And, i know this blog is dedicated to the crest, but there are times when a man wishes to dine on something other than bread. Sunday morning, i ignored the "come to church" phone calls from my parents and headed out into the vast expanse of the 909. destination: idyllwild. Met up w/ A and R at the diamond bar denny's (stones' throw from my hs alma mater) and made our way out to riverside to meet up with the deep 909 guys.
riding to riverside is generally something i'd look at with untold dread. straight freeway shot, to a seemingly distant destination, with lots of mixed traffic (aka, lots of big rigs). but at 8:30 am on a sunday, it's not bad. A leisurely pace to the meeting spot, and after no more than 30 mins, we were there.
if i ride the crest w/ an internet group, it's generally a 5-10 bike group. the 909 likes to roll deep, and we had a "small" group of 16 that made our way to idyllwild, of varying skill levels and w/ a number of different bikes.
Idyllwild is located in riverside county, in a solitary mountain range in the middle of the desert. Sandwiched between riverside and palm desert, the principle route through the random alpine environs and into the desert are CA-243 and CA-74. I hadn't been to idyllwild since...i wanna say 1984, when i was a 6 year old kid who loved lighting shit on fire. not only because of the passage of time, but the general impregnability of the 909 area code, idyllwild just seems far.
it's not. all told, continuous travel times would have been approximately 45 mins from my house (in the east 626), which is only 10-15 mins longer than it takes me to get to the crest.
Before i have to divide this post into chapters, we'll get into the road. The 243 snakes up the mountain face, and the climb up is nothing short of glorious. Fast, yet technical sequences remind me of GMR, except with much more room and vision around corners, and without the debris. I was riding midpack, and taking what i had learned the day before (see report for 3/30) about the 675, quickly caught a rhythm and found myself engaged in a 2-wheeled ballet up the mountain. The view from up there is also spectacular, and the whole first 10 miles of the 243 makes for awesome photo-ops. There was a scary moment in a right hander though: as i started to get the bike leaned over, i must have hit a rock of some sort, and felt the front end get airborne just a tad (which is always scary in a lean), but the tires re-established contact and maintained grip. if i was unluckier in life, it would have been a lowside, possibly right off the mountain face. So it serves as a reminder: keep your eyes forward and scanning for potential dangers!
At an intermediate stop, i looked at my front tire to find a nasty gash in it. After deciding to "take it easy" and not risk blowing out the front tire, i decided to continue on, at a more leisurely pace (well, as leisurely as one can manage up there).
Reaching the gas station in the commercial center of idyllwild, the town, we noticed we were a few bikes short. A shows up 5 mins later with a rashed up R1 and a nasty scrape on his knee. of course it's on a day when he's not wearing leathers (neither am i). Apparently, the insane amounts of gravel and red cedar through the middle section of the 243 claimed A's knee and left fairing when a suicide squirrel darted out in front of A, he dodged, then dodged the oncoming van, only to lose the rear tire and lay it down at about 40 mph. one of those unfortunate occurences, though personally i'm hitting the squirrel 101 times out of 100 and hoping the front tire doesn't go FUBAR. anyway, with the knowhow and saavy of a few health care practitioners in the group, he gets the wound H2O2'd and bandaged. 4 of us decide to pack it in early and head home down the 74 (into hemet.) The 74 west is also a nice road, reminiscnet of Forest, but with longer turns. In light of all of the things that happened on this ride, and my ticket, i'm not pushing it through the long, fast hairpins, and lose R riding in front of me. We stop to take a break and give A a chance to rest his bloody knee when the rest of the group rolls up--bad omens like an unavoidable lowside, or even my invisible rock episode were enough to get everyone to pack it in early.
we ride down into hemet and a bunch of "colored" guys on crotch rockets invade the local carl's jr. i hear at least 3 different discussions going on simultaneously about "bike riders"--some favorable, others scornful. i guess it's not something you fully understand until you get on a bike and try to get a knee down. i suppose that's a whole other post right there...
anyway, after lunch we make our way back through what might be the most po'dunk hamlets and cowtowns the 909 has to offer. Think harris ranch/coalinga, liberally sprinkled thorughout riverside county...it was a long ride back to the 15 and eventually home, but being tasked with making sure A got home safe, i made sure we took it nice and easy and we got back ok. It was a good weekend of riding, but not without heavy cost (front tire, ticket, A's knee) or the reminder that canyon riding is no time to get lazy about wearing gear.
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