Mountain rides, sidecars and melting metal.

Good day readers. Another week passed and another self-imposed blog update deadline missed. It has been a bit of a slow month for Motorbike activities. I have gotten out on the bikes and have done some riding, but nothing much to report on that I haven't already posted about before. I am combining two weeks worth of stuff to gather enough things to say for this post. I hope to have more post-worthy events to cover coming up before I do some summer travel. Enjoy the quick update.

Beautiful mountain views were the prize for hustling my bike up Palomar Mountain. I say prize because getting to the top was a workout for me and my machine. The occasion for this ride was to get out on the bike with a good friend and riding partner before he moves back east. Such is the curse of being in the military. Good friends come into your life by chance. Those same friends move away, but are not forgotten. My buddy is the owner of the Aprilia Tuono I rode back during my comparison between two identically spec'd bikes. He was also my travel companion for my trip to Santa Cruz where I made my podcast guest debut. We met up near Escondido and hit the road. I planned a route that would wind around the copious number of twisty roads that this area has. It was a beautiful day weather wise and the streets were not packed promising a good riding day ahead.

After a few wrong turns thanks to me forgetting my strip map on my dresser before I left, we eventually made it to the base of Palomar Mountain. We decided to take South Grade Road to the top. This would be my first time up this mountain. Back in 2015, some other friends and I were going to ride this road, but thanks to a cold snap that had me taking a tumble on my old V'Strom 650 in Julian, CA I never made it up. You can see from the pictures that we did get to the top on this day. The weather from the top in the shade was cool. By this time of the day the temps had started to hit triple digits and the mountain top shade was a relief. Take a look at this road on a map. It goes up the mountain a few thousand feet in a short amount of asphalt. What you get is a series of 180 degree switchbacks and lots of blind corners. I started out in third gear and quickly found myself down in first gear. Hucking the 500+ pounds of FZ heft through those turns gave me a lot of practice with low speed maneuvers. After getting to the top and taking a few pics we went down the way we came. Tacos helped to refuel our weary bodies and eventually we parted ways. The world is a small place and I'm sure I'll find myself on a ride with my friend again someday.

The Palomar ride was two Saturdays ago. Last Saturday I got back out on the dirt for some more roundy-round practice. We had some light rain overnight in SoCal which made the track nice and sticky for my first session. The track was quiet for some odd reason, but eventually some company showed up to give me something to watch between sessions. These guys just picked up this speedway sidecar rig from Tom Jones recently so they could start doing some speedway events. I talked with the driver and found out that this team does a lot of sidecar cross as well as other types of dirt related racing. The rig was powered by a 90's era GSXR 1000 engine. Everything involved with this type of machine is completely custom. The engine sounded awesome when they got up to full song. For some strange reason, speedway sidecars go around the track making right turns instead of left turns for Speedway bikes and Flat Track. Their rig helped to soften the hard track surface. I had a good time out there getting some practice in while trying some techniques and am looking forward to doing some practice at the actual race track this coming Saturday.

One thing I noticed after my last day at the track was some nickel and dime sized thin spots in the hard coat of my hot shoe. After last Saturday those spots were now connected into one big thin spot. I'm going to have to send my shoe away to get re-coated. Gary at Lightshoe warranties the shoe for the first year and all I have to do is send it back. I'll give them a call and get it arranged soon, but I will need it this weekend.

Speaking of this weekend there is a practice day at the Perris Raceway track for the SCFTA. I want to get to this practice so I can get the feel for the real race track as compared to the Milestone MX Ranch practice track. Everyone I've spoken with says Perris is so much better. After that it will be another dry spell for Motorbike activity while I have a visit with family that will be coming into town. June will see me and the family take a trip to Japan. I have some motorbike activities planned during the trip, but getting them posted will be a challenge without access to my home computer. Anyway get out and ride while the weather is good. Ride safe friends!

Blue