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| 3 was Chuck's lucky number today |
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| Heh, Trailer Cove |
Though we were on the famous Pacific Coast Highway, we never got a good glimpse of the water, everything was just socked in with fog, and predictably, it was congested. Not wanting to push our luck like we did yesterday, we pulled into one small town to get some gas. It was a nice little coastal town, and only had one gas station with 2 pumps. The actual station was closed, but the pumps were automated, thankfully. Even more thankfully, Chuck happened to look at the price before we started pumping, and pointed out that it was $6.29 a gallon. I'm willing to pay a convenience fee for gas, but that was at least $2 more than we'd seen anywhere else. We both decided to freshen our tanks up with a little splash, and figured we'd be safe until we could find more reasonably priced gas.
We crossed over a couple bridges under construction, and it was an eerie feeling, just riding into a misty void. It had a very Stephen King aura to it.
We got tired of being stuck in a train of cars and found a side road on the map that would take us inland. The road was twisty, but not in the greatest condition. It wasn't as bad as the Mattole Rd. had been, but still nothing to be taking at a high speed. Still, it was much better than being stuck in the procession.
We connected up with Hwy 128 which led us into Anderson Valley, where it was much warmer and arid. This was an area of agriculture and vineyards, and also coincidentally, home to one of my favorite breweries, Anderson Valley Brewing Co. in Boonville. Not only do they make great beer, but they also apparently had a disc golf course on site. We were pretty hungry by this point, so it seemed like a no brainer to stop by and grab a bite to eat if we could find the place.
Boonville, unsurprisingly was not large, and we found the brewery on the edge of town, and sure enough there were some disc golf baskets outside. Sadly, we realized that the brewery just had a taproom, not a restaurant. A beer and a round of disc golf sounded awfully tempting, but the day was young and we had empty stomachs. So, responsibly, and somewhat regretfully, we pressed on.
We made it to the intersection with 101, and noticed a sign for a town called Cloverdale, so we decided to check it out. We immediately saw a gas station, selling gas for nearly half of what the other place had, so we stopped in without hesitation. The town seemed very nice and fresh, like a lot of stores had been recently renovated. We pulled into the Railroad Station Bar & Grill.
Right as we parked our bikes, a fire truck pulled up to the place and firemen made their way inside. When we were seated, we were about 10 feet from the incident--an older gent had apparently lost his balance and in an attempt to catch himself, but an older lady down with him. She was hurt in some manner--enough to be put on the backboard and carried out. Meanwhile we sat by and ordered a couple beers. Always a sucker for a catchy name, I ordered a local IPA called Heroin. Figuring that I owed my body something a little more fibrous, I chose a salad with albacore. Chuck got some sort of grilled chicken sandwich.
The food was a little on the pricey side, but they definitely used high quality ingredients and it was quite tasty. I stole a couple of Chuck's fries, and I can attest that they were good as well.
After we finished, I called Oceana, my friend in the Bay Area who we planned to stay with. I should mention that we had no official plan of when we'd arrive anywhere, just were playing it by ear. Oceana knew to expect us, but hadn't been expecting us so early. She was currently in Berkeley and didn't know if she'd be home later that night. Chuck had an aunt in the area, who also knew we were coming, but we were just planning to have dinner with her.
So we didn't know what we'd do for the evening but we weren't worried about it. We had plans to go to Stafford Lake in Novato. We were carrying golf discs (frisbees) with us, and we had yet to play at all. Stafford Lake was supposed to be one of the better courses in NorCal so we figured we'd stop by play a round and then see what was what.
We headed south on 101, and as we got closer to the Bay, the traffic got heavier. It soon slowed to a crawl, and I remembered that we were now in California, where it's legal to split the lanes and ride up the middle. Neither Chuck or I had lane split before, at least for extended periods. It was instilled in us that doing so was verboten, tantamount to riding on a sidewalk. At a loss of how to proceed, we were just sticking it out in line like the rest of the traffic, what we were used to. And as if on cue, a guy came cruising through the lanes on an old BMW, without a care in the world. We had no choice but to follow suit, and so with me in the lead, we steered our bikes onto the dotted line.
It wasn't so much that I was stressed about going between the vehicles--though it was a bit like climbing up the high dive for the first time--it was that my ass was so wide. Speaking in terms of my motorcycle, that is. My bike is already fairly large, and the luggage I have is almost comically bulbous, so much so that it's wider than my handlebars. So through tight gaps, I was never really sure how much room I had on either side. Clipping someone's bumper or mirror along the way would be a horrible scenario that I don't care to lend much thought to. Fortunately, I had Chuck, who was much more svelte, following me and acting as my wingman and letting me know if a gap was looking too narrow for my wide load. It was an exhilarating experience, if a little on the stressful side, and I'm pleased to report we made it through the traffic snarl without incident.
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| I didn't snap any photos, but I did get this artistic interpretation |
The park was huge, and we found the vicinity of the course. We parked in the shade, and changed out of our riding gear. Not really having a place to stash our gear, we locked up what we could in hard bags, and left the rest of our stuff strapped to the bike, our boots just sitting by our bikes. We just crossed our fingers and hoped for goodwill towards motorcyclists.
It was good walk to get to the course, I would say 3/4 of a mile or so, and we knew it was going to be a big course. There was lots of open space, rolling hills of dry grass and stands of oak. And wind, plenty of it. We were right in our assumptions, the course was big and rugged, and really easy to lose a disc on if you weren't careful. I found that out all too well on the second hole, the first of many blind shots where we discovered that spotters were essential for those not familiar with the course.
