The road won this round, though I didn’t really have a
fighting chance. My day began early. I went to KNBR and did a radio
interview
before I left. It went very well and I’ll be calling in and talking
with the
morning show guys, giving updates.
Tim Liotta and Brian Murphy (shown in the picture below) are
the hosts and great guys.
Brian I knew from when he covered golf for the San Francisco Chronicle
and he
is a great guy. The response from my 15 minutes of fame was pretty
impressive.
I received a bunch of email from people wishing me well and that was
great to
see.
I packed up the bike, which is a chore in itself and then
began to head towards a friend’s house who lives outside the city for
lunch.
We were to meet at
I took a scenic route from my motel to the
It is a great place, and claims to be the inventors of Irish
coffee. It is near the end of one of the cable car lines and gets a
fair share
of both locals and tourists.
As I got off the bike a woman approached me and asked if I
could help her with her motorcycle. She had a Suzuki with a dead
battery.
There is a book called the Biker’s Code and in it one of the
tenants is if a biker is broken down, you should help.
It was something I was all to glad to do. Elaine’s bike
wasn’t going anywhere. The battery had no pulse and jump starting it
wasn’t
going to bring it back to life. She had a four-year old battery and it
was done.
She had gotten a lot out of it, but was still surprised it wasn’t going
to be
able to be revived.
We tried to quick charge it, but that didn’t help either. She
needed a battery. My problem was I was supposed to be in
I hadn’t seen my friend Susan and her husband, Dan in quite
some time and she had to leave for work at 2, so the visit wasn’t going
to be
as long as any of us would have liked.
It was going to be even shorter if I didn’t get going.
Elaine, though, was stuck. Her friend wasn’t coming for a couple of
hours and
she would be forced to sit around and wait.
If I wasn’t meeting Susan, I could have run over and gotten
Elaine a battery and put it in and she could have been on her way. I
apologized
for having to leave, and Elaine was very gracious about it.
It bothered me though. This trip was about experiences and I
felt like I had passed one up.
The quandary stuck with me as I went up Highway 1 and through
the fog of the
Because of my delay I didn’t get nearly as far as I would
have hoped, but it didn’t bother me nearly as much as I thought it
would. The
drive up was filled with scenery. The range
On this day the fog was heavy and the temperatures low. I
spent the ride trying to block out the cold. I remembered a story I had
read
about Tibetan Monks sleeping in the
I channeled my own mind to do the same and failed miserably.
My powers of mediation last about 34 seconds and then I am wondering
why it is
so bloody cold in August.
Even with the cloud cover the views were spectacular.
Going north you have Redwood trees on your right and the
ocean on your left. Cypress Pines pop up as well and there are many
turnouts on
the left to sit and watch seagulls and pelicans fly by. The
picture above is of a beach called Arched Rock
Beach in Mendecino County. The fog was pretty bad as you can see
a little bit in the picture.
Several of the towns along the way look like they depend on
tourist dollars that just aren’t there. Stewarts Point, Elk, Albion are
all
stops that if you blink you miss, but all try and lure the road weary
to stop.
This highway will take a lot out of you. The turns and twists
of it are numerous and the temptation for me to quit was constantly
there. I
decided to press on to