Bluegrass Beemers

Another late start, cold and wet here.  Not rain, just the ocean mist.  Rt. 1 south from Ft. Bragg should be slightly familiar, but then it was over 20 years ago that I was here on a K75.  Still there is some memory for bits of the road, the scenes and the interesting houses stuck on the hillsides between the blacktop and the sea.  Not enough memory of the individual curves, however, so I’m still trying to see through the apex, hang off the appropriate side and not drop the third wheel off the edge.  So far I’ve managed to keep all of those plates in the air, but it’s never a certainty.  I do recall crossing the Russian River all those years ago and it still feels the same, like I’m visiting some special place that I’ve only read about in books.  No intrigue or noir adventures, despite the name, but the twisting road down to the crossing and back up again is exciting enough.  From there down to Jenner the curves never let up.  I remember on that long-ago trip, Brenda and I left Half Moon Bay south of San Francisco in the morning,  made it through the city, had breakfast in Sausalito, stopped at Muir Woods, had a long lunch, made various other stops to look around, and still made it to Ft. Bragg before dark.  Not gonna happen today.  I’m averaging, if my head-calculations are correct, less than 20 mph and working hard to do it.  It’s not that I want to rush, but I keep having to pull over to let others go by and I realize that if I don’t get a move on, I’ll still be in California when I need to be in Ky.

There are constant 180 degree curves, where the road dips down to the sea level in the places, everywhere along this coastline, that the sea has taken huge bites out of the land. Out in the water you can see the remainders, the crumbs so to speak, showing where the cliff used to be.  The rock towers out there in the water, 40 feet or more high, are almost always hooked, shaped like shark teeth, from the constant wind and spray.  The road always climbs back out of the dip to curve back around the next bluff, only to plunge again not far along.  Eventually the sea will have  chomped its way east to take away these roads, and humans will just keep building another to allow themselves to drive along this stunning, constantly changing view.

At Timber Cove, above Jenner, I spot the Timber Cove Inn, an interesting looking place overlooking the ocean, and stop in for lunch.  It’s not 12 yet, so they are still serving breakfast, but that’s fine with me.  Brioche French Toast, ricotta filled, with whipped cream on the side and a slice of ham will do nicely.   A young man in a  leather motorcycle-styled jacket sees my helmet on the table and asks what I’m riding.  When I tell him, he seems impressed.  In response to my similar inquiry, he tells me that he doesn’t ride.

South of Ft. Bragg on Cal. One, stopped for tree inspection

Returning to the bike, i can feel that the wind, already powerful, has picked up speed and enthusiasm.  It’s difficult just walking across the parking lot.  I’m reminded of years ago, standing on a cliff in Ireland, facing into a 40 knot wind and trying to keep my footing long enough to take a picture. This is nearly as fierce, but lacking the rain.

I had intended to go east over to Windsor, to visit the BMW dealer there for some odds and ends I needed.  I like to carry a spare clutch cable, I needed a right side mirror and I thought it would be good to get another key made, since I only had one and would be stopped for good if I lost it.  But when I called them from Bodega Bay, it seems that they didn’t have what I needed, but could order it.  That won’t help much.  So I went on south, but I didn’t want to hit San Fransisco at rush hour.  At Point Reyes I stopped to look around, bought a cappuccino and a pastry from a street vendor and looked up the prospects for motels north of the  big city.  Surprisingly, there didn’t seem to be much on offer, with only a couple of low-price chains showing up in  Mill Valley.  I’ll just press on until I find something.

At Stinson Beach, I was close enough to the city and I was tired enough to stop.  I learned the hard way

The view out the rear window of the Timber Cove Inn

long ago what happens if I don’t listen to that inner voice that says it’s time to get off the bike.  This tiny beach town has just three lodging places and two of them are full.  I get to the third, a B&B, just as a couple in their 30’s, driving an expensive car, get the next to last room.  I take the last one.  It is a strange looking place, hard to describe, but I think,”I’ve stayed in worse”…and I have, but not by much.

