So I decided to ride down to SLO for their 5th anniversary weekend, after checking my calendar and realizing I had Friday and Saturday off, and that I could ride home on Sunday and go to work. Prepped the bike, had my rego in, and then made a packing list.
1 extra pair socks
2 extra chones
runners
1 extrs t-shirt
1 shorts
good to go...oh and a beer mug and my camera. :D
It was an amazing day in the bay area, nice and warm, and I was looking forward to heading out on the road, as Spring seems to be here, and lots more riding is in the near future.
A quick shot of the mileage before heading down. The route that I plan on taking was sent to me by my friend Mike who goes to Cal Poly, it has me about 230 miles from SLO. Not too shabby.
The ride out of the bay is uneventful for the most part, and takes about 50 miles to just get out of the area. Once south out of San Jose, I hooked onto hwy 25 at
Gilroy (which is a great town that has a garlic festival once a year).. south on hwy 25 with the suicide squirrels.
Seriously, if you've never heard of them you will definitely see them on hwy 25. I first saw them years ago, while flying down this road, and every so often just as you were about to pass, a squirrel would come flying out of the grass, unseen before it ran across the road, and miss my tires by mere inches. The first few times it was unnerving to say the least...especially when you are full leaned over and you catch the sight of a squirrel out of the corner of your eyes.
Honestly, I think
Geico Insurance got the idea for this commercial from hearing stories of people swerving to miss these squirrels. Most daring one I saw, was on a straight path, and a squirrel ran out, stopped and turned around, just as I passed, I swear it turned around under my bikes handlebar...inches from the tire. hahahaha
Anyway, south on hwy 25, past Pinnacles Natl. Monument reserve, and took the G13 road to King City. About 200 yds in, I saw this riverbed with a bunch of old cars strewn along the river bed....they must have dated back to the 40's from the looks of some of the body styles. Pretty cool...except who knows how much pollution gets washed down the river with this "piece of art" hahaha
another shot with the bike, as I enter into Monterey Co.
The rest of the ride was awesome, and too awesome to pull over to snap too many shots. I ended up on Adelaida road (through a region of winery's and many tasting rooms) with plenty of switchbacks, and small, twisty country roads. I did get lost a bit, and had to backtrack, always keeping the sun on my right, which seemed to work out. I thought I was going to drop out onto the coast at Cayucos, but instead I ended up as far south as Morro Bay. hahaha wtf?! seriously, I thought I was further north. eh. no biggie. Some photos of
Morro Rock. Which is, in fact, a dormant volcano. :-O
obligatory shot of me. I need to get another camera, as the fade spot that keeps coming up in the photos is not going away, no matter how much I clean the lense. booo.
While I was riding off, I saw this BADASS custom car sitting on the side of the road, and had to shoot some photos of it. Clearly a custom job, and I especially love the huge slicks on the rear...not DOT approved. hahaha
Now, if whoever owned this car would have found some white wall slicks, that would have been sick. Love the way the pipes are coming out, and I'm sure it sounds gnarly.
parting shot.
Well, I arrived at the hash hotel, and met up with a bunch of friends that were trickling in and out. Here is Cosmo and Gaynor from the Seattle H3, and us downtown at the pub crawl.
Not many more photos of the pub crawl, but I do remember a blur of hitting a pizza joint sometime about 1am, meeting a Vampires M.C. guy who knows a few friends of mine from the bay area, and then walking home to the hotel, and waking up with half a box of pizza laying in bed and me fully dressed. damn. haha
The next morning was fairly easy S.O.P. hit the pool for a while, drink mimosas to cure a few hangovers, and back to the beer, till the trail starts. After a quick chalk talk, the hares are off, and we wait 15 min. then take off after them. It didn't take long to start the hill climb in the neighborhoods, with the pack thinning out. We got to our 3rd beer stop at this antenna station, and then the hares pushed us up to the Turkey/Eagle split.
Up we went to the split. Lots of huge holes in the grass from the cattle that run around here.
