Chris and I wanted to spend a little more time on this trip and not be rushed, plus Dave and I decided we wanted to ride around on Friday. So Thursday morning, Chris and I loaded up her car and then I loaded the bike into the trailer and departed around 9:30 am. I was debating whether to take the 210 to I5 or just go up the 15 to 395 and then take 58 over to I5. As we approached the 91, west bound was stop and go, so there went my first opportunity to go to the 210. As we came closer to the 60, we could see west bound was just as bad as the 91, so at that point I said heck with it and we stayed on the 15 to the 395 cut-off. Even the 395 was a little heavier then I expected, but we still did fine for time. I actually would have preferred going up 395 all the way to the 89, but because the weather up where the 89 runs into the 395 wasn’t too good at all, snow, rain and all that good stuff, so we went through the central valley.

It was a bit windy as we went through the mountains and down toward Bakersfield. We got through Bakersfield without any problems and found the 5. It was heavy here and there but pretty much moving in general. At one point, I was in the left lane waiting in a line of cars to pass a tractor-trailer rig about 100 yards up the way. Some bozo comes ripping up the side of us all and then started gesturing at me. At first, I thought that there was something wrong with the trailer, so I pulled over to the right lane. Chris then informed me that he was trying to tell me that I was supposed to BE in the right lane with my trailer. I promptly moved back to the left lane, right behind him and stayed there until after we got around the rig. With all of his hand gesturing (I guess I didn’t see it all…;-) I really thought I had a problem with the trailer. I guess he was mad that he couldn’t do 95mph and had to take it out on someone. It wasn’t like I had any real distance between me and the next vehicle in front of me, so I wasn’t slowing the line/lane up. People!

The rest of the trip was uneventful (you know, like BORING!). As we were entering Pine Grove Dave had called and said he was on his way. We were at the Pioneer Lodge by 6:30 pm or so. And Dave came in around 8:30pm. Once we got everything unloaded, the three of us went down to Jackson for a nice quiet dinner at the local Denny’s.

Friday

The next morning was pretty cold. For breakfast we went down to the Sierra House Restaurant, in Pine Grove, and then headed back to the lodge. Chris wanted to do some shopping, so she took off. Dave and I started getting the bikes ready for our ride; things like the radar detector and setting up our radios so we could communicate while riding. Since it was cold out, the weather delayed us from being in too big of a hurry, so around 11:00am or so, the weather started warming up so we decided we were ready to ride. The sun was just starting to come through the clouds as we were pulling out of the parking lot. I was about to turn left when I decided to turn right (don’t ask me why, I just thought it would be a nicer ride going east.). So we headed east. Not far from the lodge, we hit that cold weather again, but we continued anyway, going up the 88 for about 15 miles where we hit about the 6000 ft mark. Traffic was light most of the way, so it was nice that way.

The road was getting wetter and the air was getting colder, and we didn’t have on our liners to our mc coats, so we decided to turn around and head back down. About the time we passed the lodge again, the weather was turning warmer and from that point on, the weather was great and lasted that way for the whole weekend.

Dave and I proceeded down the 88 until we came to the 49. There we went south toward the 26. We stopped at the little gas station and as I went in to use the facilities and grab us each a Pepsi, a local (named Jerry – I think) started talking to Dave about our bikes. He has a 1000 inceptor that was in need of some TLC, but chewed our ear for a good 45 minutes. At one time, a friend of his came along that turned out to be quite a character. Besides all the tattoos, he asked if we smoked refers. We told him "no", as he puffed away on his. He told us that he was legal since he had a card. We said "that’s nice" and continued talking to Jerry. We wanted no part of what he was smoking! ;-)

Dave and I were back on our bikes heading west on the 26. Hwy 26 is a good motorcycle road, this section just isn’t long enough…;-) But, it was a good ride and we rode it to the 12 where we turned left and went east. Riding the 12 unto the 49 where we turned right which was south. Once we hit the little town of Angels Camp, we spotted a Burger King and decided to go there for lunch. We took our time eating and then before heading out of town, we made a quick stop at the Shell station. All through Angles Camp, my radar detector was going off like crazy. Because of the event that Angels Camp is well known for, the Frog Jumping festivities, the town was full of bikers and cops.

