rolled across the Bay Bridge into San Francisco with this amazing view in front of us. Civilisation!

We dropped the bike off at the hotel for the night, and went into town to celebrate our journey by getting drunk on Magheritas.


Approaching Golden Gate Bridge:


Objects May Be Closer:


Entering Yosemite:


Del Puerto Canyon:



Shadows:


View of San Francisco:


View of the road from Part 1:
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Old 17-09-07, 08:20 AM   #10
Demonz
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Default Re: Slipped over to the darkside

Great write up. Sounds like you guys are having a blast and how cool is that sunset and winding road running along the mountainside.
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