2024 Pashnit Touring on a Hayabusa

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Favorite sequence of roads. This is west of Paso Robles. Vineyard to Peachy Canyon to Adelaida to Chimney Rock, each one of these roads is about 10 miles long and when glued together are a super fun twisty combination of roads outside Paso Robles.

If that pavement looks new, cuz it is, paved recently, Peachy Canyon is swoopy fun through numerous tree tunnels.

 

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What 'swoopy' looks like

Chimney Rock Rd, new pavement on this road

 

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Not quite done yet, we gotta ride San Marcos Rd to San Miguel.

No bridges on this road.

You ride through the creek rather than over it.

 

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Back to our base at Parkfield after all day on the bikes

Mark & Karen

 

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Meeting the locals

Cathy is one of my most senior tour alumni.
We've been riding together on these organized tours since 2006. She's a great rider and been on a motorcycle since she was a teenager.

Does she look 73?

Our Pashnit Tour group

 

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While I had rented every room in the town - all 11 , there was another small group of riders in town, camping.

They asked us if anyone wanted to do a slow race.

 

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Our 'race' attracted a crowd

 

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Mike & Randy - Randy has this odd thing about 'Charles Angels' poses.

The Parkfield Pashnit Tour group

 

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Turns out the guys we were having the Slow Race with was Donovan Corbett.

I didn't know who he was, but he knew who I was & came over to introduce himself.

He's the owner of Big Sur Moto Adventures
Check out his tours: Big Sur Motorcycle Adventure Tours
He does dual sport tours here in California, but also guided motorcycle tours of Vietnam

Our group

Something bumping up against my leg during dinner. I looked down & this was looking back up at me...

 

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cool morning

Heading out with an early sun

 

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There's three roads into this town. The third one isn't paved till the top of the range. At the lodge, we were told a heavy spring rain had made the road impassible, but the rain was 2 or three days prior - I'm sure it'll be fine - on a Hayabusa.

Wait, what?

Wet weather was 3 days ago.

 

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But as it turned out, my hunch was correct. The dirt Parkfield-Colinga Rd was all-dried out from the rain a few days prior. It was smooth sailing.

And, I knew the dirt only lasted a few miles to the top of the range where the pavement started back up again.

 

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There's nobody out here. Not a soul. And not sound. Imagine having all this to yourself.

 

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Nearing the summit of the range

No fences out here, this is all open ranch land.

This is the Coast Range

Parkfield-Coalinga Rd

 

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Finally reach pavement at the summit

 

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And a quick stop to air up my rear tire - got a slow leak but no puncture, my guess is it's in the bead. I go through a set of tires every three months so no use trying to fix it, I'll just order another one and burn this one off in a couple of weeks.

You're going to ask. I'm using an Oasser battery air pump. These are a couple bucks off Amazon and they work perfect. Set the psi & just turn it on. Pump turns itself off when it hits the pre-set psi setting.

This pavement is new, it was paved a few years ago and used to be dirt on the north side of the range. The new pavement cuts the dirt section down to about 7 miles of hardpack so that wasn't too bad at all.

 

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It's about six miles from the top of the range to the main highway, all downhill, twisty, and new pavement over the top of a road that has been dirt as long as I can remember.

I thought I had the place to myself, then this old timer drove by

 

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Parkfield Grade