DS Ride 05 - Jan '07 - Recap

PUTTING “ALSP” INTO DUALSPORT:
SANTA LUCIA LOOP A

What . . . . . . . .Dualsport Ride, full day, novice / intermediate
When . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Meet Sunday, 14 January, 7:00 AM
Where . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Meet @ BMW Ventura parking lot
Contact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Laine_MacTague@verizon.net
More info . . . http://ventura-county-dualsport.blogspot.com/

DS RIDE 05: RECAP

[Another ride, another batch of quivering wall-eyed trauma victims staggering aimlessly around town until various well-meaning types take them by the elbows and lead them to the nearest treatment center…]

It was pitch dark at 6 am when Laine rolled out of the garage and headed shopward, so he couldn’t see the thick layer of hoar frost covering the grass, the bushes, the trees, the neighbor’s dog who was left out the night before, and in fact most of the Santa Clara River Valley. His fingers went numb three minutes into the ride; pinched nerve, he thought.

It was the orchard full of smudge pots that near Balcolm Canyon that finally clued him in to the bottom-dwelling temperatures he and the other riders converging on BMW of Ventura County were contending with. He imagined riders sliding on frozen water, going down in a flurry of ice crystals before even meeting at the shop. Of course, it wouldn’t be that bad…

Yes it would. The headlight Laine saw pulling in from the east as he arrived at the shop from the west turned out to be a visibly shaken Phil Wren. He had just gone down a block away, where gutter water turned to black ice and coated the roadway at an intersection. The left side of his bike looked like he had buffed it with 40 grit. Come to think of it, he had.

Then the call came in from Jerry Hess:

“There are three of us here, Malibu Canyon, 14 degrees, ice on the road, send a helicopter full of hot water bottles and we’ll call you after lunch…”

The pre-ride attrition had been generally wussy in character if not sweeping in scope: “I’m afraid of the cold”, “I don’t like the cold”, “I think I’m getting a cold”, and “I’ve got other fish to fry”, for a grand total of 4 pre-ride wussouts. But here the ride was just getting to the “coffee please” stage at the shop, and one rider had already gone down, and three more were threatening to slide off the roadway into the icy waters of Malibu Creek.

That should be an oxymoron: Icy waters? Malibu Creek?

Evil – or at least highly mischievous – forces were at work here, Laine reflected over a cup of genuine BMW hot cocoa: “…Two months in a row we are in potentially lethal contention with frozen water, in southern California. I didn’t even believe they had ice cubes here until I moved down a couple years ago.”

As So-Cool tells us – and so we believe – “Some one has to ride the ride.” Some one turned out to be Craig Boone, Mike Agnitch, Laine & Phil, Richard Stark, Tim Denton, and Keith Carbine at the shop. Laine almost snapped an ankle standing on the ice-covered curb to take a photo of the departing group. In the excitement, he completely failed to call the riders meeting the group in Ventura, so in standard SNAFU fashion, he lead the group off the freeway to sit in the cold for a few minutes and make cell phone calls. Back on the road, it was a quick hop to east Ventura, where three got on and one got off: Scott Huelskamp and Terry Eannetta brought the KTM contingent to a quorum of 3, and Arne Anselm lent a little class to the operation by showing up on a 1989 BMW R100 GS.


But the morning’s earlier antics had taken their toll on Phil, who found on the ride from the shop that his instruments were dead; no tach, no speedo, flagging will to live… “I think I’ll ride up to Ojai, get a coffee, try to shake off the wreck.”

Okay Phil, said Laine, “I’ve got enough victi – I mean riders as it is…”

The keystone cops nature of the morning failed to evolve. A fabulous ride through the frigid foothills of Ventura and Santa Barbara was flawed not only by frozen riders who failed to find the shop, Phil’s fabulous fall, four freeway-side phone calls, and Phil finally fleeing: Three of the riders were temporarily “misplaced” in the Santa Barbara area. Next, In a bizarre and eventually fortunate mishap, Keith mistook a signal to be mindful of the sneakily-hidden police car as a signal to turn right, and wasn’t discovered missing until the rest of the rapidly dwindling group arrived, breathless and bewildered, at The Last Homely House South of the Misty Mountains; that is, Don Gordon’s house in Santa Barbara, south of the Los Padres range.


Don and his wife apparently cannot form long term memories, for this is the second time they have graciously hosted a warm-up visit for a gang of unruly dual sporting reprobates. The morning’s survivors settled into a continental spread of coffee, fruits, doughnuts and muffins, while Don and Laine made calls to the lost riders.

