Sunday on Thursday at the Sierras

Who wouldn’t want to start Sunday on Thursday?

We embarked on an extended weekend ride spanning the Sierra Nevada foothills then over to the California coast and back to L.A. This is my Sunday riding band. We are all riding BMW GS except one black sheep on a Harley (and a non-black sheep on Africa Twin). He claims to hold the cool respect for all of us. Ha.

We met at our regular cafe in the Valley. All six of us pumped up about the trip. We headed East on route 14 via the town of Mojave and route 395 to the South East corner of the Sierras. Then we climbed up Sherman Pass to cross back west. The terrain changed from the typical southwest arid hills to mildly acceptable mountain pines.

Our first lunch stop was at Kennedy Meadows General Store. Apparently this is a major stop for Pacific Crest Trail hikers. Usually they run out of package room due to hikers pre-shipping packages to themselves for re-supply. But it is late in the season now so we only saw a couple of hikers. A French woman who started in Canada and her German partner who joined in Northern California much later.  She hiked solo for weeks before he joined. They live in Berlin and said that there's nothing like this in Europe although they do have cross Europe hiking trails. Still, the USA is vast and beautiful. She mentioned that the hardest part is in my previous life location in between Stevens pass and Snoqualmie path in Washington state. Nice. The store patron calls these late hikers “section hikers” as they don’t quite do the full PCH. This couple in particular got stuck in a snow storm up north a bit earlier and got a ride south. They are now traversing northward to complete the famous trail. The folks there were a bit puzzled by the move. Ok, enough with that.

We kept going onwards to the customary coffee stop. The band always find a nature spot for Turkish coffee break. While at it, the solo rider I noticed earlier stopped next to us. I invited him over and he told us that the road ahead of us is snowed in with ice. A fellow rider told him he spilled and scratched his bike attempting to pass through. And a jeep coming from the other way said it’s 11 miles of snow. It’s already late in the day. If we need to go around it’ll be a 3 hours detour. Yuck. But you got to see and try it yourself. That’s how motorcycle trips roll. We took off, the roads became snowy with slushy tracks. But c’mon, it was just a bit of snow, with car tire tracks ensuring we could easily ride on asphalt confidently all the way through. The rider said he has been riding these roads for 40 years. So much BS. The moral of the story - Don’t ever believe fear stories. The best of the ride was great as well. Proper Sierra foothills twisties.

The band leader, Raphi, led us to a sweet spot by a river on the way. These dudes have been all over this place and they know many little gems.

We got to the hotel in Springville. It turns out everything closes there early but we were able to grab some lousy food at a lame, cheap and very unhealthy burger joint. The hotel though was a fine motel.

The next morning, the black sheep‘s Harley broke. I guess the bad road sections rattles got to it. The ignition switch assembly “ejected”. We spent an hour or two trying to fix it. We had a mechanical engineer and a locksmith in the band. They miraculously fixed it just as AAA was heading over to evacuate the black sheep, Uzi. This (not so) humble useless software engineer, aka myself, saved the day by providing eyeglasses :).

We went on our way late, riding incredible roads on the Sierra foothills. It was  just a beautiful uneventful ride with a lunch stop at nowhere with a grumpy solo food joint owner which we were able to soften out. The dude exclaimed that "since Covid epidemic, nobody is into working." Ya, work is overrated anyways. And yes, this band is the bomb.

Again, I was treated to an incredible view stop in midst of riding crazy good roads. Lucky me.  Lucky me. It’s not a typo.

Finally, 250 fun fun (not a typo) miles later we got to the hotel. This hotel at Sonora was much nicer, although the last one as plenty sufficient. Sonora, CA is a cute town - the western gateway to route 108 Sonora pass on the Sierra Nevada's mountains. The pass is closed due to snow. But it was not on the route plan anyways. I missed it in an earlier BMW group ride trip. It’ll have to wait for next year.

We had much better dinner, and lots of booze. Great finale for a great day.