Trans Americas 2009 - The Blog

Woke at 6am after a restless night, despite having a comfy inflatable double bed in the middle of Steve's living room. Guess that's the price to pay for a long flight followed by good beer...

Updated the blog whilst Steve slept, then had a cup of coffee and some toast to help us prepare for the day. The weather was once again foggy – being so close to the ocean, Half Moon Bay (and most of San Francisco as we'd discover later) has a period from late evening (around 6-7pm) where the fog descends and the temperature drops dramatically until around mid-day when the sun has burnt away the fog and the temperature rises significantly. This morning was no exception, with visibility down to around 300m, and the sky obliterated by a thick white blanket. After breakfast we sorted out some riding gear for me, as I could hardly ride the rented Harley whilst wearing my BMW Rallye jacket and full-face crash helmet...

So wearing Steve's leather jacket and an over-sized “half-helmet” (more like a badly fitting hat!), my motocross boots and BMW trousers and my GS gloves, we got Steve's bike out of the garage. A Honda Shadow cruiser, it's a Japanese “Harley look-a-like” with a very small pillion pad on the rear “fender” onto which I climbed behind Steve. His first remark was “that's us overloaded” and I guess he was right, but only because he's 6' 4” and hardly small himself... My first thought was how comfy this was compared to Richard's ZX12 I rode pillion on when we dropped my bike off at the freight company all those weeks ago...

Pulling out onto Highway 1 and joining the morning traffic I was instantly struck by how different riding pillion is to riding “up front”. First, all I could initially see was the back of Steve's head (until I realised I could peer round the side). Second, I was sat there like a sack of spuds, completely at the control of Steve and at the mercy of the elements. But I trusted his riding (otherwise I'd not have been sat there) and despite my oversized helmet needing an occasional push back on my head, felt completely safe. The weather was cool but not cold, and once my eyes had stopped streaming I could enjoy the view – or at least the bit of the ocean visible before the fog engulfed it. Highway 1 is “one of those roads”, as it twists along the coast into San Francisco, a journey of about 30 miles from Half Moon Bay. They're in the process of building a tunnel to by-pass some of the curves, which will be a real shame, but is necessary as the road keeps falling into the ocean. Not today, though, so we rolled along, leaning into the curves and occasionally crashing over the bumps with the extra weight of me compressing the rear suspension almost to the bump-stops...

Once in the city, we rode around for a while trying to find the hire-shop. Even with the benefit of Steve's i-Phone and Google maps, and his excellent knowledge of the city, this took a while, especially as the shop lacked the “Thunder Road” sign we were looking for, and had recently moved... But find it we did, and we were met by a nice guy with a “California beard” (one of those weird little goatie things but with no moustache) who took my driver's licence and credit card and proceeded to give me a collection of forms on which to sign my life away. With the formalities done, but his computer not able to print the rental agreement, he introduced me to his mechanic “Bob” who had ridden from Alaska to San Fran before settling down, but harboured lingering desires to complete the rest of the Pan-American Highway (the trip I'm shortly to start). After chatting with Bob for a while and selecting a helmet that fitted from the collection available, the guy showed me round the bike and finally the computer behaved long enough for the rental agreement to be printed and signed. Now we were ready for the off...

Well, nearly. With a huge Harley-Davidson Road King Classic at my disposal, looking spectacular in black and chrome, I have to admit to being a little intimidated. Sitting on the bike and hauling it up off the side-stand I realised how heavy it was. Probably weighs as much as my fully laden GS, but with the weight much lower, and harder to hold up when leaning slightly. And then there's the foot controls. On a normal motorcycle, these consist of a small round “peg” on which you put your feet, and delicate-looking “levers” for the brake (right side) and the gear-change (left side, click down to go down the gears, up to go up, except for 1st which is always down... sounds confusing but isn't once you get used to it). On the Road King, the “pegs” are foot-boards, long enough for giant-sized feet, and the “levers” are huge. The rear brake is like the foot-brake in a car, positioned at the front of the right-hand foot-board, and impossible to control delicately when wearing motocross boots. The gear-change is a lever with both a front (used for changing up) and a rear (used for changing down) either side of the pivot-point. Fortunately, it's possible to just use the front part of the lever in the conventional way, but the controls still felt alien, and coupled with the weight, caused a few butterflies in my stomach. But starting the engine killed all the butterflies, or at least deafened them, and everything within as 100-yard radius. It also had me giggling like a schoolgirl. Just what I'd wanted, a LOUD Harley. With the engine on idle, the sound was like the rumble of the gods, even if it also sounded a little like Brian Blessed bellowing the word “POTATO” as fast as he could (next time you hear a Harley, listen closely and you'll hear it's actually asking for that particular vegetable). With my nerves quietened by laughter, Steve and I set off into the San Francisco traffic, with me leaving the 1st - 2nd gear-change for a little longer that I would normally do, not because of the wonderful noise the bike was making, but because I couldn't find the gear lever with my left boot...

