To: nedod@linus.mitre.org Subject: a great weekend of riding Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 17:14:55 -0500 From: gayathri Saturday was supposed to be a day of slow-paced riding in the Palos Verdes Hills to kill time before the Pre-Halloween LaBiker BBQ. It was a comedy of errors trying to find the meeting place. I run into another labiker (JimD who reminds me of our favorite Colonel Holbrook) who is equally lost... We accidentally find the rest of the crew when we've given up, and Jim offers to take me riding thru Palos Verdes himself (its his home riding grounds) and so we head off with the Group.... PEter had his Guzzi 1100i out -- its a project bike of some interest: http://texan.labiker.org/moto_frame.htm We ended up in Fort MacArthur, and looked at the Korean Friendship bell, wandered around the Fort looking for shade (did I mention it was in the 90's?) and looked thru the Military Museum -- neat thing was how they sighted the enemy ships and used a mechanical system with pulley's and numbers to transmit the info from different rooms... The guns themselves were interesting -- there were a couple that sat on railways cars, and could only fire safely 3 degrees left and right, there was two that actually would lower themselves to hide... I wish I knew more about guns so I could explain these things, but we did get to see a movie that showed the big ones firing... wow. (http://www.sanpedrochamber.com/champint/ftmac.htm) (http://www.sanpedrochamber.com/champint/korenbel.html) for some more info... http://www.brysdyes.com/concerts/pedro/bell1.jpg for a neat pic of the bell. Then Jim took over and sent us on a high priced tour of Palos Verdes, including one part of road that was slowly sliding into the ocean. *WHEEEE!!!* the whoopdedoos are kinda interesting. It was also the weekend for BDC drivers -- I took a poll of Ovlov vs other cars... I think Ovlov is still ahead. In PV, we had one run her stop sign to turn right in front of two bikes ahead of me (who avoided hitting her, but then had to continue to avoid her trying to run them over) -- she was swerving back and forth fiddling with her cellphone and then proceeded to turn right with no signal in front of us again... finally, when the road opened up to two lanes, the biker scum all passed her on the right as quickly as possible and pulled away... We finally ended up at the Biker Scum BBQ to find the host putting the grill together. His wife had gotten the BBQ grill in the divorce, and was supposed to have given him custody for the weekend. Turns out she didnt, so he had bought one and was putting it together... A couple of engineers and cold BEvERages and much whining from us hungry folks later, the grill was fired up and much food cooked. Bikers dropped by all day to talk about sushi, bikes, racing, riding schools (CLASS and Freddie Spencer), italian food, etc etc... Head home, do laundry, fall asleep... wake up on Sunday to... go riding! Squidboy's childhood friend, aka Wowee!, had never ridden on the back of a bike before this past week. She wanted to try out canyon carving, so we dressed her up in my spare equipment and headed out. It wasn't really a long day, but we stopped a couple of times to let her stretch her legs (the back of a zx-6 isnt really great unless you are fairly small and have really skinny legs) The Crest was great -- the leaves were changing colour! lots of golds everywhere. As we were starting up the hill -- there are plenty of turnouts and two lane passing lanes... the first passing lane we hit, my friend BrianK, Squidboy and I aim to pass a couple of cages... which of course pick the 'fast' lane to be in. when they don't switch lanes, superior hp and pickup called for passing them on the right. Of course, the BMW 525 decides that we shouldn't pass and tries to take Squidboy out. (He was expecting this, of course and avoids him, doing the classic NY SquidBoy hand motions to the driver...) I'm stuck behind the driver... and decide to wait 'til the next turnout or passing lane. Cage crawls along at 45 mph. The road speed limit is 55... we come up to a turnout... nothing. Next three... nothing. The cage is now weaving back and forth and almost clips an oncoming car (the driver is talking to his passengers). I back waaaay off. When he almost clips another car, I decide I'm gonna break the law now and wait for the straight away coming up. vrooom. Right past him over the double yellow, don't slow down 'til I'm three turns in front and pull it back down to our normal pace on the road. I catch up to my friends and we continue. 9 mile turnoff -- all of us spot a silver Ovlov Station wagon about 3/4th of a mile down the road in a turnout. I think, "hey, you know, this guy is gonna pull out right in front of us." and see squidboy and BrianK slowing down. Cage looks at us, and pulls out, creeping into the intersection. We all stop about 30 feet from the cage to watch him finish. (I'm worried that a car behind us will slam into us and am keeping an eye on the rear view). BrianK does the colorado headshake of amazement and we continue. After this, no real stupid cage incidents. In fact, very few cages at all... its a little chilly over 5k feet but just perfect after the real heat of yesterday. I was actually leading most of the way, finally feeling a little more confident about my smoothness, until we hit the really tight stuff on the other side of the crest... there are a bunch of these 180 degree left handers marked at about 20 mph that are almost immediately followed by decreasing radius right handers that are even tighter. For some reason I'm not handling these right -- since you dont really see the right hander until you are almost out of the left, I'm having to pick the bike up, brake really hard, and drop it the other way... Last stupid cage of the day was almost out of the canyons -- we're behind a line of about 5 cars... each vehicle in front of us pulls over in a turn out, except the second in the row... he refuses to pull out, and then begins this series of slamming on his brakes and jerking the cage around in the turn. The cage in FRONT of him gets out of the way and we bikers decide to let him have a wide berth... (its only a couple of miles and I'm not intersted in another doubleyellow line pass) So, a good weekend -- the bike rolled over 15 k miles, I'm feeling much more comfortable on the Triumph, looks like I'm picking up a '88 fzr400 (only ridden by a woman on the racetrack), and I'm taking CLASS on friday. (Still not sure which bike, tho!) Gayathri -------------------------------------------------------------- gayathri@world.std.com Calamari Club #002, WSMC #701 "How good is man's life, the mere living! How fit to employ all the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy!" - Robert Browning