We went north on the 49 made the right to 26 heading east this time. It had a few cars here and there, but not too bad. We stopped at the last bridge, which was the North Fork of the Mokelumne River. We took a few pictures of the river which was running very high and just relaxed a bit. Back on the bikes, we continued up and took what I was hoping to be a short cut to the lodge. It turns out that the short cut put us a couple of miles past the lodge and we realize it after going about a ½ mile heading east on the 88. We took the first opportunity to turn around to head back to the lodge. We pulled in around 3:00pm or so, and saw that Chris was already back from her shopping excursion. Dave and I put on about 90 miles or so for the day. Nice ride, nice roads and no pressure! (-:

I can’t believe how great it was having the radios to communicate while riding. It sure helps when you are watching for traffic and the road in general. It was also a big help going into Angels Camp, since I had the radar detector and I was able to tell Dave when it went off. Not that we were speeding or really going that fast, but sometimes you just need to be a few miles an hour above the speed limit, so it’s better to be safe then sorry. ;-)

Around 5pm we headed down to the Pine Grove campground to meet up with other maggots that were expecting to be there for the next day’s ride. We were met by Rand, the Devlins, Jim Hiller, Don Peter and Hairston (whom we had talked to at the lodge a little earlier.) Terry Day was the next to arrive. Pete Springer came in with dinner in tow, or should I say lodged in the V of his engine. He decided to try some V4 boiled eggs, but I never heard if they wound up soft, medium or hard boiled. Maybe, even a little oily…;-)

Chris and I decided to take a stroll around to the campsites. We were talking to Pete as he was unrolling his blue burrito when someone yelled the pizza was on. Ron and Doe had arrived with the pizzas and everyone dove in. We stood around chatting with everyone and waiting to see who would show up next. We got word that the boyz from So Cal had a tire problem and were running a bit late. We found out the next day, one of the valve stems on Leif’s bike had broken and developed a leak. (Something else to pack for long trips…;-)

Around 8:30, Dave, Chris and I went back to the lodge and jumped in the hot tub. The Lodge had the temperature of hot tub way too high, but it was still nice to sit in and out and in and out…;-O. Dave was saying his knees were thanking him for it! (-:

Saturday

The next morning we got everything ready for the bikes and took off to the restaurant for breakfast. When we arrived, the parking lot was full of both motorcycles and cars. We had about a 15 minute wait for our table. The waitress at the restaurant is fun to watch and pretty good entertainment. She sure knows how to get people in and out of there.

Breakfast was soon out of the way and we were off to the campground again to join up with the rest of the crowd. I think we had 27 bikes and 5 were doubled up on. We all talked and BS’ed until Ron gathered the group for the morning rider’s meeting. Maybe if I would have gone over for it, instead of helping Chris get her radio and other stuff on, maybe I wouldn’t have gotten lost on the second leg, but I doubt if it would have helped! ;-)

Pete Springer yelled, "Let’s go". One group had already taken off, so Dave and I finished getting things ready and off we went. It was just Dave, Chris and I for the first half of that leg but since I had Chris on with me, I wasn’t going to push it too hard. Roger, Leif and a couple others came up from behind and of course neither Roger, nor Leif had to wait for an invitation to pass, so they went by and then we let some others by when it was safe. We continued on our way with a couple of riders still behind us, but obviously, they weren’t in any hurry to pass.

We got to the first stop only to find it was at the gas station Dave and I had stopped at the day before. So I did a little u-turn in the parking lot across the street, where I had turned in, and went to the back road into the gas station instead of fighting HWY49. We were BS’ing and kicking tires when we heard that Eduardo was having some kind of a problem. Not sure of the whole story, but somehow he had broken his shifter. Ron told Ed where he could get if fixed, so while he went down to Jackson, the rest of us mounted and took off on the second leg.