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| Chuck in the middle of a fairway drive, the basket is way in the shadows of the trees on the right. |
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| Oh deer... |
I don't think either of us kept score, we both had some good holes, some not so good. It was a fun round, but pretty demanding and we were ready to be done with it by the end. We made our way back to the parking lot, and were relieved to see our stuff was still there.
We made phone calls as we made the transition from disc golf to motorcycle gear. The round had taken us longer than expected and we were already running late for our conceptual plans of meeting up with Chuck's aunt. It turned out that she had a long day and wasn't feeling up to dinner, but would be up for lunch the next day. I called Oceana and it turned out that she was going to be spending the night in Berkeley. That was fine, we'd just find a campground and get a site for the night. It was Sunday after all, we should have our pick of the litter.
There was a campground about half an hour away, China Camp State Park, so we headed in that direction. We meant to stop at a grocery store along the way, but once we turned off for the park, we didn't see anything more substantial than a shitty convenience store. When it was apparent we were past the possibility of any more stores, we contemplated turning around, but decided that we'd come far enough that we should at least make sure that we could get a spot. So we pressed on, and a few miles down the road, our hearts sank when we saw the price (around $30-35 if memory serves), and the amount of cars in the parking lot. And then as we cruised the parking lot we realized that all the sites were hike in sites. Besides the nice setting in the north bay, there was less and less appealing about the place. Then as we rode past the camp host's area, where they had a whiteboard and we realized it was all for naught anyway. Not only was every site occupied, but they were all reserved for at least a couple days.
So, without anything else to do, we rode back out of there. We stopped to look at a map to see what our options were, and they weren't promising. As great as Google is, we've found it to be next to useless when looking for a campground. Type in "campground" for any city, and you'll get any number of hits for RV parks, sometimes even straight up trailer parks. But using it to find camping campgrounds is less than reliable. Chuck spotted something on the map that he said looked like it had potential, so we headed off, hoping for the best.
It didn't take us long to get disoriented and lost in Novato. We stopped into a gas station to try to get some directions. Chuck was chatting with the gas station attendant while I chilled outside and watched the sky getting darker. The gas station guy came outside and while Chuck was busy doing something, he showed me his phone with directions to the campground. It was then that I realized that Chuck had us headed back to the coast to look for camping. It was getting late and that was more of an excursion that I felt up to. But we were quickly running out of options as it was getting dark and there were no other campgrounds or chances for guerrilla camping that we could see. I mentioned the possibility of looking for a motel, which would surely be more expensive than we wanted, but our options were looking slimmer.
Then Chuck got a text from his aunt saying that she had an apartment downstairs at her house, and the sometimes tenant was out of town and said it'd be OK for us to stay there if we wanted. Hell yes, we wanted. Chuck gratefully accepted her offer, and told her we'd stop and get dinner and head down there.
The sun was truly getting low in the sky at this point, so we put on our clear visors and headed out on a quest for food. We tried to find a Baja Fresh, a California burrito chain that I recalled making above average fast-ish food. Unfortunately, this was a Sunday evening, and the nearest Baja Fresh ended up being in a mall, which was closed by the time we got there. There was a Safeway in the mall though, so we figured we'd try to find something there. We wandered around the Safeway, not finding much that looked appealing. Chuck called his aunt for directions, and she told us not to worry about dinner, they'd put some pizzas in for us. It was more than we could hope for. I got us a 6 pack to relax with once we got to our destination.
Back out onto the highway, we were headed to San Francisco. It was completely dark by this point, and as we got closer to the Golden Gate Bridge, the temperature dropped off significantly and San Francisco's infamous fog enveloped us. The fog was so thick that it actually became rain at one point and then became a perpetual mist. I wanted to get a picture of us crossing the bridge, but there was really no point. It was so sacked in with fog, I couldn't see more than 30 feet in any direction. There was a huge span of the bridge above us, and a beautiful city skyline in front of us, but that had to be left all to the imagination.
The mist was an issue. It wasn't heavy enough to turn into droplets and run off the side of the visor, but it was heavy enough to stick on there. It was basically like someone had smeared vaseline on my visor, and my visibility was horrible. Not only was everything blurry, but any source of light created a halo effect, which made things all the more difficult. Of course, I could open up my visor, but doing so just welcomed a cold blast of misty droplets straight to my eyeballs. It was an unpleasant situation.
We found Chuck's aunt's place easily enough, she was in the Richmond district, in the northern part of the city, so fortunately we didn't have far to go. We did manage to hit just about every possible red light we could though (and there were plenty of them.) The garage doors were standing open in welcome when we arrived, and we pulled straight in. Chuck's aunt, Mary Jane, and her partner Chris, came and said hi, and showed us to the apartment. They brought us pizzas, some sort of Whole Foods type that were definitely a few steps above the typical frozen pizza. It was delicious. At least I thought so.
We realized that we were keeping Mary Jane and Chris up late past their bedtime--tomorrow was Monday and they got up at 4:00. We felt a little guilty, but all the more thankful for their generous hospitality. Chuck let me sleep on the bed since he got the one at the motel, and I passed out as soon as my head hit the pillow.
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| Home for a night, more than we could have hoped for |
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