A Biker's Blog

I am a slacker, have not posted in a LONG time here. So let’s catch up some.

Tires:

I went with the new Metzlers for the Goldwing, I was debating it back and forth and in the end the cost was the last part of it. I got a decent deal on them at my local tires shop, Johnson and Wood. Total out the door for them was like $415, and that was with new front brakes as well. Let me say this, the bike with the Dunlops on them rode like fucking crap. Even when they were near new they slipped, had a bitch of a time in sand or wet. Overall I was not happy with them for this bike. The Metzler is a whole different beast. First off they gave the bike a stronger stance, just a bit higher up than before. To say that these tires have grip is an understatement, I did not realize how much I was babying the bike in the mountains till I was able to open it back up with these tires. It has made the ride a whole new experience, I am able to enjoy it more, feel a hell of a lot more safe, and really see how this bike can ride the curves. I am so glad that I made the switch. I need to take a long trip on these to really put them to the test, though since getting them just over a month ago I have put over 1500 miles on them, quite a few long rides no doubt.

Riding:

Riding has become a harder and harder thing for me of late. A few years back a had a pretty serious accident on my old bike, my Magna. I was heading through an intersection and someone made a left turn in front of me, a common accident type in the city. I t-boned him right behind his front wheel well, then flew over the bike body slamming his car full frontal, then bouncing back onto the pavement. The snap caused a compression fracture in my back at the T1, almost center of the back. I had a long recovery from that, but there was a chip out of the vertebrae that would of course not re-grow.

Over the couple of years from that accident I have done in and out of issues with the back. It combined from injuries from a pervious accident a couple of years before that, and one many years before that in a cage, have left my back challenged. Well earlier this riding season we had done a ride out to Lake Cachuma, and overnight trip. I dropped the bike at a stop, yes I am an idiot sometimes like the rest! Well something tweeked in that and since has been getting worse. It seems in the past month much much worse. Going out riding can be beyond insane painful. Most days I am not able to get the damn Goldwing off the stand much less ride. Right now I am fighting for disability with the state, because with all the other shit on top of this of course I am just such not a mess right!

So riding is a much more rare thing, and when I do manage it the pain pills are needed, and for days after I am almost immobile…wohoo. The sucky part of it is that I cannot really use much of the pain meds, not wanting to be doped and on two wheels. Sometimes that herbal medicine works in limited amounts, by work I mean taking it to a level where I can deal with it. One thing that has been frustrating is that sometimes my balance is off. I am not sure if you can understand how this might be a very bad thing when you are out on the road. I keep things very basic though, trying not to push it too far.

Just the other day I ventured out for a nice basic ride in Mulholland to the Rock Store, ugh, I cut it short because it was getting too crazy for me. It did not help that the wind was crazy bad at some points in the ride. So for now, until things calm down its more or less a mellow off season, which of course does not exist in LA.

Hey out there, for those that ride, and especially those that ride a big ass bike, what kind of tires do you ride on? I am at the point where I have to get a new front and back and am leaning into Metzler at this point, just kinda want to get some input out there. Been reading up in the forums and stuff…on the fence.

Anyhow, other than that life goes on, looking forward to a nice ride up the coast next month, maybe two if I am lucky. The bike is running bitching now since that vacum leak has been fixed, like a new bike!!

Riding is for me is and will I hope always be a way to take some stress out of life, meet new people, and discover things about your own country, and if you are lucky other peoples. I have through the years been lucky to have met some pretty great people while riding, I have had some hearty laughs, and yes from time to time I have had to go through some pain.

I look upon my current time of life as a good place to be in my riding journey. When I was younger I would not appreciate the adventure as much as I do now. I was more likely to race through the road, catching only small things here and there. Now I am more likely to take the time to enjoy the road. I know now that even a well traveled road can hold surprises. You can go through the same miles over and over again and see something, like the deer that run across your path, the new flowers blooming after a long summer, burnt trees recovering from a fire. It never ceases to amaze me, and I hope it never gets past me, the things that you come across on the road that you might otherwise miss if you are not looking.

