Gettin' Our Kicks: Chapter 8 - Day Two Hearst Castle

June 6, 2015

Today is a small rest day and a visit to Hearst Castle. The state of the drought in California was front and center at the Visitors Center. Port-a-Potties lined the front of the Visitors Center and the Governor’s Notice greeted us at the front doors.

The outdoor pool was also empty, but I believe they were using the drought as a jusifiction to drain the pool and do some needed renovations.

The indoor pool is still full and amazingly spectacular with the 24 carat Gold mosaic tiles.

Hearst Castle is very spectacular and the story behind the how it came about and the famous people who visited while William Randolph Hearst was alive is most interesting. There’s no sense in me regurgitating what is on the web, so you can learn more if you are interested at:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearst_Castle

 and

 http://hearstcastle.org/

I did not take many pictures. It is difficult to get anything good on a tour and there are plenty of great pictures on the web, but here a few.

This guy has a great view of San Simeon Bay 1600 feet below

The guy looking out at the Bay is guarding one of the guest houses behind him

Hearst was well noted for his vast collection of antiques and antiquities. Most of the collection is from the 14th to the 18th centuries. The oldest piece by far is this Egyptian statue from about 3,000 BC.

I have been to the Castle several times over the last 25 or 30 years and enjoy the tours each time. The guides are extremely knowledgeable, as well as funny, plus I learn new things each time.

Gettin' Our Kicks: Chapter 7 - Day One San Carlos, CA to San Simeon, CA

June 5, 2015

We headed out from Russ and Debbi’s around 9:00 with an escort out of town by Russ on his KTM. 

On the way to CA Hwy 1 we stopped at Alice’s Restaurant for some brunch.

You can get anything you want...

Alice's is a bike destination and the Burgers are named for bikes.
Yes, I did have a BMW Burger

No telling what you"ll see at Alice's

 After brunch we dropped down to the Coast on Hwy 84 and stopped at the San Gregorio Store where we said our good-byes to Russ.

San Gregorio Store opened in 1889. Picture from the Internet

 We stopped at Pigeon Point Lighthouse for a couple of minutes. I used to spend a lot of time here abalone diving.

Pigeon Point Lighthouse was first operated on November 15, 1872.

 The R1200GSA was cranking a little hard and I suspected the battery was going to go to hell in a hand basket soon. I stopped at a Batteries Plus store in Scotts Valley, CA and had them load test it. Tested OK, so we went on. More to come on this later…

After Scotts Valley we took a small side trip through Castroville – the Artichoke Capitol of the World – to see the Giant Artichoke.

Impressive eh!

Next up we stopped at Monterey and Cannery Row just to look and then followed the road along the coast and back out to Hwy 1 past Carmel and on towards Big Sur.

 

Lover's Point, Monterey Bay.
I did a lot of SCUBA diving here

We stopped for a few minutes at the Bixby Creek Bridge to take a few pictures. Right after we parked three guys from Sweden riding rental Harleys stopped. They all were flying Swedish flags – pretty funny stuff.

The day was gorgeous, so naturally there were half a million tourists out and they all stopped at the bridge at the same time. I really like this bridge and have stopped to look at it many times. I have taken a ton of pictures of the bridge, but can never seem to get a really good shot.

Three guys from Switzerland during a photo frenzy

Bixby Creek Bridge

Judith watching the half million tourists

 We left the half million tourists behind and continued south. Next stop was Nepenthe, in Big Sur, for coffee. The view from the outside terrace is beautiful.

View from the terrace at Nepenthe

 After coffee we continued down south. A ways further south the road gets pretty twisty and is great fun. That is unless there are 10 to 15 motorhomes and 22 cars going so slow you can count the revolutions of the tires. OK… so it wasn’t that bad. We managed to wind our way down the road and pass where we could or enjoyed the view going slow.

Once the twisty part of Hwy 1 was over we made good time to San Simeon and the San Simeon Inn for our first night on the road.

