Epic Ride, part 1
by Titus Gee
Big D sold his Nighthawk.
He didn’t want to, but he was taking the wife and child a thousand miles north to a new job in Seattle. Before he went, my partner-in-two-wheeled-shenanigans hatched one final scheme.
Now, Big D has kind of a knack for biting off more tarmac than he can swallow. Someday I’ll write a Classic Edition about our ride to Monterey for the Motorcycle Grand Prix at Laguna Seca (Pitch black canyons, pink eye, golden hot dogs, and the campsite on top of the world) . . . but that’s another story.
Before the big man took leave of the Golden State, he planned a one-day ride that could have kept us busy all weekend (at least) — a winding festival of canyons, ridge routes, and two-lane tarmac covering more than 400 miles and skimming the backside of Santa Maria before pointing our headlights home. Oh yeah, and we would be starting at noon in early spring, leaving us about six hours of daylight.
To be fair, my ambitious friend had uncommon inspiration. With his Nighthawk on the auction block, Big D planned to rent a motorcycle for this little trek. Well . . . not just a motorcycle. THE motorcycle. That is, our motorcycling Idol, since Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman rode its older brother around the world, a few years back. A two-year-old BMW R1200GS Adventure. (That’s right, Adventure is its name.) We sat on the 1150cc version at Laguna Seca half a decade ago, and the seat of Big D’s jeans has never forgotten. (It helps that the Idol is big. One of the few bikes that doesn’t look small under him.)
Ok, the styling is a bit “Beemer” for my personal taste, but there’s no getting around it: this sucker was built to GO, no matter what you point it at — Slovakian river crossings. Siberian tundra. Congolese jungles. Anything. Gotta respect that. Period.
So, Big D showed up outside my house in Simi Valley — right on time — and parked the Idol next to my Honda VF1100 Magna. I checked the oil one more time and wiped a little of the film off the slightly battered tailpipes. The 27-year-old war horse heading out for an 8-hour run with the 2-year-old stallion. Pirsig would be proud.
I wasn’t feeling too bad, though. The Beemer only had us by 100cc, and the War Horse and I have done a fair few miles together. That saddle cover didn’t wear out by itself.
We kicked off our romp with a dive down Decker Canyon. I’d been saving Decker for a day I felt light on my tires. Its dozen miles rival (maybe even surpass) Little Tujunga Canyon for swooping, winding curves and switchbacks tight enough to risk my chrome. The pavement cuts so tightly and so often that the line on our map jumbled into little splotches of road-colored pixels.
We could have started easier, stretched our legs, and worked our way up to this writhing serpent of tarmac, but not today. No half measures for us. The long road called, and the rumble of our engines answered back.
Decker dumped us out on PCH (That’s the Pacific Coast Highway or “Highway 1,” for our Eastern friends), which was built, as far as I can tell, just to give guys like us a place to blow their stress out the tailpipe. I took the lead and hit the throttle, leaving a black cloud of “stress” in my wake. Big D laughed and caught the Idol up in no time. For once Malibu had blue skies and sunshine, and at 2 o’clock in the afternoon the lanes were free and clear. The breakers rolled in on our left, flinging surfers toward the million-dollar beach houses. And straight ahead a ribbon of asphalt that edges the entire country from tip to tail. We only rode it for a few miles, but the coast road’s energy seeped up into us, and when we turned off, a half hour later, the surge of it pressed at our backs like a rising sea swell.
CA-33, to Ojai and beyond.
Californians brag that around here you can hang ten on a surfboard and hang it over the edge on a snowboard in the same day. (You’re gonna end up doing one or the other in the dark, but some hard-core bros try it anyway.) The 33 may not be the quickest route from one to the other, but it might just be the most beautiful. And, buddy, it sure puts you in touch with that transition. The road kicks it straight and easy across the coastal plane and then tips skyward.
Gentlemen, today we will be climbing . . . and climbing . . . and climbing.
The wind on our visors cooled. We had the road to ourselves, mile on mile of Los Padres National Forest stretching out on every side. This is the kind of territory that inspired ass-kickers like Teddy Roosevelt to create the national forest system in the first place. (You know he would be out here on a stripped-down chopper with a rifle holster, if he had the chance.) The road threw us just enough tight curves to keep it interesting, with plenty of longer bends and sweeping vistas in between.
On one of the straights, I saw Big D’s shoulders hunch down a little, and I knew he was about to open the taps on the Idol. I have heard many times that the VF1100 Magna is a fast bike — in its day one of the fastest on the road. But in two years, I had never really tested the War Horse, to see what that meant. Big D started his run. Not leavin’ me behind, I thought, and dropped it into 4th gear. 4000 rpm. 6000. 8000. 9000 rpm. 5th gear. Big D got a little smaller ahead of me, then larger again as the War Horse gained. 6000, 8000. Overdrive. 6000, 7000, 7500. Big D saw a curve ahead and slowed. I came up behind him, grinning like a fool inside my balaclava.
The War Horse came with a broken speedometer that I never fixed, so I had no idea how fast we went. But I know how it felt — like riding lightning or being shot from a bow, like Han Solo jumping to light speed, like merging with the War Horse and the road and disappearing — for just a second — into the wind itself.
A while later, we stopped for gas, and I asked Big D what the Idol’s speed-o read. He grinned. {REDACTED}*
After Ojai, D dropped back and let me lead for a while. He said I was looking for Lockwood Valley Road, a right-hand turn. The sky hung low with unaccustomed clouds as we came out onto a high plateau. The road shot forward for long stretches between the curves and, in the distance, snow.
Just as it occurred to me that those snowy hills might be part of our destiny, I came around a corner and stopped dead in the middle of the road. The sign for Lockwood Valley Road pointed due east up what appeared to be rock-strewn river bed. In the middle a small barricade proclaimed, “ROAD CLOSED.”
For a second we just sat there. We laughed. We climbed off the bikes and walked down to the sign kicking stones and shaking our heads. The remains of the road curved out of sight around a hill in the middle distance.
I took my goggles off and looked at D.
“What now?”
He shrugged.
We looked at the road again, contemplating the same thought, without saying it.
Then, like the sage in some fairy story, a figure appeared in the distance. Not a bearded old man with a long stick, but it might as well have been.
A weathered Mazda convertible from sometime in the early ’90s rounded the hill and crept toward us. The driver crawled it over the heaps and creases of dirt washed across the pavement and splashed through the little stream that washed crosswise behind the “ROAD CLOSED” sign. The car pulled up to us, and the window powered down.
A hefty, slightly grizzled couple in their late fifties grinned up at us, eyes alight. (Well, she grinned. He kinda twinkled grudgingly.) They already knew our question . . .
Conclusion Coming Soon in Epic Ride, part 2
Big D, the broad sweep of CA-33, and snow in the distance
* The indicated section has been redacted pending statute of limitations concerns**
**The statute of limitations shall expire at such time as the women in our lives no longer remember or no longer care about the content of the indicated section.