So Lake Cachuma weekend for me was a great time. I got to hit up new roads on the trip, find something new out about a great place to eat, had a blast with some good new friends and still found the time to take it all in. Frankly I have to head back up there, I for one have a ton of roads to adventure through up there.

We are planning a weekend trip later this month to Lake Casitas though, something quick and closer. Hoping the weather holds out for us and by all means if you are in the neighborhood hit us up!!

We awoke to a very much different day than the one before. The thunderstorms through the night had purged the air, the humidity was all but gone, it was very overcast and even a bit foggy, but no matter it was not an oppressive fog. I was awoken with the flickering light of the campfire coming through the window of the motorhome, remember wus camping here! It was a great way to come back to life in the AM though.

We sat around chatting for a bit, got our stuff together, got showers done and then started to get ready for a day of riding. We had a visit from the rangers informing us that we had too many vehicles in our site, talking them down though by the logic that we towed the bikes in and therfore they were towed vehicles…and were different…we got those looks like um okay your full of shit but we are in a good mood kinda thing. The overall campgrounds had filled up more by that time, though we were not immediately crowded or anything. There seemed to be a lot of single car and tent people hanging out, was kinda fun. There was one large site across the way full of teenager that had kept Chris up the night before, but thank you ambien I barely heard them.

We did not have a lot of people planning on meeting us, most of them bowed out at the last minute, bummer for them! Richard and Jenny did end up meeting us there at the gate, and to our surprise had brought their tent and such to spend Sat night there with us. So we got them setup at the site next to ours and got our buts out on the road.

We decided to head north on Highway 154 till it ended and see where that took us after. So as we approached the end, the 101 fwy, not wanting to jump on the fwy we saw there was this road to the right called Zaca Station Rd. No signs about where it went or anything, so what the heck right! We jumped on the road and it was incredible. I have posted two videos covering the canyon part of this road on my YouTube channel. Zaca Station turns into Foxen Canyon eventually and as we find out leads us through some incredible wine country. Mattter of fact this is a pretty famous wine country area, http://www.foxencanyonwinetrail.com/ , has some interesting information on the various wineries back in here. You know you are in a different part of the world when the normally dry oak is covered with heavy moss looking like it belongs in a swamp

This road was incredible though with just the right amount of straight and curve to satisfy the wandering biker. At one point we passed a sign that said the next 12 miles were all curves, music to the ears!! So we meandered through, no rush, no race. Taking in this wonderful country was so worth it. At one point near the middle of the road we stopped at the Foxen Winery wine tasting room for a break, no wine tasting done…and then kept going.

Foxen Canyon eventually wound around and took us through the farmlands of Santa Maria and brought us back to the 101. We stopped and had some yummy lunch at a local diner there called Pappy’s . It was a truck stop diner so you know the food had to be at least edible. It was great though, we avoided their famed Tri-Tip because we knew we would be heading to Cold Springs later on that day.

A note about the riding companions on this trip. Chris I have ridden with many many times now. I find him to be always open to a new road, full of information about other ones, and never shy on getting out there for an adventure when time permits. Richard and Jenny, collectively known as IronHorseman, are great riders. They are a husband and wife team that ride on their wonderful Nomad and are very much into the adventure of riding. They drove from La Puente to get to Cachuma that morning and then spent the entire day riding along with us, I mean that is dedication folks!!!

So after Pappy’s we continued along and made our way to Hwy 1, towards Lompoc and the Buellton and finally Solvang. We walked around Solvang overindulging ourselves with sweets…it was horrible, so glad all those that bailed on this trip missed that torture Anyhow we hit up Mortensen’s Bakery and the Chocolate Factory, major yum Factor. We left Solvang and headed back to camp from there for a rest of about an hour or so. Once we were ready to go we hit up Cold Springs Tavern.

Cold Springs Tavern is a different beast at night, as we found out. It gets more neighborhoody and less tourist for the most part, or at least less biker tourist. The menu is different, there is a live band playing in the bar. I for one had a super thick Pork Chop with a chopped Apple glaze that was to die for, I mean if I had dropped right then I would have had the best ever final meal! Luckily that did not happen though and we got back to camp for an evening of campfire stories, going over the pictures and videos of the day. I am going to post the pics here for this day and all of these were taken by Richard and Linda, they were very modest in not taking the credit for an incredible eye with the camera. This first Gallery is all the Cold Spring tavern, the next posts will be all the other pics from this day!

