Motorcycle Misadventures

Meet me at the BMW NorCal Rally this Memorial Day Weekend

BMW Motorcycle Owners to Converge in Yosemite & California's Gold Country for Unparalleled Riding & Events at 40th Annual 49er Rally, May 24-28, 2012 in Mariposa CA

Introducing MotoSFO, your guide to motorcycle touring in Northern California

It's my birthday, it's International Female Ride Day, and it's the day I launch my new website, MotoSFO. It's been a blast to develop this site with a community of local rider-riders who share their favorite places in Northern California. I hope you'll ride along with us, my friends. We can't wait to see you here!

MOTOSFO - WHERE LOCALS SHARE THEIR FAVORITE PLACES TO RIDE IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, May 4, 2012 -- MotoSFO, a new website devoted to motorcycle touring in Northern California, launches today. The online magazine was created by motorcycle adventure travel writer Carla King, who lives and rides in the San Francisco Bay Area. She developed the site for her Motorcycle Misadventures blog readers who asked for information and advice about motorcycle travel in this very popular tourist destination. The site combines travel stories with maps, resources, news, and events of specific interest to motorcyclists.

The site serves a variety of motorcycle touring styles including the business traveler who has just one day to rent a motorcycle and take in the highlights, the fly-n-ride travelers on the vacation of a lifetime, and motorcyclists on a budget. Recommendations and reviews include hotels, campgrounds, state and national parks, restaurants, motorcycle rentals, repair, events, and gear. The site will also be of interest to local riders who want to break out of their usual weekend groove, says King, who says her team of writers have already surprised her with new information about areas she thought she knew well.

MotoSFO is a team of local riders and writers who live in the region from San Francisco to the Sierras, and Big Sur to the Mendocino Coast. King says that "not only will MotoSFO readers discover our favorite roads, but the quirky tourist destinations that rarely make the guidebooks, our favorite places to eat, to hang out with other riders, and the places we pull out to get the best view. We might take you to a hot springs, or an overlook where you can see elks grazing or elephant seals mating, or a quiet redwood grove where you can be alone." 

Along with King, the initial team of MotoSFO local guides are Lisa Alpine in Mill Valley, Sandy Borden in Davis, Kathy Hensley in Aptos, Cat MacLeod in El Sobrante, Carl Ribaudo in South Lake Tahoe, and Cindi Servante in Novato. At launch, guest bloggers include Christopher Gil of MAD Maps and Issa Breibish of WeLove Motogeo. Find out more about them on the site.

"MotoSFO brings all my favorite activities and areas of expertise together," says King. "It combines motorcycle touring, travel, writing, editing, photography, and web design, all in my favorite place to live and ride in the world, Northern California."  

http://motoSFO.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/motosfo
Twitter: @motosfo

 CONTACT: Carla King | contact@motosfo.com 

 

Tuesday March 27 on SideStandUp.com - Cat MacLeod of Leod Escapes Motorcycle Tours in California

On Tuesday, March 27 on SideStandUp.com motorcycle radio, I talk with Cat MacLeod, who has worked in the travel industry for seven years and the motorcycle industry for ten. His new motorcycle touring company Leod Escapes is based in San Francisco, with some really fun tours like: a perfect twisted day, a Dr. Gonzo Hunter S. Thompson historic ride, a two-up plush NorCal trophy trip, and more, combining roads, inns, restaurants, sights, and the occasional activity to provide both locals and international riders with a unique and culturally relevant vacation.

TUESDAY MARCH 27 5-6:30 PM PACIFIC TIME

Join the program and the live chat room on SideStandUp.com 

 

Destination Highways Map Sale through March 31

To celebrate the arrival of Spring this week Destination Highways is offering an EXTRA $10 off any DHBC, DHWA and DH NorCal Gold Editions (book + Companion Map) when you buy online through midnight on Mar 31/12. That's any book and its Companion Map for only $69.95! It's like getting the map for only $10! (Already got the book? Take $5 off any Companion Map.) Just enter this code: MAR3112 at the appropriate place during the online order process. 

Boost Your Creativity: Go to the Back Country

I was so happy when daylight savings time kicked in yesterday but it's a cloudy, rainy week in the San Francisco Bay Area so I'm having a little trouble kicking the winter blues. Yes I do know that people do ride, hike, and camp out in the rain -- my friends and family in the Pacific Northwest, in Canada are giggling now because they don't let it stop them -- otherwise they'd never get outside.

And I also know that a backcountry experience will help boost my mood and my creativity. I just spotted this article in Backpacker Magazine that may spur me on: Top 3 Literary Hikes: Thoreau, Hemingway, and Kerouac all went into the backcountry to find the right words. Here are the three tours:

Fox River, MI 
From Hemingway's "The Big Two-Hearted River" 
In this Hemingway standout, a war-weary young soldier named Nick Adams spends three days hiking and fishing in a remote area of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. 

