45 Days on a Gen3 Hayabusa - 2023 Pashnit Touring
- Thread starter pashnit
- Start date
La Porte Rd used to be a dirt jeep trail over the mountain. Originally built as a wagon road for gold miners. It was gravel until about 1997 when they paved it. Super fun road. I first came up here on my ZX-11D as soon I a learned it was newly paved and got stopped by snow.
Very fun road!
Yeni & Hana, these two just met & hit it off immediately. Yeni is a new rider to us, rides a BMW GS & has done several tours with us already. Hope to see more of her!
Very fun road!
Yeni & Hana, these two just met & hit it off immediately. Yeni is a new rider to us, rides a BMW GS & has done several tours with us already. Hope to see more of her!
Last edited:
Nice pics Tim. I’ve been over most of those roads one time or another but never on one tour. I may do a hiway 49 tour this summer and maybe swing over to Lassen NP as a turn around spot. Been a year or two since I’ve ridden thru the giant redwoods too. Hmmmm
Terry, that would make for a very fun weekend from your home base. Highway 49-Little Dragon just up the road from you,
follow Highway 49-Yuba Pass all the way to Highway 89,
then up to Mount Lassen just to see the bubbling mud pots & smelly sulfur works
Zip across the state out to the Pacific Coast on Highway 36,
then a few miles away is Avenue of the Giants.
Then down Highway 1 - Pacific Coast until you cut across the Coast Range
and headed for home base.
All highway & non-stop twisties.
Let us know how it goes! 
In regards to the mining, my fiance's dad is a retired coal miner from sw Va(he's 74)
He can tell some stories, lol
One that really suprised me was that they were on vacation, and at an amuesment park(Carrowins, NC) and rode the drop tower.
These things are at most big parks these days, and average around 300' tall.
She told me "ask daddy about this, we rode that a few times, and everyone on the ride was terrified...except him".
She said he laughed, and talked normally to the people screaming on the way down, lol.
What really got me was when he said "oh yeah, that was nothing, I had faster and longer drops in mine shaft elavators!"
What?!?!
Yep, he said most of the big mines he worked, the guys let the elavators drop as fast as possible without killing everyone!
Ahhhh...no thankyou...not only do you go mile(s) underground into to tunnels, but you free fall in darkness getting there(aside from a few small lights flashing past), nope, much respect, and I will pass, lol
He can tell some stories, lol
One that really suprised me was that they were on vacation, and at an amuesment park(Carrowins, NC) and rode the drop tower.
These things are at most big parks these days, and average around 300' tall.
She told me "ask daddy about this, we rode that a few times, and everyone on the ride was terrified...except him".
She said he laughed, and talked normally to the people screaming on the way down, lol.
What really got me was when he said "oh yeah, that was nothing, I had faster and longer drops in mine shaft elavators!"
What?!?!
Yep, he said most of the big mines he worked, the guys let the elavators drop as fast as possible without killing everyone!
Ahhhh...no thankyou...not only do you go mile(s) underground into to tunnels, but you free fall in darkness getting there(aside from a few small lights flashing past), nope, much respect, and I will pass, lol
It was still rather early in the morning as we rolled into the tiny town of La Porte. population 26. And we're at an elevation of 5000 ft so still a wee chilly, a coffee stop seemed like a well-received idea.
Ever been to a general store in a small town? These places sell everything.
Right next to the diapers was pipe fittings. Or get a sandwich. Or get a circular saw blade. Whatever works for you.
Ever been to a general store in a small town? These places sell everything.
Right next to the diapers was pipe fittings. Or get a sandwich. Or get a circular saw blade. Whatever works for you.
Swords, Saw Blades & Throwing Stars
It was summer. My two older brothers and I had access to a stick welder. And we had a pile of scrap metal. And, we had just watched Conan the Destroyer. And, there was no adult supervision. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Wilt Chamberlain took out the baddies with giant swords. We would make swords...
www.pashnit.com
Ninjas always had throwing stars. If we were going to be ninjas, we had to have throwing stars. We tried cutting them out of sheet metal with tin snips, but that never worked very well to keep them symmetrical. They would fly off in all sorts of random directions. Then we discovered a pile of rusty old circular saw blades. We sharpened both sides all the way around with an angle grinder and those worked great. My dad came home from work that day and the side of our shed was covered in sharpened saw blades sticking out. He never said a word.
No, I didn't buy it. The 80s came and went.