There are chickens in the “courtyard” in front of the house, though it is hard to spot them amid the clutter.  My rig is parked in front of the gate, out on the street.  I can’t really tell what the house actually looks like because of the objects, small and large, everywhere.  There are signs allegedly from the Titanic, various bits of what I assume are sculptures, though I can’t tell what most of them might be, random pieces of inside and outside furniture, carved tiki gods and plants all over the place.  Cats roam among the detritus.  There is a fence around the house, but it is so covered in the decorative junk that I can’t get my eyes to focus on any one piece to tell what its contours might be. There is an iron staircase to nowhere.  The proprietor is a muumuu clad lady of indeterminate age, probably older than me, and my guess is that in her day she would have been what back then was called a hippie

and the curves go on and on and on…..

here in the birthplace of that movement, before the term came to mean deadbeat. She seems distracted.  Breakfast, she tells me is at 8:30 and when I say that I’ll be long gone by then, she gives me a discount on the room without my asking.  Still, it’s the most expensive lodging of the trip so far, even down to $60.  My room is not in the house, but in an “annex” across a  wavy cobbled brick patio, with a half bath across the hall, which is open to the outside.  There is a curtain across the space under the half-bath’s sink and when I look in, I find several broken toilet seats stored , presumably, for some future use. The room is small, obviously added on at some point from an outside area and there is a support column in the middle.  The decor is “Middle Hoarder Period” with so many things piled on every surface that I really can’t tell what I’m looking at.  I do the mandatory bedbug check and find no evidence, which suggests that even they won’t live here.   I devise a way of hanging my clothes from an abandoned TV rack jutting out from the wall, so they won’t touch the floor

Part of the courtyard at the B&B. Note the iron staircase on the left that goes to nothing.

and whatever else is projecting.   I keep the bags tightly closed.

A short walk outside brings me to the three restaurants in town, one of which is closed for the evening.  On the porch of the first, a lady about my age is sitting, enjoying the sun she says, not here for the food, and next to her is a large dog tied to the rail (with a water bowl handy).  He is of generously mixed ancestry, but she tells me he isn’t hers, that he belongs to one of the patrons inside, so I don’t try to pet him.  She can’t recommend one restaurant over another, but then informs me that the live music is about to start in this one, so I go to the other.  The Parkside Cafe turns out to be a good choice, since the menu is eclectic, the draft beer selection small but thoughtful, and it’s quiet.  I select a vegetarian combo with roasted this and that and subtle spices that I can’t definitely identify, but certainly enjoy.  It is all washed down with a local oatmeal stout, which won’t knock Guinness off its perch, but was well worth a try.  I walk back to the room and go to bed, even though it’s only 8, because there’s nothing else I can do.

Not sure if northern California was part of the epic drought, but if so, I’ve broken it. Rain most of the night and now it’s 9 AM and the showers are sporadic. I have determined that my schedule is not so tight (yet) that I have to rush out to ride in the rain. The sidecar, while it won’t slide out and fall over like a two wheeler, will “understeer” and push into the oncoming lane on a right or over the cliff into the sea on a left if I’m not very careful. I want to learn that bit at my own pace.

First down into Ferndale, once I think, the basis for a TV show, “Ferndale Tonight” . If not, it should have been. It seems to be “Mayberry West”, a little town still existing in what we want to believe the 50’s were like. There are stores on Main Street, including a Rexall that looks just like the drug stores of my youth. I buy razor blades, if only to support the image. I stroll down Main Street to the Ferndale Pie Company for my mid-morning pie break where I choose the Apple Crumble from among several available crusted confections. I made the right call I think.

As I make my way back to the bike and start to don my helmet, a nattily dressed older couple comes up and they say , almost in unison, “Cool bike”, and the man tells me he took its picture earlier. We have to discuss the merits of sidecars for a bit and the logistics of my journey and then they walk on. Sidecar Delay Factor again.

