Monday, 5/16/2016
We left Fort Brag this morning after having an enjoyable hotel breakfast and great conversation with a couple from Quebec, Canada who spoke in broken English as they were French Canadian. They had 2 daughters, also like us and a couple GRANDS. While we have 8 GRANDS. He was a professor of Psychology at a university in Canada. As we have SILs who both majored in Psychology with one having a doctorate in and now in seminary. So we had some things in common.
People we meet:
A Lady lone rider named Diane on a Honda Valkyrie in Utah (Valkyrie is what Al use to drive, a great bike). She was from Oklahoma. And later we saw her again at another fuel up. She was headed to Idaho to see her brother.
Man from India, Bombay on a Triumph from San Francisco. He camped near us in the Sequoia Red Woods. We laughed with him as I told of my childhood post card picture experience of the drive-through Chandelier tree and unbelief. He said he saw a sketch of it in a grade school book, he laughed – not even a picture, but a sketch in a book. He said as a child – is this for real???
A young man from Michigan making much the same circle as us. With a log of over 5000 miles he was also from India. His name was HaShay. We told him of the other guy from India we met. I told him he also was driving a Triumph. He ask if it was white, I said yes it was. He had seen him from a distance he thought.
When you are all on the road heading the same direction you tend to see one another again and sometimes again.
We saw HaShay twice more.
Once along side the road at a look out and then again as we climbed the very high mountain on the lookout over San Francisco, going up and back down we waved and smiled.
We began our passage across the Golden Gate Bridge in none other than Monday 5 O’clock TRAFFIC. Al said – ‘here we go’ (that’s our trip catch phrase).
I said – we have conquered, rain sleet, snow and snail ( that’s my made up word for snow/hail) we will conquer this too. So straight through the peak traffic hour we went.
Stop light after stop light we sat as other motorcyclist did the legal lane splitting practice of their culture in California rushing by us as we were stopped in tandem, one would rush by us on either side. We laughed and said – NO WAY, as we sat and waited for lights to change neither of us would entertain the idea of driving our motorcycles through between cars sitting in traffic.
So we continued on our way stopping, starting and jagging lane changes, me keeping up with my Navigator Captain until we came out of it all and pulled into a McDonalds where Al got a cone and I got a chocolate milk shake and we plotted or next course of action south of San Francisco.
We spent the night where it is now morning as I script this in our tee pee. We are a few miles from Santa Cruz, CA.
And 50 miles from Big Sur.
It was late, cold and windy as we did rapid tent set up around 7:30 pm last night in an ocean view camp-ground. Both of us again exhausted, we could feel the strong ocean wind blowing on our tent. And we could here some near by surfer dudes camping across this grassy designated tent ground, as they cut up and laughed into the night, but did not even bother us. So tired, we both fell sound asleep.
happytrails2U 