James Burleigh
Well-known member
Joe (BMW K1200 RS), Kurt (Harley-Davidson 1200 Sportster) and I (Yamaha FJR 1300) left Concord Friday morning of Memorial Day weekend at 10:30 AM. About an hour later when we were pulling into a gas station in Stockton, Joe encountered a foot-deep pothole that shoved his front fender out of alignment and dented his front tire rim (he was lucky he didn’t lose control). We managed to straighten out the fender, and the tire seemed to be holding air, so we continued eastward, stopping for lunch in Oakdale at a Mexican restaurant.
After lunch Joe checked his air pressure again: down 4 pounds. So Joe announces he’s going to limp on home. But I insist we find a local BMW dealer so he can get it repaired and continue with us to Yosemite. Using his cell phone, he finds one 20 miles southwest in Modesto. They have the rim and can install it. So Joe heads to Modesto while Kurt and I continue east toward the Sierra Nevada mountains and Yosemite National Park. We will meet at our cabin in Yosemite Valley.
Anticipating hundreds (thousands?) of Bay Area vacationers heading up to Yosemite at the start of the Memorial weekend, we were surprised to find very little traffic at all, so there was very little need for any Yeah Baby! passing maneuvers of Winnebagos and trailers (too bad). In fact, when we got to the park entrance at about 4 PM, we were surprised to find no long line of cars waiting to get in, and we went right up to the gate. (However, when we left the next morning, Saturday, exiting the park at about 11 AM, the back-up to get in was about a mile long.)
After stopping many times to admire the views and snap some photos of our motorcycles (and an occasional waterfall), Kurt and I checked into our cabin. (And oh yeah, when we had pulled over to admire El Capitan, we were informed by some fellow tourists that just that morning someone was on the top of El Capitan shooting photos over the edge when he dropped his camera and reached for it, losing his balance, and…”Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh…” — 4,000 feet straight down the granite face, or the equivalent of three stacked World Trade Centers. I wonder what goes through your mind in those first few seconds? I’m guessing maybe it begins with the F-word.)
When Kurt and I got to the check-in counter for our cabin in Curry Village, I thought I must be back in Spain, because there must have been about 60 people checking in, and practicing Spanish mob-style line-forming behavior. It was chaos, no apparent lines, just a mob of people pressing toward the counter, everyone talking. “I’ve seen this before,” I said to Kurt. “I’ll handle this.” We persevered and got our room key in remarkably short time (I only had to threaten one cunning, sweet-looking mid-western lady who tried to sneak up behind me and grab my spot—“Don’t you be cuttin’ in front of me, Sister! The line forms at the rear.”).
After unloading our gear from the bikes (and dropping mine sideways to the ground in one of those classic failures to fully engage the kick-stand before beginning to lean the bike over—anyway, better to drop it while stationary than at one-hundred-and…uh, make that 25 MPH), we gave Joe a call on Kurt’s cell phone to let him know what cabin we were in. It was now 6 PM. We had left Joe in Oakdale about 5 hours ago and expected he’d be in the park by now. Thinking we’d leave a voice mail because he’d be on his bike, we were surprised when Joe answered. He was still in Modesto. (It seems ol' Gomer and Ralph, contrary to what they'd said over the phone, in fact did not have a replacement rim. So they wound up pounding out the dent.)
Anyway, finally on his way, he was now lost, trying to find his way out of town to the Yosemite highway. He had just talked to about his fourth Pakistani 7-11 owner, and by the time we spoke to him he was pretty sure he would never leave Modesto, feeling part of some crazy Twilight Zone episode, where he just travels around and around, returning down the same one-way streets to the same Pakistani 7-11, where an accented fellow sends him down the same streets….
But Joe assured us he was still coming. As soon as Kurt hung up the phone I started to worry about Joe’s getting to Yosemite safely. He had been up at that morning at about 4:30 AM to attend a 6 AM breakfast at his work in San Francisco, then went back home, then rendezvoused with Kurt at 9 AM for the hour ride to my house by 10 AM. It had been a long day, and now it was getting dark, and he was still about three hours away. He’d be heading up the foothills and into Yosemite Valley with its unfamiliar twisty corners, black ice, deer, swamp-geisters, and golly-woggles while fatigued. I felt certain my best friend of 35 years, through high school and college, was going to die tonight. And I was the one who insisted he get his bike fixed and come to Yosemite. Now I’d never get that $20 he owed me.
