Category: Pictures

A few hours free on Sunday and excellent weather (mid to upper 70s in November) usually equates to a ride around town.

I left home to get gas at the local Ardenwood station. While filling up I decided to try Fuelly — this website that tracks fuel consumption and mileage for your vehicles. I got 49.1MPG on my last tank. It’s going to be fun tracking MPG over the next several years!

I decided to ride a mix of freeway and twisties, mostly along familiar roads: 800, 680 and Calaveras.

Calaveras was superb! The weather was fine, not too cool but not too warm. There was very little traffic and I could ride at my own pace.

I’m starting to get the hang of this bike now. The engine is incredibly powerful (at least that’s what I think, coming from a DR650 thumper). The bike handles the curves very well. It is easy to lean over and confidence inspiring through the turn. The brakes are solid — in fact, sometimes a bit too harsh — and slow down the bike very effectively coming into a turn. I enjoy the engine braking too, and I’ve gotten used to that riding the thumper. But the biggest grin lingers right after the turn when I’m pulling away. The bike rockets away effortlessly, no matter what gear I’m in. In fact, I kept the bike in 2nd and 3rd for most of Calaveras.

After about 75 miles in the saddle, all I can say is that this is a wonderful machine. Quite comfortable, enough power, excellent handling. Looks pretty too!

Hollister Hills SVRA is the oldest and largest off-road park in California. I’ve been itching to go check it out, after having been to Metcalf and Carnegie. Unfortunately, HH is about 75 miles from home — a solid hour and a half on the super slab. Anyway with baby #2 due in less than 4 weeks, I thought the New Year break would be the ideal time to go check it out. I’m not going to have any time starting Feb. The forecast for Jan 1st 2012 was an awesome 73 F (~23C). Now that is nice for January in the Bay Area.

So I took 880 and 101, gassed up at Hollister and reached the park a little after noon.

Hollister is much bigger compared to the other two parks. And being a holiday, it was packed with riders. The parking lots were full and I could see kids buzzing around in their high pitched two strokes almost everywhere.

As a cautious newbie, I decided to try out the greens. I rode Rancho Road, Harmony Gate Trail and Field Road (all three greens). The trails here are long (longer than the other parks, i.e.) winding and certainly a lot of fun. A lot of tree cover makes for a picturesque ride. This winter has been unusually dry and so there was a lot of dust being kicked up.

I also tried a couple of blue trails (tighter, narrower and steeper), but nothing too adventurous. The good part of the Hollister Hills is that almost all the trails (the major ones for sure) are one way. So there’s little danger of running into someone at speed — a thought that makes me wince.

The DR did awesome — and I’m getting tired of repeating myself here.  It is however, heavy and a handful to manage. But it takes you where you want to go and has no complains doing so. In fact if you listen to your DR closely, it is begging you to go explore it’s limits.

I took the slab back home for the boring ride home and kept up a brisk 80mph speed. The DR did not skip a beat from being abused on the trails to grinding down the freeway miles.

Last evening I washed off the dirt. Now would be a good time to clean the air filter and chain. Maybe next week 🙂 Adiós!

Since my first dirt outing to Metcalf I have been itching to do it again. So last weekend, I found myself at Carnegie SVRA and spent a few hours on the trails there.

Carnegie is beautiful! Some very nice trails, long and curvy, challenging at times, but manageable on a DR650. Carnegie is also much bigger than Metcalf, so one could possibly spend a lot more time there.

I spent most of my time on the greens (Pottery Loop trail, Juniper Trail and Klin Canyon Trail) and some blues (Golden Eagle and Franciscan Loop).

Here is a picture of the hill training area. Riding up that hill is harder than it seems!

On top of one of the hills there

A nice view

A nice view is incomplete without the DR!

Some people were attempting (successfully) ridiculous stuff ! That grade is close to 60 degrees there (Big Bear Black, at the end of Klin Canyon Trail)

A nice tight blue trail

Spending some quiet time at the top

I spent so much time riding the trails that I came into reserve while doing a hill climb. So before heading back home, I had to gas up in Tracy (about 10 miles down on Corral Hollow Road) before I rode back to Fremont.

Again, I was amazed at how well the DR goes from riding trails to doing 80mph on the freeway. A truly awesome machine!

I did a couple of interesting rides this weekend, which were in addition to a 10 mile run, house work, buying Anushka a new bike, and a hundred other odd things. I’m glad this is going to be a slow week at work, followed by such a hectic weekend.

Anyway, on Saturday, we met up with some old friends in Belmont. Vjiay (below) rides a red Ninja 250. We rode down Skyline towards four corners, and then rode 84 and Pescadero to the Pescadero beach. This worked out to be a fun and enjoyable ride, with ample opportunities to push hard in the curves, followed by several mellow miles following a slow car or truck. We rode back to town on Hwy 1 and Hwy 92. I was impressed with the little Ninja: it had no trouble doing 90 mph (indicated) on the slab.