Day 2
Obligatory bike photos
Had breakfast with old friends and roared out to the coast. Rte one was jammed so I turned it around and took
Sir Francis Drake, then let the nav take me on backroads through horse and cow country. Destination was Dinuccis, the best Italian food on the planet Earth…except for Aunt Joyce’s of course…my final destination.
I don’t know how this trip became so much about the food, but I bet it’s because I’ve been on a strict “My Fit Foods” diet for months, lost a bunch of weight, my friend David at work, reminded me vacations are not for dieting, so I’ve liberated myself for couple days anyway.
Today I Iearned a lot about the bike. Things like you can’t take super sharp tilted corners on the switchbacks with the new exhaust. The Softail used to grind on the foot rests, that’s normal. The road king is higher and shouldn’t grind at all…yet I heard a grinding sound on a left followed by a right sharp turn, I was going too fast, I miss my sports bike on the corners. I sent these pics to my mechanic, Johnny Rocket:
….he’s the kind of mechanic that will right off make you feel better by telling you a story about how what happened to you is nothing to worry about and how he layed down a brand new bike once. Plus you can’t even see it he said. True I had to use my cell phone to see these scrapes underneath, but the feeling it gave me is best described by saying: I’d rather it be my own skin, I know that’s fucked up but that’s who it feels to me. I had this fantasy that I’d go 8,000 miles without a wrinkle, It’s hard to break the cherry..but it always happens sooner or later, and it always sucks for a bit…needless to say, Johnny added that he’ll simply make some guards and now we know exactly where to put them. So stop whining and ride !
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Johnny’s the best.
What happened next made up for it. I rounded a couple switch backs and up a steep hill and rolled up on this
Then down the slope and found this
Spent the day listening to Huckabay
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Spending the night in Fort Bragg, tomorrow I cut across the redwood forest, to Mt Shasta, and to visit Scott Huckabay and Lisa.