California 101

     "Reckon this'll be awright," I growled in my best Sam Elliott imitation, imagining my voice to be as big and coarse as the desert night. Like a mosquito to a flame I'd been drawn to the neon red "cafe" sign, and I swung the door open with high expectations--none of them faintly gastronomical.

     So, imagine our surprise when the waiter uncorked his Parisian accent--delivered the salade nicoise, the shepherd's pie with fresh venison, and the profiteroles for dessert! Over a glass of good merlot I chatted with newfound friends--two fellow Pennsylvanians and an ex-New Yorker now hailing from toney Newport Beach. The meal stretched to two hours, and I scarcely noticed when the piano player drifted in off the street ("damn--they have a good sound system here!"), transporting me back to a cherished memory--a stop on Duke Ellington's final concert tour.

     It was a dinner to die for, and that part sucked--that fate chose a deadly high speed pileup to back us into Independence, CA and the Still Life Cafe. US 395, cradled between the snowy Sierras and the chocolatey crenelation preceding Death Valley, is like Lyle Lovett's Road to Ensenada ..."plenty wide and fast." Not wide enough though. Not at night, when headlights boring through the thin desert air at 100 yards look little different from beams a half mile beyond. Not when motorists think that all you need is enough horsepower to shrink what once took weeks by stagecoach into a commute of a few hours.

     Do people drive and ride faster in California than in other parts of the country? My supposition is that they do. 96.7% of the state's population is "urbanized" (according to the US Census Bureau), a rate second only to New Jersey, which has five times California's population density. Their habitudes dictated by ocean on one side and mountains on the other, Californian's regularly find themselves living--and driving--in parallel universes. Would that not make the perpendicular connectors (i.e. mountain roads) the thread by which Californian life is held together? Heaven or hell, depending your mood and circumstances.

     There's an age old debate in the enduro world over who meets the tougher riding challenge: eastern woods riders ...or western desert racers. The former claims that their tight, technical trails demand greater skill and cunning; that deserts are for lugs who can do little more than twist a throttle. The latter likens woods riding to mud wrestling; a comically tedious game demanding little power or courage.

     I've long theorized that there's a similar, albeit subtle, dichotomy between street riders in the east and west. Track schools on both coasts have convinced me that street riders on the west wing do ride faster. A twelve month season no doubt sharpens their skills, but I also think that California roads attenuate riders to higher velocity. I remember once leaving Willow Springs Raceway and subsequently realizing that I was rolling faster across the desert than I had on the track! A scary realization ...and yet the big landscape made lesser speeds feel unnaturally slow.

     My latest California excursion actually began with a breakfast in LA with Edelweiss Bike Travel's Werner Wachter. Wachter opined that the skill levels of American riders are "all over the map" (I think those were his words). Since Edelweiss runs three "touring centers" (fixed locations from which riders can enjoy a variety of day trips)--one each in France, Arizona and Montana, we discussed which rider skills might be honed at which centers. I candidly remarked that the limited training I'd offered in the Mountain states had left me with too little to comment on--what with their lack of driveways, intersections and traffic.

     Climbing Hwy. 33 into Los Padres National Forest (the Rider staff's favorite backyard game), it was as if we'd rented the road for the afternoon. Nevertheless, I warily regarded the abundance of turnouts on my right--many of them at the entry points to left hand bends from whence oncoming drivers could potentially sweep across our path. Think that drivers only turn left in front of motorcyclists in the city?

     In the arrow straight Cuyama Valley (still on Hwy. 33) I spotted a sheriff's car ...but not before its driver spotted me. I slowed down to 70, trying not to appear too furtive but mindful of a costly forty minutes spent in the penalty box outside of Mendocino last summer. California's finest, compared to the constabulary in my part of the world, takes a keener interest in life beyond the freeway. The lawman tailed me for about a mile at short range, grew bored, passed, and disappeared at what I'd estimate at 115 mph.

     Hwy. 166 was another story. I was glad to see cops on this rapid two lane corridor. With heavy truck traffic and hemmed in drivers itching to pass, I found myself frequently riding next to the shoulder so as to "present" myself to the numerous tailgaters. California--even 150 miles out of LA--is definitely not Montana, I concluded.

     Hwy. 58, the route described by Mr. Salvadori in his February Road Tales column, was an absolute treat--except for the low lying sun, whose searing rays were impervious to dark glasses. We affixed strips of electrical tape to our visors, though Clem, who mapped out some terrific back roads for us the next morning, carries a little shade which attaches via suction cups. He went to Harvard, you know.

     Hwy. 1, an expressway in the Morrow Bay area, can serve up wind gusts unknown to many eastern riders. A column of mine once drew some flak for implying that more speed is an effective antidote to potent wind. It is on paper--where wind doesn't gust or suddenly change directions.

     Just off the coast, below Paso Robles, lie some vineyards which, while not so famous as those of the Napa/Sonoma region, are just as scenic. Blind hills. Live oak trees, not so dense as the eastern hardwood forests, but big enough to hide a driveway. Overall, a riding challenge much like you'd encounter between the major eastern cities and the Appalachian ridges.

     Nacimiento-Ferguson Road is another story. Guidebooks recommend more than an hour to negotiate the seventeen mile "back way" to Big Sur Highway! Steep, narrow and slimy with mud and pine needles, nearly every left bend on its decent to the ocean is negatively banked. Its builders surely held the conviction that one plunge into the abyss is worse than a hundred collisions with the mountainside. Perhaps, on a 270 pound dual sport, I could have slid the bike around those weird ass hairpins, but with 900+ pounds of motorcycle, cargo and human weight, our pace reflected my painfully mortal skills.

     How many states have a fog season? We scampered through the redwoods on more drizzly Salvadori roads before dropping into the San Joaquin Valley, whose freeways are notorious for chain reaction collisions, particularly in the winter months. Last January, a 54 year-old motorcyclist was killed by a speeding Dodge Ram while stopped in the soup. It's been suggested (though not proven) that California riders who split lanes may be safer than ones who sit patiently and defenselessly in stalled traffic.

     While technically neither legal nor illegal, lane splitting is a skilled discipline. Most motocommuters ply the gap between the two lanes farthest to the left. The time savings in stop and go traffic is remarkable, but savvy riders content themselves with the HOV lane once its flow reaches about 30 mph.

     I saw not one pistol brandished in the fury of rush hour traffic. Although a local friend insists that "using a turn signal in LA is a sign of weakness," I think that many SoCal drivers have met the enemy and admitted that "he is us." On every mountain pass, from south to north, California drivers politely used the turnouts upon sighting our advancing V-Strom in their mirror.

     I won't go so far as to say California drivers are better than those in other parts of the country, but I think that motorcyclists who live and ride in the Golden State receive a daily education that riders anywhere would find invaluable. And, as sadly witnessed out in the desert on US 395, they need it.

     Grodsky's Stayin' Safe Motorcycle Training will conduct its first California "Neo-Alpine" training tour on October 22-24. Details at www.stayinsafe.com.