Colorado Cruiser: 2019 Pacific Coast Highway

2019 Pacific Coast Highway - Day 4 - Angels Camp to Susanville

I woke up with my right arm stiff and aching. I'm sure its the results of lots and lots of throttle twisting, braking, and turning. I've also had a problem with my right arm since I was in my mid 20s.

I used to play raquetball when I was younger. Then one day I went running across the court to hit a ball of the right wall. I don't remember if I got it or not, but after swinging, I slammed my right shoulder into the wall and felt a little pop.

Ever since that time, whenever I swing my right arm in an overhand motion, I get a sharp pain right at the back of the shoulder, and it often aches after working it hard.

I'd blame my poor performance in sports on the shoulder, but unfortunately I'm just an uncoordinated clutz.

Anyway, back to the topic. My shoulder ached and surprisingly, my left thumb was sore. Neither hurt much, and a good hot shower helped allot.

After 3 days of riding, I've gotten better at only bringing the things I really need into the room, and re-packing the bike. So I was out of the room by 7:15 and headed for, surprisingly, a waffle, a boiled egg, and a yogurt.

Everyone was fed, loaded, and ready to ride by 8:00.

The schedule said we were riding even farther than yesterday with about as many twisties, so I was psyching myself up for another grueling day, but it turned out to be one of the best riding days I have ever had in all my years of riding.

We rode Scenic highway 4 - click here to read about it

Highway 4 started right outside of town. The first impression was that it was just a normal road on a nice cool morning. But it quickly began to gently weave through the thickening forest and hills. The road was smooth with sweeping turns and great views.

Everyone was chatting on the CB about what a great road it was, at least those with radios which is about half of us.

It was hard to pick out particularly great sections because it was all so good.

We made our first stop after an hour at a scenic turnout. Everyone was taking each other's pictures, snacking, and adjusting bikes.

I always have a small collapsable tripod on my bike, so I pulled it out, mounted my phone, then yelled for everyone to come and take a picture. We began to line up with mountains in the background when someone said "I want to be over here". The whole group kind of broke up for a bit while different people tried to pose in different places.

Then Drew and Ron popped up on top of a big rock. Everyone gathered around the base, and a few more climbed up on top. I framed the picture, hit the timer and ran over to get in the shot, but there was no visible evidence of when the photo went off.

Someone suggested turning on the flash. So I did that and triggered it again. This time there was a satisfying flash when the photo was taken. It was a really good photo, good enough to post and share to everyone.

We are using the app PhotoCircle to share pictures among people. I haven't uploaded much yet because I'm busy writing this blog.

Eventually John rounded us all up and got us back on the road. But we hadn't got 20 minutes when the pulled off again, this time for some J-Johns by a lake. And because it was a lake, it turned into another long photo taking session. It took quite a while to rotate us all through the outhouses and back on the bikes.

From here the road got even better. The center stripe disappeared, the road narrowed just a bit, and twists got twistier. With John riding the lead and calling out oncoming traffic, it left me free to wander the whole width of the road and play allot more. It was very fun.

Oh, I haven't mentioned the temperature. We've been climbing this whole time. Most of the riders (all from Arizona) started out with some warm weather gear on. At the first stop several people added gear because the temp was down to 65 and by the second stop is was near 60, so even more gear went on. Well, one lady (We won't mention D'Nette's name) had put her rain pants on backward and spent a considerable amount of time trying to figure out what was wrong, then trying to fix it.

In the meantime, I was basking in the cool weather. It was the most comfortable I'd been on the entire trip.

We left the lake and continued riding that awesome road. We wove through a couple camp grounds and eventually came up on another lake. Not as big, but this time we rode right on the edge of the lake. I started my video camera and got just a small piece of the lake, but right after that, we sumitted and began to drop down the far side, so I got a video of some of the best descending road I've ever ridden.

The road condition deteriorated just a bit, but was still fine. We wound through some tight hairpins, but now I'd ridden enough and practiced enough to have my grove mostly back. Look through the turn, way down the road and the bike will follow to where you're looking. Works like a champ.

Watch the start of the ride down Highway 4 on youtube

We twisted and turned down a very steep section of road. Someone said they saw a sign saying 25% grade which is very steep. I didn't see it and don't really know which section that was because I was busy looking way down the road.

About half way down we came to a section that on the map, just looked like a big blob of ink. That was because the road wound back and forth so tight that you could barely tell when one loop of road overlapped the other.