Having got weird, things stayed that way: After turning right at the sneakily hidden police car, Keith ended up finding the lost riders again a few miles away, while he was filling up at a gas station. Thanks to the miracle of cellular communication, the four were eventually reunited with the group, force-fed a few fresh strawberries and muffins, jammed down onto their bikes again, like plastic angels on top of Christmas trees, and the group started the, uh, actual ride, part, of the ride – with Don in the lead, and Laine at the back, so that if Laine crashed while steering with one hand and shooting photos with the other, no one would be incommoded.

Don led the group through town to Gibraltar road, which slithers up the west face of the Los Padres to Camino Cielo Road. Camino Cielo follows the ridgeline along the coast, providing spectacular views of Santa Barbara and the ocean. The group stopped briefly where Painted Cave Road connects with the ridge road.



Painted Cave is short and sweet; a narrow, steep, and windy road overhung with old oaks. The inside of some of the hairpins are so sharp and steep its like making a U-turn across a ski slope. The road connects to Highway 154. Soon the riders were across the highway and continuing along West Camino Cielo Road.

It was along here, somewhere, that gunfire broke out.

The group stopped a few miles up West Camino Cielo, where the pavement ends, to lower tire pressure, raise spring pre-load, and count rosary beads. The engines were cut, and suddenly they could hear that staccato pop-pop sound. Riders hit the deck, covering their heads.

“There’s shooting!”
“OPFOR’s got me pinned!”
“Call in the choppers!”
“No good,” shouted Laine, cowering behind a sandstone boulder; “They’re delivering water bottles to Malibu!”

Dust rose as riders scuttled around behind their bikes, before realizing that they had no idea which direction the shots were coming from. Come to think of it, there weren’t a lot of shots…

Don was sitting astride his 1200, cleaning his nails; “There’s a shooting range just over there;” he pointed with his Leatherman, off to the side of the road. The shots continued, on and off. It wasn’t that loud. Nothing zinged by our heads…

Don carried on in front, and we left the pavement.

The ride had threatened to develop a flow, during the previous fifteen miles. The flow may have continued, for riders in front, but in back, there was faltering and confusion. Keith’s spare fuel container came un-tethered from the back of his HP-2, dangling dangerously near the rear wheel. After several minutes, Laine and Keith got it tied down properly. After a few moments’ riding, it came un-tethered again. They tied it onto Laine’s tail-rack. After a few moments’ riding, they caught the rest of the group. Mike was almost out of fuel. Off came the spare fuel, which Keith wouldn’t need til after the group left Santa Ynez… Ironically, the long loop that would have required more range from the HP-2 was eventually lopped off the ride: So much time was spent counseling crash victims, make phone calls, getting lost, eating strawberries, dodging gunfire, re-attaching spare fuel containers – all the usual stuff that goes on during a motorcycle ride – that there wasn’t enough time to ride it.

The unpaved section of Camino Cielo includes some seriously rocky terrain, and some breathtaking views of the Pacific Ocean. It follows the coastal ridgeline to Refugio Road, a rutted and rocky drop from the ridge to Santa Ynez. Laine followed Terry Eannetta down this dusty road under trees hung with lichen, a slightly treacherous descent in surroundings reminiscent of northern California oak tree woodland. Dust prevailed. Further down, where the terrain is less steep, the road is paved and includes several stream crossings. Laine and Terry found the first of these to contain one slightly damp and shaken KTM rider. Laine hailed Scott as they approached him:




“You okay? What happened?”

“Yeah, fine, just being stupid, is all!” Scott had already hauled himself and his bike off the ground and was riding on a moment later. It looked to Laine like maybe Scott had been practicing his track-stand in the middle of the crossing; there was no real sign of a wreck; just some splashes of water. Scott and his bike appeared undamaged.

Laine stopped at one of the more photogenic water crossings to take a few photos. Arne was the next rider through, followed closely by Keith.
















The road continued on through dormant vineyards to Highway 246, which provided a quick fuel stop, followed by a run up Highway 154 to Los Olivos. Los Olivos was to be a brief mid-ride lunch stop, but it was already 1:45 pm.


Riders took up chairs in front of a deli on Grand Avenue, eating sandwiches and looking over maps. Tourists lined up, apparently to get rides on Don’s motorcycle. There was a big group, but eventually they all drifted off, relieved but unsatisfied.

The riders discussed what to do with the remains of the day. Laine had already excised from the ride a loop of about 35 miles; “And yet,” he told us, “if we carry on with the rest of the ride as I have it planned, we will be arriving in Ojai at about 6:30 in the evening.”

