Grants Pass to Fort Bragg

An epic day to ride yesterday – got a late start which inadvertently turned out in our favor. The roads in the mountains were wet by the time we were on them, but with temps in the 30’s they would have been frozen and slick had we been there much earlier.

Just as we came out of the tunnel on 199 and crossed into California the sun came out. Imagine that, Cold and wet in Oregon. Sunny in California. Were talking the distance of 1/2 mile. Both the mood and temp came up instantly. With the road bathed in sunshine we decended some “twisties” to the coast. After stopping for some gas and shedding some of the heavy clothes we rolled down the coastline on 101 to HWY 1. The North end of HWY 1 was made for bikes and we had a blast – probably good the thing was wet and sandy in spots so we kept the speed down a bit. We also played with the the on board camera’s a bit.

Pulled into Fort Bragg just as it started getting dark – filled up with gas and grabbed a crappy hotel room. We were sitting in the bar thinking about dinner and overheard a couple guys talking about how you better not leave the heat on in your room while you’re not there. John said to them “I just turned the heat up and we left, what’s wrong with that?” – One of the guys said “if you didn’t turn it up all the way you’re fine” – and the other said “don’t worry, it’s a dead heat”.  A dead Heat?

My buddy Bert (Jim Bratsanos) also played a little trick on us – he’s been watching our SPOT GPS realtime track (if you don’t know about this – check it out here) – when he saw we stopped for the night he started looking around. Found the gas station where we filled up and then he started calling hotels to see if he  could find us – he left a message on our room phone and sounded like a little kid who just stole his siblings Christmas present – he said he limited himself to 5 phone calls to see if he could find us – I think Bert may have some “issues” but it was fun!

We’re going to head down 101 today and probably end up a ways south of Monterey – down the Big Sir.

Cheers!