1stepcloser
Member
The plan was to ride a Saddlesore 1K and explore central Nevada’s desolate “Extraterrestrial Highway” looping around the upper part of Nevada back to California around Mono Lake, then an easy cruise back down Hwy 395 through Mammoth lakes. We would take a detour through Death Valley on the way into Nevada. We set a date for Monday April 8th.
Saturday April 6th comes around and the sky is heavy with what passes in California for rain, as it has been on and off for the past couple of days. Todd, my riding partner, sends me a text in the afternoon; one of the back roads through the desert we planned to ride looks to be in bad condition, he is changing the route slightly. Okay with me, Thanks for detailing the route!
Sunday morning, April 7th. I get another text from Todd. Weather is looking bad along our planned route. High winds and rain. I hate riding in wind.
I give him a call to discuss; he has worked up an alternate route up the coast, through San Francisco and Sacramento, and back. All highway though. I didn’t really want to do an all interstate ride, but… still gonna ride. I ask him to email me the route.
“I sent you two” he texts me.
Hmmm, the second is nothing but a straight line up through the central valley of California. “Boring!” I say to myself. I present an alternate route through Arizona that we throw out due to high winds and potential rain. As I’m mulling over the Coastal route, I get another text a few minutes later; “Wanna go for 1500? A turn around trip to Grants Pass, Oregon would do it”
A closer look at the routes confirms that’s the second route he sent; 755 miles of interstate right through the heart of California. The weather looked promising as the system that had been hanging off the coast was finally moving east. We should have clear skies for the trip.
So, without much more thought it was set. We were going to ride our first BBG…. How hard could it be?
My alarm goes off at 02:45. A quick shower, a cup of strong coffee and I’m out the door headed to a local bank for my start receipt.
03:22 shows on the receipt. Damn it’s early, but not too cold, temp is 56, I head off to meet Todd near his place where he will get his start. I stop at a Chevron a short distance before meeting him to fill my tank and get a receipt from here also, thinking that if I have to, I can scrub the bank receipt for time, but more importantly, I needed the fuel.
03:57 shows on the Chevron receipt. I meet Todd two minutes later, he hits up the ATM and together we jump on the 405 north and head out of town. It’s a nice ride, the air is heavy, we get some attempts at rain a couple of times as we headed through the Valley. We pick up the 5, head over the Grapevine and drop into the Central Valley. As we take the 99/I-5 split I notice there is a headwind building but the skies are clear and as the sun starts to come up we are making good time, the bike is humming along, my new Russell Day-Long saddle feels great, and I notice that my fuel gauge is now blinking at me. Strange, I think out loud, I was expecting to go 200 to 220 miles between stops, but… as we head into the first stop, all seemed pretty good. 2 hours 40 minutes and 181 miles have passed. I fill the tank with 5.1 gallons, shoot, that’s just over 35mpg. Must be the wind… I hope it doesn’t get any worse.
06:37 shows on the Shell receipt and we hit the 5 again to go north. The wind really is starting to blow and is becoming more unpredictable regarding direction. Sand blows across the highway in little swirling motions, and the air is thick with dew. This area is well known for fog, Tule fog, as its known, has been the cause of several very bad accidents on this stretch of the highway. The building wind is still mostly a headwind, but occasionally it pushes me around a bit. It’s a little more work to maintain speed, and we slow up a bit due to the ever increasing wind velocity. The ride through here though is dull and uneventful. Mile after mile of farmland. It never seems to change or end for that matter, just endless farmland. I again notice my fuel gauge taunting me. What the hell? Barely 130 miles show on the trip meter! We exit the freeway at another Shell station where I again take on 5 gallons, but the same 2 hours 20 minutes have elapsed. Fuel mileage is down to 27 mpg, and the wind is really howling now.
I should note here that my tank holds 6.6 gallons and I could have pressed on another 30 or more miles, but when that damn E is flashing at me, I get nervous and wanna stop. The IBA tip 19 is ringing in my head “get gas BEFORE you need it.” That’s a good rule. Todd on the other hand has a fuel cell on his big Kawasaki Vulcan Voyager giving him around 10 gallons. I’m sure he was annoyed at my constant need to stop. It wouldn’t have mattered though, if it wasn’t for fuel it would have been for natures call. I have a walnut sized bladder apparently.
