More practice

A planned practice

My BFG said he would come with me if I wanted to take a practice ride, and I decided to take him up on it.  The goals were two-fold.  One, to just practice going to somewhere new on a curvy road.  Two, to try, once again, to get the GPS to work from a route I programed in.  If anyone has any clue how to do this, please let me know!  I had also gotten a new Ram Mount for the bike to hold my phone, so I was going to try to take some photos while driving.

We decided to run up to past Bullards Bar, to Graeagle then down to Oroville and home.  Google said this would be about 300 miles and take about 5 hours.  I made our route, downloaded it into the GPS unit, packed us a lunch, and we hopped on the bikes.

Road construction

Immediately, less than 10 miles from the house, we got stopped in road construction.  Forever!  Since the construction was on a street onto which we were turning, there was no flagger, so I left my bike running.  It was a warm day out and my fan kept kicking on.

Stuck in road construction and getting hot!  The phone was in the new holder.

Now I don’t know if I have previously mentioned the two most terrifying (to me anyway) things about driving a vehicle (car, motorcycle, boat, truck, forklift, doesn’t seem to matter) are running out of gas and overheating.  Why these two things, both largely under my control would be so scary, I am not sure, but they are.  While we sat idling in the sun for 10 minutes, I wanted to turn back.  Glenn started to whistle “Soft Kitty” from the Big Bang Theory and I laughed.  I could keep going!

New roads

We continued on and were very soon, within 15 miles, on roads that were all new to me.  I enjoyed the scenery and soon we crossed the New Bullards Bar Dam.  I don’t have any photos, as there was nowhere to pull over and my phone wasn’t angled that way, but that dam is an impressive sight!  While it’s small as far as dams go, only 645 feet tall and 2,587 feet long, it looks huge where it is.  And you drive really close to the concrete face before curving away to cross it.

The road took us to California Highway 49 and we followed that up twists and curves that were a lot of fun, following the North Fork Feather River.  It was such a beautiful drive.  We ran into more road construction, this time stopped by lights rather than flaggers, but it wasn’t too bad.  We drove through the tiny town of Downieville, to which I’ve always wanted to go, but have never found an excuse to take me there.  If you blink, you’re going to miss that place!  Glenn was hoping to get gas here, but I drove by the only pump in town, not even seeing it because a large truck was parked in front of it!  Don’t worry, he said, we’ll get gas in Sierra City.

More road construction near Downieville.

We rode on, still following the river.  Sierra City is a very small town too, and the only gas station we could find was closed up.  We rode on, both of us worrying about the fuel situation.  Glenn can only go about 125 miles on a tank of gas.  I can go nearly 300, so my situation was not as dire as his.  Surprisingly, I didn’t feel too stressed.  I figured if he ran out, we could double up to the next gas, get some gas in a can, and we’d be good to go.  Fortunately, at our turn onto Gold Lake Highway, there was a stop with a single pump and we both gassed up.  This driveway was really steep and there was a tight turn at the top, but I made it through the nerves, and did my turn twice.  I missed the pump on my way in.  I parked, used the restroom, and Glenn and I drank up a bunch of water before putting on the helmets and continuing on.

Even MORE construction!

Awesome

Now the ride got awesome.  Though we were driving through the Plumas National Forest, all of the roads into the interior of the forest were closed, and the road was nearly empty.  We had beautiful views.  The fires hadn’t burned near the road and we didn’t see any evidence of the recent fires.  The road was twists and turns that was so fun, and the high altitude kept us cool.  What a great time we were having!

Glenn took the lead in Quincy after another gas stop.

We came off the mountain and hit Highway 70.  This would be a fun ride because after we left Quincy, we would go through the Feather River Canyon.  Following the river, there would be lots of twisties.  It did have the potential to get hot though, as the day in our area was predicted to be about 99 degrees.  There was a lot of road construction, and a lot of stops.  Still, the ride was gorgeous and we absolutely enjoyed it.  The temperature rose, and it got hotter, eventually reaching 101 degrees.  We roasted, but still loved it.

 

Took a little test video from the phone attached to the handlebars.

Headed into Oroville.  Glenn is leading the way.

Dinner

We stopped in Oroville for Glenn to gas up again and we decided to pick up some Chinese food from our favorite place, Tong Fong Low.  This place has fantastic food and they give you a ton of it!  We ordered, picked up and made the rest of the ride home.

The food was delicious and we had a fantastic day.  Glenn had so much fun he said he would come with me again.  I can’t wait!