"Round Round, Get Around, I Get Around...."

"Round round, get around I get around.....
I get around round round I get around......'
The Beach Boys

My favorite Road sign

The most common California road sign

I have spent the last 5 days constantly adding and removing layers of clothing, and switching gloves back and forth between lightweight and heavily insulated ones to suit the particular micro climate I'm in at any given moment. Over and over again I have gone from desert, to mountain, rain forest, high desert, ocean, and even had lunch sitting on a patio watching skiers go past. I've gone from sea level and up through mountain passes to 5, 6, or 7 thousand feet so many times I couldn't possibly count them. On Wednesday morning I went from the desert, up and over through a tightly twisting mountain pass, out into a lush valley with 50 miles of orange and lemon groves and dump trucks full of fruit parked at the side of the road, back up another canyon that twisted and turned even more than the first, tore along at over 100 miles an hour on an arrow straight stretch of highway in the high desert, through another canyon complete with snow, down to the ocean and the Pacific Coast Highway, watched the sun set over the ocean, back up through yet one more canyon to another high desert, followed by another canyon, a descent down into a gorge on a seemingly never ending series of switchbacks and hairpin turns (by now in the dark and rapidly dropping temperatures), back up another series of switchbacks to long sweeping high speed curves in still one more desert, crossed an oilfield, before finally getting a room in a dump of a hotel in Taft, best known as home to one of the first civilian drop zones opened after the second world war. I was so cold it took a 20 minute shower to stop my shivering.

I've gone out of my way to avoid Interstates and chain restaurants, seeking out every road I could find on the map that held out the promise of constant corners with minimal straightaways. Motorcycle tires are rounded, not flat on the bottom like car tires. Driving on straight, flat, roads with nowhere near enough corners results in wearing a flat spot in the middle of the tires. If I keep finding canyons like the ones I've spent most of my time in for the last few days I'll wear out the tread on the sidewalls long before I wear a flat spot into it. And my brake pads, which had plenty of life in them when I left Ottawa, are wearing down fast.

The most famous motorcycle road in North America is an 11 mile stretch of US Route 129 known as The Tail Of The Dragon. I've extensively researched the subject over the last few days, and I can categorically state that it's over-rated - way too much traffic, way too many Cops, and the scenery isn't particularly great. On the other hand, I can come up with a dozen different roads I've been on in the last couple of days that were longer, with a lot less and in some cases NO traffic, no cops, spectacular scenery, and that would make The Tail Of The Dragon look like some boring boulevard in the middle of town. The speed limit on most secondary highways in this state is 55 mph, but on some of these roads it's taken me as long as an hour and a half to cover 50 miles. I can go for 10 miles at a time only getting out of second gear when I'm forced to drop down into first. Recommended speed signs in the corners as low as 15 or 20 miles an hour are common, and I've learned to never drop my guard.. All the roads have turnouts on them so slower traffic can pull over to let faster moving vehicles pass, and it's pretty rare I get held up behind someone.

If you look closely at the picture above, starting at the right hand side you can see the same road in at least 5 different places. If I'd had a wider angle lens you could see it in 8. I sat on a guardrail eating lunch watching a white pickup truck moving in and out of sight for 20 minutes. It was one of the 2 vehicles I saw on that road in 50 miles.

Jennifer, Mark, Kevin, Ray, you people screwed up. I offered to bring your bikes down with me, you passed, you lose. .

If Beth and I hadn't made plans for this weekend I wouldn't be going back to Palm Springs for at least another week.

By the ocean in Guadalupe

Over and over again I've eaten at roadside diners and hole in the wall restaurants in tiny unnamed towns, and over and over again I've had some of the best meals I've ever eaten. At a restaurant in the only building on a 70 mile stretch of highway I ordered the "Fajita Feast". The waitress apologized  as soon as I placed the order saying "It will be a few minutes before it's ready, my mom is running out to get some tomatoes". "Running out to where?" I thought. "We're in the middle of nowhere!" Just then I saw mom through a side window as she ran across to a greenhouse,  returning a moment later brandishing a pair of tomatoes. The young girl had asked "Do want chicken, or beef?" When I told her both, half and half, she got a funny look on her face but took the order, and a few minutes later when I heard someone else ordering the feast she asked "Chicken, beef, or both?" The guy went for both. I've started a trend.

I'm here until early March if I don't get arrested for excessive speed or vanish completely into a chasm if I miss a corner. Counting the pie run Beth and I made on Sunday I've racked up 1,100 miles in 4 days. The straight route back to Palm Springs is around 250 miles, but a bunch of my favorite canyons from the last few days are only small detours out of my way. If I make an early start I should be home before dark.