DS Two-Up 02 - Feb '08 - Recap

TOUR de CARRIZO

What . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Dualsport Ride, full day
When . . . . . . . . . . . .Meet Saturday, 09 February, 7:30 AM
Where . . . . . Meet @ BMW Motorcycles of Ventura County
Contact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Laine_MacTague

Another big turnout for another Two-up ride. Nineteen, if you count Paul and David, recon patrol for a Speed Channel film crew that came along to see if VCDSRS is worthy of the channel’s attention. We dropped them like a pair of limpets in a barracuda race, though, so I don’t count them… more on that later…







We spent a while at the shop Saturday morning, enjoying the coffee and chit-chat. We might’ve stayed longer but I had a long day planned for us. We gathered up for a brief orientation. Paul & David introduced themselves. I explained that because the unpaved portion of the ride was not only long but also fairly far away, we would be making use of the superslab and maintaining a steady pace. Paul shot some test footage of us as we queued up to leave.











We took a fairly direct route through some of Ventura County’s agricultural areas, and hit I-5 within an hour. I expected I-5 to be rather a drag. It turned out to be a pretty fun ride. There was little traffic and the weather was clear and warm. It is pretty long and straight, though… We fended off the doldrums by taking photos of each other and waving at bored kids in passenger seats. Looking in my mirror, at times it appeared that our little band owned its own section of the freeway.
















The Grapevine experience was marred only by the smoggy view of the Central Valley; it made me pine for that fresh L.A. air…








Once down the Vine we exited at Hwy 166, and up front, Eileen & I set a pace extremely close to the speed limit for the dead flat, straight twenty-odd miles to Maricopa. It is part of the magic of group riding that a nice steady pace up front is nevertheless often unsteady – that is, faster, and slower, in back. “My clutch starts to slip over 100 miles an hour,” I heard some one say while we were gassing up in Maricopa. I think he was explaining why another rider passed him.





That phenomenon must be why it was several minutes before Paul and David showed up in their van. Apparently, they hadn’t seen us since Santa Clarita. “We got on the freeway and you guys just disappeared over the horizon,” is more or less how David described it.










We hung out at the gas station, chatting up the Baptists, buying sandwiches, allowing time for Lars to patch up the bullet hole in his charcoal canister… It was nice just to be where we were together. But – Somebody’s Gotta Ride The Ride. We lined up for departure. I had told Paul we’d be a lot slower in the dirt, two-up – but within about 15 minutes we had seen the last of the Speed Channel film crew. Too bad; the ride was getting more and more interesting.











A short dirt trail section lead to a broad unimproved dirt road that quickly began to sway up high into the arid hills. At one point, topping the ridge, we could see the Sierra Nevadas rising up on the east lip of the Central Smog Bowl, and looking west we could see the Sierra Madres that border the northwestern Cuyama Valley.

We dropped down into the Plain.

Today’s posted rider SNAFU happened early, with the result that a small group made a mid-sized detour. This gave us some time to park in the middle of nowhere, enjoy the space, and take some photos. I forget who it was that left his post, but I do recall the horrible screams during the flogging. [If you don’t like braided leather touching your skin, make sure you understand Standard Formation!]
















Eventually everyone trickled in. We carried on, heading north and west on the north side of the plain. We’ll just gloss over one or two of the significant events that took place during this portion of the ride, shall we?












Moving right along, we… took a snack break.





















For being very flat, with a lot of straight roads, the Carrizo provided us with a surprising variety of terrain. After our brief stop we came to the most unusual terrain of all. This was a long and twisty section of sorta-kinda sand-mud-pillow-dirt. It was like riding on leavened bread. We could feel the soil give like mud, or maybe like sand, but then, the tires wouldn’t get knocked about like in sand, or slide out from under us like in mud. They just sort of oozed in and kept tracking, with only a slight lateral shifting. Maybe it was more like riding across a waterbed.






This section brought us to the edge of unincorporated California Valley. We were looping around Soda Lake. On its southwestern side we found a solitary hill with a dirt parking lot and a view of everything. We stopped for lunch.

We took in the view.

Even more inspiring was Tomer’s Turkish Coffee – the main reason people come on these rides. Thanks Tomer!







After lunch we made a quick stop at the visitor center. Peter was a little apprehensive about the vulture, which kept making weird noises when no one was looking, but on the whole it was a pleasant and informative stop. Outside, I took the roadrunner as a clear sign that it was time to make tracks. We jumped on Soda Lake road, a broad dirt and gravel affair, and accelerated. I like to be able when I come home, to say that the fastest I went that day, was on dirt. The Carrizo obliged.




In about an hour’s time we reached the southern entrance to the Monument and began preparations for the pavement ahead: A short stretch to the Santa Barbara Pistachio Company, then on up 33 to Ojai.










After the briefest of fuel stops at SBPC, we set out for Ojai. The snow was thick on the hills but the air was comfortable. We dodged boulders climbing into the Los Padres range. Dirty snow whizzed past on the shoulder, melting across the road. The salt and pepper of chaparral poking through on snowy hillsides was quite a contrast from the cactus-free desert we had left less than an hour before. Winding down out of the mountains, there was orange light on the ocean, tipping the Channel Islands with sunset light. We reached Ojai just after dark, and pulled up in front of Antonio’s for dinner.











Easy riding, epic views, a taste of adventure, and margaritas at the end of a long day. We’ll have to do this again! If a couple of us carry the Speed Channel crew as passengers next time, they won’t get dropped…