This story actually begins some two weeks before the tour to the meeting departed. We met Don (L.o.t.T.) and Dave Gluss at Second Sunday Breakfast just as they'd landed from their return trip. They'd been off scouting this tour's route, and they were both somewhere between ashen and speechless. Amidst the mumbling, though, we were able to discern "terrible road", "beautiful views", and several other sub-positive clues that had us deep in discussion about how to approach this ride for the next week.
Myself, I shuddered at the thought of dirt and rocks and R1100RS,s combined. Chris kept offering me his F650. It sounded so good, I called San Jose and bought a red one just like it (only newer!). And off we went on 1300 between us to meet up with the tour at the Iron Skillet in Los Gatos.
A healthy and still hungry and unserved crowd greeted us at breakfast, including the long-missed Marshia and Daryl Hall. Don was distributing pieces of paper with squiggly lines on them drawn by his pet spider. This was the tour map. Ahhhhh. After most of us had had our fill of the French toast, somewhat past the advertised departure time of 0800, we began to migrate into the parking lot for take off. Don asked Chris and me to ride sweep and give a wave as we all came to stops and turns where he'd wait for stragglers. Oh boy, a job to do!
Things went bad pretty much immediately as the parking lot emptied and Chris stayed put, trying to get that F650 started. That operational lapse set aright, map in tankbag and pocket, we pulled onto the road and caught sight of the last bike turning onto Shannon Road, according to plan. We followed at a distance. But we could still see the last of them as we made the turn.... until we got up to the "T" in the road that wasn't on the map. Hmmm; no T's in that spider's vocabulary. We turned left. They'd gone right.
Turned around, we again caught sight of the group heading up Camden towards Almaden Expressway. We rejoined the group at that turn, moving en masse to McKean and then snaking between the reservoirs. At the top of Uvas Road, Don made his first catch-up stop where everyone NEAR the end of the group gave a hearty wave. Luckily, we were there, too....
Through and around Gilroy, a couple of bikes dropped out for petrol stops (which we had planned in advance for Paicines). Just as we approached 101, we got caught behind a semi-truck and a premature red light as the group disappeared over the freeway. A quick glance at the map at that point showed three different routes to Paicines, or this might have been a bit of the spider's web. We decided on the most likely (we are NOT successful gambling people) and headed after them. Rocketing in the lead with no map handy, I completely missed the group sitting off the side at the turn onto Frazier Road as I completely missed all Chris' wild and frantic gestures as he tried to stop me and turn me around. A couple of miles later, I looked in my mirror (don't tell MSF), stopped and we turned around and headed after them. Again.
Onto Frazier Road, there was no sign of them, but we sped ahead. And a quick check of the mirrors showed King Bill bringing up the rear, recently refueled. Chris was in the lead. We stopped at 152, checked the maps, Bill and I sat behind, gesturing madly to continue on straight. From Chris' view, it looked like we were all pointing left - which seemed an unlikely direction, but being new to the area still, he followed our (he thought) suggestion. Only nobody followed him. He turned, I went straight, Bill stayed put waiting for him to come to his senses... a process that took some time... more time than Bill expected, so he moved on without us. Straight. I waited longer. And eventually we followed after the now invisible Bill.
On to Paicines and our planned gas stop. Found the tour, but they don't sell gas at that place anymore. Plenty of beer on ice for 9:30 on a Saturday, and a talkative line at the one facility. We gave Don some abuse for stopping out of sight at the turn and for his artistic map license, and then everyone was off again out Panoche Road at a swifter pace and an immediate rise in temperature.
Calculating miles per gallon with no history on this, my first tank, we came into Firebaugh's Chevron station for a quick group fill-up. Then on to Madera and our lunch rendezvous with Carol Feldman and John Caramagno at Di Cicco's. As the tour pulled into the parking lot, each rider filed into the only two feet of shade alongside the back of the building in their attempt to dodge the heat.
