Trip to California - Day 5

Today, Thursday, was the day of my Russell Day-Long saddle ride-in appointment.

It was up at 4:00am, quick cup of coffee, then on the road by 4:45 to make the ~200 mile trip from Benicia up to Shasta Lake (just north of Redding). I needed to be up there at 8:00am, so figured a little over 3 hours to make the trip would be enough. It would also help that I was leaving before traffic could get to be too bad.

There had been some confusion on the Russell end of things, so there ended up being two of us doing ride-in's that Thursday, so things took a little longer than they normally would. Add to that the extra complexity of the fuel cell set-up I have on the back seat, and it's easy to understand why it took until almost 6:30pm to have everything complete. These guys are a class act. Completely hand made and hand stitched, the attention to detail is incredible. My front seat and backrest were ready not long after 4, the rest of the time was taken up getting all the stitching and grommets around the fuel cell on the back seat worked out.

With all that worked out, it was time to head back to Benicia for the night ... since that's where I had left my luggage before heading up to Redding. All said, I would ride just over 400 miles today, with almost none of it being in daylight.

Once back in Benicia, the three of us (Richard, Jacqueline, and myself), headed out for dinner ... a good little burger joint not far away, with a really good chocolate shake and even better chocolate cream pie. After being on a road food diet for the past 5 days, this was a bit overload for me, and it wasn't long before I was passed out on the floor for the night.

Trip to California - Day 4

What a day!

Many more pictures on my gallery than I can post here and do it justice, but ...wow!

I was up and out of Westley by 8:00am ... I just couldn't take the flies any longer than that. For some reason the GPS routed me up via some backroads rather than the Interstate, which ended up being a pretty nice route on some good 2-laners, and I don't think I lost any more time than had I stuck to the slab.

I ended up getting to Richard's house right around 10:00. After catching up with Richard, being introduced to Torrey, and getting a couple cups of coffee, we were ready to get in some riding. Jacqueline came over to join us, and around noon we headed off to Sausalito. The plan was to meet up with another GT rider and head out, but after a bit of hit and miss with the cell phone, we decided to grab a quick lunch and head off for Highway 1 on our own.



With food out of the way, we headed off.





Coincidentally, we ended up running into the other GT rider about half way through our ride, and continued on as a larger group.



From there, we headed up to Point Reyes for another coffee stop. Since the sun was starting to drop, we decided to run just a little further north, then catch a route across over to the 101 to return back down to Benicia. Not having my GPS track in front of me, I believe we headed up to Tomales, then over to Petaluna where we picked up the 101 and headed south.

Trip to California - Day 3

Tuesday morning would start early, as I headed out of Phoenix with Tom during morning rush hour on his way in to work. We were on the road by roughly 8:30am. Tom pulled off by the airport, and I continued on I-10 around the city, stopping for fuel on the western edge of town, then headed for the desert.

Today would be an easy day, with all Interstate planned with the goal being to get within easy reach of the Bay area. Chatting with Tom and Richard about routes, I decided to stick with Interstate, taking I-10 towards Los Angeles, taking the I-210 loop around LA without actually getting wrapped up in that traffic, and then running the I-5 up north. There was a possibility for a side trip up to Joshua Tree National Park depending on my timing.

No pictures from today, I ended up just sticking to the route and made it up to Westley, CA just after sunset. Not one of the best Days Inn's I've ever stayed in, but the whole town seemed to have a bit of a problem with flies ... possibly something to do with all the farm land and irrigation right next to highway.

Temps today where very nice, getting slightly chilly as I headed up I-5, but no where near the freezing temps I had the past two days.