Category: On The Road

Washed my socks and pants.
Last night we left most of our kit in the garage downstairs. It’s the same garage that the ants use.
So, I’ve boil washed everything to kill the little bastids. I discovered this after doing the to camera piece.

So, nothing doing distance wise. Tom has his new tyres and is arranging for the petrol cap to be shipped on. I’ve been doing communications bits and bobs and charging batteries…and killing ants.

You do know, don’t you, that you can help support the charities I’m riding for, simply by buying books, that you were going to be buying anyway, from www.threecupsoftea.com ?
It’s an online bookstore that offers discount prices on books (like amazon) and each time you buy, some of that money goes to the charities, so that’s a book, a discount, smug satisfaction at helping overcome ignorance (your’s from reading the book and the kid’s from the schools that will be built and the teachers that will be provided, or the additional cultural programmes that can be run) all for money you were going to spend anyway…what a fab bargain that is!
www.threecupsoftea.com…take a look, then buy a book.

I’ve decided that there’s a big difference between a direction and a destination.

If you are heading in the right direction, then you are making progress, whatever happens. If you set a destination and don’t make it, you have failed.

It’s a mindset.

Anyway, I know some of you folks are thinking, this is all well and good, but how about some gratuitous tarmac shots, with sexy curves…

What you don’t see is the drop on the right. Birds nest on the cliff face and are safe, that’s how sheer and steep it is.

The highlight was breakfast with Randy. He was riding the first GS800 I’ve seen moving. He paid for breakfast too, so a thoroughly nice bloke. It sort of went down hill after that. 101 and freeways until I caught Tom in Malibu. we went to Santa Monica Pier for lunch. Piers always seem so jaded and in need of some tlc, this one was no exception. 

After lunch, over to Hollywood, where we rode around Beverly Hills and then rode straight back onto the highway. We should have stopped our relentless quest for distance in exchange for a few moments of quality, tea on the grass in front of the Hollywood sign or something. Instead we opted to sit in a traffic jam than ran on for hours, all the way to San Diego. So I’m afraid that once again, no tea making chances.

Things will need to change.

Hit the Pacific Coast road today. The 1 and 101. Have some road footage, but no tea drinking footage, as at 4pm I was on a freeway and had been and still were to be for a few hours, just coming out of San Francisco.

Tom and I had split up early in the day, as I wanted to stop and take pictures and Tom was on distance to cover mode. 

I didn’t catch up with him all day and when I stopped in Paso Rubles, he was 45 minutes down the road.

Still it enabled me to run around the motel room stark naked!

Far better than day one. Mt Shasta looming large from the living room window. A ggod nights sleep and then some spectacular riding on Cecilville Rd Route 3 across towards the coast. The roads went from sweeping low country to tight blind switchbacks on single track with sheer drops and no barriers.

The needles I had must have worked better than I expected, because I didn’t get off and walk.

Mid day we were in Orleans, with a good little hardware store and a cafe where the waitress should find another job…is there a job where insolence is required!

Later in the day, the Avenue of Giants, somewhere I’d passed by but not through before. Very impressive.

Took tea at 4pm (little unusual- watch the vid), then ended the night in Ukiah. A long day, with challenges I’ve faced up to (vertigo) and overcome…primarily because there wasn’t an option to not go on.