There were three camps. One group thought the ride had been great, and was ready to head homeward. Another group wanted to ride more, but not until 6:30 at night. And of course, there were the bent and twisted few who wanted to keep going until they got to Ojai or rode off the edge of the planet, whichever came second.

Unable to see why everyone shouldn’t get to do what they wanted to, Laine gave his map to the middle group, and outlined the 35-mile loop for them, which includes some brilliant mountainous paved roads as well as a fun unpaved section. The riders who were ready to head back did so, and those who didn’t care that at 6:00 pm they would be in the coldest valley in southern California on the coldest day in the last ten years, carried on as planned. We’ll call them the A-Team – just to be ironic.

While sane people were exploring local Santa Ynez back roads or sweeping beachward over San Marcos Pass on a beautiful afternoon, the A-Team was catching bugs in their teeth at unpublishable speeds on Foxen Canyon Road, headed north. It was cold, they were fast: Motorists were confounded, first by the strongly blue-shifted riders in their rear-view mirrors, then by the noise light and heat as the riders passed, next by the excessively red taillights that seemed to bleed colour over the backs of the bikes, and finally by the need to use fog lights to navigate through the riders’ contrails.

Finally there was a blinding right turn, like a course correction in that movie Tron, where energy is redirected, but not dissipated, and the A-Team was winding up into the mountains again. Another quick turn to the right, and the pavement gave way to blessed rocks and dust. The riders slowed, almost perceptibly. A good thing, too: There were immediately water crossings.


The first one wasn’t too bad; shallow, not wide, wet but not rocky. Laine rode through, then stopped to watch the other four. When the last rider passed, Laine joined on at the back. At the next crossing, the lead rider did the same thing. An entertaining and useful pattern had developed; at each demanding section, the lead rider stopped after navigating it, and after making sure all the other riders got through successfully, joined on at the back. In this way every rider was being watched over through the challenging sections, and the continual change in lead rider resulted in repeated variation in the “feel” of the ride, which was refreshing.

Some of the wet crossings were straightforward, but there was one real eye-opener; the water had obviously been frozen, and the road before and after was covered in a thin layer of icy mud; water from dripping vehicles had frozen on the roadway on either side of the crossing. Scott skated down-into-through-and-out of the crossing, with Laine slipping along right behind, before they realized the danger. The other riders took it a little slower.

Laine had warned us about crossings in this section of the ride, but these weren’t the crossings he meant. After the wet crossings, there were several miles of excruciatingly beautiful mountain country, as the road climbed to a saddle, and dropped down the other side of a broad ridge into another valley. Then the dry crossings began. But first, Laine ran Don over.

Don rounded a climbing hairpin with Laine two bike lengths behind. Laine threw a quick glance over his shoulder to check on Scott and Arne’s progress around the turn, and as he faced forward again, he found the tail end of Don’s bike connected to the front end of his own. There was a lurch and a clunking sound as the bikes, locked feebly together by the turn signals, leaned into one another, the riders struggling to maintain control. It was – well, embarrassing, for Laine. It was a goofy thing to have happened, and here he couldn’t get his front end off of Don’s bike because the bikes were leaning together. Finally, he tapped the front brake and leaned way left, away from Don’s bike, causing his own bike to fall over – this at about 5 miles an hour – so as not to force Don to fall. Both riders stopped more or less simultaneously, after riding along like Siamese twins for about fifty feet. Laine tipped over, did a little roll and came up on his feet, while Don just stopped and put his feet down, still straddling his bike.

“What was that!?”

Laine felt like Scott had sounded, back in that river crossing on Refugio Road; “Dunno, just being stupid, I guess. Really sorry Don. How much do I owe you?”

They looked at the bikes. Don was missing a turn signal cover, which Laine found for him. Laine had a cracked plastic hand guard – and had a spare in the garage at home. The biggest damage by far was to Laine’s ego.

Meantime, a few hundred feet ahead, Terry Eannetta had managed a small crash all by himself, with equally underwhelming consequences. Once again, we found that falling on big bikes doesn’t have to be a big deal. In short order, the A-Team shook off this foolishness and was back on the road.

Arne is new to off-pavement riding, and had seemed a little unsure of himself at first, but proved to be an enthusiastic learner, and a quick study. In fact, he was the only rider who never fell over. Laine and Arne spent some quality time talking technique during brief stops; Arne’s abilities visibly improved as the ride continued. The group moved smoothly along, rotating leaders like a pack of drafting cyclists at every crossing, and there were many. They were dry now, and much more intimidating, because of the rocks. Some of the crossings were scary long stretches of nothing but river boulders of varying size. They were intimidating to look at, not to mention ride across. But there were no more falls.