Kurt and I grabbed a couple of cold beers and pizza at the Curry Village food court while girl-watching and worrying about Joe, but mostly the former. We had ordered an extra-large pizza, thinking that when Joe finally stumbled into the cabin late, cold, miserable, and tired, the way Rod Taylor stumbled into his living room after fighting off the Morlocks in The Time Machine, we could offer him some nourishment. But the pizza was really good, so we ate it all. Instead we went to the grocery store and got him one of those Oscar Meyer snack packages with the crackers, cheese, and ham. “If he’s hungry,” I told Kurt, “he’ll eat this. Anyway, he may not even make it.”
After dinner we walked around a bit, then went back to our cabin and opened the bottle of wine Joe had handed to us before he left us back in Oakdale in a gesture worthy of the final moments of the Titanic (after I told Joe I was bringing a couple of bottles of “some kind of Merlot,” he insisted on bringing the wine). Kurt and I sat on the porch of our cabin, sipped the wine, and chatted. I smoked a cigarette. We watched across the dark open space between our cabin and the next row of cabins back as two families, recognizable only as silhouettes, young and old, male and female, worked for it seemed like an hour to arrange and move some kind of abundant stuff into the two attached rooms. They were like the people in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, working silently, tirelessly, and in harmony to move alien pods. We shook our heads and drank more wine.
Then Kurt’s cell phone rang. It was Joe. He was at the front desk. The time was 9 PM. We walked down and met Joe, then led the way through the dark parking lot to where our bikes were parked, with Joe following on his bike behind us, all lit up with auxiliary lights and sending out piercing light beams into the surrounding shadows like an alien vehicle out of Close Encounters. We helped him unload and settle into the cabin.
Finally in the light of the cabin, I studied him closely. Instead of looking like he’d just fought off legions of Morlocks or even Pakistanis, he was exhilarated. It had been an incredibly beautiful ride, he said, having come in a whole new way that was spectacular in the setting sun. Before long he was even preaching the merits of “Iron Butt” riding—riding for hours without stop except to get gas and relieve yourself. “That second hour,” he said, “after the first hour when you usually feel like stopping, you enter the zone, and can go on forever.” Next we heard about how when he was in the zone riding down to the Yosemite Valley, every car he passed was a white Plymouth Voyager.
I looked at him doubtfully, remembering the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Were there a couple of pods in his saddlebags, and like a couple of dupes we’d carried them right into our cabin? So that in the morning Kurt and I would wake up as a couple of weird alien doppelgangers next to our old bodies, which would be all wrapped in sticky gross space yarn. I handed him a glass of his snooty wine and thrust the Oscar Meyer snack pack at him. “Here,” I said, “eat this.”
Before long the three of us were sitting on the porch in front of the cabin, talking and laughing in the cold mountain air, all bundled up in motorcycle clothes, drinking now the second bottle of red wine. We were steeped in the deep, plush, familiar comfort of 30-year-old friendships. And we were, frankly, drunk. It was after the second request by our neighbor, who shared the other half of the duplex cabin, to please keep it down because the baby was trying to sleep, that we gave up and turned in for the night.
After a rich night’s sleep full of those vivid techno-color dreams that I only experience at high altitudes, we enjoyed a hot buffet breakfast, packed up the bikes, and headed out of Yosemite. It was about 9 AM by the time we were on our way. Joe had not seen the Valley the night before because of the dark, so we made a few stops so he could see the sights. The air was chilly, and the sky a patchy overcast, so that the surrounding granite monoliths were a patchwork of bright sunlight and dark shadow. At one point it began to drizzle. Then the drizzle turned into snow flurries, and finally the snow turned into hail. So that as we rode along the river, the road and foliage ahead of us was bathed in bright morning sunlight, yet the atmosphere was a three-dimensional curtain of sparkling ice pearls falling from the sky. And we downshifted, careful to keep the bikes straight up as we gingerly rode along the thickening bed of tiny white ice globes blanketing our path.
Leaving the Valley floor and climbing to the park entrance, we pulled off at the famous Vista Point for Joe to have a look. Right after we pulled in, about five cars crowded in behind us on their way down into the Valley. Their doors opened up, spilling out loud Mariachi music and a couple of dozen Mexicans who assembled for a quick photo, then piled back into their cars to move the party on down the mountain.
We left the park, passing the mile-long back-up coming the other way, and took the new route off the mountain that Joe had discovered the day before. But before we got to that turn-off, where the road narrowed amid farms and ranches, we took advantage of the broad, paved, wide-shouldered, positively cambered highway weaving down from Yosemite to open up the throttles and practice leaning off the bike like racers through the tight, fast, sweeping curves.
Joe’s newly discovered road (Hwy 132 between Hwy 120 and Modesto) was without doubt one of the top motorcycle rides I have ever been on.