Matterhorn PK, CA
From Kerouac's The Dharma Bums 
Seeking enlightenment, Jack Kerouac attempted an ascent of Yosemite's 12,279-foot Matterhorn Peak with poet Gary Snyder and friend John Montgomery in 1955. 

Mount Greylock,MA 
From Thoreau's A Week on the Merrimack and Concord Rivers 
Not long before heading to Walden Pond to build a cabin, Thoreau climbed this whale-shaped hump of a mountain in the 10,000-acre Mount Greylock State Reservation.

Read more about these Top 3 Literary Hikes.

I'm heading up to the Sierras this weekend to help celebrate my friend Carol Levow's new book Dare to Paint. If it's not really storming I'll ride the Guzzi up there a day early, find a place by the river, pitch my tent, cook a meal, sleep with the sound of the water and the night to clear my mind.

Boo hoo no trick or treaters but there are three motorcycles in my driveway

Halloween eve on a Monday night and boo as in boo hoo nobody's coming to my door because I live on a dead-end street in a neighborhood with exactly zero children. I used to love Halloween in San Francisco because I'd sit on the front porch with my landlord who lived in the big house on 15th Avenue at Lake and hand out candy to kids in elaborate costumes. For example, a boy in a rock and roll outfit had a guitar that turned out not to be a toy as he demonstrated a Jimmy Hendrix number - it blasted from a portable amp strapped to his back. His parents giggled at the bottom of the stairs at our astonished looks and I wondered if they used to be famous rock and rollers, which wouldn't have been surprising in that area of the city.

Okay... motorcycles. I bought a Moto Guzzi California Stone this month so now I have three bikes in my driveway. I know that most of my neighbors find it amusing but I overheard one of them - not someone I really know - expressing disapproval. Or maybe he was kidding. Well, what can I do? Get rid of one? Yeah, right. Here it is pre-windscreen and panniers. I chose soft "throw-over" panniers by Touratech, that expand. They're black with grey trim and I think they look nice.

So the Guzzi is a lot like the California EV 1100 I rode in the late 90's in Italy for a few months. I rode it from Lake Como to The Boot, Sicily, Sardenia, and back again to Lake Como, camping most of the way and sending dispatches to the web. During that trip I fell in love with Italy and I fell in love with the Guzzi air-cooled V-twin engine that sits off-center at 90 degrees. On an 1100 cc motorcycle you'd better have both feet firmly planted on the ground before you race the throttle at a stop light or it'll whop you over on its side. That's not a defect it's a feature. Or maybe what we call "personality" in the motorcycle world and you either love it or you hate it. 

The only thing wrong with the bike was that it has just one key it was dangerously bent trying to open the gas cap. I took it to Trudee at Key Kraft in Noe Valley where all the motorcycle shops said to go because she's a genius, and she is. Oh yeah, and Bill at Quality Motorcycles told me that every single Guzzi he has seen has had its motor wiggled loose, so he torqued it down for me. Thank you Bill.

I didn't get the saddlebags and windscreen installed quite in time for the Horizons Unlimited motorcycle travelers meeting but I did ride it to the Overland Rally in Hollister. It wasn't awfully awkward on the dirt road to the meeting, but riding it took me back to Italy to the day I rode its cousin down a dirt road on the island of Sardenia that took a sharp curve where I saw too late that the small gully running down the center became a deep, sharp V that sucked the bike right in.

I waited for 45 minutes under some scrub trees for someone, anyone to come along, and finally I heard the stamp of hiking boots from a dozen elderly Dutch hikers headed to the petroglyphs I'd been headed for. It took almost all of them to haul the bike out and then they were so quickly anxious to get on their way that I had to beg them to wait a minute to make sure I made it back up around the corner away from the bike-sucking V. I still want to see those petroglyphs.

The Overland Rally was fun though it was waaaaay heavier on 4x4s than motorcycles. Next year I hope to convince Horizons Unlimited attendees to extend the party for a week using the rally as an excuse. I did learn how to right an overturned vehicle, which rope to use - the static rope, the bungee rope, or chains - and how to wench it just right so you don't flip it into your windshield, you know, useful stuff like that. There was a lot of math too that I need to review before I actually try to do it myself. Rope weight and tons per inch or something. I never was good at math. But the crowd was adventure travel-y and interesting and there were a LOT of modified vehicles which is always a kick.

This month I've also started walking my neighbor Raymond's fat Jack Russell Terrier Tinker. I tried walking him a couple of years ago when Raymond first had a heart attack and couldn't provide him with the exercise he desperately needed, but Tinker pulled so hard that I couldn't stand it. Another neighbor, Marilyn, has since trained him really well and he heels beautifully and does not veer to follow common doggie interests such as squirrels, cats or other dogs. So he has been my companion on my almost-daily hikes.

