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/