I had intended to explore the thin gray map line leading from Ferndale back eventually to 101, but I need gas and it’s beginning to spit rain again, so I head back up to the highway for fuel. There a local fellow     ( but with a hard Chicago accent…I needed Pete Galskis for an interpreter) inquires about the machine and the trip and then relates his story of a guy he knew who got killed on a bike. He tells me to be careful and I agree that I will.

Back on 101, the speed limit is 65 and I’m maintaining a steady 60. Tara, at DMC Sidecars had told me it would take about 500 miles for the control to become “muscle memory” and stop being something I had to think about. I’d like to think I got it a little sooner, but at any rate, it seems to be working. The constant corrections still occur, but now they are just bits of pressure that happen automatically and the rig proceeds calmly down the road. I still have to watch myself on rights, as its difficult to overcome the urge to dive to the inside at the apex. Once or twice I get that sidecar wheel right up to the edge, but so far I haven’t gone over into the dirt. I’m learning that hanging off is good to lessen the amount of effort that goes into sharp turns and it is amusing since I don’t hang off near this much when leaning a two-wheel machine. (Later I will find out just how involving this can be when I find Rt. 1.)

At Pepperwood, I leave 101 to meander through one of the many Redwood State Parks that dot the landscape here in Humboldt County. No point in taking pictures. The high trees have it dark as sundown in here and I don’t have a lens (not sure anyone does) that could do any justice to how tall these things are.

A bit farther down, at Wieot, I take in the Redwood Visitors Center and see some representations of the longevity of these giants. One stump of a tree that fell in the last decade shows on its rings the founding of Oxford College in 1100, the signing of the Magna Carta, the “discovery” of America, all things in our ancient history that this tree saw as a fully mature adult. Redwoods once spread across much of North America (as far back as the Jurassic Period) but now, by mainly human intervention, they are making their last stand here in this little corner of northern California and Oregon. Behind my parking spot I see three “baby redwoods”, about 20 feet tall, planted within 10 feet of each other, but then I realize that it will be 500 years before their proximity becomes a problem.

Gabbardville appears, and with it the motorcycle shop I’d seen advertised on a billboard. I needed chain lube. But first, my nose detected the odor of something really good, and it was about lunch time, so I tracked the scent to a restaurant on the north side of town. After a delicious vegetarian quesadilla, with made-here hummus and blue corn chips, I have garlic breath that would stun a moose….but I’m traveling alone, so not to worry.

I do get the chain lube and have to go over the journey story again with the young man who sells it to me. He says he wishes his wife would let him do that. I give thanks again that mine is so supportive of my motorcycle addiction.

Lubing the chain on the rig is a bit awkward, since there’s no good way to elevate the rear wheel. It seems to require that one spray a section, roll the rig, spray some more. Not difficult, really, but it does occupy a lot of real estate to accomplish.

At Legget, 101 splits off to the east and California 1 begins. First I must stop at the Drive-Thru Tree. I’ve seen photos of these all my life and I just couldn’t resist paying my three bucks for a chance to do it myself. I am a bit surprised at how much modern cars must have grown, because the rig barely fits through the gap. I’m watching carefully that outrigger wheel, because I really don’t want to tell this as the story of how I tore the fender off. A fellow tourist volunteers to take my picture and I agree.

As I leave the Tree, California 1 starts down hill and immediately goes into some sort of asphalt spasm that has it twisted like a python with a bad burrito inside. I’m hanging off from side to side on the outfit, trying to stay ahead of the curves up and downhill at a speed that would seem quite slow on a solo. Those MotoGP stars look so good when they hoist themselves up on the pegs to smoothly move their backsides, hanging all the way over into each turn, flipping like gymnasts without upsetting the transition of the bike. Unlike them, 1) I’m not 22, and 2) I’m not coordinated or talented, and 3) my knees are as old as three of those guys put together. Five miles into the curves I have to pull over into a layby to walk around and get my nether joints working again. For 20 miles or more I’m seldom higher than second gear or over 30 mph but I’m worn out.

