2024 Pashnit Touring on a Hayabusa

pashnit said:
Terry I think you mean Berryessa Knoxville Rd. It's been a few years. The mid-section is really tore up last time we rode it with a tour group a few years ago. It was goaty, we crossed it off the list. Certain spots had just 12 inch wide strips of pavement left, the rest gravel. CalTrans paved it about 20 years ago and hasn't been back since.

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It's much worse. Passable but just goaty.

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Berryessa Knoxville is most famous for all the stream crossings, there are 14. No bridges.

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Berryessa-Knoxville Rd
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Yeah that’s got to be the road. I remember all the stream crossings and how desolate the area was. I must have ridden it in 2006/2007, soon after getting the Busa. I first rode it in the early 70s on my CB750-4 with my soon to be x brother in law on his Suzuki Titan 500.
 
Our next story begins a day late.

Constant travel while balancing a full-time job and family has always been a challenge. I start the ride season with a list of important dates and try to plan around those. Birthdays, kids events, school functions, yearly holidays.

But it’s the stuff I can’t predict that always gets me. About a month before the next ride, my wife advised me the school just announced the graduation date for my youngest. It was the Friday morning of the upcoming ride & you can’t miss it. Always taking a chance when planning motorcycle tours a year in advance. It was even more challenging when the kids were young. But I’ve been running these tours for 21 years & somehow it seems to balance it out.

Last year I had to run home in the middle of leading a tour, attend an school event with my son, sleep at home base, then ride back to the tour group & meet them at dawn. Another time I had to ride across the state to attend my daughter’s Hula recital during the middle of a 1600-mile road test review for a magazine article I was writing. That was well worth it watching 7-year-olds do hula.

But this schedule conflict also meant heading out mid-day after the graduation to ride 500 miles nonstop to meet the group on the other side of the state bombing up and over the Sierra Nevada Range and then night riding across the desert to reach Big Bear Lake where the tour group was based for the night in the San Bernardino Mountains. That also meant I missed the first day of the tour and handed over the reins to my buddy Dmitry who’s local to the region and been riding with me for the last 15 years. We’ve done many, many tours together and I was confident he could ride my prescribed route, and safely get the group to our lodging for the night in the San Bernardino Mountains.

Since I missed Friday, I'd lead the tour group for Saturday & Sunday for a tour of Southern California mountain ranges.
We'll do this ride again May 2025.

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Southern California | Pashnit Motorcycle Tour

Pashnit Tours rides Southern California Mountain Ranges
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Monitor Pass - Highway 89 & the Slinkard Valley in the distance.
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Fuel stop in Lee Vining - that's Yosemite NP in the distance. Look at those clouds, probably snowing up there.
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Mono Lake

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Riding to Southern California after work, 500 mile ride to reach the San Bernardino Mountains where my tour group is.

Don't want to take the agonizing I-5 freeway, Highway 395 along the California-Nevada border is longer, but much better view.
Highway 395 goes two-lane, then back to four lane highway running parallel to the east side base of the Sierra Nevada Range.
This is such a scenic region, I do a whole tour focused on the Southern Sierra Range.

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Better view at least

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Last fill-up of the day. Getting closer to Southern California, been on the bike for 6 straight hours & 345 miles, still not there yet, making good time. Still another 170 miles to go.

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7:30 pm Setting sun behind me - desert riding

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I never night ride anymore, but the Clearwaters sure help. Made it to Big Bear Lake by 11 pm. Not bad.

514 miles nonstop. 8 hours on the bike.

This bike is set up just perfect to hammer out at 500 mile day & zero issues.

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The Plan is to head south through the mountains towards the Mexican border in San Diego County staying in the green stuff on the map. Yup, paper maps. And a bit of memory. I haven't run a tour of Southern California since 2017.

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Do we know these people? Nope. Just random bikers that pulled over at an overlook. Everyone is instant best friends. Always appreciate that about random bikers.

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Above the clouds - SoCal is a whole different weather pattern for us. Below those clouds are people - lots of 'em. Always trying to avoid people.

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Random bikers - instant friends
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The Palomar Observatory was the destination. Super cool place, and well worth a visit to get inside the observatory - the building is huge!

The last time I was here with a tour group was 2016. We attempted to go to Palomar Observatory again a year later in 2017 but yours truly experienced a brain bleed stroke while leading the motorcycle tour group seven years ago a few miles from Palomar & I spent the next 7 days in a Neurological ICU. The event I experienced back then had a 25-45% survival rate depending on which source you check. Haven't read this story, you should. We haven't been back to Palomar since.

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This is my Stroke Story | Pashnit Author Tim Mayhew

Had a stroke while riding my motorcycle | A Stroke Survivor's Tale of Recovery
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Skip ahead seven years to present day and as we rode up to the summit skimming through the smooth curves & I was transported back to that Southern California Tour in 2017 reliving the series of unusual events that slowly built up to the climatic revelation that I had broken the inside of my brain & was whisked off to an ICU. We were on the same road with the same smooth curves headed to the same mountain summit, exactly seven years later to the day. I wasn't able to finish the tour that day. Closure is the idea that we have an innate need to complete a task, and I needed this ride to the Palomar summit to have a sense of closure for the ride I never finished seven years ago.

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Ever get a chance to go inside an observatory, do check it out. These places are super cool. No idea what I'm looking at but mechanical stuff is super cool.

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Time warp from our visit in 2016 to present day - and closed. What!?
Isn't it supposed to be open, never even thought to check the observatory hours.

We came all this way
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Well, nuts. What a bust. But not giving up that easy. I added Palomar back to our schedule for May 2025. I promise I'll check their open/close schedule this time around. :laugh:

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Southern California | Pashnit Motorcycle Tour

Pashnit Tours rides Southern California Mountain Ranges
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