Memorial Day Ride - Pescadero

I took off on the bike Saturday with the basics of a route in mind and then just wandered around the hills until I made it to the ocean. Since it's Memorial Day weekend, I was a little worried about traffic, but apparently the route I took was treacherous enough to keep the majority of vacationers away. I spent the majority of my time switching between 2nd and 3rd gear, and when you're riding a moto geared as a dirt bike, that means you're cruising along at about 15-25 mph. The turns were extremely sharp, and the roads narrow. It gave me a great opportunity to practice my vanishing point technique. Here's the route I used on the way out to the Pacific:


Despite what the time estimation says, I was on the road for over 5 hours after everything was said and done. Although that included a couple "wrong turns" (I use the term loosely because I wasn't really going anywhere to begin with) and some time at the beach.

When I finally made it to the ocean, I wound up at Pescadero State Beach. It's a decent distance south of Half Moon Bay, which is one of two extremely busy South Bay beach destination (the other being Santa Cruz). I never encountered any sort of crowd at any point on the ride, so that was a relief. I parked the bike and snapped a couple pictures with my phone (sorry for the poor quality).


There was a group of sea lions sunning themselves on the rocks down by the water, so of course I had to get some pictures of them. I had to descend a sheer wall of loose gravel and dirt in my full riding gear (sans helmet), so that was a little interesting, but well worth the effort. I just wish I had grabbed the camera before taking off.



On the way back into the hills, I stopped at Pescadero to fuel up and wandered into a small grocery store. They had an interesting selection of fresh "mostly baked" breads, so I picked up some cinnamon English muffins and a loaf of cranberry walnut sourdough.

Lick Observatory

Today I took the DRZ out for a pretty nice ride up Mt. Hamilton to the Lick Mill Observatory. It's about a 20 mile trek up the hills after passing through downtown San Jose. It's fun to go from tight urban streets to wide open twisties all in the matter of 3-4 miles.




As you can probably tell from the number of bikes in the picture of the observatory, it's a pretty popular destination for weekend motorcyclists. It's pretty easy to see why if you take a look at those curves leading up to the observatory. The road actually continues on inland for another ~50 miles before the nearest civilization. Some day I'll have to continue East, but for now that's really pushing my luck as far as fuel range. I'm intending to replace my stock gas tank (1.6 gallons = ~80 mile range) with a 4 gallon tank. Whenever I decide to pick that up, I'll definitely make a day trip heading up and over the hills.





I sneaked around to the back of the observatory for a more pristine wilderness view. I parked the bike on the edge to take some pictures, and then walked away for a minute to send a text message to a friend. Apparently, I placed it right in the way of some woman's snack-time view. She told me to move it in a fairly demanding tone. I asked if I heard a 'please' in there, she rephrased and I happily moved it to a parking spot so I could finish my text.

Overall a great ride. It was my first long ride with my new boots and riding pants. I was a little nervous about my choice of boots because they were really tight and restrictive on the first couple short rides I took last weekend. However, I made a point to wear them to work several times, and they loosened up quite nicely. They felt natural and comfortable on the ride today.

I've done a few modifications to the bike on my own thus far. First, I put on the handle guards. They provide a wind-break for my fingers as well as block insects. But most importantly, they'll protect my clutch/brake levers from snapping off should the bike ever fall over... moving or otherwise. I found a freee replacement baffle for the muffler and replaced the airbox. The guy that owned the bike before me cut a huge hole in the airbox, which allowed a huge surplus of air into the carburetor. This made the bike run like crap. So a quick fix was to reduce exhaust flow restriction by tossing away the baffle off the end of the muffler. So I was left with a loud bike that ran semi-crappy. Everything works very well together now, and I'm extremely happy with the bike.