Suddenly, after a sweeping left hander, there is the ocean, just like in the pictures. The mountains are behind me and ahead, nothing but water and blue sky. Smiling wide in my helmet, I tell myself that this is exactly what I came here for. The curves along the bluff that forms the shoreline are still tight and it’s really difficult to “look where I want to go” because everything in my head is pulling my eyes over that cliff to the blue expanse of water and breaking waves. After a few vista points, I realize that I’ll never get anywhere if I keep pulling over for pictures. But it’s just that beautiful.

About 30 miles down that gorgeous coastline, at 5 o’clock, Ft. Bragg appears and I know I’m stopping for the night. Brenda and I came here in the early 90’s on a rented K75, as part of a trip up from Half Moon Bay and down through Napa Valley. We ate that night at the North Coast Brewery Taproom and I still pick up North Coast beers when they are available. Tonight though, I get a motel on the other side of town and can walk only up a few blocks to Mendo Bistro, a second floor restaurant on the coastal side of the street. An excellent meal of local cod, with roasted veg and soon I’m asleep back in my room.

Awake at 3:30 in Coos Bay Oregon. The Sidecar outfit is sitting outside, under its cover, awaiting today’s ride. It is cold this morning, in the 40’s and there is a thin fog everywhere, not enough to occlude vision, but sufficient to take the edges off of every image.

I start out waiting on the sidewalk at an auto parts store, for them to open at 8 so I can purchase a few wrenches. The F650 is leaking oil like a Brit-bike and the first thing to check will be the various drain plugs and banjo fittings. When I finally get in to buy the tools and then lay in the parking lot to try tightening the plugs, none of them are actually loose. Still the oil comes and I know not from where. Well, I’ve had Brit bikes and ridden them everywhere while they leaked, so this one will just have to do likewise until I can sort this out.

Heading south down Highway 101, the sea, when I can see it, is on my right and the old song “The Terror of Highway 101” is stuck firmly in my head, playing on repeat. “He wore black denim trousers and motorcycle boots, and a black leather jacket with an eagle on the back. He had a hopped up ‘ sickle, that took off like a gun, that fool was the terror of highway 101″ I can recite the rest of the verses if you’d like. A song from 1955 that I last listened to in about 1958 on the jukebox at the table in a restaurant in Ashland KY, THAT I can remember. What I had for dinner last night, or what I did with the motel room key, not so much.

Soon I’m crossing the border into California, that fabled land where everything is always perfect, from the starlet”s makeup and artificially enhanced appendages, to the star’s coiffure, and certainly the weather. When the movie stars are driving their convertibles down the coast, it’s always 75 degrees and sunny. When I’m here it’s 45, overcast and fogged in so that the high breakers seem to be coming out of nowhere to crash on the beach. Still, I have a huge smile on my face and sometimes I even laugh out loud in my helmet. I’m on a sidecar rig on 101 going down the California coast. It would take a lot worse than a cold fog to dampen that feeling.

I make a stop in Crescent City to locate the Post Office and mail an envelope back to a stamp-collecting friend so that he’ll have one from here. In my wandering around, it seems that the more run-down section of town is the one closest to the shore. There are houses that haven’t seen paint or a helping hand in quite a while within sight of the crashing surf. There is a wide beach with beautiful rock-strewn shallow area, with the waves breaking a hundred yards or so out, where one could see oneself walking along with a dog and some sort of string music playing softly in the background. (The musicians might have a hard time hanging on to the sheet music in the constant wind, but that never seems a concern in the movies.)