08:35 and we hit the highway north again. Damn! The wind is getting really crazy, and I’m starting to feel it in my shoulders from keeping the bike straight during the powerful gusts. About 35 miles later the 5 heads off to the right towards Sacramento. As we make the sweeper the wind instantly is coming hard from the left and really tries to push me off the highway. Okay! You have my full attention now! I look ahead at Todd and it doesn’t look like he is battling as much, but his bike does weigh 300 pounds more than mine… I lower the windscreen partly to try to reduce my area and partly because I fear the thing will snap off the way it is flexing around. We keep going through Stockton and across more open space with no end to the winds. Things get real dicey as we make our way through Sacramento, the city buildings and freeway walls created some ridiculous wind vortexes. Another freeway direction change as we made our way past the airport and the wind has now changed to my right side, and was as powerful as it has been the entire trip. This is really starting to get a little scary. Now, I love riding my bike, but I really don’t like riding across bridges, they make me uncomfortable for some unknown reason, and coming up is a very long bridge above a very open space with no protection on either side. This was by far the single worst minute of the entire trip for me. I was cranked over heavily to my right, slowed down to 55 or so and had a death grip on my bars, if I could have closed my eyes I ‘m sure I would have. After what seemed like forever the other end of the bridge finally arrived but, much to my dismay, the wind sure didn’t let up. I’m already tired and my shoulders are reminding me they have been wrestling the bars for the last 200 or so miles. When my fuel gauge gets my attention I am actually grateful to get off the highway to refuel in a little place called Woodland. Again 2 hours and 20 minutes have passed, only 137 miles though. As we stop at the ARCO, the first thing Todd says to me is “Damn, this wind sucks!” I could only agree. We are 450 miles into this and a long way to go. We talk briefly about the time, I go inside to warm up a bit; we admire how nice the waving grass in the fields looks. It’s actually quite mesmerizing from inside the building, this is a really beautiful state, but we can’t really do anything else but move on, so we do.
10:52. Time doesn’t seem to care about the weather conditions. It shows no mercy.
We just rode. Past endless farms and ranch areas. I marveled at how we had been on this highway for well over three hundred miles and the farms just go on and on. That’s a lot of agriculture. Somewhere after another hundred or so miles have passed I realize that the wind has subsided and the temperature, which has remained at a steady 58 degrees, has risen to 62. The sun felt good, the winds were milder, the miles were clicking away, and we were still going north. As we approached the town of Redding I decided to exit for fuel again and I needed to stretch a bit after the windy mess of the last 6 hours. We had travelled 140 miles this leg in 2 hours 10 minutes.
13:12. Todd has a minor issue on the big Kawasaki; I had to wait in a line to use the restroom. We ate a little bit of food, drank a lot of water and talked about the fact we were behind schedule. We needed to be in Grants Pass, Oregon by 3:30 PM to make the turn around and get back. It wasn’t looking promising. We filled the tanks and hit the road... Too late to turn back now. The weather was very nice now, and as we moved from the valley into the Shasta forest area it really was a pleasant ride. We passed over Lake Shasta with a snow covered Mount Shasta looming on the horizon winding our way over and through the mountains then finally passing into Oregon was just pleasant and uneventful. We soon arrived at our halfway and turn around point, Grants Pass, Oregon. We were both tired, and feeling a bit dejected as it was 4:00 in the afternoon. We rode 186 miles in just about 3 hours flat. We both knew that this is still going to be a Bun Burner ride and after a quick discussion about what to do, decide that neither of us wanted to rest here and have to ride back through the forest in the dark. We filled the tanks, I took a round of vitamins and some ibuprofen, ate something and we took off headed home.