If the word Oroville seems familiar and you’re not remotely familiar with California, there’s a reason for that. First, the tallest earthen dam in the nation at 880 feet is the Oroville Dam that created Lake Oroville in the 1960s, but more interestingly, you’ve heard of Oroville because the town made national news in Feb 2017 after heavy winter rains in the mountains above Lake Oroville, the lake filled up so quickly, they couldn’t release the water fast enough, and water topped over an emergency spillway rushing downhill and taking the hill with it in the process.
If you're curious, just search "dam failures caught on tape" on YouTube & you can see what this would look like if it had collapsed. It thankfully didn't. The lake level is completely level with the top of the emergency spillway. That's a lot of water.
Officials thought the emergency spillway might collapse sending a 30-ft wall of water into the town of Oroville. A mandatory evacuation order was issued to 188,000 people to get to higher ground immediately, you can imagine how that went trying to fit 188k people onto local two-lane roads at the same time. To get the water out of the lake & release the pressure on the emergency spillway, a concrete spillway was opened and massive amounts of water were released, so much so, the concrete spillway failed and began to disintegrate with massive blocks of concrete being washed away.
At the time, it was a crazy story and quite fascinating to those of us who lived nearby. As soon as the rains stopped, and the water receded, the finger pointing started. But one thing was obvious, the concrete spillway had to fixed as fast as possible just in case the next winter brought the same amount of rain. They did fix it with a gargantuan effort and it cost over $1Billion to rebuild & upgrade the spillway.
Oroville is about 70 miles north of Sacramento as the crow flies. I told the group part of today’s mystery route is we were headed to see the nation’s tallest earthen dam and check out the completed repairs. Plus, the lake is still pretty full from the crazy winter we had a few months back.
If you're curious, just search "dam failures caught on tape" on YouTube & you can see what this would look like if it had collapsed. It thankfully didn't. The lake level is completely level with the top of the emergency spillway. That's a lot of water.
Officials thought the emergency spillway might collapse sending a 30-ft wall of water into the town of Oroville. A mandatory evacuation order was issued to 188,000 people to get to higher ground immediately, you can imagine how that went trying to fit 188k people onto local two-lane roads at the same time. To get the water out of the lake & release the pressure on the emergency spillway, a concrete spillway was opened and massive amounts of water were released, so much so, the concrete spillway failed and began to disintegrate with massive blocks of concrete being washed away.
At the time, it was a crazy story and quite fascinating to those of us who lived nearby. As soon as the rains stopped, and the water receded, the finger pointing started. But one thing was obvious, the concrete spillway had to fixed as fast as possible just in case the next winter brought the same amount of rain. They did fix it with a gargantuan effort and it cost over $1Billion to rebuild & upgrade the spillway.
Oroville is about 70 miles north of Sacramento as the crow flies. I told the group part of today’s mystery route is we were headed to see the nation’s tallest earthen dam and check out the completed repairs. Plus, the lake is still pretty full from the crazy winter we had a few months back.
Last edited:
The rebuilt spillway
This lake also came to symbolize the 2012-2016 California drought a few year ago as before and after photos showed a photo like this, lots of water, next to this lake nearly completely empty. The 2017 winter filled the entire reservoir within a few months.
This lake also came to symbolize the 2012-2016 California drought a few year ago as before and after photos showed a photo like this, lots of water, next to this lake nearly completely empty. The 2017 winter filled the entire reservoir within a few months.
How do you feel about S-curves? Left, then back right, repeat. Over and over. As in, lots of them.
Vast see-through, and few if any, other people. There is a place in the Northern Sierra Range just like that. We think of the Oroville Quincy Highway is the most northern pass over the Sierra Range. It doesn’t have the dramatic climbs and steep grades the Central Sierra Nevada does, rather it’s a very fast road that every rider I’ve ever brought here over the last 20 years has loved. In the middle at the top of the Sierra Range is Bucks Lake, and the perfect lunch stop.
Vast see-through, and few if any, other people. There is a place in the Northern Sierra Range just like that. We think of the Oroville Quincy Highway is the most northern pass over the Sierra Range. It doesn’t have the dramatic climbs and steep grades the Central Sierra Nevada does, rather it’s a very fast road that every rider I’ve ever brought here over the last 20 years has loved. In the middle at the top of the Sierra Range is Bucks Lake, and the perfect lunch stop.
Similar threads
