S has told me that i'm the luckiest guy out there. I get to ride the canyons on weekdays, which i don't do enough, it seems. But this particular friday, V and I got to take a late afternoon ride up Azusa Canyon.
V works for the City of LA as an engineer, on-site in a very far away place, and doesn't get alot of weekdays off. Add to that that he's a reluctant work-a-holic, and it adds up to him not getting much time to ride. So it was nice to get up into the canyons on a really nice friday afternoon (compared to a really shitty saturday morning, described later) and explore my own backyard.
I'd ridden Azusa a couple of times. Halfway up west fork (San Gabriel Canyon Rd) and up east fork to GMR/GRR/Mt Baldy. I'd hated GMR and GRR for various reasons, but West fork is really nice. it's fast and a little short, but still a nice ride when combined with the lower part of azusa canyon, especially with low traffic (not alot of passing opportunities up there). Unfortunately, the giant storms of 04/05 wiped out the road that connected San Gabriel Canyon Rd to ACH (oh god, what a ride that must have been) as well as portions of ACH. Local riders surmise that Cal-trans won't be fixing the road anytime soon, so we're getting a stilted version of the CA HWY 39.
The daytona was typically marvelous, but V's K5 was troublesome. we've been trying to dial in the suspension on that bike for months now, and it just never seems to be as crisp and as solid as you'd expect a Gixxer to be. At the road closure, we switched bikes and i flogged the hell out of it on the way down for a few miles, and through the fast stuff, it seemed like the bike didn't want to lean. through the tight technical stuff, more of the same with some bouncy-shock action. I felt like the tires were low on pressure (they weren't), but it could also be because my bike is alot easier to get over than his.
His k5 has pilot races on, and they've seen lots of miles (down to the wear bars), so it could be that they're flat spotted and need to be replaced. For all the tinkering we've done on that suspension, it's pretty much the only thing that hasn't been replaced. At some point we'll get the set of pirelli's in my garage on the thing and hope it starts handling like it should.
Azusa regulars always say there's less cops up there, but it seems like there's enough to get you into serious trouble. On ACH, you're always afraid of stout popping out of a pine cone and busting your ass, so you have restraint built into your system. on azusa, 1) there's less riders coming up and down to give you any reliable info on where the bulls are hiding 2) it's ridden much faster (relative to posted speed limits) than the crest, well portions of it anyway. I envision myself getting caught doing very ugly speeds on this road and getting a CHiP rammed up my ass...
Saturday morning i was supposed to meet up with S to ride the crest with the SCS guys. I woke up mostly on time for the 10am meet. but when i did wake up, the weather was nasty. Threatening clouds made me want to go back to bed, but the crest was calling. The ride over to the shell was just as nasty, as the drizzle made me wonder if i should just turn around and go home, but i continued on. S was nowhere to be seen, and the clouds shrouded the mountains like stink on shit. I decided to give it a look see, because oftentimes, when the weather sucks down here, it's nice on the crest above a certain elevation. I was hoping that elevation wasn't too high up, so i made my way up the dampened lower portion of the crest. about 2 miles past the country club, i decided that this was too nasty to continue. visibility was shit (20 or 30 feet), the drizzle wasn't letting up (and my tires aren't exactly the best wet weather tires-supercorsa pro's have no tread pattern on the sides to maximize dry grip), so i turned around and went back down.
Later reports said that the weather cleared up around the AFH turn off (aka at the Ranger Station) and was beautiful beyond.
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