The riders began to climb out of the valley. There came an intersection of trails, with views of the upcoming climb as well as the valley behind. A perfect place to stop and celebrate with a group shot.

Laine spun into the ground around another hairpin on the climb, well ahead of the group, trying to position himself for a photograph. The others passed him as he was getting up. That would have been the best photo of the ride. Other than that, the climb to Sierra Madre Ridge was a lot of fun but fairly uneventful; Arne continued working on his form…

They reached the ridgeline in afternoon light, and took a short break. What followed was about 10 miles of wide-open ridge riding. The trail was fairly straight and the riding was quick, except when the odd boulder required circumnavigation.

All along the ridgeline, there were spectacular views of the rolling mountains to the west, and to the east, the broad sweep of Cuyama Valley, and the Temblor and Caliente Ranges beyond, hinting at the Central Valley hidden in the distant haze further east.

It was just before sunset when they reached the top of the descent into Cuyama Valley. They were surprised at how warm it was. Arne’s handlebar-mounted thermometer read 25 degrees, but they assumed it was broken. Then Laine noticed that after about a minute out of his gloves, his fingertips were beginning to tingle. Apparently, it was cold.

It also did not seem late on the ridge, where the sun still shone, but on the north facing descent into Cuyama Valley, the headlights began to become useful, and the late afternoon suddenly felt like it. By the time the A-Team reached flatter ground, the sun had disappeared, taking eight or nine Fahrenheit with it. The riders swung onto Highway 166 after a jaw-dropping but bone-chilling pastoral cruise through broad sloping grassland on the alluvium flowing out of the foothills, and hunkered down for a quick run toward the speed-bump called New Cuyama.

They stopped at the gas station. The sky was dark. Arne and Scott replenished the air in their tires, and Don and Terry fueled up. Laine took a couple photographs, and flirted with the local women. It was hard to hear his clever comments over his chattering teeth.

It was about 70 miles to Ojai; up the Cuyama River corridor, over a 5100’ pass in the Los Padres, through the mountains, and back down on the south side into the Ojai valley. The local ladies looked dubious about the riders’ prospects. It was nearly 6 pm. It was also nearly 28 degrees. The mountains would be colder.

The next several miles of lightless back roads reminded Don of a video game: There were no lights or even reflective surfaces for miles of patched, pot-holed asphalt. The shoulders of the road were mostly invisible, and since the road passed through plowed fields, there was no sign of brush, buildings, anything, on either side, for miles. Laine’s taillight glowed like a will-o’-wisp, bouncing along, always a little ways ahead. He aimed for it and stayed on the throttle. In about eight miles, he caught it:

ROAD CLOSED

Not the first and only thing you want to see, in foot-tall letters, stenciled on a sign posted across your line of travel, after 8 miles of bouncing along a roadway as cold and dark as space itself. This, however, is what they saw. As luck would have it, the road was only nominally closed, which is to say, if you are on a dual sport bike you can cross the riverbed even after the road has been washed away. This they did, and in short order the A-Team was hunkered down behind their windscreens, racing up Highway 33 in hopes that the friction generated by the rapidly passing air molecules would warm them up a little. Don & Terry couldn’t feel their fingertips. Arne had somehow lost the cord to his heated vest, and, not being dressed for a ride like this without a heated vest, was slowly freezing to death. Scott’s breath in his helmet had frozen into hoarfrost in his moustache. At a brief stop, Laine tapped experimentally at the fingertip of one of his gloves. It shattered into glittering ice-edged fragments that fell to the ground with a gentle tinkling sound, like pins dropping on tile. He had to wrap his finger in anti-abrasion tape.

It must have got colder as the A-Team approached the north base of the Los Padres range, and at the 5100’ pass at Mt. Pinos, it was probably very close to zero degrees Kelvin. But it warmed up slowly as they got closer to Ojai, where it was a balmy 40 degrees in town. The riders pulled into a parking lot in front of a Mexican restaurant Laine had found a few weeks earlier, and clambered off their bikes.

What followed was the best meal any A-Team member ever had. Not only was the food delicious, and the service exemplary (we will be returning to this restaurant after DSR 06!), but – they were all alive! It was good, to be alive. “That was a great ride,” some one said, and the others agreed. There is something about struggling along persistently, enduring hell’s coldest day, and finally winning through against impossible odds, that doesn’t just make a meal taste better; it makes a life taste better.

Arne said it best: “I can’t believe that was fun."