Bragging about the Fort Bragg ride!!!

My darling motorcycle was angry with me and refused to start. Joy and I explored all possible blogs/forum about Honda VTX 1300 to go to the root cause. Tried all possible solutions like jump start, changing the spark plugs, push start etc etc but no luck. Finally Joy found that the vacuum line from the petcock had fallen off. We put it back and voila, it started again :) I think she was angry because I did not take her for ride during the week, so I decided to take her for a long ride on the weekend.

Joy/Priti and Piyush decided upon a place called, fort bragg around 200 miles from the bay area. We met at Joy's place on Saturday morning. Joy's friends Vaibhav/Pooja made awesome omlette and coffee for the breakfast. Unlike my earlier rides, this ride did not start at 6am so I was quite happy :) Finally we left home around 10:30 am. Vaibhav Pooja and their cute daughter Simi joined us in their car. Joy/Priti were on their honda Goldwing (1800cc), Piyush was on his honda VFR(800cc) and I was on my honda VTX 1300S (1300cc). It was a happy honda family :)

Ride on 101 was quite boring. Actually freeway rides are boring as there is nothing else to do than steering the handlebar. High speeds on freeway used to provide some thrill initially but not anymore. Now I was riding at 90 mph and not feeling anything. Because of the high speed riding, my spark plug compartment cover fell off and by the time I could ask the other riders to stop, we had already covered half a mile. Decided to ride like that.

Soon we ended our journey on 101. Had to take a lots of breaks due to the small capacity of my fuel tank :( I can go only about 150 miles on a full tank :( I was filling after every 70-80 miles as I wasnt sure if I ll find the gas station in ghat sections. We finished lunch and started our journey on twisties of hwy 128. Piyush decided to zoom past us and soon disappeared. We gathered at a point for a photoshoot. Here is the group shot taken. The earlier shot was taken at the same place.

After riding for about 240 miles we reached to the motel in fort bragg and checked in. The place did not appear great to me. Moreover Joy/Priti were not sure if she wanted to stay there, but finally we decided to check in there. The guy put a cross on $65/night and made it $45/night when Priti told him that the guy told $45 on phone when she had called previously:) Well even though there was nothing exciting in that motel, I still managed to find something interesting :) Here is the shot of the side stand of a harley davidson :)

We did go to the glass beach in the evening, but the only glass portion that we could find on the beach was in the form of a beer bottle. After a quick photoshoot we came back for dinner and crashed in our rooms. The rooms were quite comfortable but I still couldnt sleep, thanks to Joy's snoring machine :)

Next morning we decided to take a different route back home, but first it was time for some heavy breakfast. We hogged like anything and started back home. The new route was full of twisties. We rode for about 15-20 miles in the shade of tall pine trees. We stopped at a nice place for photoshoot. I checked for my tankbag to takeout the camera but it wasnt there. I had left it at the restaurant. :( Rather than going back on my bike I decided to go on twisty master Piyush's bike. Luckily I found back my camera in the restaurant but we wasted about 40 mins in the process of finding it :(

On our way back Vaibhav/Pooja decided to take the direct route home but we bikers decided to take different route to ride more :) On our way back we stopped at clear lake state park. After clear lake we swapped our bikes for next 60 miles till Napa. I was on 1800cc, Piyush was on 1300 cc and Joy was on 800 cc. We had fun riding each other's bike.

Ride after Napa was quite uneventful. There is nothing boring like riding motorcycle on freeway. Reached home about 8:30 pm.

I am yet to process the photos and dont know when I ll be able to do that as my laptop with photoshop is giving some problems :( Photo credit for these photos goes to Joy and Priti :)

Total distance covered was 525 miles over two days.

Pinnacles pinned down :)

Pinnacles national monument was the venue decided by Joy and Priti. They were planning it on Saturday, but I had my carom practice session on Saturday. They decided to go on Sunday to accommodate me
It was decided to meet at their place at 7 am sharp, that means I needed to leave home at 6:15 am, that means getting up at 5:45 am at least, that means no sleep on weekend in short . I got up at 5:45 and exactly at 6:20 am left the house. I stopped at the gas station to fill up. I was filling up the gas and noticed that the gas tank was dusty. I had not washed her in a month . Suddenly petrol came out of the nozzle and tank. It had over flown at least by 0.5 gallon and washed the tank. It also washed the foot rest and some part of the engine. The nozzle did not stop automatically. Now I was too scared to start the engine. I got hold of a rough cloth and wiped every drop of the petrol. Waited for 10-15 mins to dry it. I was getting late, so decided to start it. I was still sh*t scared to start it. I prepared myself to jump off. Luckily nothing happened and I started cruising @90mph on 880. There was hardly anyone on the freeway. It was feeling like I had rented this freeway for myself for a day

I reached at Joy’s place at 7:15 am. One of their friend was supposed join us along with his family. We headed to his house. This person, Arup is an amazing photographer. For a change there were three people who were interested in photography and can go to any extent to get a good shot . We headed to Pinnacles around 8 am. Joy was leading the way, I was in between and Arup was following us in his van. After around 50 miles we took a break.

