Month: January 2019

Ride Report #49: Sierra Foothills Ride

This was the second long ride I did in between jobs (Velodyne → Waymo)… a long day trip into the Sierra foothills. The 2019 winter was turning out to be a very wet winter, the snowpack was very tall (the fifth ever recorded since 1941) and hills very were green.

We started the day early from Fremont and took Tesla Rd through Livermore out of the Bay Area. We crossed the central valley a little north of Turlock, on Keyes Road. This road goes through the heart of farm country, there were all sorts of farms on both sides of the road and lots of heavy truck and farm equipment traffic. Keyes Rd joins Hwy 59 which soon turns into J16 and then it starts to get interesting. We turned right over a bridge over the Merced river and then followed Hornitos Road through the small town of Hornitos. It was my first time exploring this area and I loved the roads here. There was very little traffic. We split off J16/Hornitos towards Hwy 49 on Old Toll Road, which was a small goaty trail with a single lane and very rough pavement.

We got to the vista point at the top of the Hwy 49 grade (“little dragon”) at which point Akshay realized that he had lost his rear seat and some tools. We back tracked our way, down the bumpy old toll road and back on J16. A few miles later I spotted the seat on the side of the road and we resume our trip. We then took Bear Valley Road (also a fine road) to Hwy 49, down the little dragon and to lunch in Coulterville.

There is no gas in Coulterville, so we pressed on. We rode up Greeley Hill Road for a short distance and then took Priest Coulterville Road to the top of the Priest grade. This was easily my favorite road of the day. Short and sweet, not overly taxing on a Busa, still winding, goaty and fun. The scenery was great, the traffic was very less and we got to Priest grade easily.

We then rode down Old Priest Grade and enjoyed the very steep grade! We then continued to Hwy 120 to Chinese Camp and rode Red Hill Road and La Grange Road back to Hwy 132. At this point Akshay was running very low on fuel and there was no gas station in La Grange. We asked a store owner and she mentioned the nearest gas was towards Coulterville. When we arrived at the gas station, 15 miles later, Akshay’s bike was almost out of gas, showing an available range of zero miles.

We gassed up at Don Pedros Market on Hwy 132 and made the long and boring journey back home. We took the freeway all the way back as I had to get back on time and coach Anushka’s basketball team that evening. No laws were broken, but we did see triple digit speeds for a little bit on I5.

I really enjoyed this ride and I have a new appreciation for the roads in the Sierra foothills.

 

Ride Report #48: Hwy 36, 3 and 299

By an amazing stroke of luck, I found myself with 4 weeks of vacation between jobs. The first two weeks were a little busy wrapping up my old job and planning the start of the new job, so it was closer to 2 weeks than 4, but by any means a long stretch of time to myself. So what does one do with 4 weeks? If this was really 4 weeks in the summer, I would have made a solo trip to Alaska. Solo because it’s almost impossible to find someone else with that much free time. Yup, thanks Silicon Valley. So I ended up meeting lots of friends, hanging out with the wife and kids, going on a school field trip, traveling to the East Coast, and a couple of day long motorcycle rides. This was the first of them.

I left Fremont early one weekday morning and drove to Redding to Bill’s house. The drive was uneventful and easy as I listed to Dirty John. We had a big breakfast at Lumberjacks and started on our way after dressing warmly. The first part of the ride was I-5, straight down to Red Bluff. We took the exit to Hwy 36, gassed up and then stopped at the famous Hwy 36 sign for pictures.

I consider the initial part of Hwy 36 as truly the best of any road in California. It was cool but dry and I enjoyed the curves and whoops very much. The first 40 or so miles were easy and we kept a brisk pace. As we started the climb to the top, it started to get cold and wet and we saw remnants of snowfall on the edge of the road. We had slowed down, but by the time we summit-ed we were going at a slow crawl. The last 5 miles were a True Grit ride, white knuckles, death grip, shivers, the works 🙂 We made it across somehow and stopped in Hayfork for gas and some much needed hot coffee. Hwy 3 and 299 were also very good, as usual, and 172 mile ride came to an end at Bill’s house in Redding.

I very much enjoyed riding Bill’s ZX10R. I looked up the Motorcycle Consumer News spec sheet… A 2008 Gen-II Hayabusa weighs in at 577 lbs wet, while the 2004 Gen-I ZX10R weighs 432 lbs wet. That’s a whopping 145 lbs difference! No wonder the ZX10R feels like a bicycle with a rocket engine. The engine on that bike revs very quickly and builds constant linear power everywhere. While the bike is pretty docile, the front wheel has a tendency to come up. I remember on one of the many whoops on Hwy 36, I crested the top of the hump while gassing it just a tad more than necessary and front end came up by a lot. Great fun bike and I immediately saw the appeal of a light track liter bike.