Wednesday, June 2, 2004

Napa, California

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Greetings from the "Rawhiders".  As we prepare to begin this wonderful adventure, the group slowly assembles in the awesome city of San Francisco.  Renee' and I were the first arrivals on Friday the 28th with Joe dragging in the next day after driving the route backwards and locating all of the downhill (?) slopes for us to ride.  Richard (French pronunciation of Ree-shard) and Denise, our friends from Canada, appeared in their minivan covered in pictures, lettering, ads, and announcements (in both French and English) on Saturday, the same day Lisa from Ohio Willow Wood got into town.  In the next few days our merry band of travelers was filled out by the arrival of Kip, Linda and Chris and his mom, Gloria.  I do not think San Francisco was ready for us as we exhibited our skills by practice riding across the Golden Gate Bridge and through the town. 

The night before leaving, Joe's sister, Claire, a longtime resident of San Fran, invited the group over to her place for a dinner party and a very entertaining sendoff with some of her friends.  She is such an awesome lady, luckily for us she passed some of her sweet personality on to Joe as well.  Bright and early the next morning, as Joe was slamming things around in the trailer in the parking lot, making sure all of us, especially "Rooster" Kip, and everyone else in the motel, was awake, we began to drag our luggage from our rooms, checking our bicycles, figuring out what Joe had done to the wiring on the flashing lights, and other prep work for the beginning of "The Adventure". 

We drove to the Presidio, met our guest rider Andy May,  unloaded, and . . . waited.  Finally Joe gave the word, "I want to take some footage of the group leaving", which translated meant, ride around the parking lot a dozen or so times so I can take a lot of different views of the group riding.  After wearing us out, he decided that the ride should start for real.  As we wound our way through the Presidio to the Golden Gate Bridge, the day was beginning nice, cool, and beautiful, just the day to begin a journey like this.  But wait, what was this?  Change of plans.  The side of the bridge we were going to ride on was closed due maintenance work and so we rode on the other side.  It appears that "flexibility" is going to be a major component of this trip.  We rode into Sausilito on some winding roads with some nice downslopes (mixed with upslopes).  Chris exhibited his possession of having better judgment than the rest of us by acknowledging his limitations and  lack of experience on riding down steep slopes at high speeds and jumped into the van for a few minutes as we entered Sausilito. 

We were doing good going through town, with some friendly waves, honks, and thumbs-ups, until a lady, not knowing all of the good things we are trying to do turned in front of Kip and he, using his super powers of evasion, was able to avoid her and  wished her well in spite of her actions.  Oh my! What was that sound?  It came from that black and white car with the red lights on top that followed Denise through the yellow(?) light.  She was just being friendly and gave us an escort through town.  These California people are soooo nice.  East of Sausilito, on the way to Napa, we were cruising along on the good roads with wide shoulders.  Oh no!  What happened to the shoulder on this narrow two-lane road up and down the hills?  The majority of the riders stopped to load up while a few courageous souls continued over the hill as traffic began to accumulate behind the truck as they looked for a place to stop.  A couple of near accidents by inattentive drivers not noticing the decrease in speed from warp to crawl had us holding our collective breaths. 

Upon regrouping and loading all of the bikes on the vehicles, one of these inattentive drivers who had not secured his load properly and had watched his boards slide out of his pickup, stopped to have a chat with us about safety and thanking us for showing him the error of his ways of not paying attention to traffic and properly securing his load.

On a slightly wider shoulder, everyone but Chris (due to safety concerns) rode into Napa where after exploring downtown, the parking lot of a motel where we were not staying, Joe's expertise at twenty-point turns, and being unable to see the Imaginary Ben & Jerry's beside the motel where we were staying, we unloaded the luggage, loaded the bikes, found our rooms and settled in for the night.  Boy, were we trashed!  Oh, well, tomorrow we begin again.

                                                                Thumper

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