Day Twenty-Two - 4839.6mi - HOME

Thanks again for reading. I'll be cleaning up the posts and adding even more photos and even VIDEO of some of the great roads I was on.

Of course, the only time I saw rain was the day I left, and the day I returned. Thanks Pacific NorthWet... Anyways, getting home just didn't feel right until I went for a parade lap downtown.
Here's the REAL parting shot after over 3 weeks and 4800mi / 7750km!!!

So, what's next?

Days Seventeen to Twenty-One - 4406.3mi

...it's not over yet! Time to head back after the conference. Here's the prime parking spot I had in San Jose right at the hotel lobby with 24hr valet watch (at $18/day they'd better watch it!). BTW check out my cool new front tire.
Shasta Lake is one of California's major water reservoirs. Look at how low that water level is!!! Stop washing your SUVs, California! There's even a 5mph speed limit for boats so they don't run aground in the shallow water.
The next day I got to do a back to back ride on my Versys vs. BRAMMO's Enertia. What a treat!
Around town the Enertia wins hands down. It's the perfect city bike with ideal seating position, light weight, and plenty of torque. Its electric drive is perfectly silent. Too bad a 40mi all-electric range won't get me the 750miles back to Vancouver! Thanks for the test ride, I'm an instant fan! Order yours at www.enertiabike.com!
Just when I thought my trip could not get any more pefect - it was the annual Oregon Beer Festival this weekend in Portland! With just 2hrs before they closed I had over 32 beers to sample.... I didn't stand a chance with those crowds !
Go check it out next year! www.oregonbrewfest.com

Day Sixteen - 3621.8mi

Hi. Thanks for reading.
Here's my parting shot for this trip. It concludes in the Bay Area as I work the rest of the week here and on the freeway back.Fort Point is a great spot to take photos of the G G Br.
I made some Play-Doh animals for my friend's daughter and we had a great time! Thanks for a great end to a fabulous trip!

Day Fifteen - 3454.7mi

After 14 days on the road, a one day break was well deserved and spent at the lake with friends. This is my postcard photo:The water was warm (by Canadian standards!):

Day Fourteen - 3454.7mi

Today was practise day at Laguna Seca so I went to check it out (it's less crowded than race days). The MotoGP bikes aren't as loud as Formula One. If you're in it for the noise go to F1. I prefer F1 because those cars will make your heart stop, these bikes are just noisy (but really fast!). Laguna Seca though, is a great track.I'd never seen so many bikes before in my life! Just riding into the parking lot on the highway there must have been a group of 50 bikes on the road together! Wow! Now... where did I park?

Day Thirteen - 3208.6mi

Today was a transit day, with the general plan of getting from LA to somewhere around Laguna Seca, Monterey County. So I thought it would be interesting to follow James Dean's route as he left Hollywood to go racing at the same track.

Of course, he never made it to the track. He made it to this intersection, on an open highway where someone turned left in front of him to go on Hwy 41 as he came barrelling down Hwy 46. Hwy 1 reopened the day after I tried to go through the first time so I had to check it out. Look at the fire damaged park!
And I eventually made it to camp at Mount Madonna, overlooking the Salinas Valley. Nice spot, but the most money I've spent on overnight accommodations so far: $24!

Day Twelve - 2806.7mi

So I did it. I rode my motorbike from Vancouver, BC to Ensenada, Mexico. Conquered the Coast, relived US-101. As people have told me, "a road-trip to talk about forever".

It's all northbound from here, but that doesn't mean the adventure stops, just less frequent updates until I get back home.

For example: do I run those worn tires until I can get to my new ones in San Jose? Nope. I'm on vacation, don't skimp. Bought a new tire. What to do with the ones in San Jose? Don't know.

Day Eleven - 2663.7mi

Olá!
For all you worry warts, I seem to have spent 8hrs in Mexico today, riding about 250km without getting into any trouble. In fact, I had a great time in Ensenada. There were no cruise ships in so it was pretty quiet around town.

The giant flag in Ensenada is as far south as this trip goes, so out came the Disagreeable Rabbit for yet another photo shoot:
"I hate taking photos. Why does he drag me all over the planet?"

The nicest building in town is the former "Speakeasy" and Casino, Riveira Pacifico, allegedly funded by Al Capone. It's still very well kept today:
The long way back included a detour on Highway 3 to Tecate, which is much easier crossing than Tijuana. The road is also way better for motorcycling; along the way are some incredible mountain passes in the tundra/desert - temperature was over 100F!
It's mostly northbound from here, but my back tire is totally worn after today's roads. A new tire is waiting, but it's 450miles away in San Jose... Let's hope it holds together on the I-5!

