My weekend: ... and BBQ

On Sunday I was meeting up with some RSBS pals in Paso Robles for lunch. It's a bit of a ways from Las Vegas to Paso Robles, so after the football game I hopped back on the bike and came back as far as Barstow, where I got a cheap hotel for the night. It was sort of windy, but not too cold, coming across the desert at night.

Unfortunately I parked the bike in the one spot in the parking lot that gets completely watered by the lawn sprinkler overspray. That must be some hard water in Barstow 'cause the waterspots were totally white on the black tank and saddlebags. The bike sort of looked like a reverse Dalmation ;)

So, up early, and an easy cruise west on Hwy 58. It was a little windy going through Tehachapi, but not bad, I've been in much worse. Past Bakersfield I jogged a bit north and picked up Hwy 46 to the coast. Strangely I don't think I've ever been on that road before. Coming up on the junction of Hwys 46 and 41, cars heading towards Fresno are turning left in front of you, a situation that makes you sit up and get alert. Well that very intersection is the James Dean Memorial Junction where the rebel without a cause ate it fifty-plus years ago. Now I know I've never managed to take this road before, I would have remembered that.

Lunch was with Jen, Rhonda, BluDog, Mel, Roger, and I got to meet Laura (BigRed) at Big Bubba's Bad To The Bone BBQ. It was pretty good 'que by California standards; meaty ribs and decent sauce. I enjoyed stuffing myself on spareribs but I'm still looking for the kind of smokehouse that is rare in the West.

No one rode the bull.

I decided to ride back via US 101, which would have been way out of the way for everyone else, so I was on my own again. No prob. The coast route was socked in with a heavy marine layer and I got practically no sun for most of the way home! I stopped at a gas station in Pismo Beach and called in to the WFBTalk line, and gabbed about the prior night's game until my battery started beeping. Then, it was time to saddle up and ride the rest of the way home.

A little over nine hundred miles total on the weekend, and my butt's not in shape for it. I think I must have landed on my tailbone in karate or something 'cause it was really killing me the last few hundred miles.