Mesa Grande - Banners Grade - Sunrise Highway

zzkenoman, DocDanDC, SoCalMike, myself on (4) 2005 FJR's & my buddy Steve on his 2006 Hayabusa rode this planned ride today.

Weather was great, nice and cool in the morning (60-70) mid 80's by ride end.

Start: 07/08/06 07:08:25

Finish: 07/08/06 09:56:31

Distance: 126.7 mi

Map



Elevation Change



Pictures





This ride has been named the "Wild Kingdom" by SoCalMike.

I may leave some species out but here goes:

-Turkey

-Peacock

-Rabbit

-Sparrow

-Squirrel

-Deer

-Bull

-Cow

-Various Lizards

-& one juicy bug that covered a 4" diameter circle on DocDanDC's helmet

I wish one of us had a video camera running when we came across the cows.

They were close enough to reach out and slap them as we went by!

More than one on either side of the road inside/outside of a shady turn, just grazin away...

Definately would have made a bad ending to the day if they were aggressive. :blink:

Other than the zoo (80% contained in the Mesa Grande area of the ride) we had a perfect ride.

We left early enough to avoid the majority of the weekend traffic.

I can only think of 2-3 areas where we wished the cage in front of us would just pull over already.

Sunrise highway had a squidly moment when some joker on a CBR1000 thought it would be cool to pass on my left on a blind curve with two HD's coming the other way. Jackass couldn't wait the 10 seconds for us to get around the corner :angry2:

We finished out the morning with a great brunch at Barona Valley Ranch

For future reference (2) people can get 20% off the buffet per casino card.

Finally, here is the GPS track (just unzip & open with Google Earth)

(previous Google Earth post here)

Hope you enjoy!

We sure did

Great pic of all the bikes....

Thanks...

Whip

That was a great ride with a lot of scenery throughout! :yahoo: :yahoo: ... and yes those cows did scare the hell outta me when we came around that corner -- especially the one that decided "NOW" would be a good time to make a left turn into my lane. All I had time to think was "this can't be good"... your list of critters was fairly complete and we did manage to avoid most of them. I'm still trying to figure out what kinda varmint hit Dan's helmet. That was a pretty big splat! That picture could definitely be used as advertising for why you would want a full-face helmet. I can't imagine getting hit in the face by whatever that used to be... Here's a couple more pics:















More pics...

Great pics, guys !! Looks like a great ride !!!

Hey ZZ, can you give us some specs and piccis for the spraymister you have sitting there?

Thanks !!

wow ZZ,

Those reflectors are really noticable! See and be seen right?

I forgot to add a sighting I had on the way home from the casino after brunch

At the same light we turned right onto Wildcat Canyon I saw an old guy in a big boat of a Buick parked on the back of a guys (looked to me like a red Vmax)

Old guy rear-ended the biker at the light.

Buick was wedged up there pretty good.

Rider was OK, he was trying to get the Buick off his bike as I went by.

pawtracks said:

I forgot to add a sighting I had on the way home from the casino after brunch
At the same light we turned right onto Wildcat Canyon I saw an old guy in a big boat of a Buick parked on the back of a guys (looked to me like a red Vmax)

Old guy rear-ended the biker at the light.

Buick was wedged up there pretty good.

Rider was OK, he was trying to get the Buick off his bike as I went by.

Click to expand...

I don't know if that is better than trying to get the cow off the bike, or bike off the cow. Like the ones we encounted that day!

That was a very good ride! Nice to meet you all and hope to ride again with you. I'll watch out for those few sneaky off camber turns too.

Looks like a great ride! Who has that bike with the reflectors? I'd like to see more details on that.

OrangevaleFJR said:

Looks like a great ride! Who has that bike with the reflectors? I'd like to see more details on that.

Click to expand...

That is zzkenoman, it is just reflective tape put on to form a stripe.

I have only ridden with him during the day but you can see from the camera flash it really lights up.

In the light it looks like silver/white tape from 10 feet away, up close/certain angles you can tell it is reflective.

He has stripes on the sides, between the headlights and red/white pieces on the rear bags if I recall correctly.

(At work many pictures are blocked from my :angry2: firewall) I end up reading many posts twice since pictures tell most of the story.