Gettin' Our Kicks: Chapter 6 - Staging Day

Thursday was spent taking care of details – adjust levers, checking oil level, checking tire pressure, and attaching a Tiger – normal stuff.

Russ has a pretty much fully equipped garage, so no problems.

The Staging Site

The Garage with Russ' Street Tracker in the foreground

Please note the Tiger on the tail

Russ - The Staging Master

Tomorrow we go...

Gettin' Our Kicks: Chapter 5 - Pirates 3 – Giants 1

Wednesday was a family outing to the Giants Game. Shaun, another son, picked up tickets for Judith, Ryan, grandson Leon and me. It was a Businessman’s Special Game – in other words it started at 12:45 PM.

 

We met at Shaun’s flat in The City and took the streetcar to the ballpark.

A T & T Park is a great baseball park – pretty small and with a nice atmosphere. I figured the game might be a short one for us. Leon just turned three a couple of weeks ago and while he likes baseball he is not just yet as much of a baseball fan as his father.

 

We ran into Emily’s (Shaun’s wife) father and his brother at the game. So Leon had a two Grandpa and two Uncle day.

We made it through the fourth inning before it was time to pack up. Pretty good actually. It was just as well – the Giants lost.

We ended the day at a Sushi place a block or so from Shaun and Emily’s flat.

Thursday - Getting the bikes staged for the trip.

Gettin' Our Kicks: Chapter 4 - We Left and We Arrived

One thing about getting to the U.S. from Germany is you have to fly. OK, you could take a boat, but…

Flying has become such a drag. Fortunately we had a fight from Nürnberg that left at a reasonable hour – 11:15 AM and a ride to the Flughafen from our friend Wieland. We connected in Frankfort with no problems and eleven and a half hours later we were in in San Francisco – 4:00 PM local time. Our friend Russ picked us up at SFO and we were reintroduced to the Bay Area traffic – Wow!

Once we got to Russ and Debbi’s house we relaxed with a few beers, a little wine and had a very nice dinner and off to bed.

Monday we relaxed a bit. I helped Russ with a few things, but overall a pretty low key day.

Tuesday morning we headed off to Roseville to pick up the bikes at A & S. On the way we picked Ryan, my son. This was pretty important to do since he had all of the DMV paperwork for the bikes.

The bikes were all ready for us when we arrived at A & S – Thanks to David Morton. We picked up a few odds and ends, including a new tank bag for me. I had this great idea of using an older tank bag that had been on my ‘07 R1200GS. In short, as most of my great ideas go, it did not work as planned. David and I spent about an hour trying to get the old bag to work. I finally through in the towel and bought a new BMW tank bag. It is a good one I’ll have to say.

Once the tank bag fiasco was wrapped up we headed back to San Carlos and Russ and Debbi’s. More beer, went out to dinner to a nice Italian place and then finished up the day with a beer and a shot of Tequila.

Wednesday is a Giants Game.

Gettin' Our Kicks: Chapter 3 - Packing for Two Months and 10,000 Kilometers

"Judith, please pack light!"

There has been much written on how to efficiently pack for short or long motorcycle tour. I've read many articles, if not all of them and take them to heart, with the promise to myself to follow the suggestions for efficient packing.  My mantra is "next time I'm packing light(er)".

We need to pack for a two month tour.









 
With that mantra in mind I did pack lighter... that is to say I left the kitchen sink and the portable defibrillator out of the bags.

All the stuff is pretty much packed. My light packing mantra equated to two rolling duffel bags and a medium-large tail bag (that contains another small tail bag and tank bag).







Judith's packing light equated to one rolling duffel bag. Humph!

In all fairness to me, I am carrying a small set of tools, small battery operated air pump and tire repair kit, first aid kit - and my clothes are a lot bigger than Judith's.

As Dean Martin once said (I think it was him), "That's my story and I'm sticking to it."