16:14 This all seems like Déjà vu. The ride back into California went really well, My fuel mileage was back to normal, The air was cool and crisp, I was feeling better as the Ibuprofen was beginning to relieve the aches in my shoulders and back and the vitamins were relieving the fatigue. We passed the northbound Redding stop and kept a nice pace into Cottonwood where we stopped again for fuel. We apparently were both doing the same mental calculations on the road as we both came into the Sunshine Gas station feeling really good and deciding that we might be able to pull this off as a BBG if we can keep as good a pace as we just did. And as long as the wind isn’t howling like it was earlier. Todd checked the weather, looks like the winds have calmed through most of the valley, I decided to throw out my initial start time from the bank and go with the first fuel stop where I met Todd. I’ll still make the miles; I will just have to ride with Todd back to the start point. “Either we both make it or we fail together” I thought. We agreed to keep going, filled the tanks and took off. We travelled 196 miles in 3 hours.
19:12 PM. We rode on down the freeway, the wind that had tortured us so badly on the way up had yet to return, my FJR was as smooth as could be, my aches from the day were in check. One thing I hadn’t noticed was that my butt was not sore. Not at all. Dang! That Russell seat really works! We rode through a very pretty sunset into a nice crisp evening back through the (never-ending) farmlands. Heading toward Sacramento I began to get uneasy about “The Bridge” I knew was coming. The wind had been mild and coming from the back giving us a nice assist, but as we wound through the area the warning signs were up “GUSTY WIND AREA NEXT 9 MILES”. I felt a little nudge once in a while, the bridge arrived and I passed over it with no real fanfare. We cruised through the city proper, kept right on past our northern woodland stop and on into Lodi, California. Oh lord, I hope we don’t get stuck. We pulled into the Shell feeling good and confident that we are going to make it, as long as nothing happens. We filled the tanks, ate, drank and took off. We travelled 184 miles in 2 hours 50 minutes.
22:02 PM. There is no solace in the dark of night. I kept anticipating the winds to return. So far they have been at our back, making a nice quiet ride with great fuel mileage. Every so often we would pass a highway information sign that read “GUSTY WINDS AHEAD” but so far, they stayed on our tails. I started to get a little road weary thinking “when is this road going to end?” I mean there is nothing to see but an endless ribbon of road that stays just out of view at the edge of my headlight, occasionally passing a car or truck, longing for a city or something to break up the inky black monotony. It finally came in the form of a city called Kettleman. We exited for fuel, Todd calculated that we had about 45 minutes to spare if we keep this pace, no time for another fuel stop. We had 200 miles to go in a little over 3 hours. We had traveled 183 miles in 2 hours 40 minutes.
12:41AM. There should be something which marks the end of one day and the beginning of another. I mean something more than the sweeping hand of a clock. I’m really tired.
But now I want that BBG certification. We had come too far to fail. I took a couple more ibuprofen to keep the aches at bay. I knew that soon we would leave this valley and head up toward the Grapevine again and while it was a refreshing thought I also was thinking that it has been a very pleasant 60 degrees the entire night and it was likely going to get cold over the pass. We finally rounded the 99/I-5 connection again and headed toward the pass, as we began to climb we were warned of road construction ahead. “Dammit! We can’t have any delays…”
The traffic was light and we climbed up and over the pass without too much trouble, even having a lane closure to deal with, keeping an eye on the clock and constantly doing the math in my head. We could make this… if we don’t have any trouble. We pressed on over the hills, we did get buffeted around a bit on the pass, but nothing compared to earlier in the day. The temps dropped to 48 degrees but fortunately not any colder. As we dropped down into Castaic the I-5 was wide open and hauling the mail! We cruised on down and connected with the 405 with time to spare. ROAD CONSTRUCTION AHEAD we were warned. We still rode. 55 MPH ZONE - STRICTLY ENFORCED we were warned again. We still rode. THREE LEFT LANES CLOSED AHEAD we were warned. NO!! not now. We were fortunate that traffic was light at this hour and the few cars on the road managed to get through the one lane fairly efficiently and we again were on the gas heading home. Time was ticking away though.
