Another SoCal ride

And here is the motley crew...

RetroRiceRocketRider wrote:

The kickstand on the only Honda in the group (CBR 600) sunk in so far, the bike tipped over onto ltdrider's KZ900.
No damage that I could see, and it could have certainly been worse if it had fallen over hard enough to domino all of our bikes.

See the Honda should have been parked at least 10 feet away.:woohoo: . Glad all went well otherwise. I sure hope to go on the next ride.
Mark

Thanx for the great ride guys. No real drama on the ride. We stopped to help a sport bike rider who had just gone down and slid across the road. His shifter was bent back and his knee didn't look to good either. My bike is running rich to begin with and balked once at altitude,(we reached 8443' at Onyx pass),but after a little fiddling it was working OK.
The pictures don't do the views justice and the smell of the Pines was pure perfume. The traffic wasn't as bad as it could have been. On the way down the hill we were stuck behind a flatlander in a Mazda who refused to use a turnout:angry: .
The helmet cam once again didn't work out but we will get this solved and working.
Ltdrider has made all of the rides I can think of and has traveled from Palmdale to do them. I think the next ride should be in his neck of the woods. How about meeting up with him and grantl at the 2/138 intersection,( or somewhere near there),and ride south on the Angeles Crest Highway to Newcombs for lunch then finish it at the 210. What do you think Tim? How about the rest of you? Ideas,opinions?

KZJohn wrote:

Ltdrider has made all of the rides I can think of and has traveled from Palmdale to do them. I think the next ride should be in his neck of the woods. How about meeting up with him and grantl at the 2/138 intersection,( or somewhere near there),and ride south on the Angeles Crest Highway to Newcombs for lunch then finish it at the 210. What do you think Tim? How about the rest of you? Ideas,opinions?

I'm up for that.
Besides, we can't let Tim be the only rider in the group getting monkey butt to make it to the rides! :S :pinch: :whistle: :woohoo:

OK, my turn. As usual it was a great ride. I rode up from Murrieta (70mi) and met up with the guys off the 138 and "215" lol. We all headed up the 138 for some really nice twisties. Couple of tight ones took me by suprise! Ran across a guy who went down in a corner and bent his shifter in half, he was gonna have an interesting time shifting down the mountain! Stopped to admire the view (awesome!) and continued on. KZJohn and R4 cut loose into Big Bear and I gave chase. I pushed it harder than I normally ride and stayed with them until a couple tight corners slowed me down. But to my credit, my chicken strips got a lot smaller! It was scary and it was a rush! Had lunch and came out to find (Sorry, his name escapes me) his 600 laying over against LTDrider's 900. Luckily no damage. All of us had sank a little into the asphault! Bellys full we started down the mountain, would have liked to have gone a lot faster but we had 3 cars leading. Two pulled over but the last one refused, we finally got passed just as we hit bottom. Went into Redlands and stopped for a break and then we headed home. R4 and Z1rick headed out on the 10 and KZJohn and I headed south on the 215. Of course, KZJohn started lane splitting and I lost site of him (That stuff scares me) But everyone made it home safely and it was a great ride. I showed 235mi after getting home. Here is a link to my photobucket for you guys and for JoeK.

tinyurl.com/yw875l

I got home safe & sound at about 5:00pm. Grantl and I had a long hot ride down to Victorville, and then home. My new mesh jacket was a Godsend. We should have stopped and hydrated along the way, but Annette was kind of 'cool' on the phone when I called her and said I was still an hour from home, and Grantl had to get home, too, so we just rode thru. Grantl said it was like riding in an oven.
The road up to Crestline and Big Bear is AWESOME. Lots of twists (a couple that caught me by surprise, YIKES!) and lined with pine trees.
No mishaps in our group, except for some damage to Stuart's CBR from the 'lean over'. Blaze was undamaged, but her kickstand was sunk in pretty deep by the time we showed up after lunch.
I shot a view video clips, I'll post them on Monday.

All in all, an unqualified success. I don't know about the rest of you, but I think the next ride should be at the beach. I'm ready for some ocean views (and temps!)