Soon the road is enclosed in the redwood forests, the impossibly tall and straight trees standing right up next to the blacktop in places as if they were creeping slowly onto the surface to take back what is rightly theirs. We humans have built this path through the woods, but our time here is so fleeting in the lifespan of a redwood, that they have only to be patient, to wait us out and then it can be all one thing again. I’ve been seeing signs for the “Trees of Mystery” exhibit for quite a while, but when I get to the “museum”, I see the 40 foot tall Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox statues, looking like a grade school art project gone wild, and I give it a miss.

Just past Klamath, I veer off to the west as the road goes slightly east so that I can ease through some of the Redwood state parks. There seem to be several of them, with different names, but transition is seamless as the blacktop meanders through the forest. I pull into a trailhead marked “Big Tree” and think of the person who named it. Not sure if it was a complete lack of imagination or just that when immersed in this place, that is the only description that can come to mind.

In Orick, there is the Palm Cafe with its neon sign advertising “homemade pies”, so I must stop. It is exactly the kind of place I like to find on these trips, a cafe in a very small town where the staff seem to be just waiting for a chance to show off their skills to a hungry tourist. The waitress tells me that the apple pie was just made this morning, but she also had a variety of others to choose from. I go with the apple and I am temporarily in the time warp that excellent pie provides. The moment slows to a crawl while I savor each bite, and then suddenly it’s gone. Men at the next table want to engage the sidecar driver in conversation, but I have disappeared for the moment until now, when I can rejoin the real world. They hear that I am from Kentucky, headed back that way now, but it is a foreign place to them. All they can find to say about it is “Bluegrass State” but that is enough.

101 comes back to the shore soon after Crick and follows the twisty contours the ocean has left with its constant stealing of bits from the land. Taking the curves is a completely different sensation on the sidecar outfit….not better, not worse, just different. There is not yet for me a flow, the swinging back and forth in smooth arcs that a two wheeler provides. I’m hoping that will come, in its own way, with experience. I have learned that “hanging off” makes a major difference, reducing the steering effort and, I hope, the stress on the machine. My rear tire seems to be melting, with visible wear in just the hundreds of miles I’ve traveled. So I go into turns with my butt off the seat inside the curve, my torso completely to the left or right of the windshield and my arms extended. It is a workout and I’m not sure what other drivers on the road behind me or coming the other way think I’m doing. I’m not sure myself. But slowly I seem to be getting the hang (literally) of it. Still, I’m going at a pace that would be quite slow for a solo machine, so I pull over frequently to let cars and trucks go by. And that’s a good thing. Even at my advanced age, I might be, were I solo, going by this scenery too quickly to take it in. The rig makes me slow down and think about what I’m doing, what I’m seeing and experiencing. Yet another of its virtues.

At Patrick’s Point, the road becomes a highway for real, not just in name, splitting into four lanes. It still wiggles a bit around the shoreline, but the speed limit (for cars, not touring sidecars) is 65. I stay at 55 or 60, in the right lane. There are frequent turnouts now, “Vista Points”, each with cars nosed into the fence and people just standing and staring out at the surf. I stop often to do the same. I suppose it’s cliche, but we humans have been doing this for thousands of years and I think, no matter what technology brings us for amusements, we will keep doing it for as long as we’re here.

It’s getting to be late afternoon and the sun is strong, though struggling at times through the mist that hangs in the air. I’m struggling too, trying to stay focused on all of the things I still have to think about while riding the rig, so when Eureka appears, I call it a day. A tour up and down its streets shows me an old town, with “painted lady” houses along the shoreline, buildings in the main city that were modern in the 50’s but now a bit faded, and some signs of urban decay already well advanced. A Quality Inn beckons, with a reasonable rate and a nice room and I park for the night.

Just down the street from the motel is Restaurant 301, with excellent roasted Brussels Sprouts with walnuts, pan seared salmon with roasted veggies and a small cup of butterscotch pudding for dessert. I eat too much then walk back to my bed where I’m soon asleep.