All fat and happy, we filed back out into the heat and onto our bikes, back onto the road with full bellies and the hypnotic drone of engines through the oven... er... valley... until the road began to bend and recapture our attention. Pretty uneventful even up to and past the last gas stop in Shaver Lake where Don announced the 80-mile round trip into our camp and back. Up 168 we headed on our "final" leg. Bob Love roared up to us just as we turned at the first rangers' station. Never DID find out what the lengthy conference was about, but Don pulled into the parking lot, (apparently) picked up our camp reservations, and took off, thus marking the beginning of the end of the orderly tour with 25 miles to go.
Even as we swept up 168 in clusters from there, I was thinking that perhaps Don and Dave had been exaggerating about the state of the road. Still, I was having fun and enjoying my new little ride. And then the road narrowed. And then came the craters and boulders. Almost like they tried really hard to pave that road, but ran out of material and threw in whatever they could find to make it stretch. And what they could find were BIG boulders. Oh, yes, and we also had the pleasure of the company of any number of pedal bikers, any number of whom we might have slapped for stopping dead in the middle of the road in front of us (I use the term "road" loosely), or for PASSING each other on narrow uphills without regard to other traffic in either direction. And of course there were other four-wheeled vehicles: 4-wheel drives, campers, Jaguars, BMW,s, Mercedes. All with a common disregard for oncoming traffic on a single lane road, let alone motorcyclists or bicyclists. Eight miles from our target, we congregated at the last ranger station where we found our Tour Captain. We debated gathering up a posse to go back and discipline some of these rolling road blocks, but pressed on at Don's comment "You've seen about the worst of it." Optimists all, we figured that meant it could only get better from here. In retrospect, I think he meant that we had seen the worst of the TRAFFIC, because the road from there got narrower and tighter even to the last 2 miles which were altogether unpaved.
Only a few YEARS from the campground, I figured I'd put my money in the right place by picking up this 650GS. It was riding like a little power lawnmower - or at least it SOUNDED like it. Regardless, it was unfazed by the road surface, and would let me power up to the crest of each little hill, pause to see where the goat path went, and then power up to the next one. My hat goes off to every person who rode their RS's and RT's up there; this road was one memorable challenge!!
By this time, Don had long since disappeared over one of the little crests and Bill was leading the pack with Jen offering guidance from the pillion seat. In little packs, the tour trickled into the campground (after figuring out where it WAS), most arriving in that same speechless state we'd seen in Don and Dave weeks before. We had just enough time to begin unpacking before the club meeting. I left our sleeping bag on the nearby table and headed off to report on finances.
After the meeting punctuated by thunder, most of the club mobbed the lodge nearby to take advantage of their Saturday Night BarBQ.... Except for the 60 minute downpour that caught some of us seated under one big tree, dinner was great. IDEAL, you might even say, as we had our dessert first - only because our waiter had forgotten to turn in our order and appeased us with a whole homemade berry pie while we waited for our main course! Other entertainment was provided by the local Jack Russell terrier who insisted that we all take turns throwing rocks for him to push around with his nose and fetch (almost) back. (Maybe this technique helped build the road in!) After dinner, a number of us took advantage of the campfire at the lodge, warming our parts and settling our meals.
Tired from the long day, we headed back to our camp only to find our sleeping bag still sitting out, sponging water from all over the table into our cover and pillows. Luckily, down still works when wet, though it added a homey humidity to our (un)rest.
Early the next morning, Ranger Rex was already making his way through the campground, taking note of every motorcycle license plate in order to extract appropriate fees for camping. As if time released, pairs of riders left the camp to make the trip down to breakfast in Shaver Lake. We sailed down the hill laughing most of the way, dashing through the puddles and veering away from the cliff edges, all accompanied by the putt putt putt of these little engines. And suddenly the road widened and we swept through the last 15-ish miles at what seemed like an incredible rate but couldn't have been much over 60.
Breakfast finished, we headed home in a smaller "tour" that repeated much of the previous day: we lost our group, missed another couple turns, rode some HOT (!) new motorcycle roads, "mowed" across the valley. Not nearly as exciting on the return trip as on the way into Edison Lake, ride will be one of their most memorable.
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