FOAF

Day 15: Pismo Beach, California

Distance for the day: 323.6 km

Cumulative distance: 3178.0 km

Top speed: 131 kph

Moving average: 83 kph

Temperature: 16.2 - 31.8 

We don't normally ride with an agenda but today we have one: get to Pismo Beach, just south of San Luis Obispo on the coast at a reasonable hour and spend as little time on the freeway as practical. We have new friends here and they have invited us to stay over, Warren and Kathy. Warren is almost a Canadian. His grandmother emigrated to Toronto in 1922 at the age of 4 and lived in a house which is now currently occupied by good friends of ours Wendy and Daryl, (such good friends in fact, that they are pulling up stakes and moving to the Okanagan). Well, a couple of years ago Warren was in Toronto and being a lover of architecture, wanted to see his grandmother's old house, make sure it was still standing and for nostaliga's sake. This was at best, a small challenge for Warren as he knew the location well because as a kid growning up, he would come from Philadelphia to visit his grandmother every summer. And Warren stood outside photographing the house. This went on for a few minutes and lest Wendy or a neighbour be suspicious of this activity, Warren thought he had better knock on the door and present his credentials: a picture of the house from when his grandmother lived there lest their be any worry that his intentions were nefarious.

Wendy answered the door and after a brief discussion, invited Warren to have a look around the house to see what Wendy and Daryl had done with it and give Warren his nostalgia fix. How can you not love that? OK, well, friends of ours who are/were police officers, but who else?

Warren and Wendy became friends through this action and last September when I was doing my solo warm up motorcycle trip in anticiapation of THIS trip, Wendy told Warren that her friend (me) might be traveling down close to where he lives! Warren looks at the blog and reaches out to me through the "comments" section and tells me I would be welcome to stay with he and Kathy if I was in the area.  Also, he gave me some road guidance on Hwy 1, which at that time had been closed for nine months due to the rock and mud slides in January of '23 taking out the coastal highway. Alas, as it turned out, I did not venture so far south, turning east at Manchester, much further north than here.

This makes Warren (and his beloved Kathy) in the vernacular of urban legends, a FOAF, or Friend Of A Friend.

Warren is an avid motorcyclist with his steed being a pristine BMW 1200 adventure tourer. This turns out to be very helpful to us because he gives us some route suggestions to get from Santa Cruz to Pismo Beach and miss out on some of the freeway. And the recommendation is phenomenol! We have to retrace yesterday's steps to Carmel -By-The-Sea (I wonder if people who live there get tired of typing that out?) and then turn south on Carmel Valley Road, which is a narrow, twisty ride along a creek through wine and ranch country. How narrow and twisty you ask? Well, this is a perfect opportunity to remind you about the Inverse Road Line Rule: the fun riding a road is inversely proportional to the number of lines painted on a road. IE: fewer lines being more fun! And while the road starts out with about a dozen lines, in short order there are fewer and fewer until eventually there are NONE. Well how much fun is THAT!?

We ride down Carmel Valley Road until we get almost to Greenfield. The road is enclosed by trees, surrounded by hilly ranch country and in places, wineries and further along, MASSIVE wineries with what looks like thousand of acres of vines.  That may well be the case but of course, it is not possible from the road to determine who acutually owns which vine.  The vines all look healthy here. 

Eventually, we get back on to Highway 101 for a couple of hours of slab riding because it is just not practical to take the back roads all the way to Pisbo Beach. And we stop at Wildhorse to get a small lunch. 

We arrive before 4:00 p.m. so we have a little while for a visit and to settle in then go for a fabulous dinner - far and away the best meal we have eaten since I cooked for her at home last.