n8 moto

Woke up early to head out towards San Diego. And meet Jay for breakfast. I told him my standard thing about trying to eat at a local establishment and he recommended a great cafe in El Segundo. It is a very nice part of the LA area, just south of LAX. We talked about old teachers & principals and how life had changed since we were young.

As much as I liked hanging with my buddy, I was extremely anxious to do the remaining 150 miles to San Diego. So I parted ways with Jay and hit the road once again. There isn’t a lot of good riding roads between LA and San Diego on the coast, so I just took the 405 to the 5 and on down. I did pull over at one rest area to get a pic of the bike and the coast.

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I started to get pretty excited after I hit Oceanside. I felt the perma-grin as I reached Encinitas. Getting off the Interstate I felt elated as I cruised down the local streets towards my house. Tracy had requested I let her know when I was close so I stopped to send a quick text. As I rounded the corner into the street, there she was waiting for me. What a great sight, my own home, my own bed and my future wife.

We celebrated my return with dinner that night at the Fish Market, downtown. The next day we did something I’ve wanted to do ever since I left…go to the beach. These pics were at Coronado, my favorite area beach.

What a great day to be home too, temps in the mid 70′s, sunny and beautiful with a slight breeze. Aaah, San Diego, I missed you.

Now that I’m home, I’ll take a week or two to reflect on my thoughts and then post a moto-adv wrap-up that discusses my trip and what I would and wouldn’t do next time. It’s been 9723 miles so far. And hopefully this is just the first of many trips like this.

Mike and I woke up early and got some breakfast. Not too early mind you, my ride today was real short, just from Oxnard to LA to visit my bro for a day or two. After a nice meal of bacon and eggs at a local cafe that Mike recommended, I hit the road.

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I went into Santa Monica via the coast, which was beautiful. Lots of traffic tho, so I didn’t get any pics, too busy trying not to get killed. Some sort of stinging insect flew inside my sleeve and started stinging me on the arm, which was painful until I could pull over and deal with it. I finally made it down to David’s work and we got some lunch at a local taco shop. Man, it was great to get So-Cal mexican food again. Been missing that a *lot*.

David lives up in the San Fernando Valley, just north of LA, famous for porn stars and hot weather. He recommended I take the coast back up and SR-27 (Topicanga Canyon Rd), which was nice and curvy. If it weren’t for the danged traffic, I could have had some real fun. But it was nice and pretty. Stopped at a park for a shot of the valley.

Finally made it to his doorstep in the late afternoon. It was about 105F out and my bike had been doing fine. But as I stepped off, I noticed I had a coolant leak that had just started a few min ago. I let the bike cool off as I tried to figure out what to do, I couldn’t really drive it anywhere. Luckily I had planned to stay with him the next day so I had a day to get it fixed.

Had dinner that night with our mutual college buddy Chris, who we both hadn’t seen in years. David knows some good places to eat, and we ate at the Peruvian place down the street, so good.

Woke up the next day and called around a few places to see what I could do. I took off all the panels on the bike (and the crash bars) to get to the hose. Apparently the pipe only has a lip on one side, so it looks like it had just vibrated off over time. I stopped by a local auto-parts store for coolant and a local grocery for distilled water. Snugged that baby back up and re-filled the radiator and over-flow tank to the right levels. Done.

Normally I would explore the towns I stay in a bit more but I’ve been up here a few dozen times so I just went for a mid-afternoon walk. I didn’t know LA County had a logo, cool.

Had dinner that night with David, his fiance Kavitha and my friend Jason. Had some great Italian food while David and Jason discussed the virtues of Redondo Beach, where David just bought a house. Jason and I stayed up late that night talking about my trip and his new job in San Francisco. Good luck up there man! I had also tried to meet up with my elementary school buddy Jay while I was in the area but we were just too tired to make it out, so we decided to get breakfast the next day.

Tomorrow, San Diego!

Woke up early to a dreary San Francisco, cloudy and about 50 degrees. I said good by to my guest host Brian who had to head off to work and packed my bags.

I knew parking in his garage would be tough but getting the bike out would be even tougher. I don’t know if you can tell from this pic but it is an *extreme* angle.

I hadn’t dropped the bike in the last 9000 miles, I sure wasn’t going to drop it now. So I ended up turning the bike around in the garage, powering out of there up to a flat spot at the top of the hill and coming back down to shut the garage. Whew. I headed down to a breakfast spot that Brian’s room-mate had recommended at Half-Moon bay. I can’t remember the name of the place but it’s at the intersection of Main and Miramontes. Something like “Main Street Cafe”. It was an excellent 60′s style diner and even the cooks were singing along to the hits on the juke-box.

After a good breakfast, I hit the coast. And of course, more sight-seeing tourists clogging up the roads. But I just took it easy and enjoyed the view.

I had decided earlier that I would stay the night in San Simeon. But after getting there quite a bit earlier than I expected, I decided to trek on down the coast. My new destination for the night was Oxnard, to visit my motorsports buddy Mike. I see him every year at the Monterey Historics and he’s always invited me down to his house so it’s high time I took him up on that invitation. Mostly uneventful, driving down the coast. Just nice and pretty.

The sun set on a beautiful Pacific ocean as I got into Oxnard. Again, my GPS took me on a scenic tour of the wrong part of town. My fault actually, I wasn’t paying attention. I finally rolled into Mike’s garage about 8pm. The car you see behind us is Mike’s Lotus 7 kit, with a Mazda rotary engine and a supercharger. I’ve been hearing about this rocketship for years, it was good to finally see it.

Mike’s is like me, been affected by the economy. But he’s been looking for work a lot longer than I. We had dinner that night, talked about economics, politics, race cars and women. I was thankful he shared his home with me on one of the longer of my riding days, a little over 400 miles and 14 hours on the road.

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Tomorrow, down to the Valley to see my brother!