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Central Coast & Bay Area Tour: October 2004 Day 2

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Day 2: A Wet San Francisco Distance: 80 miles
The next morning, I was woken up by voices outside my room. I checked the time: 4:27AM. WTF! The guys were awake and talking! In fact, Ken was already taking a shower! I thought I woke up early! Of course, they poked fun at my snoring....yada-yada-yada. Bastards!

Unfortunately, Jackie decided 2 tickets was too much for her to bear. She headed home that morning, despite my trying to convince her otherwise. She said our planned ride for the day, which included a whole lot of twisties, would just expose her to the unnecessary risk of getting another ticket. A 3rd one in one month would mean suspension of her license. Not good. Nevertheless, all of us shook our heads at her, making it this far only to turn around. But in a way, it made sense for her. Too bad.

Ken, Carl, Phil on his Triumph Trophy 1200, and myself headed out into the cold dark morning for some Starbucks coffee and a well needed pick-me-up. Ken flirted with the two cute girls at the counter at Starbucks. The stud. After some good coffee and some fresh pastries, we met up with Jim on his FZ1000 and Jeff on his Bandit 1200S for the ride across the Golden Gate Bridge. I had no idea Sunnyvale was that far away from the city of San Francisco. It took as almost 30 minutes just to get off the freeway.

San Francisco is quite unusual in that in order to get through the city, everyone MUST get off all freeways leading to it. This forces everyone to get on the surface streets of the city to get across the GG Bridge. When we got to the city, it was drizzling and wet. We crossed the GG Bridge and I looked up to see the cable towers shrouded in fog and clouds. Very humbling and definitely unusual for me. Once across the bridge, we pulled into an overlook with a large parking area. There, we met up with Nelson with his Honda CBR600 F4.

In the parking lot, Carl dropped his ignition key down into his Sprint�s fairing where it disappeared. We laughed as he had to remove the left side fairing of his bike to get the key. Next time Carl, use a soft key chain to avoid the same hassle! Hah-hah!

Left: While parked across from the Golden Gate Bridge, Carl looses his keys inside his Sprint's fairing. I'm pretending to help him find it. Nelson decides to walk away from the foolishness we Southern Californians are capable of. While Ken attempts to take a piss! Kidding!

Notice the rain drops! It was dark and rainy for sure.

Picture courtesy of Phil.

Right: Downtown San Francisco. It was as gloomy as this picture.

Notice that the edge of the sky line there appears to be a clearing where skies were not so dark. We decided to change our plans and head back south that way. We thought we could outrun the weather.

Photo by Phil.

Everyone agreed, except perhaps Ken, that riding tight twisties in the rain is crazy. However, south of the Bay Area looked clear. So, we decided to head back down south and ride twisties there. After all, there are plenty of great motorcycle roads in all directions from the city. We headed back across the bridge where we had to pay a $5 toll. Everybody made it across the toll booths except Carl, who had trouble putting his gloves back on. Everyone was waiting across the toll booths except Carl, when Jim took off. It took us a while to signal Jim we were one man short, and by the time we stopped to wait, the road had split, with one going downtown and the other going south of the Bay Area, which was where we were heading