Day Ten - 2424.6mi

Just putting around San Diego today. Nice beaches.
The USS Midway museum is so very cool, and well worth spending half a day. If you're special you can get in for free (who, me?).
Chief Petty Officers are not ones to be messed with..
San Diego's World-Class Zoo is also worth a late afternoon/evening if only for the Pandas:

Day Nine - 2370.6mi

After a long detour around the fire, I pulled into Morro Bay State Park right at sunset (sunset has been earlier as I go further south). The campground was full and I didn't want to ride to the next campsite so I putted around the sites to see if there were other bikes that I could share some campground with. Some people around a campfire were looking at me as I passed so I stopped and asked if I could have a corner of their site. They were bike friendly (Kirk has done the 3-flags tour - the opposite of my trip but in 2.5 days) and let me stay. Thanks Kirk, Tom, Suzie, and Sherry!
The Madonna Inn is worth a stop for its "Roadside America" character.
This is the Mission in Santa Barbara, one of the prettier ones down the coast, and where I started to run into traffic headed towards LA.
This is on the Ventura Hwy heading into LA, traffic was light here, but got much worse as I got close to Santa Monica. Crossing LA was a pain, and I got into San Diego really late and after over 360miles..

Day Eight - 2007.5mi

An excellent day of small adventures!

Thanks Normie for letting me stay at your place for a couple of days! Sorry that all I could do for you was let you into Costco to get free samples and let you pretend you're riding my bike:
So I left them to their free samples and blasted down the highway towards San Juan Bautista, where the church from "Vertigo" is (this has been a big Hitchcock tour as well). Along the way I noticed an unusually large amount of bikes around me. Everywhere, going every direction. I pulled into San Juan Bautista and found this on the main street:
"One of these things just doesn't belong here!!!"
But I noticed a bike with a Canadian Flag hanging off the back - It's Dave and Andrea who have come down from Port Alberni!
They explained that there's a huge rally in Hollister, down the road, with over 250,000 bikes!!! Wow. They suggested I go check it out, but not wanting to get lynched by Harley guys, I went the other way to Monterey and ran into the total opposite bike crowd:It was a Ducati Meet celebrating the Moto GP race next week! Coool.

So then I headed down the coast highway, knowing it was closed 30 miles down - it was worth it for the amazing vistas:
Cool picture, huh?
And here's as far as I got:

It was about 150miles to detour around this 60 mile stretch, but you don't get stuck being tourists doing 35mph so I figured it took about the same amount of time.

Day Seven - 1637.6mi

Google has really, really, really good food. Can't beat the price either - free (for Visitors too)!SF is very bike friendly for parking and traffic jams.

Day Six - 1536.4mi

Today was a rest day, so I just visited The Mystery Spot, where strange gravitational forces are at play with your mind:Then I took one of our customer's demo Electric Bikes for a spin:
and worked and relaxed the rest of the day, trying to figure out how to get around the fire in Big Sur. I'm probably going to kick around the Bay Area one more day.

Day Five - 1435.1mi *

After breakfast at a biker-friendly joint (I think it's biker friendly, lots of bikes parked out front), I passed through the unique, but private, community of The Sea Ranch. I stopped at the Sea Ranch Lodge to try and take some photos of this environmentally sensitive community and I chatted with this resident who told me about all the restrictions designed to not affect the land they live on (he's probably 70+ yrs old):Bodega Bay is a definite stop to make if you are a Hitchcock fan because "The Birds" is based around that town. However, the schoolhouse is in nearby Bodega. In the upscale resort town of Bodega Bay I met a couple who had ridden bikes from Florida!!!
The roads were really twisty heading into Bodega Bay and I was following a couple through some really tight, cliff-side corners. I had the camera on so when they pulled over to let me pass I stopped and told them I could send them some video of that excellent stretch of road. Rocky and Glenda had ridden all the way from Utah up to Port Angeles!
UPDATE 31Jul08: Here's some video from following Rocky & Glenda (yes, I understand the cheesiness of the music):

Once through the twisties along the coast, the road threw me onto a huge 8-lane highway onto the Golden Gate! That was way too much so I pulled off to take some photos where Starfleet Command (Star Trek) will be in 500 years:

It was sad to see this lighthouse deteriorating. It is on a surprisingly isolated piece of coastline between San Fran and Santa Cruz and made a good stop on my way to the hotel.
The fire in Big Sur is still raging, so I will have to detour around it. In fact, its grown from 50,000 acres to 90,000. I'm going to go as far as safely possible.