By the time we'd ridden past the new baseball ground, and past a tall ship in the dock, down the side of the bay and on towards Golden Gate Bridge, I was a fully-fledged Harley rider, and my worries had gone. I could concentrate on the traffic (very well behaved) and the scenery (gorgeous), all the while with a fantastic sound-track of thumping Harley engine. When we came round the corner of the bay and could see out to Golden Gate bridge, it looked like someone had cut the top off, as the fog still hung over it. No photo opportunity today, then. But I still got to ride across, as we headed for Saualito, a really beautiful little town on the bay, with views over Angel Island, the bridge and Alcatraz, and with a huge yacht complete with helicopter anchored up. We pulled up and grabbed a delicious coffee mocha and sat in the sunshine discussing the ride and where we'd head next to try and avoid the fog.





Suitably refreshed, we disturbed the peace and quiet by firing up the bikes and rode back over the bridge again (still covered in fog), through Golden Gate park and then picked up the “Skyline Highway”, a road which meanders across the top of the mountains above the bay, with spectacular views on either side, made all the better as the fog lifted. With a short stop for Steve to ditch his jacket (it was already getting very hot – but I kept mine on, still thinking “safety first”), we rode for what seemed like hours along the twisty road, leaning the Harley over far enough to have the footboards touching down (not that far, really!), and laughing like a drain. Then remembering I'm supposed to look cool not a fool, and adopting a Harley-stare instead. That lasted until the next bend and the sound of the engine roaring as I wound it back on again, and the broad grin was back again. Guess I'm just not made to be cool...

After a fantastic ride we pulled up at a lunch-stop, Alice's Restaurant, where there were many bikes parked up. This is the San Francisco equivalent of the burger-van at Devil's Bridge in Kirkby Lonsdale... sunshine, great bikes of all styles (cruisers, sports-bikes, fully-laden tourers, supermotos, etc) and the food... the burgers from the van don't taste like this! I had a “Le Mans Burger”, a 1/3 pound sirloin burger with sauteed mushrooms, onions and Monteray Jack cheese (my mouth is watering at the memory) and we shared a portion of the best beer-battered onion rings I've every tasted. Boy, is this the life... As we sat and watched the bikes come and go, we were joined by a procession of supercars – 2 Ferraris (599 and 555), an Aston Martin Vantage convertible, Porsche GT4 and an Audi R8 – which were driven by a large group of well-healed, suntanned Americans (thin, too, but then this is Californ-IA)... but the odd thing was, they all had their names written on sticky labels attached to their shirts! This must count as a “coach party” for rich Americans in California...

Just before we set off, Steve took a picture of me sat astride my Harley outside this wonderful place... do you think I look a little like Marlon Brando (in the Wild Ones)? Or more like the geek in Wild Hogs?





From Alice's we continued the ride, over to San Gregorio and down to Santa Cruz along the coastal Highway 1 and with the incredibly intense smell of the ocean in our nostrils and watching pelicans soaring in formation on the wind. We stopped briefly in Santa Cruz, another beautiful little town that reminded me of the centre of Chester but with sunshine, where we checked Google maps once more whilst drinking iced coffee (or ice with a hint of coffee), before setting off again up Highways 17 and then 35 before taking a very interesting little road up into the mountains. And interesting is the word, as it became a single-lane road twisting steeply up into the woods, before emerging on the the top and re-joining the Skyline Highway. This stretch had us both laughing out loud, as the bends came relentlessly, some turning back on themselves so much we were getting dizzy. It reminded me of a pass I found once in the Alps, and it had the same effect on my arms, tiring them out through the sheer effort of turning the bike one way, then the next. When we finally rejoined the Skyline we found a rest stop to pull over and get off the bikes for a while...

The final run back into Half Moon Bay was back along the main road we'd come in on from the airport (was that only yesterday?), and once filled up with “gas” (where a nice middle-aged American woman engaged us in conversation before commenting on my “wonderful axe-ent”) we put the bikes back in Steve's garage and poured ourselves a well earned beer – another pint of Steve's now-named “Sloppy Hog Brown Ale” - and reflected on the fact we had only done 177 miles. Seemed a lot more!

After a couple of beers, we decided against Steve's original plan of a BBQ (way too tired!) and went out for dinner. The restaurant he chose was “The Miramar” perched right on the beach with fantastic views out over the ocean. With a table sat in the window we were entertained by watching pelicans diving into the ocean for fish, a dolphin playing in the shallows, a seal bobbing up and down watching the fishermen stood in the breakers casting their lines as far as they could, and a fishing boat seemingly lost going this way and that in the descending fog... and that would have been perfect enough, but the food, well, I've run out of superlatives already... starting with a shared plate of breaded fresh calamari served with a spicy dipping sauce, I then had a “pasta pescadores” - a plate of linguine with 2 lobster tails, mussels, salmon, clams and calamari in a rich tomato sauce (I only managed to eat half of it before almost bursting) whilst Steve had a creamy seafood linguine with a similarly exotic mix of fresh seafood. All washed down with a couple of locally-brewed beers. Just fan-tastic...

Back at base we watched a bit of telly before crashing around 9pm again. Exhausted, at the end of a great day...