The highway information board overhead cried out to us 405 SOUTH CLOSED AT SEAL BEACH – FOLLOW DETOUR What? How can this be? It’s Tuesday morning (sort of) they can’t have closed the freeway! A few miles more we find the same message on another board 405 SOUTH CLOSED AT SEAL BEACH – FOLLOW DETOUR. I am really panicked at this point. We are no more than 10 miles or so from our target and have maybe 30 minutes to go…. Todd is leading this leg since he knows the area better than I. He makes a quick lane change and jumps off the freeway at Studebaker rd. I think to myself “I know he has a plan.” Again traffic at this hour is very light, we make a left, another left and cruise up a long road, passing a couple of Fuel stations, I am really nervous about the time as we are down to less than 20 minutes. I see a Chevron up ahead and think “I’m hitting that place no matter what!” Todd pulls into the Chevron ahead of me, we pull up to the pumps, both fill up and print out a receipt; 03:43:49. We rode 212 miles in 3 hours 2 minutes; we completed the ride with 14 minutes to spare. It seemed rather anti-climactic. I still had to ride home, which is 30 miles away, it’s too early and were both too tired for breakfast. “Which way is the 22?” I ask Todd. He points me in the direction I need to go, “thanks for the ride! Talk to you soon.” and with that it was over.
03:43 I ride home slowly. This is very familiar territory; I ride this route to and from work every day. I tell myself not to be confident, but to pay attention. This is the last part of the trip, and I need to make it home safely. I wind my way up the 57 and through Carbon Canyon to home, into the garage, safe. My wife has left a note on the garage door welcoming me home, reminding me she loves me. I pull the earplugs from my ears and it seems comical at how noisy everything suddenly sounds; I take off my gear in the garage to try not to disturb her. The light is on dimly in the dining room, I sit down for a few minutes to say hi to the dogs… It occurs to me Im very cold very hungry and very tired, but mostly Im feeling very happy and just a little bit proud. We just completed a Bun Burner Gold ride! Its 4:30 in the morning and I’m quietly going to bed. She wakes up anyway, we visit for a while before she gets up for work; we share a cup of coffee together. I figure I’ll shower and get some sleep. I’m asleep before she leaves. I love her too. It’s a very nice ending to a very long day.
Saturday April 6th comes around and the sky is heavy with what passes in California for rain, as it has been on and off for the past couple of days. Todd, my riding partner, sends me a text in the afternoon; one of the back roads through the desert we planned to ride looks to be in bad condition, he is changing the route slightly. Okay with me, Thanks for detailing the route!
Sunday morning, April 7th. I get another text from Todd. Weather is looking bad along our planned route. High winds and rain. I hate riding in wind.
I give him a call to discuss; he has worked up an alternate route up the coast, through San Francisco and Sacramento, and back. All highway though. I didn’t really want to do an all interstate ride, but… still gonna ride. I ask him to email me the route.
“I sent you two” he texts me.
Hmmm, the second is nothing but a straight line up through the central valley of California. “Boring!” I say to myself. I present an alternate route through Arizona that we throw out due to high winds and potential rain. As I’m mulling over the Coastal route, I get another text a few minutes later; “Wanna go for 1500? A turn around trip to Grants Pass, Oregon would do it”
A closer look at the routes confirms that’s the second route he sent; 755 miles of interstate right through the heart of California. The weather looked promising as the system that had been hanging off the coast was finally moving east. We should have clear skies for the trip.
So, without much more thought it was set. We were going to ride our first BBG…. How hard could it be?
My alarm goes off at 02:45. A quick shower, a cup of strong coffee and I’m out the door headed to a local bank for my start receipt.
03:22 shows on the receipt. Damn it’s early, but not too cold, temp is 56, I head off to meet Todd near his place where he will get his start. I stop at a Chevron a short distance before meeting him to fill my tank and get a receipt from here also, thinking that if I have to, I can scrub the bank receipt for time, but more importantly, I needed the fuel.