Day Four - 1167.8mi *

I parked the night before between two Harleys with BC plates. Well I woke up to meet Jerry and Dawn from White Rock! They had just pulled out to the coast from the I-5 and were going roughly the same way I was. See you on the road, Jerry and Dawn!

I stopped at Walgreens to get some eye drops and other stuff and this man actually recognized my Kawasaki Versys. The pamphlet in his pocket says "Stop Smoking in One Hour!" so I took a photo of him while he waited for his (even older) friend. I wonder if he ever quit smoking...

On a website lead I thought I'd go look for the Ewoks on Endor at Grizzly Creek Redwoods National Park. The Park Ranger directed me to the Owen R Cheatham grove and the "Star Wars Trees". Being dressed like a stormtrooper and on a bike myself, I couldn't resist (I am humming the Star Wars tune):

UPDATE 3 Aug 08: I compiled my Redwoods videos to help illustrate how I felt riding through these majestic forests:

After a couple hours in 100+F heat, I rode my bike through a tree! Michael and Debbie from Conway, Arkansas took this photo for me (they flew into Sacramento):

It was cooler on the coast, and after some fantasically scary twisties through the forest, I pushed into the sunset to get to my alternate camp site because I knew I'd hit traffic the next day. Here's Day Four's parting shot from Manchester Beach State Park:

Day Three - 860.4mi

This is "The Money Shot"
At Cape Blanco, the supposedly most Westerly and windy point in the continental USA.

Today I was amazed by the views and also treated to some lovely stone-arch, Art Deco bridges. If you can only see one portion of the coast, the Central Oregon coast is it.

One noteworthy mention is Brookings, OR, just before the California borders. I was warned by Buzz (see below), that it was 104F there, and he had come north to escape the heat. Well, he was right. The hot air moves into Brookings from inland, and it was smoking hot in town, but otherwise cool and manageable outside town.

I continued to blast on to stop at the Ship Ashore, one of those road-side oddities where you have to stop and have some Oyster Fry, before pulling into the Crescent City Hampton Inn.

Crescent City itself isn't much to speak of - much of it was destroyed in the 1964 Tidal Wave. Yes, they called them "Tidal Waves" back then, but it seems "Tsunami" has more shock value now. Still, the Hampton Inn sits right on the rocky beach, where we were entertained by a night-time Search-And-Rescue.

Stories from the Road

On the Port Townsend Ferry:
Top Left: My bike. Top Right: A couple who have ridden their Harley from Wisconsin! Bottom Left: A woman who works at Burnaby Hospital, riding alone, just come from Montana and going as far south as she can before heading back home to work! She's on a Star 1100.


"The Turnaround" at Seaside, OR
On the left: A man from Utah, cycling from Burnaby to Tijuana! A lady from Burnaby (second fellow Burnaby resident I've met!), "just" going to Lincoln City. Those two have been cycling for 8 days!
On the right: Two kids from Alaska, cycling to Tijuana before flying home to go back to high school!

At the Tillamook Air Museum: Bill, from near Fresno. He and his buddy are going up to Vancouver Island, then over to Yellowstone Park. I gave them some tips on Victoria and Vancouver Island. He kept calling it "Busch Gardens".... (Buchant Gardens). Bill used to work in aerospace.


At Mo's in Florence, OR
This is Steve. Steve was born in Burnaby. He's been on the road about a week, but he started in Prince George! After my lunch at Mo's I came out and saw his British Columbia license plate so I went back inside, had the waitress point him out to me, and we had a good chat about being on the road! He doesn't know how far south he's going to get, maybe to the Redwoods then back home to Prince George.

At Cape Blanco, OR
This guy spoke perfect Korean. I know because his Korean girlfriend spoke to him in Korean. He took an interest in my bike, but it was hard to stand upright let alone have a conversation in the 60+km/h winds! He's from nearby, and you can tell because he's wearing shorts and a t-shirt while everyone was covered up!

Pistol River, OR
In the hills in the background they are filming some new car commercial (car was under wraps but there was a nicely placed Audi A6 nearby...) so I thought "this must be a good place to take photos of my bike then. I pulled over and Buzz came over to tell me about the history of Pistol River. He's waiting for the temperature in Brookings to fall (it was over 100F and boy was he right!) to work on his boat!