A full album for all the picks from Richard and Jenny are here http://www.abikersblog.com/images/thumbnails.php?album=6

Hello there, of course been slacking on updating this for a bit now. So here is an update to what has been going. Over the weekend of September 23rd, last weekend, I loaded up the trailer with the GoldWing and headed up to Lake Cachuma with some friends from the TRI-Valley Riding group, linked here to the right. Lake Cachuma is located just north of Santa Barbara California off of Hwy 154.  We figured that since we were going during the off season, being it was after the end of the summer holiday, it would be a great time to get in there, get some good riding in, and not have to worry about too much with the campsite and such. Check out the link to my YouTube channel on the right, or by clicking on the link inline to see the start of the videos that I am starting to put together.

Day 1 – Friday

Got up early in the morning, the night before I had already gone to Uhaul to get the trailer for the bike, and loaded the bike onto the trailer. For some reason I was having a brain fart on the ties downs, so wasted too much time doing that..ugh, but no worries got off okay. I met up with Chris, the one that was riding up that day with me, he was already loaded and ready to go with his truck and 83 GoldWing. We started out on Hwy 126 from the Santa Clarita area, had a quick breakfast and gas up along the way and got to the campsite about noon. The weather along the way was from wet to super humid. Lake Cachuma was very warm and humid itself, but no matter we got camp setup and unloaded the bikes and got our buts on the road.

We headed over to Cold Springs Tavern for lunch, then took a quick tour of the Painted Caves road and Painted Caves themselves. For those that do not know about Cold Springs Tavern it is a great place to eat, the food is always great, had a wonderful Buffalo burger…mmmmm. The Painted Caves is not a huge thing, very small site just off of Painted Caves Rd off of Hwy 154. The road was the adventure though. It is a very tight turned, switchbacked, not so wide road…insane fun and a total challenge. I would NOT recommend this road for beginners at all. Even if you feel you are experienced you need to be careful. Case in point I stopped the bike at a stop sign, where there was a very steep elevation change from one side of the road to the other and dropped the bike midjudging it, so hey its easy to get caught off guard.

Once we were done with the Painted Caves we headed up Hwy 154 to Hwy 246 and into Solvang, had us some yummy chocolate eclairs at Moretensen’s Bakery. By the time we got back to camp it was almost dark, so we got to see an incredible sunset. For dinner we had some campfire hot dogs and chips. By later that night thunderstorms had made it into the area and we were treated to a good light show and some off and on rain, a great end to a first day out on the road!!! Some pictures from Day 1 below more to come

I just wanted to take a moment and highlight my YouTube channel. For those that do not know where it is, http://www.youtube.com/labearforyou , because I have been putting up a tons of videos there. I know that the quality is not the greatest on some of them. I am using a GoProd camera now to do the videos, and am still working through getting it more stable. Now, so you know my goal is to video all of the routes that I take, piece by piece, here in SoCal.

I love riding, no doubt, and I want to share that with those of you out there. Note that before the year ends I plan on moving this site to a better format. I have been using this already setup WordPress format, which is fine for the overall basic blog stuff, but I want to rally bump things up and get my videos here and such. The one thing that I do not like about YouTube is that it limits you to 15 mins, and to be frank I would like to have someplace to post the full ride so that people can enjoy it if they want.

Anyhow, please take the time to visit the channel and click on an ad there once in a while, I am using adsense

shove it up your ass, because its about as useful to the rest of us there. You having some all important conversation in your car with the phone up to your ear, swerving in and out of your lane, tailgating, making illegal lane changes, missing your exits and swerving into everyone else to make it does not show us your ability to drive and chew gum at the same time. When I am riding on my two wheels and have to slam my brakes on, swerve to miss your sudden lane change, praying you do not rear end me in my own lane, none of this is less important to me. Living is important to me.