03:57 shows on the Chevron receipt. I meet Todd two minutes later, he hits up the ATM and together we jump on the 405 north and head out of town. It’s a nice ride, the air is heavy, we get some attempts at rain a couple of times as we headed through the Valley. We pick up the 5, head over the Grapevine and drop into the Central Valley. As we take the 99/I-5 split I notice there is a headwind building but the skies are clear and as the sun starts to come up we are making good time, the bike is humming along, my new Russell Day-Long saddle feels great, and I notice that my fuel gauge is now blinking at me. Strange, I think out loud, I was expecting to go 200 to 220 miles between stops, but… as we head into the first stop, all seemed pretty good. 2 hours 40 minutes and 181 miles have passed. I fill the tank with 5.1 gallons, shoot, that’s just over 35mpg. Must be the wind… I hope it doesn’t get any worse.
06:37 shows on the Shell receipt and we hit the 5 again to go north. The wind really is starting to blow and is becoming more unpredictable regarding direction. Sand blows across the highway in little swirling motions, and the air is thick with dew. This area is well known for fog, Tule fog, as its known, has been the cause of several very bad accidents on this stretch of the highway. The building wind is still mostly a headwind, but occasionally it pushes me around a bit. It’s a little more work to maintain speed, and we slow up a bit due to the ever increasing wind velocity. The ride through here though is dull and uneventful. Mile after mile of farmland. It never seems to change or end for that matter, just endless farmland. I again notice my fuel gauge taunting me. What the hell? Barely 130 miles show on the trip meter! We exit the freeway at another Shell station where I again take on 5 gallons, but the same 2 hours 20 minutes have elapsed. Fuel mileage is down to 27 mpg, and the wind is really howling now.
I should note here that my tank holds 6.6 gallons and I could have pressed on another 30 or more miles, but when that damn E is flashing at me, I get nervous and wanna stop. The IBA tip 19 is ringing in my head “get gas BEFORE you need it.” That’s a good rule. Todd on the other hand has a fuel cell on his big Kawasaki Vulcan Voyager giving him around 10 gallons. I’m sure he was annoyed at my constant need to stop. It wouldn’t have mattered though, if it wasn’t for fuel it would have been for natures call. I have a walnut sized bladder apparently.
08:35 and we hit the highway north again. Damn! The wind is getting really crazy, and I’m starting to feel it in my shoulders from keeping the bike straight during the powerful gusts. About 35 miles later the 5 heads off to the right towards Sacramento. As we make the sweeper the wind instantly is coming hard from the left and really tries to push me off the highway. Okay! You have my full attention now! I look ahead at Todd and it doesn’t look like he is battling as much, but his bike does weigh 300 pounds more than mine… I lower the windscreen partly to try to reduce my area and partly because I fear the thing will snap off the way it is flexing around. We keep going through Stockton and across more open space with no end to the winds. Things get real dicey as we make our way through Sacramento, the city buildings and freeway walls created some ridiculous wind vortexes. Another freeway direction change as we made our way past the airport and the wind has now changed to my right side, and was as powerful as it has been the entire trip. This is really starting to get a little scary. Now, I love riding my bike, but I really don’t like riding across bridges, they make me uncomfortable for some unknown reason, and coming up is a very long bridge above a very open space with no protection on either side. This was by far the single worst minute of the entire trip for me. I was cranked over heavily to my right, slowed down to 55 or so and had a death grip on my bars, if I could have closed my eyes I ‘m sure I would have. After what seemed like forever the other end of the bridge finally arrived but, much to my dismay, the wind sure didn’t let up. I’m already tired and my shoulders are reminding me they have been wrestling the bars for the last 200 or so miles. When my fuel gauge gets my attention I am actually grateful to get off the highway to refuel in a little place called Woodland. Again 2 hours and 20 minutes have passed, only 137 miles though. As we stop at the ARCO, the first thing Todd says to me is “Damn, this wind sucks!” I could only agree. We are 450 miles into this and a long way to go. We talk briefly about the time, I go inside to warm up a bit; we admire how nice the waving grass in the fields looks. It’s actually quite mesmerizing from inside the building, this is a really beautiful state, but we can’t really do anything else but move on, so we do.
10:52. Time doesn’t seem to care about the weather conditions. It shows no mercy.
We just rode. Past endless farms and ranch areas. I marveled at how we had been on this highway for well over three hundred miles and the farms just go on and on. That’s a lot of agriculture. Somewhere after another hundred or so miles have passed I realize that the wind has subsided and the temperature, which has remained at a steady 58 degrees, has risen to 62. The sun felt good, the winds were milder, the miles were clicking away, and we were still going north. As we approached the town of Redding I decided to exit for fuel again and I needed to stretch a bit after the windy mess of the last 6 hours. We had travelled 140 miles this leg in 2 hours 10 minutes.
13:12. Todd has a minor issue on the big Kawasaki; I had to wait in a line to use the restroom. We ate a little bit of food, drank a lot of water and talked about the fact we were behind schedule. We needed to be in Grants Pass, Oregon by 3:30 PM to make the turn around and get back. It wasn’t looking promising. We filled the tanks and hit the road... Too late to turn back now. The weather was very nice now, and as we moved from the valley into the Shasta forest area it really was a pleasant ride. We passed over Lake Shasta with a snow covered Mount Shasta looming on the horizon winding our way over and through the mountains then finally passing into Oregon was just pleasant and uneventful. We soon arrived at our halfway and turn around point, Grants Pass, Oregon. We were both tired, and feeling a bit dejected as it was 4:00 in the afternoon. We rode 186 miles in just about 3 hours flat. We both knew that this is still going to be a Bun Burner ride and after a quick discussion about what to do, decide that neither of us wanted to rest here and have to ride back through the forest in the dark. We filled the tanks, I took a round of vitamins and some ibuprofen, ate something and we took off headed home.
16:14 This all seems like Déjà vu. The ride back into California went really well, My fuel mileage was back to normal, The air was cool and crisp, I was feeling better as the Ibuprofen was beginning to relieve the aches in my shoulders and back and the vitamins were relieving the fatigue. We passed the northbound Redding stop and kept a nice pace into Cottonwood where we stopped again for fuel. We apparently were both doing the same mental calculations on the road as we both came into the Sunshine Gas station feeling really good and deciding that we might be able to pull this off as a BBG if we can keep as good a pace as we just did. And as long as the wind isn’t howling like it was earlier. Todd checked the weather, looks like the winds have calmed through most of the valley, I decided to throw out my initial start time from the bank and go with the first fuel stop where I met Todd. I’ll still make the miles; I will just have to ride with Todd back to the start point. “Either we both make it or we fail together” I thought. We agreed to keep going, filled the tanks and took off. We travelled 196 miles in 3 hours.
19:12 PM. We rode on down the freeway, the wind that had tortured us so badly on the way up had yet to return, my FJR was as smooth as could be, my aches from the day were in check. One thing I hadn’t noticed was that my butt was not sore. Not at all. Dang! That Russell seat really works! We rode through a very pretty sunset into a nice crisp evening back through the (never-ending) farmlands. Heading toward Sacramento I began to get uneasy about “The Bridge” I knew was coming. The wind had been mild and coming from the back giving us a nice assist, but as we wound through the area the warning signs were up “GUSTY WIND AREA NEXT 9 MILES”. I felt a little nudge once in a while, the bridge arrived and I passed over it with no real fanfare. We cruised through the city proper, kept right on past our northern woodland stop and on into Lodi, California. Oh lord, I hope we don’t get stuck. We pulled into the Shell feeling good and confident that we are going to make it, as long as nothing happens. We filled the tanks, ate, drank and took off. We travelled 184 miles in 2 hours 50 minutes.
22:02 PM. There is no solace in the dark of night. I kept anticipating the winds to return. So far they have been at our back, making a nice quiet ride with great fuel mileage. Every so often we would pass a highway information sign that read “GUSTY WINDS AHEAD” but so far, they stayed on our tails. I started to get a little road weary thinking “when is this road going to end?” I mean there is nothing to see but an endless ribbon of road that stays just out of view at the edge of my headlight, occasionally passing a car or truck, longing for a city or something to break up the inky black monotony. It finally came in the form of a city called Kettleman. We exited for fuel, Todd calculated that we had about 45 minutes to spare if we keep this pace, no time for another fuel stop. We had 200 miles to go in a little over 3 hours. We had traveled 183 miles in 2 hours 40 minutes.
12:41AM. There should be something which marks the end of one day and the beginning of another. I mean something more than the sweeping hand of a clock. I’m really tired.
But now I want that BBG certification. We had come too far to fail. I took a couple more ibuprofen to keep the aches at bay. I knew that soon we would leave this valley and head up toward the Grapevine again and while it was a refreshing thought I also was thinking that it has been a very pleasant 60 degrees the entire night and it was likely going to get cold over the pass. We finally rounded the 99/I-5 connection again and headed toward the pass, as we began to climb we were warned of road construction ahead. “Dammit! We can’t have any delays…”
The traffic was light and we climbed up and over the pass without too much trouble, even having a lane closure to deal with, keeping an eye on the clock and constantly doing the math in my head. We could make this… if we don’t have any trouble. We pressed on over the hills, we did get buffeted around a bit on the pass, but nothing compared to earlier in the day. The temps dropped to 48 degrees but fortunately not any colder. As we dropped down into Castaic the I-5 was wide open and hauling the mail! We cruised on down and connected with the 405 with time to spare. ROAD CONSTRUCTION AHEAD we were warned. We still rode. 55 MPH ZONE - STRICTLY ENFORCED we were warned again. We still rode. THREE LEFT LANES CLOSED AHEAD we were warned. NO!! not now. We were fortunate that traffic was light at this hour and the few cars on the road managed to get through the one lane fairly efficiently and we again were on the gas heading home. Time was ticking away though.
The highway information board overhead cried out to us 405 SOUTH CLOSED AT SEAL BEACH – FOLLOW DETOUR What? How can this be? It’s Tuesday morning (sort of) they can’t have closed the freeway! A few miles more we find the same message on another board 405 SOUTH CLOSED AT SEAL BEACH – FOLLOW DETOUR. I am really panicked at this point. We are no more than 10 miles or so from our target and have maybe 30 minutes to go…. Todd is leading this leg since he knows the area better than I. He makes a quick lane change and jumps off the freeway at Studebaker rd. I think to myself “I know he has a plan.” Again traffic at this hour is very light, we make a left, another left and cruise up a long road, passing a couple of Fuel stations, I am really nervous about the time as we are down to less than 20 minutes. I see a Chevron up ahead and think “I’m hitting that place no matter what!” Todd pulls into the Chevron ahead of me, we pull up to the pumps, both fill up and print out a receipt; 03:43:49. We rode 212 miles in 3 hours 2 minutes; we completed the ride with 14 minutes to spare. It seemed rather anti-climactic. I still had to ride home, which is 30 miles away, it’s too early and were both too tired for breakfast. “Which way is the 22?” I ask Todd. He points me in the direction I need to go, “thanks for the ride! Talk to you soon.” and with that it was over.
03:43 I ride home slowly. This is very familiar territory; I ride this route to and from work every day. I tell myself not to be confident, but to pay attention. This is the last part of the trip, and I need to make it home safely. I wind my way up the 57 and through Carbon Canyon to home, into the garage, safe. My wife has left a note on the garage door welcoming me home, reminding me she loves me. I pull the earplugs from my ears and it seems comical at how noisy everything suddenly sounds; I take off my gear in the garage to try not to disturb her. The light is on dimly in the dining room, I sit down for a few minutes to say hi to the dogs… It occurs to me Im very cold very hungry and very tired, but mostly Im feeling very happy and just a little bit proud. We just completed a Bun Burner Gold ride! Its 4:30 in the morning and I’m quietly going to bed. She wakes up anyway, we visit for a while before she gets up for work; we share a cup of coffee together. I figure I’ll shower and get some sleep. I’m asleep before she leaves. I love her too. It’s a very nice ending to a very long day.
