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Thanksgiving Week Sport Touring 2005 |
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Written by Daniel Hienzsch
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Wednesday, 14 May 2008 |
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Page 4 of 5
 Misty Mountains Friday, November 25
If Thanksgiving Day was the day of possible nightmares narrowly averted, this day would see other riding nightmares fully realized.
I woke up early as is my usual custom on tour, and went outside to check the weather and see the sunrise. It was an absolutely amazing site. The sun hadn't popped up yet but the sky was a blaze with purples and reds and golds. I grabbed my helmet and windbreaker and headed about 15 minutes south on the freeway to see if I could get a decent snap of the eastern deserts bathed in the beautiful colors. A look over my right shoulder though told me a very different story. The previous day had been crystal clear, this day… wasn't.
I knew there wouldn't be a moment to lose so I went back to the hotel, drank a quick cup of hotel room coffee and packed up. I left the key on the coffee table in the room and rode quickly to the Tioga Pass entrance to Yosemite. I didn't come across a single car going either direction. At the entrance fee collection station, the gate was up and I rolled to the guard shack. I talked to the park ranger for a couple of minutes, showing my Parks Pass for admission and was told that it had rained and snowed all night in the park and that they were getting ready to close Tioga Pass. In fact, as I was talking, the phone rang and she broke off our conversation to answer it, waved me on through and as I looked in my mirror I saw her walk out and lower the gate behind me and padlock it shut.
I had the privilege of being the last vehicle let onto Tioga Pass in 2005.
I moved into the park, trying to determine if I was the predator or the prey. The road was obviously slick everywhere I looked and it was cold. Very cold. No where near as bad as the previous day though since I was only going at about 30 to 35 mph at maximum. Up to Shelob's Lair
If it wasn't raining, it was snowing. If it wasn't snowing, it was foggy. Everywhere you looked something was covered with ice and sometimes it was the pavement. Slow, slow going… sometimes at idle speed in first gear almost duck walking the bike across patches of icey road. The feeling of having your entire motorcycle just start drifting lazily under you a few inches is incredibly unnerving. All I could do was flow with it: don't tense, don't grab the brake, just draw in the clutch and let the bike drift over it and feel it grab on the other side. Oh and just for that little taste of indignity, the coffee I had in the hotel also started to hit me and I had to hop off the bike in the rain every 10 minutes for nearly an hour.
To replicate this experience, go to your local grocery store and buy a few bags of ice. Grind the ice up and pack it along a bunch of curves in your neighborhood. Now, this is key, wait until you need to pee so badly that it feels like internal organs are failing. Then, jump on a 450 pound motorcycle and ride around those curves while a friend of yours sprays you with a hose.
It was difficult proceeding, with scenery almost Tolkein-like in its combination of potential malevolence and majesty. It didn't even seem real, like I was riding through a movie set or painting. Maybe "malevolence" isn't the right word, you got the feeling that nothing was really out to get you, but if you made one little mistake, nature would take no pity on you at all.
 Frozen Lake on Tioga Pass
Out of the park, down past Wawona and into Oakhurst where I gassed up and had a nice, long, warm, dry meal at the Ol' Kettle Restaurant. The owner is a former Harley rider and took pity on my dripping self. I ate hungrily and he recommended that I stop by his daughter's pizza place in Three Rivers if had a chance. I was planning on staying in Three Rivers for the night so I said I would if I could, thanked him and loaded up for the next park on the list, King's Canyon. Looking back into Yosemite
The ride into the central valley wasn't particularly cold or wet, just bad enough to let you know that the weather could break loose at any moment if it so chose. I got down into Fresno and gassed up again and headed east into the Sequoia National Forest on CA180 to the Grant's Grove Visitor's Center in King's Canyon National Park. The road up was totally swamped in clouds and fog so I have no idea what it was like other than curvy, steep and dangerous. It was snowing at the Visitor's Center when I arrived. Out of prudence (see I'm learning!) I asked if there were any rooms to rent in the park but was told that wasn't the case by the Park Ranger. It's a bit of a shame because I would have enjoyed just hunkering down in the snow for the rest of the day and relaxing. I got my parks passport stamp and headed down from King's Canyon straight into Sequoia National Park (the two are joined). I didn't stop at any of the park locations I had planned on since there wasn't anything to see but fog. There was one parking lot though, where two ENORMOUS Sequoias were growing on either side of the road with all but the lower 20 feet disappearing into the clouds. The steady drizzle kept my camera under wraps though so you'll have to take my word on it. I continued into the park and south on the General's Highway, named after the massive 280' tall General Sherman Sequoia, and then onto what has to be the most technical stretch of road I've ever tackled in my life.
This road reminded me of helicopter shots of l'Alpe d'Huez during the Tour de France. From Giant Forest Village to the park exit lies a two lane, 16 mile hell comprising, according to the National Park Service, 130 curves and 12 switchbacks that drop you 5000' in elevation. It was pouring rain making the god awful pavement slick as snot. I crawled in first gear across a patchwork quilt of asphalt, tarmac, concrete and tar snakes all the way down using a body that had seven hours and 230 miles in them while trying to squeegee the sticky haze that formed and reformed continuously on my face shield. Just sitting here writing about it makes that little spot just inside my right shoulder blade start to burn. Curve linking curve linking curve in a never ending torrent of s-curves, chicanes, and 180 degree, potholed, hairpins dropping 30' in elevation every so often all while avoiding the little stone pony wall meant to keep you from plummeting to your death just to liven things up. If you calculate it, that's about 8 hard curves per mile, one every 600 feet or so with no margin for error. To make it more interesting, at any speed less 15 mph, you don't lean a motorcycle through turns, you steer it bodily. With a dry weight of around 450 poundsI, that Sprint ST isn't pleasant negotiating a grocery store parking lot let alone the Inquisitional torture of those slick bends. I pulled over at the bottom and took a breather in the rain to gather myself and shake out the cramps in my shoulders and back.
 Before Curve 1 of 130
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 On the General's Highway to Hell
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Fortunately it was only ten miles from the bottom to Three Rivers where I was planning on stopping for the night. What I wasn't planning on involved each and every hotel room in Three Rivers being booked solid for the day after Thanksgiving. I guess all those people that weren't on the Extraterrestrial highway the day before had stopped in Three Rivers. I made note of the the Pizza Parlor mentioned to me in Oakhurst and headed down into the central valley to find a place to stay. I road into the sunset, on a, thankfully, decreasingly curvey path. My ride ended for the day at the Best Western in Exeter, leaving me totally spent. My wrists and shoulders were burning and a lot of my stuff was pretty wet. I draped what I could over chairs and tables near the heater in my room, turned it on full blast and tried to find a place to eat. I finally settled on Alejandra's Mexican restaurant, had a couple of enchiladas and ended the day with a pair of aspirin. It wasn't at all what I expected and I felt like the day had gone after me with a tire iron.
 Start of Day
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 End Of Day
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One day of riding; sunrise to sunset. To make matters more interesting, weather reports for the next day weren't exactly looking friendly, so I thought about cutting the trip short. I'd make my mind up the next morning.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 03 February 2009 )
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