Malibu at Dusk Ride
Saturday, December 11th,
2004. Well, it was a real blast folks.
A couple of diehard club members
made it out with me and it was
worth it. Linda and Eric both made it a really
fun ride. We started
out from the store at around 6pm and headed straight for
the
Chevron station at Sunset and PCH. The
traffic was light and the
temp was nice and cool. Not cold, just
right. Now, Linda was on
her black GT200. A beautiful bike by any
description. And she
keeps it showroom clean. The thing is. . .
she's got a secret! Yup.
She gets an outrageous amount of miles per
gallon.
Anyway, I lead the way up PCH to Topanga Canyon
Blvd. Now,
there were a couple of cars directly in front of us
(on the way up
Topanga). it is quite dark of course, so I keep a
slow pace behind
the two vehicles. It's ok though, because it
sure can be dangerous. Man, it was dark. For sure.
The fun really began when we hit Old Topanga Road.
Just beautiful. I pick up speed a bit and find my groove through the twisty
road. Luckily, we had a clear road. Usually, because it is a residential road,
you have cars pullin' out of driveways or headin' right towards you with their
brights on. At night, Old Topanga has a certain magic. I really like it. One of
my favorite stretches of road. Especially at night.
Mulholland. We took it all the way to Kanan. During
the daylight, on a sportbike it's a nice road. On a scooter it's . . . just ok.
Really. It can be a bit boring on a scoot. Yet, at night it's charms are the
starry sky, smooth, clean, and carefree road surface, and the smell of horse
poop. What's a rider to do? We get up to the Rock Store (obviously closed) and
we pull over for a second cup of Linda's delicious hot coco. With the exception
of a single warm colored street lamp the stars revealed themselves to us in big
screen technicolor. Linda even noticed a satellite lazily making it's way across
the sky. Damn good eyesight. Both Eric and Linda (Good man Eric ET4. He's got
the blue tail light) are into astrology so I suggest we need to do Star Gazing
ride sometime in the future. What do ya think? Good?
Ok, gloves are toasty from sitting on the
exhaust pipe and we got to get rolling. Now, if you've been West of the Rock
Store on Mulholland you know it's tight. So, it was quite nice to have a pair of
135watt fog lamps to illuminate the way. It was about 7:15 by the time we got to
Kanan and after a brief side road conference we head down Latigo Canyon. Man,
who knew how much longer Latigo was a night than it is during to day! It must
have grown twice as long and twice twisty. This was really nice. The temp was
perfect. Nice and warm. Perfectly quiet, clear night sky, clean, clean, clean
road - And it was all down hill! Woo hoo. Once at PCH we parked the bikes and
gave a nod of appreciation for being riders. What a way to top off a fabulous
night ride.
cheers, Victor
The Motorscooter Webring!