Here is the pile that somehow needs to get to San Francisco on Sunday.

Top to bottom: Two helmets (carry on), tail bag, Dennis' duffel #1, Judith's duffel,Dennis' duffel #2, laptop/iPad bag, camera bag (not shown Judith's tank bag carry on)

The contents will get transferred to the panniers on the bikes and the tail and tank bags attached. Then the empty bags get sent by FedEx to Pennsylvania for the return trip. I'm pretty sure Gen. Eisenhower had an easier time with logistics for the landing in France.

Off to SFO on Sunday morning.

Gettin' Our Kicks: Chapter 2 - The First Road Trip

A & S Motorcycles
Roseville, CA

The First of A long Road Trip

Off to Roseville

The day after Christmas - most people are running off to the Shopping Mall to either exchange a gift or use a Gift Card.

Not us... we drove to Roseville, CA to buy two motorcycles. Now that I think about it, this is kind of like running off to the Shopping Mall, but we did not have anything to exchange or a Gift Card.

So how'd this all come about? Let me back up to mid December 2014.

Finding Bikes

While searching the Web for some motorcycle dealers to visit during our Christmas Holiday in San Francisco I rediscovered A & S Motorcycles. They had a very good inventory of used motorcycles and I found two that would work great; a 2013 Triumph Street Triple and a 2012 BMW R1200GS Adventure, as well as a few others.

David Morton

I called A & S and got a sales guy named David Morton on the phone and proceeded to explain our crazy idea. David is a great guy. We talked through the various details of how to go about buying, registering and insuring the bikes. David really helped with lots of details that we'd need to get past, and after 30 or 40 minutes we agreed that it is all possible and not that difficult.



Next we discussed the possible bikes. One of the BMW R1200GS bikes I was considering had been sold, but there was another that I had not seen on the Web site that David pointed out to me. This one was a keeper. Next we talked about the three Street Triples and narrowed it down to one with only 1300 miles.

David and his boss agreed to hold the bikes for a couple of weeks until we were in San Francisco and make the drive out to Roseville for the final inspection.

There was also the little hurdle to clear of storing the two bikes from December to the end of May when we'd be back. They also graciously agree to store them at no charge - another problem solved.

This was working out just perfect - and thus the reason for the day after Christmas road trip.

Judith's Street Triple

Dennis' R1200GS Adventure

Tour, Look and Buy

We arrived at A & S about 1:00 PM and found David. First thing, he gave us a tour of the Dealership. This is a large dealership selling BMW, Triumph, Ducati, Vespa and Eric Buell Racing. Each brand has it's own specific area for display and the associated accessories.

After the tour, we looked at the two bikes and determined that all is good with them. Next was discussing some details about a few things we wanted to add to the bikes. Then the ever painful part - the paperwork. We had agreed on the prices, so it was just off to the races to get the paperwork taken care. Actually this is like a slow race. The Calif. documentation is tedious at best, and it would have been worse if we were financing the bikes.

About an hour and a half later we had finished all the signatures and the copies were made.

Dave, thank you very much for making our crazy idea real easy.
 

BMW Show Room

It was the day after Christmas
so the tree was still up.

A & S has several vintage BMW's on display

Dennis, David and Judith
after the deal was sealed

We headed back West to San Francisco, stopping in Tracy on the way to have a celebratory beer in a local brewery.

A Couple of Details

Well, you may ask: 1) How is it that I can register the bikes if I live in Germany now days, and 2) how the heck are we going to sell them at the end of the trip?

For the registration part it was easy. My youngest son lives in Vallejo and we registered the bikes to his address.

As for selling them, a very good friend in the Philadelphia area, David Harris, agreed that he will sell them for us once we finish. Dave is a seasoned buyer and seller of motorcycles, so he knows what and how to take care of this for us. This is a huge help - so a big thank you Dave. Plus Dave and his wife Mary Ellen are putting us for a few days once we get there.