Reed's Rat Race

Here's a short clip I assembled from a few of the roads we sampled in northern California.

Wednesday Despite sleeping well, we woke up early on Wed. morning and were on the road by 6:45am. Perhaps it was the fact that I wasn't sure exactly how long it would take us to get back to Mountain View that had me worried a bit. The morning temps were hovering around 51 deg so I hit the switch for the heated grips and raised the windscreen all the way up. Our goal for Wed. was to take scenic Hwy 70 out of the mountains and then head south and west back to Mountain View and the rental place. We had to be there no later than 5pm.  The town of Chester rests on the north shore of Lake Almanor.  The water was like glass as we sailed by.  Aside from a couple areas where we had to wait on road repairs being made, 70 is another great road. It follows the Feather River through the Plumas National forest and has lots of great corners, very good pavement, and great scenery too.  Feather River, a train, and mountains.   More views on Hwy 70 TUNNEL!! T

Tuesday Another epic day of riding in the books. Out of the hotel by nine am, we started off by back tracking just a bit to go back to Humboldt Redwoods State Park for some pictures since we didn't actually stop on our way through yesterday. It was neat to get up close a personal to those old trees. I'm still blown away by the size of them.  Panorama of a fallen Giant Redwood.  Angela loved the Redwoods.   How do I get the pictures to rotate back to vertical? Walking around this grove of trees felt like being in church.   After a few pictures we're back in sport touring mode as we turned east at the start of CA Hwy 36, which is supposed to be one of the all time great motorcycle roads in CA. Since I haven't ridden much of California, I can't tell if its one of the greatest, but I can say that it is an amazing stretch of pavement. 36 starts innocently enough with a lazy trip through a small grove of redwoods and then begins a twistin

Monday We woke up around 7am and got our gear packed up and ate a continental breakfast. Over breakfast we played around on Google Maps and wrote down our route.  With the GPS out of juice, Angela was going to have to do the navigating.  Luckily, our route for today was primarily Hwy 1 with just a few excursions.  So it was pretty simple.  We got on the road by 9am and headed north on Hwy 1. The town of Petaluma had a nice feel to it.  We loved the hills and all the livestock. It was still pretty brown, but bits of green were starting to pop up as we glided toward the coast. The landscape was farmland and rolling hills and with the temperature hovering around 75 degrees things couldn't be nicer. Traveling west to the coast through idyllic farmlands. Closer to the ocean! For the 30 minutes that it took to reach the coast from Petaluma, I played with the electronic suspension.  I settled on 1 rider with luggage in the sport setting.  The bike seemed to handle

Sunday: 7/17/2011 After a good night's sleep at the Courtyard by Marriott, we were ready to start our long drive north. Because California was undergoing “Carmaggedon” on the 405 Hwy, we were told to expect delays. We wanted to make sure we could get to the motorcycle rental place in Mountain View, CA near San Francisco by 5pm so we could start the motorcycle part of our vacation early.  The whole "Carmaggedon" bit turned out to be much ado about nothing, at least from our view point.  There was absolutely nobody on the road this morning and we were only forced to get off the 405 one exit early.  Sweet.   We left the hotel by 7am and drove up the Pacific coastline to see Malibu and find out what all the hype was about. It was a pretty area. We could see the rocky coastline of the Pacific ocean. We stopped at a Mcdonald's (my first time to step foot in a Micky D's in two years!) for some yogurt parfaits and mango/pineapple smoothie and then headed b

To be honest, we left Caledonia on Friday afternoon and drove to Huntsville where our good friend Wes had kindly let us stay at his place...and he wasn't even there.   Now that's a friend .  Thanks Wes!  Staying in Huntsville allowed us to be able to get up at a reasonable hour so that we could arrive in Nashville around 10:00 am. We rolled into Nashville right on time and met Jean and her new dog Cheeto.  After getting the kids' stuff offloaded and a quick bite to eat it was off to the airport.  At the terminal we said our goodbyes to the kids, wished Jean luck, hugged and kissed the kids a 2nd and 3rd time and then headed into the terminal to check our luggage and go through the dismal ordeal that is the TSA safety screening. We each checked one bag.  One bag contained just motorcycle gear--pants, jackets.  One bag had all our clothes for the week.  We packed pretty light and planned on doing laundry a couple times while we were out there. For carry-ons, we each car