We travelled from LA to San Francisco on a cheap coach. It was run by a company called USAsia. You guessed it we were the only none Asians on the coach. All the information was in Chinese, so we ended up just following the crowd to ensure that the coach didn't go without us. When we disembarked in China town the bus drive kept thanking only Phil and me. Then as we were trying to find a cab the coach driver went passed and was blowing his horn and waving at us. We must have been a novelty for the bus [View Full Entry]

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Porterville: a hot, dry departure. The airshow people were doing their thing, and we had to fit our departure in between their graceful formation takeoff practice runs. We were finally on our last leg towards our first view of the Pacific Ocean. We took off around noon. In the early afternoon, we sighted the blue of the Pacific as Monterey Bay heaved into view. Near the posh city of Monterey, we then turned northbound to parallel the coast. As noted in omnibus entry, ATC gave us fabulous assistance and clearances that gave us great views of the Golden Gate Bridge and [View Full Entry]

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There were three days left for riding and some choices to make when I chose my route home from Fortuna. Having been thwarted by the weather on the southbound leg, I still wanted to ride my favorite central Oregon roads on the way home from the coast. It would require a traverse, west to east, across the north end of California. Last April I had ridden such a traverse, and my experience on that trip left me wanting more of this area's roads. The route options from Fortuna to Alturas are many if time is not an issue. In order to [View Full Entry]

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On Thursday morning March 27th at 0700 departure time, an unseasonably cold weather system from Alaska was crossing the Washington coastline. Temps near freezing and snow flurries created a cold and painful start to the ride. Snow on the helmet visor required only a couple of wipes as I bore South toward Portland. The temps never rose above 40F until approaching Eugene as I slabbed it down I-5. The initial option of traveling down central Oregon and Nevada was abandoned with forecast freezing temps and severe cross-winds in the Great Basin desert. Experience as proven (in Nev [View Full Entry]

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Welcome back ya'll. Eureka was great and we were certainly sad to say farewell. Who knows, we may decide to spend some more time there but for now the road was calling. We hit the road and headed due (more or less) east to Redding Calif. I guess the Calif was kind of redundant there but alas. Anyways the main reason we headed down this wya is because I have always had an infatuation with the whole 'gold rush' in California history thing. Why, I don't know. Secretly I have always wished i was in on those days, panning fo rgold [View Full Entry]

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As Vince said, the beginning of the trip was fantastic. I found a Patagonia bathing suit bottom to go with my "Target" top, on sale no less. We had a good lunch, I recommend the brownie cookie, and the weather became clear once we were back on the road. I thought it was fitting that it was rainy and gray through Seattle and Portland. I wouldn't want to remember it any other way. There were an amazing amount of hawks in central Oregon following the tractors who were cutting down long golden grass (or some other product that I don't know [View Full Entry]

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Hello everyone, It was nice to have spent some time with you all last night before we left. It has been great to connect with you all. It was sad to say goodbye last night, but we are excited to have started this road-trip. On that note, we were good-to-go for a while. We stopped in Portland and had lunch. I had the best Greek salad ever. A little place called "Daily Cafe'" I recommend it. We got on the road again and listened to Harry Potter for a while. It was some time before we reached Shasta Lake just north [View Full Entry]

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