This was an adv ride to Georgetown and Foresthill, Mahesh was on his Ducati Scrambler 1100 and I rode the Yamaha Tenere 700. This was Thanksgiving week and the kids were off from school. Shruti has work meetings in November and December (“Peak”) starting at 6:30AM, so we were doing 5AM classes at Elite Performance Gym. So I’d had a pretty early start to the day and I was also feeling a bit under the weather, but in spite of all this, I decided to head out for the ride.
I met Mahesh at the Mission gas station and we took the highways to the central valley. We took Hwy 88 and then Hwy 124 through Ione. After riding the nice twisties on Hwy 49, we cut over Hwy 50 to Hwy 193 towards Georgetown. We gassed up in Georgetown and took the amazing Wentworth Springs Road towards the Rubicon trail. WSR was a lot of fun, I was riding it after a long time (2016) and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The pavement is still perfect, the turns are perfectly banked and there was no traffic whatsoever.
From WSR we turned off on 11 Pines Road and were greeted by some amazing vistas. We crossed the scenic bridge across the Rubicon river and eventually made our way to the French Meadows Reservoir. The weather was perfect at this point, not very cold and not hot at all.
From French Meadows we took Mosquito Ridge Road heading back towards Foresthill. MRR is also an amazing road and had a lot of fun on the twisty parts. Currently (November 2023), MRR was closed 7 miles from the Robinson Flat Rd intersection. We used Robinson Flat Road to cut over to Foresthill Rd. This was a nice ~6 mile dirt road mostly double-track and easy work for the Tenere. About a half mile from the Foresthill Rd intersection is Duncan Peak Lookout which we wanted to visit but it was closed for the season.
Along the dirt road Mahesh realized that his GIV top box was coming loose. He took it off at the side of the trail and road the short distance to the Duncan Peak trail gate. We inspected the bike and realized that the bolts that hold the muffler and rear rack to the subframe had sheared off. I pulled out a few zip ties and secured it in place and then also added a bungee cord and a lashing strap. Mahesh was able to make it home without further incident, but unfortunately somebody took the GIVI top box that he had left on the side of the trail. Someone stole his top box, in a matter of 20 minutes, and he was really bummed about it.
We rode back to Foresthill had a late lunch at Dragon Boat Chinese Restaurant. The food was great, the hot chowmein, rice and veggies felt great on the cold day. The portion sizes were HUGE.
From Foresthill we made a straight shot home on I-80 and I was home by 7pm. It was a long freeway ride back, but the Tenere is a roomy and comfortable bike.
Sujit Kirpekar 