Tuesday, April 27, 2010

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.