If I was likeing the road, most of the rest were absolutely loving it because they were still far more comfortable in the turns than I was.

Unfortunately we eventually reached the bottom of the mountain. The center stripe came back, the road widened, and the traffic thickened. Our 4 hours of blissful riding was over and it was time to move on. Several people complained that we should just turn around and ride back, but we didn't.

The other highways were still nice, we were still in forest forest, It was cool, and we weren't in that much traffic.

We were heading to lake Tahoe which wasn't very far. There was more road construction and one lane restrictions. That seems to be everywhere in California. One time we sat at a light for 10 minutes, then when it finally turned, we went through 100 yard of one lane. There was no construction going on, and only a single car on the other side, Why the heck did we sit for 10 minutes? It made no sense.

We stopped just outside of Souh Tahoe to gas up and empty bladders. I'm not sure what alignment happened, but there was a line 10 people long to use the bathroom, and it never seemed to shrink.

We didn't really know where to go to eat, so we decided to wing it. We have a recurringly bad experience with "winging it" on this trip and it happened again. We rode slowly through town but nothing spoke to us, so we turned down a road that we thought would take us down closer to the lake.

The road led us out of town and far away from restaurants. We spent the next hour riding along the short and failing to find anything.

When we passed Emerald Bay, there were cars parked everywhere. I couldn't tell what was so awesome to see out there but even if we had wanted to stop, there was no way we would find parking for 8 motorcycles. Ross announced over the radio that he was going to stop and get a picture. We kept on going, trusting that we'd meet up later.

Rode through a few more small towns without finding anything until we got to Tahoe City where we pulled into a parking lot to regroup. We checked some of the local restaurants and found them packed and very expensive so once again we opted to continue riding toward Tukee. Ross caught us just before we left, so we were whole again.

In Tukee we got a bit separated due to some construction. Drew, Penny, and I wound up on the far side of the freeway in a small strip mall. Drew and Penny opted to get something at a Dairy Queen, but I wanted something different. I walked over to a small shop called Golden Rotisserie. It turned out to be a taqueria. I ordered a chicken burrito.

I think I won the lunch lottery. The burrito was great. Shredded chicken, refried beans, guac, and really good salsa to pour over every bite. And it was ready by the time I'd gotten my drink and a table.

Drew and Penny came over after their DQ meal and wished they'd come with me.

We checked on the rest of the crew. They had picked a pizza place and had just given their order so they would be a long time yet.

We decided not to wait for them and head for the hotel, so we saddled up and left.

The afternoon ride was nothing like the morning ride, but it was still pretty good. We avoided Reno by taking some rural highways across fields and through small towns.

While crossing one small valley, Drew mentioned on the radio that there was a big fire burning across the way. Sure enough, when I looked there was a massive plume of smoke rising from a distant mountain ridge. It was billowing very high into the atmosphere so it must have been a very hot fire.

We watched it until the road led us around the far end of the ridge where we took another road to get to the other side of the ridge. On that side we could see the plume of smoke rolling out across the valley and right across our path.

Half an hour later we rode into the smoke. The temperature actually dropped and it felt soft of damp in the smoke. The farther we went, the more orange everything around us became. Eventually it started to lighten and finally we rode out of the smoke.

Susanville was 25 miles beyond the smoke. We found our hotel and got checked in.

My clothes bag was mostly full of dirty clothes by this time, so I decided to do laundry. I changed into my swimsuit and a spare shirt, then started the laundry. I came back, showered, then switched the laundry to the dryer. Once that was done, I dressed and continued working on this blog.

At 5:45 I met up with the people that wanted dinner. We walked across the street to a mexican restaurant. Lots of teasing, joking, laughing and great stories were told. We laughed till my sides ached.

After dinner we headed in many different ways. Some to find playing cards, some to get ice cream, some to get laundry soap.

I came back to my room and typed more on the blog.

Ron and Karen messaged everyone to come to their room for ice cream, but to bring your own cup. Once again we laughed and told stories. I talked about my time as a prison service missionary and the federal prison complex in Florence. I served for 7 years.

We also talked about BYU winning its football game in double overtime. Drew was super happy about that.

Now its 9:30 an I'm nearly done with the blog.

Tomorrow we'll got to church at 9:00am, most of us wearing jeans and t'shirts, then we'll ride to Klamath and some of us will visit Crater Lake (Or Creator Lake as Drew calls it).

Route