Your phone belongs somewhere else than your hand, lets face it you are probably one of those people that think you are alone on the road, that you alone own that lane, you have the certain right to barge into anyone you want because, well because you want to. You do not. You do not know how to drive with that thing on your ear, face the truth stupid. You cannot claim ignorance, no matter what you say. You cannot “handle” it, the many lives lost on the roads tell this story all too clear.

So put the phone down dumbass, or Mr. and Mrs. Dumbass if you feel you need the respect. You are a waste of our time, you put our lives at risk and you have overgrown your welcome to our space. One day someone is gonna snap, if they have not already, and pull that phone out of your hand, drag you out of your car, bend you over and put it where it belongs, just saying. Until that day, save yourself the embarassment of this event to come and just fucking put the phone down.

This angry and oh so true statement of fact was brought to you by someone that is sick of dodging your car on the road.

I am so happy to be able to ride again. I was out today on a ride to Wrightwood, videos uploading as I type. I got to capture video of the entire route of Hwy 2 from Wrightwood to La Crescenta. Its a great ride, bar none one of my all time favorites, and to be honest this particular direction is much prettier than the other way.

Anyhow, so the weather was a concern, since all of a sudden today while the weather was much cooler we had a storm move in from the North that gravitated to the mountains and deserts. We caught a small amount of rain on the way up to Wrightwood, taking the back way through Fort Tejon rd and such. When we got up there we were having lunch at the Grizzly Cafe when it started to pour, and then hail. By the time we were done with lunch it had passed and we took off down the road towards Newcombs Ranch. We managed to avoid the rain all the way through, no small feat because because that storm just kept right in front of us the entire way.

So there were only three in our group today, short notice ride. One of them broke off and went down Angeles Forest highway toward Palmdale, planning on taking Aliso Canyon Road and back to Santa Clarita, the other two of us kept on Hwy 2 to the 210 and then back to our home base. So my friend that took off towards Santa Clarita hit some harsh weather along the way, sever thunder storms, lightning and desert flooding!! He has an old 83 GoldWing, tough son of a bitch bike and great rider he is. It made it through some pretty incredible water and mud and got him back home. Without a doubt its one of the things that I like about the desert, the unpredictability of it all. The fact that the weather can be peacful and sunny one minute and in a heart beat you can be swimming for your life trying to outrun a storm cell.

Anyhow, all is all today was an example of what makes me want to ride more. I need to take a long trip sometime soon, before the weather turns maybe. Hey for those that are interested we will be doing an overnight camping and riding trip top Lake Cachuma up near Santa Barbara starting Sep 23. If you want you can check out the following link, http://meetu.ps/3MDxS, and join us!! As to the health issues, all seem to be settled much now, making riding all that more enjoyable

Okay, so the health is improving enough to get back on the bike. I am hoping to make a ride this weekend to the Rock Inn, YEAH…its about fucking time. I miss getting out there, and even though the heat has been insane I still would have liked to have been out there. The bike is calling to me and this will be a pretty simple ride.

On the other note, started the bike today and let it run a bit, sounds good…she wants to get her ass on the road. Oh, forgot to mention that the new seat did not work out for me. I think the real issue was that I was a bit too tall for it. When I was sitting on the bike with it, and it was all the way back, I felt so pushed forward that it was painful. My crotch felt like someone was grabbing it and kicking it in the entire ride…while this may be a fun feeling at the right time, on a long day of riding not so good.

I found a guy that can redo my old seats. I have the stock seat and one that I had bought from an Aspencade. What I am planning on doing is having one of them redone to be close to stock, so that I can carry a passenger. I am going to have the second one redone to be a more solo seat, pushed further back with a higher backrest built in. It will depend of course on how much it costs before it gets done.

I will hopefully get some more video this weekend, looking forward to that

Well I gave the new seat a fair shake, but its just not for me. I think I am physically just too big for the seat on the bike. So for those that are interested in a nice barely used seat for your old Goldwing I am selling it on EBAY! Below is a link to the auction, hit me up if you have any questions.

Ebay Auction for Saddleman Seat