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Last fall PCH ride


Rick in NV

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Rick in NV

About a year ago I requested ideas for a trip renting motorcycles and riding the Pacific Coast. Thanks to all that responded to the original thread.

 

It turns out that I’m not very good at trip planning. It’s easy to invite my son to Torrey: ride to Torrey, stay at the Chuckwagon, ride around the epic scenery that is southwest UT, hang out with some of the best people on earth, ride back to Las Vegas. Not so easy for me when I have to plan something different.

 

Jeff and Colleen got tired of waiting for me to make plans, so they came up a plan of their own. They reserved two Yamaha Super Teneres at Eagle Rider in San Francisco for a four day trip up and down the coast. The first day’s destination was Ft. Bragg. Day two had us riding back to San Fran. Day three we would ride as far south as the John Little Natural Preserve and return to our hotel in Monterey. Day four we would ride back to San Fran and return the bikes.

 

This trip happened October 18-21, 2019. On October 17 I started my trip from Las Vegas to San Fran by way of a flight to San Jose, a bus to the San Francisco airport, and a shuttle bus to our hotel. I called my wife to update her on my progress and she asked me if the power outages would cause a problem with our trip. I hadn’t been watching the news and was clueless about the public safety power outages and the location of the wildfires. Jeff and Colleen joined me in San Fran Thursday night after their flight from Minneapolis. Friday morning we picked up the rental bikes and started our journey to Fort Bragg by way of the PCH. Our first night in Ft. Bragg we were victims of a public safety power outage. We checked in to our hotel and gassed up the bikes before we went to Glass Beach. While we were at the beach the power was turned off. While riding back to our hotel we noticed a restaurant with a big generator providing power. We had to wait a while to be seated but enjoyed a nice meal. The morning of day two we had discussions about which route to take back to SF, whether we should try to return the bikes at another city and cancel the rest of the trip, and whether we had enough gas to make it nonstop if we decided to ride back to San Fran. We decided to reverse the route from the previous day. We rode through some heavy smoke during part of the ride. We were fortunate once again to find a restaurant with a generator, The Sand Dollar in Stinson Beach. Our fuel lasted the whole way to SF where we stayed overnight. Our ride south on day three started out with slow traffic due to traffic lights not working. We rode to the John Little Preserve and back to Monterey for the night. We had a nice seafood dinner at the Fisherman’s Wharf.   The final day we rode up the coast to Hwy 9 in Santa Cruz. We turned on the Big Basin Hwy in Boulder Creek and then stopped for some pictures in Big Basin Redwoods State Park. After that we continued on to join Hwy 9 and then the Skyline drive back into the City. We had lunch at Fisherman’s Wharf and then the real adventure began, negotiating the steep SF streets back to Eagle Rider to turn in the bikes. I found the shifting on the Super Ten to be clunky. Several times I thought I was in first gear, but I was in second gear. This caused me to stall the engine two times on steep hills and nearly tip over. We returned to bikes and I flew back to Vegas. Jeff and Colleen visited with a relative and caught a red eye flight back to Minneapolis

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Jeff and Colleen did an excellent job of trip planning. Colleen and her iPhone did a great job of navigating. I did my usual great job of following them.

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I remember a few of those San Fran hills. :eek: Quite a unique skill set you can only pick up by riding that city.

 
Sounds like ya had a great time! :thumbsup:

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