Yorkmeister
Member
A couple of friends and I wanted to go to Chaparral Motorsports in San Bernardino, CA. This is my reason for not going on Santa Fe Dream's ride and I am sticking to it. I also had the weekend alone since the wife is at the "Lotus developers conference" at Disney World in Orlando, FL. Yes, she does go to some sessions.
I decided Saturday was good for this shopping trip since I was home alone. The weather was good (trying to put this politically correct so as not too disgust the northerners too much). I will not rub it in and state what the temperature range was all day, but it was near perfect. The objective was to go to Chaparral Motorsports in San Bernardino and try on summer gloves. Now you do not ride a motorcycle to a motorcycle store on the freeways useless there is no other path. So I had to find a more interesting route. I rode with Shane, the guy I worked with last year, to Glendora on the freeways. We met Bryan, an old friend of Shane's, at a Starbucks there. We all have Yamaha FJRs. Bryan has a 2005, Shane a 2006, and me a 2007.
We went up Glendora Mountain Rd. This road switchbacks up the front face of the San Gabriel mountains. We then proceeded east on Glendora Ridge Rd. This road seems to travel on top of a ridge for 15 miles to Mt. Baldy village. It has spectacular views both north and south if you ride a lot slower than I do so you can enjoy the views. We did have one pucker point about mid way. We came around a corner and there was a dark streak on the road. I was thinking "what is that?" when the next corner came up. This corner was tighter and both the front and back end started sliding. Answer, OK that was oil. Did not drop it, but both Shane and Bryan had pucker moments also. Anyway, decided to throttle down the rest of the ridge. There was also more traffic on the road than I have ever seen. Several motorcycles pasted us going down as we were going up, more than usual. There were also a lot of bicycles and several cars. Cars are the biggest problem as this road is only 1.5 lanes wide. So when you get an asshole cager that thinks the entire rode is his, it can get exciting. There was one cager like that.
We made a quick butt break at the Buckhorn Lodge in Mt Baldy village, a biker/skier restaurant/bar. We then proceeded down Mt Baldy Rd to the I-210. I let Bryan lead to Chaparral since he grew up in the area and said he knew the way. Well, we got there but I saw roads I have never been on before. Also, mission accomplished as I found and bought some Tour Master textile gloves I liked. Bryan bought a lot of stuff and told us he was surprised the wife let him go there alone with the credit card. We made a lunch stop in San Bernardino.
We proceeded to Banning on San Timoteo Canyon Rd, a back road that parallels I-10, where we picked up CA-243. This road goes up to Idyllwild in the San Jacinto Mountains. It switchbacks up from Banning and gets up to 6000 feet and pine forests. It feels similar to Peak to Peak Highway in CO. I decided to keep it to about 55 mph so as not to get anymore pucker moments. You can almost not use the brakes at this speed and enjoy the all the sweepers. We made another stop at a biker bar in Idyllwild. We then proceeded down the west side of the mountain on CA-74. This road has some amazing banked sweepers a couple of miles outside of town and then proceeds with tighter turns down the side of the mountain. You get down to the valley and hit boring straight roads through constant So Cal cities, the ones with all the foreclosure signs you read about, until you hit Ortega Highway that goes over the coast range. Bryan lives in Temecula, so he peeled off for home when we got north of there.
Shane and I proceeded up Ortega Highway, still CA-74. The eastern end has nice turns up the mountain. It was getting late, but still light so we could take them pretty fast and all the traffic was going east and we were going west. This was the last fast section as it was almost dark when we stopped at Hells Kitchen at the top of the hills. Yes, another biker bar/cafe. There were only a few other bikes there and they were all Harleys. The ride back to the I-405 was more exciting than it needed to be. I found out I should have checked the aiming on my head lights. They were pointed too far down, so I couldn't see anything unless the brights were on. I do not normally ride after dark on my day rides. I had to turn the brights off a lot with the traffic going west. This made 45 - 50 mph exciting enough. The headlights were not a problem on the freeway with all the lights from cars. Anyway I left home at 7:45 am and got home at 7:00 pm for a total of 313 miles.