I hike in the open space near my house where a mountain lion was recently spotted so now it is considered that dusk and dawn walks are not safe. Those who know me just had a little giggle at that word "dawn" because they know that a dawn walk is not really in the realm of possibility, but I do love dusk hikes as the heat of the October sun is cooled by bay breezes here in Northern California. Tinker, I think, would make a nice distracting little appetizer for a cougar, anyway, and I can run faster than he can - so far, at least.

I've got him jogging a little bit but mostly we just walk really fast. After an hour and a half in the hills and then down by the waterfront - where the sound of water laping around the rocks kind of freakes Tinker out - Raymond tells me he sleeps very well.

The International Motorcycle Show hits San Mateo in mid-November, and I want to motorcycle there, it's only an hour, but if tradition stands there will be driving rain all weekend. This would be too bad, because Liz Jansen of Trillium Tours is coming to tout her new book and I want to take her for a ride through Fairfax over to Bolinas by the lakes and through the Redwoods, and then down Highway 1 to Stinson and back to Mill Valley and over the Marin-Richmond Bridge. 

Liz says we could ride even if it rains but I say you don't understand, you're Canadian and I live in California and I will ride in the rain if it hits me unexpectedly but few of us like to negotiate greasy wet roads and idiot tailgating lanechanging car drivers talking on their cell phones. I am going to keep my fingers crossed, hope for sun, and if it rains maybe, just maybe, I'll try. I have the gear for it. 

I will join Liz at the show on Saturday for a couple of presentations on her new book Women, Motorcycles and the Road to Empowerment: 50 Inspiring Stories of Adventure and Self-Discovery. (You can pre-order it for delivery in time for holiday gift giving.) I have a story in the book, and there are some other women whose names you might recognize like Genevieve Schmitt and Sue Slate, Debbie Evans, Stefy Bau, a couple of others I wrote about in May for International Female Riders Month. Here's a review I wrote of the book:

“Women, Motorcycles and the Road to Empowerment is a collection of fifty intensely personal stories of women’s journeys through obstacles, desires, self-realization, setback, perseverance, failure, success, courage, excitement and finally joy in shedding fears to open a big new world in which to frolic and share and move through with purpose. I recognized myself in many of these stories and you will too, whether you motorcycle or not. It’s all here — bad husbands (and good husbands), supportive parents, discouraging bosses, perceptions of physical limitations, real injuries, societal restrictions, and then, a turning point, a role model, or sheer exasperation and simply getting fed up and doing it anyway. Some of the stories made me cry but then they eventually made me laugh or even shout out loud in congratulations. The writing is exquisite, with each woman pouring her truth and passion onto the page in the spirit of sharing and encouragement. Our tour guide on this journey is Liz Jansen, a real-life motorcycle tour guide, workshop and retreat leader whose own story elegantly leads us through ten aspects of power through mastering the motorcycle, the very real, yet symbolic and spiritual machine so uniquely qualified to carry each of these women to freedom. ”

If you're anywhere near San Mateo on the weekend of November 18, 19, 20, stop by the show  (Twitter: @motorcycleshows) and say hi! I'll be monitoring tweets and you can tweet your location to @MissAdventuring.

Until next time, may all your misadventures have happy endings.

World-Traveling motorcyclists learn how to fix it, cook it, and jump it at California campout

The latest from Horizons Unlimited - please share with your lists!

WORLD-TRAVELING MOTORCYCLISTS LEARN HOW TO FIX IT, COOK IT, AND JUMP IT AT CALIFORNIA CAMPOUT

Riding Skills, First Aid, Roadside Repair, Camping, and Cooking on the Menu in Cambria

Cambria, CA -- September 2, 2011 – Motorcycle travelers meet, learn, and become inspired by sharing stories, skills, companionship and encouragement at the California meeting to be held at Camp Ocean Pines in Cambria, California, October 14-16, 2011.

"A lot of industry professionals live California, so we have the benefit of first class education at this Horizon's Unlimited meeting," says Grant Johnson. "Riding clinics include off-roading by Coach2Ride leaders Bonnie Warch and Andrea Beach, Molly Marti's leads a hands-on emergency first-aid clinic, and Chris Sidah's "farmer fix," workshop to show riders how to get themselves at least limping into the next town. Plus Nicole Espinoza of Rugged Rider will be there to showcase dual-sport accessories, camping equipment, and provide tips and tricks for dual-sport newbies and experts alike.