Beach? do I her Malibu, Venice, and Bikinis?:evil: :whistle:

ltdrider wrote:

I don't know about the rest of you, but I think the next ride should be at the beach. I'm ready for some ocean views (and temps!)

:evil: My only "issue" with the beach, and PCH is weekend traffic... ...the ride through Santa Monica was nasty last time on the way home.

Even though I wasn't there, I consolidated the photos into one album:
jekgraphics.com/gallery/kzr_06-2007

Post edited by: JoeK, at: 2007/06/24 23:55

Thanks JoeK, wonderful job as usual!

Thanx for putting that together JoeK. How did your bike run on the way home from my place?
Bluemeanie; Sorry about dropping you on the way back, I split lanes so often that I don't even think about it. I pulled over at Maddison and waited but didn't see you go by.
Ltdrider; I found the problem with the helmet cam. The red wire coming from the battery was frayed and losing contact. No power to the camera. I will repair the wire and put some foam around the battery to keep it from moving around in the case.

KZJohn wrote:

Thanx for putting that together JoeK. How did your bike run on the way home from my place?

NP putting the gallery up, I just wish I'd been on the ride.
The bike has been running well since you worked on it! Thank you very much for helping me out. I should have let you know sooner. I rode it to work last monday and today. I had to show off the new chrome bits I installed:
all 4 blinkers & stems
new headlight housing
new chrome rear fender
all from z1enterprises.com
I've had the parts since November...

Well I have to say that this ride was really fun. The Monkey Butt ride to the beginning of the ride sucked however. Tim (LTDRider) and I met up at 7:45 in Acton and navigated the closure on Hwy 138 with no problems. We exited at the HWY 138/Hwy15 Wrightwood exit and sat waiting for everyone else to show up. We had no idea that about 1/4 mile away and out of line of sight from us, the other 5 were sitting at their fast food joint waiting for us to show-up. 10 o'clock comes up and we decide we must be at the wrong exit so we ride 12 miles down the freeway to the next exit with fast food joints--still nobody. We figure we would ride back to the original exit check one more time and if we don't see anyone we would just head on home. We finally ran into the guys and tried to get the infamous helmetcam to work--no dice. The beginning of the ride was relatively low altitude and we rode through a large section of terrain that had recently burned--very stark, kind of sad really. Once the altitude started to rise, we started encountering some tight twisties, which kind of caught most of us out at one point or another. I thought it was so cool watching KZJohn and his friend Stuart diving into the corners and rapidly pulling away from the rest of us (me mostly). Bluemeanie (John) and R4 (Chris) have 650's that give my CSR 1000 an inferiority complex. Several times during the ride I looked in my mirror and freaked when I saw a Cop Bike crawling up my tailpipe, to instantly realize--hey its okay its only KZRick escorting me personally.
On the way up the mountain we had some guy in a red late 60's early 70's Chevelle pulling a U turn on the exit of a blind corner. This guy almost collected half our group, then we came across the two young squids scraping themselves off the road. Our group stopped and tried to help straighten out the guy's shifter lever. Tools were coming out from everywhere--it looked like a yard fight at the local penitentiary. The rest of the ride went smoothly, I'm constantly amazed at how fast our greybeards ride even my Cop escort was getting on it. His bike looks solid and it doesn't seem to wallow in the corners like you (I) might expect.
Lunch was great, we discussed the state of the website and all the weird stuff that has been going on lately. I think the general consensus was that maybe there should be a flamer section on the site where you can go-- but don't go there if you are easily offended... Everything else on the site should be about bikes or related to the subject matter. Thats the gist of what I absorbed from the conversation.
I guess everyone else was as thirsty as I was because we all opted for either iced tea or water... Beer sounded so good to me, but I could tell that I was dehydrating to I stuck with the tea.
Shortly after lunch, Tim and I split off from the main group to ride north out of Big Bear and down through the desert... To say it was hot is an understatement--blast furnace--oven--hellish is a better description. You don't realize how much moisture you're losing in that heat with the hot air blowing on you. My kidneys have been squeaking for the last 2 days. Anyway folks, regardless of the heat, I had a great time and enjoyed seeing the group again.
Grant.