When we started again, Joy wanted to switch the bikes. He was kind enough to let me ride is goldwing aka airplane. Initially I was skeptical about its weight(450kgs) and its size, but then thought what the heck and decided to ride it. Mannn!!! it was an amazing experience. This was easily the best vehicle I had ever driven/ridden in past 11 yrs (before that I did not know driving/riding). It has amazing control over curves. It is much easier to ride compared to my 1300CC VTX. In-spite of having 1800CCs it is so silent that you can barely hear it. It has a reverse gear and a CD changer. Here is a beautiful picture of it.


After reaching the park, we had to park our bikes and van at the entrance as the parking near the trails was already full. Then we hiked about 2.5 miles, took lot of pictures. There were three camera enthu people so we stopped at every possible opportunity. I won't bore you by writing what we did there, instead just look at these pictures.






Ride back home was quite uneventful. Rode back home with couple of photoshoot stops. Here is one of the interesting shot on our way back. I know we should have removed our helmets but that's a big PITA. Need to remove the gloves, keep them somewhere, need to unbuckle the helmet, keep it somewhere, remove the skull cap keep it somewhere and while going repeat all that process again. Removing the entire gear just for the couple of shots is next to impossible. Now I know why Joy and Priti had their helmets on in most of the shots of their 30 days coast to coast and back trip :)



The total distance covered home to home was 220 miles. Here is the link to the other photographs of the trip. I will add the photographs as and when I process them :)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pappupp/sets/72157623611887987/

Life at 150kmph

Got up early on Saturday to cheer for Mumbai Indians. Rajasthan Royal and Kolkata Night Rider match was in progress. I got a ping from Joy about the Goldwinger's meet in next couple of hours. I was in double mind, whether to watch Sachin Tendulkar's batting or go for a ride. Sachin hit Stein for 3 consecutive boundaries and that made my choice more difficult, but Sachin himself made my choice easy by getting out soon :)

Wore my gear and got ready. Wifey was still sleeping, told her that I was going to leave the house for good and she said ok :) Started the motorcycle and zoooomed to the meeting venue. Parked my Honda VTX 1300 cc in between two 1800 cc goldwings. It was looking very tiny.



Joy and Priti were already there. After a brief round of introduction, we headed towards the Mt. Hamilton. The group was full of enthu people. Almost all goldwings were equipped with a CD changer and a GPS. Few of them had radio communicators integrated within the helmets. A lady called Susan had the most colorful goldwing on the planet earth. Here is her photo with her motorcycle. Kiran, now that's what I call a car on two wheels :)



It was an amazing sight to watch 10-12 goldwings crusing at almost 100 mph in staggered formation in a lane. I decided to stay in my limit and followed them at 90-95mph. Cars in our lane were making a way for us. After riding for about 10 miles on freeway, we started riding in mountains. That reminded me my Pune-Mumbai-Goa ride. The twisties were similar to Kashedi and Parshuram ghat. I had a lot of fun taking those turns on my 300+ kg motorcycle.

After about 25-30 miles, our leader stopped. We took a quick photo-break. There were a few horses around. Goldwingers started feeding the horses.



It was a funny sight to see the owners of 120 horsepower feeding 4 horses and 1 horse power was smiling :)

We started again. The road was getting narrower and there was a lot of loose gravel on the road. Everyone was crusing at 25-30 mph now. We rode for 25 more miles in the mountain. It was quite a beautiful sight to watch 10 riders taking turns in a line in front of you. We stopped near a restaurant. It was my first time to answer the nature's call with riding gear on. I unzipped my riding pants and started searchin for you know what;) Then realized that I need to unzip one more layer :)

I was wearing the bikenomads t-shirt (which was very tight for me). This photograph is for you my bikenomad friends :)


Joy and I started early from there to shoot the other bikers. We stopped at a place and clicked the bikers.

After riding for about 65 miles we reached at the top of mt. Hamilton. Clicked a group shot. Joy and I decided to part from the group to do some more photography.

Here are the some more photos from the trip
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pappupp/sets/72157623660591012/


The total ride for me was about 115 miles with over 80 miles in the mountains.

P.S. Even thought the previous post said last post, I decided to add posts related to my rides here, hope you enjoy it :)