Participants come to HorizonsUnlimited Travelers meetings for inspiration from people like themselves who present slideshows of recent travels across the state or around the world, and to rub elbows with motorcycling celebs, like Ted Simon, author of Jupiter's Travels; Gregory Frazier, five-time RTW motorcyclist and author, Clement Salvadori, celebrated columnist and travel book author, and Carla King, author of the Motorcycle Misadventures series.

Horizons Unlimited travelers meetings are held around the world by Grant and Susan Johnson, founders of the vast HorizonsUnlimited.com web resource for motorcycle travelers, and accomplished world travelers themselves. "This year's location in Cambria was chosen in order to reach riders from both Northern and Southern California as well as travelers riding through on the ever-popular Pacific Coast Highway," says Johnson. "Camp Ocean Pines is set on 13 acres by the sea, and offers cabins and a vast camping area. Participants don't even have to cook as the event offers meals packages of up to three meals a day."

Over 200 motorcycle travelers and aspiring motorcycle travelers can be accommodated, and if other meetings are any indication, the display of participants' touring-outfitted motorcycles and packing systems will be worth the price of admission itself. Campers are constantly entertained and educated by impromptu demos of stoves, tents, GPS units, clothing, tank bags, panniers, lights, locks, and bike modifications.

"But most of all, you can meet people who don't think you're crazy for wanting to ride your bike to South America or Africa or across Asia, or even around the world," says Johnson. "People get to share experiences and advice on how to do it and, who knows, maybe they’ll meet each other again in Mongolia or Timbuktu. "

ABOUT HORIZONSUNLIMTED.COM

First created in 1997, with the addition of the HUBB and E-zine in 1999 and 2000, HorizonsUnlimited.com site has become the most relied-upon resource for thousands of motorcycle travelers around the world. The site has over 9,000 pages of superb content and gorgeous photos, not including the HUBB, which has over 48,000 threads, 300,000 posts and over 900,000 user sessions per month. 

LINKS

·         Details and Registration

·         About the HU Meetings

·         HU 2011 California Poster

·         Hi-Res Images from Past Meetings

·         Horizons Unlimited in the News

·         Photo Highlights from Grant & Susan Johnson's 11 year, 39 country, 5 continent, 100,000 km journey

 

 

American Borders available as an ebook online with Scribd, Smashwords, Amazon

It was almost too easy. I uploaded my book American Borders: Breakdowns in Small Towns All Around the USA online to be downloaded from Scribd for $6.99, to view in PDF format. Readers can also buy it direct from Amazon in Kindle format, and  in text only format that reflows for easy reading on devices, even on mobile phones, buy it from Smashwords. I'd recommend the same process for any indie author.

For those of you who already have the book - you'll notice the cover has changed on the ebook edition, but the words inside are the same.

Breakdowns in Small Towns All Around the USA Now in eBook Format

I've just uploaded my book American Borders: Breakdowns in Small Towns All Around the USA online to be read on your computer in PDF format or downloaded from Scribd for $6.99. You can also buy it direct from Amazon in Kindle format , and if you want it in text only to reflow for easy reading on devices, buy it from Smashwords. Thank you!

For those of you who already have the book - you'll notice the cover has changed on the ebook edition.

Your Road Trip to the Sacramento Delta Area can include Beekeeping Tour in Brentwood

Attention all road trippers, bikers, and tourists: Here's a great stop in a loop from the San Francisco Bay Area to the Sacramento Delta area on Sunday, July 12.

Did you know that one in three mouthfuls of the food we eat comes as a result of the work of honeybees? These pollinators are in trouble and that's why Slow Food Delta Diablo invites you to spend a day at Knoll Farms in Brentwood touring the farm, eating lunch and learning about honeybees and the important relationship between thoughtful farmers and mindful beekeepers.

Learn about the life of the honeybee, the world-wide threat to honeybee health and what beekeepers and farmers on the urban fringe are doing to sustain the lives of bees. Learn about bee habitat and what the public can do to improve and support the lives of honeybees and other pollinators.

$20 Slow Food members
$30 non-members
$15 students (age 15 and up)

Well-mannered children under 15 may attend at the student price; however, there will not be child-targeted activities at this event.

Activities will include a talk and beekeeping demonstration by Alan Hawkins, beekeeper at organic farms in Brentwood, Tracy, and Marin, a tour of the farm and bee habitat with Rick Knoll, and a showing of Pollen-Nation, a short award-winning film that discusses the threat to bee health. (See movie trailer here.)

Enjoy a delicious lunch that features Knoll Farms honey and produce.

The day closes with a tasting of a variety of artisan honeys from around the country.

Wear light colored clothing and a hat as you will be on a working farm with thousands of bees in the air. Beekeepers are welcome to bring a veil.

Buy tickets here.

Lodging in and near Brentwood.

Map of Brentwood.

(This article also published in examiner.com.)