Now, even before we took off, I told Dave and Chris (thank goodness we had our radios on (-: ) that I could see from the map, we would get lost on this leg. We weren’t too far behind several riders when the first turn off 26 came up. I looked at the map and thought they were taking a short cut, not the actual turn that we were suppose to take. Sure enough, that was the turn to take and we missed it. I kept looking for the turn that I never found )-:. We continued down to a little town right off the 12. We turned around and headed back where I found, what I thought was the missed turn. We took it and continued on. After a short time, I started looking for another particular road. When I couldn’t find it, I told Dave we must have missed it, so we turned around and went back the direction we just came. As we came back to that turn I thought I missed before, we stopped and studied the map. We were able to figure out where we were and turned around again and headed back the way we had just came. When we got to some cross roads (where we should have been earlier!), we were again able to figure out where we were on the map. And we found that we were going the right direction all along. We just didn’t go far enough down the road and missed it by about ¾ of a mile.

We were soon on our way in the right direction this time. Once through the little town of Ione (that’s eye-own, instead of I-owe..;-), we took off on the 124 east and found our way back to Hwy49. On 49, we were supposed to turn towards Plymouth; instead, I didn’t look hard enough at the map (it’s a little hard looking at the map the same time I’m trying to keep my eyes on the road! Sure would have been better if we could have had Gloria with us reading the map to me as we went, like last year! ) and turned towards Jackson, again going the wrong direction. We immediately realized my mistake but had to go a couple of miles before we found a safe place to turn around and head back towards Plymouth. Once in Plymouth, we were just about to make our next turn when we were cut off by a stupid limo heading up to one of the vineyards, in our direction of course. This guy was too much and he wasn’t in any hurry, must have gotten paid by the hour or something. At one point, I found a safe place to pass and I went around him. Dave said that as soon as I passed, the limo driver slowed way down and did his best to keep Dave behind him. Since we had the radios, I was able to tell Dave what cars and how far spaced they were. I guess the limo driver was pretty surprised when Dave passed him on a blind curve. Radios were great to have! (-:

A short time later we pulled into River Pines, the last of the group to show up. We ordered our food and then I went next door to get Dave, Chris and I each a Pepsi. It was a nice little lunch stop, and I’m sure they were glad to see us come, and really glad to see us go!...;-) About 31 people (remember we lost Eduardo), all coming down on you at the same time! )-:.

Since we were the last to eat, we were also the last to leave. No problem, the last leg was a nice ride (Chris thought so anyway), just easy curves, long straights and a lot of cars, so you couldn’t get up too much speed. We followed Kayla, on her Ninja 500, most of the way and then at one point, I found myself in front of her and Dave behind her. Not long after that we were at our last gathering spot and of course, we were last in which made us last out ;-) We became the sweepers this time, so we made sure everyone was gone before leaving.

The trip back was slow and uneventful. HWY 49 has just too many cars on it on the weekend to be anything but fast, which was just fine for Chris. Once in Jackson, we stopped at the Raley’s so Chris could pick up a few things to include in her avocado dip. After finding places to put the big bags of chips (so they wouldn’t get busted up and all –thank goodness for large saddlebags!..;-), we took off for Pioneer.

As we were nearing Pine Grove on the 88, we came upon a Hardley V-Rod. Just in front of him were a couple of cars, keeping us from gaining any speed. Just before Pine Grove is a long passing lane. The two cars soon got out of the way and the V-Rod was working hard at trying to stay in front of me. He saw me right behind him and decide to pull over to the slow lane. Once out of my way, I started going around him. Because the road was nice and had a number of somewhat tight curves, there was just no way he could stay up with me. Dave was behind us both and was watching the V-Rod ready to scrape chrome when he finally backed off. I guess he was worried about losing face since I was two up and he was by himself. His problem was, he just didn’t know what he was being passed by! lol

Unfortunately (or fortunately in my case) Chris’s radio had changed channels and she couldn’t communicate to me that I really didn’t need to pass the Hardley. Oh darn, if I would have known that, I would have passed him anyway! lol

We made it back to the lodge. While Chris was busy making her avocado goop, Dave, Hairston and I were out front talking about the bikes and the ride. We found out that Hairston had dropped his bike in some loose gravel. The only real damage, I think, was a little pride.

