2022 Pashnit Touring on a Hayabusa

While the guys fixed the Speed Triple, we skipped the Motorcycle Museum in Solvang to ride Tepusquet Rd instead. Here is one of my favorite backroads. Not exactly Rossi’s Driveway, but maybe a distant second cousin twice removed. Tepusquet flows up Tepusquet Canyon before popping up and over. After spending two days on the Tiger, I can see why Mark likes this bike, it does all things well, and the Tiger zipped up Tepusquet with a fervent eagerness to please.

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Like a ribbon of chocolate.

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After all day of riding, it was off to take in some BBQ

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This would be the final dinner of our ride season, this would close out the 2022 year & 12,000 miles of riding.

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For the last several months, I’ve been staring at my screen, writing new tour descriptions, plotting out new routes in the mapping program, figuring out lodging, working on Season 20. Yes, twenty years. It’s a bit mind-boggling. If you multiply out all the miles we’ve spent together, I have designed & led over 2 million combined miles of organized motorcycle tours across California, Nevada & Oregon, the vast majority of those miles done with my Hayabusa(s). But, to make it to 20 years, there has to be something else going on here to reach that milestone than just miles covered. How do you explain this business still thriving after 20 years.

It has to be the connections that develop on these rides, the sense of inclusion, togetherness, the sense of family. We seek people out that like to do what we like. And we like to ride. At our final dinner together of the season, Mark, who acts as my sweeper, has this long-standing habit of jotting down quick notes after each tour we do, and he regaled our 2022 season spent riding together with quips, antidotes and stories of each subsequent ride starting from March when we headed for Death Valley (back on page 1) all the way to present day. Our rides together traversed through Kings Canyon & Sequoia National Park, to the tiny ranching town of Parkfield, climbing to the top of 6500 ft Moro Rock, down into Kings Canyon NP, off to the Speedway Races in Auburn, into the Sierra Nevada Range and back-to-back rides out to the Pacific Ocean to escape the heat of California summers, into the Northern California Motorcycle Wonderland, plus exploring the Eastern Sierra Nevada Range based from Mammoth with a visit to the oldest trees in the world at 10,000 ft and a World War II Internment Camp where 10,000 Japanese-Americans once lived.

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Mark also tells us this story of Kenji Oda, a Japanese biker he met on the side of the road in Northern California in 1987. Yes, over 35 years ago. They’ve kept in touch for the last 35 years, and since I’m constantly tagging Mark in FB posts, Kenji sees all my FB posts of our trips together. And proceeds to design a custom t-shirt for me and sends it from Japan to Mark to give to me. Thoughtful and kind, much appreciative for the gift.

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Then, Mark pulls out a helmet and tells of how the tour alumni have worked together for months to commemorate the 20th anniversary year of these motorcycle tours. They started an email chain with all the tour alumni that went on for months unbeknownst to me. Nobody said a thing.

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First, they came up with the idea to design a 20th anniversary Pashnit Tours logo, then someone suggested they get me a helmet, then they had to locate a graphic artist to create the logo, collect donations for a helmet, source a Shoei Neotec II flip up helmet, find a professional artist that specializes in painting custom helmets & paint the new 20th anniversary logo onto the helmet. Then somehow carry the helmet on the tour and not have me take note of the extra helmet (I never noticed) on Bruce’s Goldwing. I had no idea they were all working on this together. Mission accomplished. I was floored, honored and overwhelmed. It was a fitting end to Season 19.

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But wait, there’s more.

Since I sold my Hayabusa a few weeks prior, I’ve been hunting for another, to replace my 15-yr-old '08. The plan all along was to buy a one-year-old 2022 Hayabusa, so I've been saving & planning for the Gen3 for a very long time since the bike was even revealed in summer 2021.

There were several false starts while watching the price come down over the last year.

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After months of hunting for a used 2022 titled in California (it’s an arduous process to get out-of-state bikes titled and plated here), I found a black/gold 2022 in SoCal, but the owner had de-badged it and removed the stock exhaust cans but didn’t replace them. Wait, what? Yeah, nope.

Then I found another bone-stock one-year-old 2022 black/gold Hayabusa with 126 miles on it via Craigs List in San Diego. You read that right, 126. The guy rode it home, and parked it for a year. After making arrangements to purchase it, a day before we were supposed to leave to go pick it up, the seller said they changed their minds and were going to keep it.

This was after it sat on CL for weeks with zero interest at 17k. Really!?

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Then, this happened: Yup, 15k private sale.

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Leave it to the Org Family to come through and put me in contact with a seller/org member in Virginia, since you all knew I was looking for something very specific.

The bike in Virginia:

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Virginia is not exactly close in distance, but I’ve bought several bikes sight unseen from outside California and shipped them sight unseen across country. A very long process to get this bike here, four months of waiting while it transited the United States. Yes, four. But it’s here, it’s in my garage, and it’s already been prepped for sport-touring duties. (I’ll post that story later.) This will be my fourth Hayabusa I have owned. There are many like it, but this one is mine. This motorcycle does all things well, all day in the saddle, twisties, fast, slow, 1000-mile days, this bike can do all that.

Using Haul Bikes the 2nd time:
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I'm using Haul Bikes for the 3rd time. I've also bought bikes out of Iowa and Minnesota. The bike I bought in Washington, a friend went & got it & rode it back to California for me.

The bike being picked up in Virginia. The semi gets as close to your front door as they can, you wheel the bike out, and they take it from there, it's actually a super-simple process to ship a bike cross-country. Just don't be in a hurry or have any deadlines. Transit time is never guaranteed.

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I shipped the bike to a friend in El Paso, Texas. You're going to ask, so here it is: it cost $690 to ship a bike from Virginia to Texas.

Then another buddy of mine who has a place in Phoenix went to pick it up and bring it back to California.

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Four months later, all the way from Virginia, it's here in California.

When it showed up like this, this is the very first time I'm seeing the bike in person.

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Yeah, I remember posting that.
I had to stop myself from going and getting it, as it was only 3 hours away.
It's the best deal I've seen on a gen3!
Congrats
 
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