We stopped for lunch outside Modesto at Jimbo’s Drive-In, a relic from the 1960s, including the prices. There we took our first and only group photo, finished our burgers, onion rings, and shakes (Kurt went veggie, natch), and headed home over the Altamont Pass, famous for its wind-powered turbines and of course the Rolling Stones concert of 1969 when they hired the Hells Angels for crowd control…. But you know the rest of that story.
Keep the Rubber Side Down
JB
After lunch Joe checked his air pressure again: down 4 pounds. So Joe announces he’s going to limp on home. But I insist we find a local BMW dealer so he can get it repaired and continue with us to Yosemite. Using his cell phone, he finds one 20 miles southwest in Modesto. They have the rim and can install it. So Joe heads to Modesto while Kurt and I continue east toward the Sierra Nevada mountains and Yosemite National Park. We will meet at our cabin in Yosemite Valley.
Anticipating hundreds (thousands?) of Bay Area vacationers heading up to Yosemite at the start of the Memorial weekend, we were surprised to find very little traffic at all, so there was very little need for any Yeah Baby! passing maneuvers of Winnebagos and trailers (too bad). In fact, when we got to the park entrance at about 4 PM, we were surprised to find no long line of cars waiting to get in, and we went right up to the gate. (However, when we left the next morning, Saturday, exiting the park at about 11 AM, the back-up to get in was about a mile long.)
After stopping many times to admire the views and snap some photos of our motorcycles (and an occasional waterfall), Kurt and I checked into our cabin. (And oh yeah, when we had pulled over to admire El Capitan, we were informed by some fellow tourists that just that morning someone was on the top of El Capitan shooting photos over the edge when he dropped his camera and reached for it, losing his balance, and…”Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh…” — 4,000 feet straight down the granite face, or the equivalent of three stacked World Trade Centers. I wonder what goes through your mind in those first few seconds? I’m guessing maybe it begins with the F-word.)
When Kurt and I got to the check-in counter for our cabin in Curry Village, I thought I must be back in Spain, because there must have been about 60 people checking in, and practicing Spanish mob-style line-forming behavior. It was chaos, no apparent lines, just a mob of people pressing toward the counter, everyone talking. “I’ve seen this before,” I said to Kurt. “I’ll handle this.” We persevered and got our room key in remarkably short time (I only had to threaten one cunning, sweet-looking mid-western lady who tried to sneak up behind me and grab my spot—“Don’t you be cuttin’ in front of me, Sister! The line forms at the rear.”).
After unloading our gear from the bikes (and dropping mine sideways to the ground in one of those classic failures to fully engage the kick-stand before beginning to lean the bike over—anyway, better to drop it while stationary than at one-hundred-and…uh, make that 25 MPH), we gave Joe a call on Kurt’s cell phone to let him know what cabin we were in. It was now 6 PM. We had left Joe in Oakdale about 5 hours ago and expected he’d be in the park by now. Thinking we’d leave a voice mail because he’d be on his bike, we were surprised when Joe answered. He was still in Modesto. (It seems ol' Gomer and Ralph, contrary to what they'd said over the phone, in fact did not have a replacement rim. So they wound up pounding out the dent.)
Anyway, finally on his way, he was now lost, trying to find his way out of town to the Yosemite highway. He had just talked to about his fourth Pakistani 7-11 owner, and by the time we spoke to him he was pretty sure he would never leave Modesto, feeling part of some crazy Twilight Zone episode, where he just travels around and around, returning down the same one-way streets to the same Pakistani 7-11, where an accented fellow sends him down the same streets….
But Joe assured us he was still coming. As soon as Kurt hung up the phone I started to worry about Joe’s getting to Yosemite safely. He had been up at that morning at about 4:30 AM to attend a 6 AM breakfast at his work in San Francisco, then went back home, then rendezvoused with Kurt at 9 AM for the hour ride to my house by 10 AM. It had been a long day, and now it was getting dark, and he was still about three hours away. He’d be heading up the foothills and into Yosemite Valley with its unfamiliar twisty corners, black ice, deer, swamp-geisters, and golly-woggles while fatigued. I felt certain my best friend of 35 years, through high school and college, was going to die tonight. And I was the one who insisted he get his bike fixed and come to Yosemite. Now I’d never get that $20 he owed me.
Kurt and I grabbed a couple of cold beers and pizza at the Curry Village food court while girl-watching and worrying about Joe, but mostly the former. We had ordered an extra-large pizza, thinking that when Joe finally stumbled into the cabin late, cold, miserable, and tired, the way Rod Taylor stumbled into his living room after fighting off the Morlocks in The Time Machine, we could offer him some nourishment. But the pizza was really good, so we ate it all. Instead we went to the grocery store and got him one of those Oscar Meyer snack packages with the crackers, cheese, and ham. “If he’s hungry,” I told Kurt, “he’ll eat this. Anyway, he may not even make it.”
After dinner we walked around a bit, then went back to our cabin and opened the bottle of wine Joe had handed to us before he left us back in Oakdale in a gesture worthy of the final moments of the Titanic (after I told Joe I was bringing a couple of bottles of “some kind of Merlot,” he insisted on bringing the wine). Kurt and I sat on the porch of our cabin, sipped the wine, and chatted. I smoked a cigarette. We watched across the dark open space between our cabin and the next row of cabins back as two families, recognizable only as silhouettes, young and old, male and female, worked for it seemed like an hour to arrange and move some kind of abundant stuff into the two attached rooms. They were like the people in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, working silently, tirelessly, and in harmony to move alien pods. We shook our heads and drank more wine.
Then Kurt’s cell phone rang. It was Joe. He was at the front desk. The time was 9 PM. We walked down and met Joe, then led the way through the dark parking lot to where our bikes were parked, with Joe following on his bike behind us, all lit up with auxiliary lights and sending out piercing light beams into the surrounding shadows like an alien vehicle out of Close Encounters. We helped him unload and settle into the cabin.
Finally in the light of the cabin, I studied him closely. Instead of looking like he’d just fought off legions of Morlocks or even Pakistanis, he was exhilarated. It had been an incredibly beautiful ride, he said, having come in a whole new way that was spectacular in the setting sun. Before long he was even preaching the merits of “Iron Butt” riding—riding for hours without stop except to get gas and relieve yourself. “That second hour,” he said, “after the first hour when you usually feel like stopping, you enter the zone, and can go on forever.” Next we heard about how when he was in the zone riding down to the Yosemite Valley, every car he passed was a white Plymouth Voyager.
I looked at him doubtfully, remembering the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Were there a couple of pods in his saddlebags, and like a couple of dupes we’d carried them right into our cabin? So that in the morning Kurt and I would wake up as a couple of weird alien doppelgangers next to our old bodies, which would be all wrapped in sticky gross space yarn. I handed him a glass of his snooty wine and thrust the Oscar Meyer snack pack at him. “Here,” I said, “eat this.”
Before long the three of us were sitting on the porch in front of the cabin, talking and laughing in the cold mountain air, all bundled up in motorcycle clothes, drinking now the second bottle of red wine. We were steeped in the deep, plush, familiar comfort of 30-year-old friendships. And we were, frankly, drunk. It was after the second request by our neighbor, who shared the other half of the duplex cabin, to please keep it down because the baby was trying to sleep, that we gave up and turned in for the night.
After a rich night’s sleep full of those vivid techno-color dreams that I only experience at high altitudes, we enjoyed a hot buffet breakfast, packed up the bikes, and headed out of Yosemite. It was about 9 AM by the time we were on our way. Joe had not seen the Valley the night before because of the dark, so we made a few stops so he could see the sights. The air was chilly, and the sky a patchy overcast, so that the surrounding granite monoliths were a patchwork of bright sunlight and dark shadow. At one point it began to drizzle. Then the drizzle turned into snow flurries, and finally the snow turned into hail. So that as we rode along the river, the road and foliage ahead of us was bathed in bright morning sunlight, yet the atmosphere was a three-dimensional curtain of sparkling ice pearls falling from the sky. And we downshifted, careful to keep the bikes straight up as we gingerly rode along the thickening bed of tiny white ice globes blanketing our path.
Leaving the Valley floor and climbing to the park entrance, we pulled off at the famous Vista Point for Joe to have a look. Right after we pulled in, about five cars crowded in behind us on their way down into the Valley. Their doors opened up, spilling out loud Mariachi music and a couple of dozen Mexicans who assembled for a quick photo, then piled back into their cars to move the party on down the mountain.
We left the park, passing the mile-long back-up coming the other way, and took the new route off the mountain that Joe had discovered the day before. But before we got to that turn-off, where the road narrowed amid farms and ranches, we took advantage of the broad, paved, wide-shouldered, positively cambered highway weaving down from Yosemite to open up the throttles and practice leaning off the bike like racers through the tight, fast, sweeping curves.
Joe’s newly discovered road (Hwy 132 between Hwy 120 and Modesto) was without doubt one of the top motorcycle rides I have ever been on.
We stopped for lunch outside Modesto at Jimbo’s Drive-In, a relic from the 1960s, including the prices. There we took our first and only group photo, finished our burgers, onion rings, and shakes (Kurt went veggie, natch), and headed home over the Altamont Pass, famous for its wind-powered turbines and of course the Rolling Stones concert of 1969 when they hired the Hells Angels for crowd control…. But you know the rest of that story.
Keep the Rubber Side Down
JB