Back to the campground we went for the BBQ. Of course, Ron and Doe’s spread of lamb burgers, chicken-k-bob and hot links weren’t a disappointment. Plenty to eat, I don’t think anyone went hungry! Christina made it up for the BBQ, but her bike had suffered a dead battery, so she had to cage it up. I’m sure she’ll have that taken care of for the next ride. We got back to the lodge around 9pm. Since Chris was too tired and I really didn’t feel like getting wet, Dave went in the hot tub by himself to give his knees a well earned rest, while I just sat nearby in a chair and chatted with him.

Sunday

I got up around 6:30am and wanted to get the bike loaded as soon as I took a few pictures of Dave’s and my bikes. Since I had changed the colors on my bike I needed a new picture for my website. Chris told us that we really needed to park someplace else then where we did the last time, because the bikes were right in front of a couple of the room’s bathroom windows and Chris said it looked like we parked them in front of an outhouse! So we parked the bikes in front of the empty restaurant next door and the pics turned out just fine! (-: Right after that Dave and I loaded my bike into the trailer and I took off my shifter for Eduardo to borrow. (Roger wanted to make sure he got home safe) I then spent the next five hours (well, it seemed like 5 hours) dragging out everything from our room and loading it in to the car. Chris and I could never come up on the bike; there just isn’t enough room to carry everything!

Once loaded up, we headed over to breakfast at the Sierra House Restaurant. Of course, it was already full of bikes. I found a spot to back the trailer into and we went in to find there was a waiting list. Once seated, Chris saw Shawn and Diane sitting alone, so she asked them if they wanted to join us. They came over a little later (they didn’t want to confuse the waitress they had, but she figured out where they went, plus it opened up another table.) So we enjoyed talking to them while eating.

We were then on our way, with a brief stop at the dollar store in Jackson. We stopped in Sacramento to see Dave’s new house and spent a few hours there. We were able to visit with Dave, Gloria, Ma Hampton and our sister Yvonne. We were finally on our way, driving down the 99 to Stockton then taking the 4 (Fwy) to the 5. As we were driving down the 5, we came across an accident on the north bound lane. It looked like it was quite a mess. They even had a fire that was started by one of the cars in the accident. We continued down 5 to Buttonwillow to get something to eat and gas up. While gassing up, I found a couple of my trailer lights had burnt out. Thank goodness for truck stops! The 76 had one of the lights, but I had to go next door to find the other one. We then drove until we came to Palmdale, where we spent the night at the Palmdale Best Western. We made it home the next day (Monday) around noon. It's always good to be home! (-:

Rumors had spread pretty thick at breakfast Sunday morning about happenings at camp the night before. Some chick came looking for an escape from John Law, but was found when there was no place to hide. Keith tried to ride to Jackson, fell off his bike and those there, picked up his bike, and then picked up Keith, and placed him in someone’s tent for the night. Of course, you always pick the bike up first, so there isn’t anymore damage done to it…;-) But that was cool, better for him to lose it there, instead out on the road. Those roads are not good at night for cars, much less motorcycles with a motorcyclist that had a bit too much to drink.

There were a couple of things that are happening and didn’t happen. First, is the fact that they are getting rid of the camping at the campground and turning it into a RV only park! And Ron and Doe were talking about having the next fling down by Comanche lake/park. That sounds like along ways from the Sierra House Restaurant and even farther from the Pioneer Lodge. Maybe the few that camp could find a place close by (Pete’s famous for ditch camping…;-) so we don’t have to move everything, and still have the BBQ at the pavilion at the camp ground?

Nothing about a Fall Fling. Depending on work and money, come September, Chris and I just might head up there anyway and meet Dave & Gloria at the lodge and we will have a little ride. Dave has wanted to make the Sonora Pass loop for some time now. That’s starting in Pine Grove, follow 88 up to 89, 89 over to 395, 395 to 104, then west on 104 to 49, back 49 to 88 and into Pine Grove. At least in the Fall, the roads shouldn’t have snow on them. (-:

As always, we had a great time. The bikes (Dave’s and mine) ran great and I only scared Chris a few times. Like coming in too hot in a couple of tight corners and scraped the center stand a bit. And she wasn’t too happy about me passing the Hardley, but that just couldn’t be helped. Actually, I didn’t even know it was a V-Rod, Dave told me later. O-: