WCRM: Day 1

The whole “blog as write-up vehicle” worked well for the San Simeon trip, so I’m going to do that again for the Sport-Touring.net West Coast Regional Meet III.

Diana (MsLusty on STN) rode up on her Moto Guzzi Centauro around 9am Friday morning. To say that I was not yet prepared to leave would be a charitable assessment of the situation, and Diana was very patient about sitting around while I found “just one more cable, hang on, just gotta pack one more thing….”

The ride up through San Francisco was uneventful. Instead of doing 19th street through downtown (the direct — but heavily trafficked — route to the Golden Gate Bridge), we got off of Hwy 280 at Hwy 35 in Pacifica and then rode along the coast through San Francisco. We stopped for gas just north of SF, lucking upon the World’s Tallest Gas Pumps. It was a little urban preview of the later redwood trees.

Highway 101 north of the city was its usual amazingly boring self. Any reservations I had had about getting a custom seat were left along the shoulder of the freeway when my butt started going numb after about 30 miles. Ugh.

Diana and I stopped at Old Mission Pizza in Willits, the same place that Peter and I stopped last year. Their pepperoni pizza continues to be high-quality, thin-crust happiness.

While pulling into the pizza place parking spot, I made a tight right turn, and POP! off flipped the antenna from my GPS (I guess it knocked against the windscreen). “Huh,” I said, and put it back on. I forgot about it — and you may too, dear reader — until Sunday afternoon…..but that’s still two days away, now, isn’t it.

Construction along 101 as we entered the redwoods left Diana and I eager for a break — all the rain this past winter meant that every single road I was on this weekend, without exception, had at least one partial lane closure for landslide damage repair. This slide was particularly bad and resulted in a full closure, meaning a pilot car and long delays.

Anyway, the closure was at Confusion Hill (a popular place for landslides), which also houses one of the very few remaining tacky touristy tree shit places in the redwoods I’d never been to.

Like the Mystery Spot in Santa Cruz, and probably a dozen other places around the country, Confusion Hill has a gravity house in which your body “defies the laws of nature”. I don’t know about that, but after walking around it for a little while, my body was definitely about to defy the law of keeping lunch in my stomach. It felt like being stumbling drunk, only without the marshmallow cushion of — well, confusion — that normally keeps your intoxicated brain from thinking that there’s anything odd about walking sideways.

Fortuately, there were also the normal touristy attractions to help us recover from our gravity house stupor before getting back on the bikes…

There’s even an extensive Chipalope Tale of how these elusive beasts came to be. See, my write-ups are all about learning. You’re welcome.

Back on the bikes, Diana and I continued north. We got off of 101 for Avenue of the Giants, which continues to contain very tall trees.

We arrived at the Super 8 in Fortuna just before dinnertime. I was very happy to see that Porter still lives at the Eel River Brewery. He said “merp” to me, which I’m sure means “hey, Carolyn, good to see you again this year; say hi to Peter for me!” Or maybe “you gonna eat that french fry, monkey?”

Dinner was fun and comprised a lot of really good beer and a lot of amazingly huge-portioned food. Thanks again to Gary (twist) for eating at least half of my burrito after it arrived on a forklift.

There was much good conversation, more beer, lots of laughs, some more beer, photos, beer, and then some beer. Diana and I were clearly the life of the party, as we crashed (figuratively) at around 8:30pm and were in bed by 9:15pm. Can’t take me anywhere.

Diana and me enjoying the Eel River Brewery wares:

Becky (Beck-zuki) dealing out shirts:

Dr Gil representin’ wid his STN hat, yo:

Nathan (MisterSmooth) telling us where it’s at:

To be continued…..