Yes, I know there are no photos. I only get photos when the wife is on the back clicking away. Also, since life usually averages out, I am off on a work trip to Philadelphia Monday morning to experience what the rest of the country has been suffering through.
Gary
I decided Saturday was good for this shopping trip since I was home alone. The weather was good (trying to put this politically correct so as not too disgust the northerners too much). I will not rub it in and state what the temperature range was all day, but it was near perfect. The objective was to go to Chaparral Motorsports in San Bernardino and try on summer gloves. Now you do not ride a motorcycle to a motorcycle store on the freeways useless there is no other path. So I had to find a more interesting route. I rode with Shane, the guy I worked with last year, to Glendora on the freeways. We met Bryan, an old friend of Shane's, at a Starbucks there. We all have Yamaha FJRs. Bryan has a 2005, Shane a 2006, and me a 2007.
We went up Glendora Mountain Rd. This road switchbacks up the front face of the San Gabriel mountains. We then proceeded east on Glendora Ridge Rd. This road seems to travel on top of a ridge for 15 miles to Mt. Baldy village. It has spectacular views both north and south if you ride a lot slower than I do so you can enjoy the views. We did have one pucker point about mid way. We came around a corner and there was a dark streak on the road. I was thinking "what is that?" when the next corner came up. This corner was tighter and both the front and back end started sliding. Answer, OK that was oil. Did not drop it, but both Shane and Bryan had pucker moments also. Anyway, decided to throttle down the rest of the ridge. There was also more traffic on the road than I have ever seen. Several motorcycles pasted us going down as we were going up, more than usual. There were also a lot of bicycles and several cars. Cars are the biggest problem as this road is only 1.5 lanes wide. So when you get an asshole cager that thinks the entire rode is his, it can get exciting. There was one cager like that.
We made a quick butt break at the Buckhorn Lodge in Mt Baldy village, a biker/skier restaurant/bar. We then proceeded down Mt Baldy Rd to the I-210. I let Bryan lead to Chaparral since he grew up in the area and said he knew the way. Well, we got there but I saw roads I have never been on before. Also, mission accomplished as I found and bought some Tour Master textile gloves I liked. Bryan bought a lot of stuff and told us he was surprised the wife let him go there alone with the credit card. We made a lunch stop in San Bernardino.
We proceeded to Banning on San Timoteo Canyon Rd, a back road that parallels I-10, where we picked up CA-243. This road goes up to Idyllwild in the San Jacinto Mountains. It switchbacks up from Banning and gets up to 6000 feet and pine forests. It feels similar to Peak to Peak Highway in CO. I decided to keep it to about 55 mph so as not to get anymore pucker moments. You can almost not use the brakes at this speed and enjoy the all the sweepers. We made another stop at a biker bar in Idyllwild. We then proceeded down the west side of the mountain on CA-74. This road has some amazing banked sweepers a couple of miles outside of town and then proceeds with tighter turns down the side of the mountain. You get down to the valley and hit boring straight roads through constant So Cal cities, the ones with all the foreclosure signs you read about, until you hit Ortega Highway that goes over the coast range. Bryan lives in Temecula, so he peeled off for home when we got north of there.
Shane and I proceeded up Ortega Highway, still CA-74. The eastern end has nice turns up the mountain. It was getting late, but still light so we could take them pretty fast and all the traffic was going east and we were going west. This was the last fast section as it was almost dark when we stopped at Hells Kitchen at the top of the hills. Yes, another biker bar/cafe. There were only a few other bikes there and they were all Harleys. The ride back to the I-405 was more exciting than it needed to be. I found out I should have checked the aiming on my head lights. They were pointed too far down, so I couldn't see anything unless the brights were on. I do not normally ride after dark on my day rides. I had to turn the brights off a lot with the traffic going west. This made 45 - 50 mph exciting enough. The headlights were not a problem on the freeway with all the lights from cars. Anyway I left home at 7:45 am and got home at 7:00 pm for a total of 313 miles.
Yes, I know there are no photos. I only get photos when the wife is on the back clicking away. Also, since life usually averages out, I am off on a work trip to Philadelphia Monday morning to experience what the rest of the country has been suffering through.
Gary