Turkey trail went down, Eagle went up...so up we went.
Hit the top of the hill and ran the ridgeline, which was flipping cool.
Hashers up in the distance, I think there was about 5 that broke off and were making better headway.
After the ridgeline we dropped on the other side of the hill...which cold mean only one thing...yep, we'd have to climb again, to get back on the right side of the hill to get back to the hotel. This spot was weird, as there were all these different structures and sculptures out in the grass...we began our climb again, and ran into our last beer stop. not bad, 4 beer stops on the trail. A good 7.5 mile trail, decent circle that we did in the pool, with people called to the circle being thrown in the water if they couldn't come up with a response fast enough. Lots more beer, and then time to build costumes for the party.
The party was an ABC party (Anything But Clothes), so being that I was going the cheap route, I snagged some trash bags, and had my trusty duct tape with me.
Myself, Cosmo and Sparerib (europe hasher)
and voila, roman centurionish skirt/kilt thingy...hahaha Cosmo, in the middle above, went and got bubble wrap and card board boxes and had some harriett tape him up till it wasn't moving much. We made the 2 block walk over to the community center, and lo and behold they had a basketball court. before long, we had a game of 3 on 3 going. With us winning pretty easily, as our ringer, Chubsucker (a small petite young lady) was found out to play on the mens basketball league, after the fact. she was sinking baskets left and right. hahaha awesome.
The hash band came on at 7pm, after dinner had been served (and prepped and made by one of the hashers, salad tosser, who is a chef) very good food.
The hash band played till almost 11pm and it was awesome, with a wide range of music and everyone in costume dancing it up. Did anyone else know that doing all kinds exercise, dancing, playing basketball with a costume made of trash bags, is the worst idea ever, cause it makes you sweat like crazy. Thankfully there is a pool at the hotel.
Sin D Bare, on drums. Check out the cans on this one. Rowwrr..
The costume contest went well, with the hasher dressed up as the disco ball winning the womens..
and Cosmo losing in true form.
Weed Whacker got up and sang a song near the end. He was a sumo wrestler of sorts...disgusting. hahahaha.
A group shot, myself, Chubsucker, Salad Tosser and Otter eat my clam (she's a marine biologist)
Great party, great fun, didn't go to bed till 4am. We got up and I was moving slowly the next day. Here is myself with C-Fck Run from the Humpin Hash in San Diego.
The ride home was uneventful, I took 101 north to the bay, and the mapquest said 201 miles, and I was home in 2 hours 40 minutes. Not too shabby. boring, but I had to go to work. I got a burrito, showered, and napped, and headed off to work, walked in the door and they all looked at me strange, and I didn't see my name on the board. hmmmm, wonder what that means...oh yeah...it means I'm not working tonight. :| motherfcker! hahahahahaha I guess I didn't have to work, which was awesome. Home for more sleep and a couple beers to round out the weekend.
Great pre-lube to TXIH which is this coming week. I leave for Tx in a few days, and will be seeing some of you in Austin, Tx. On On
Knuckledraggers H3 M.C. has arrived, parked, and started to drink at this point.
My bike on the left, and Donnie's bike.
The campsite was very spacious, as it's a Mountain Bike ranch. Which means that the trails should be killer, right? There is so many single tracks that we should have a great trail on Saturday...or so I hoped.
People catching up, meeting up and drinking beer. The Ryder truck in the background is full of kegs of beer for the whole weekend.
This was the scene when we arrived, as the already arrived Kimchi's from Colorado were passing out the 40's and hooping it up by the time we arrived.
Net...trouble is coming. hahaha
Compound logistics. a) place tent in that general direction b) make sure Net doesn't get drunk before putting up tent. c) fix tent that Net put up while drunk d) find Donnie's brother who is buried in the tent that is rolling across the field due to the high winds, cause Net was drunk and put the poles in the wrong way and didn't stake the tent down. HAHAHAHAHAHA
Donnie and Cocktor Spork (named on Sunday)
Late evening music and shenanigans.
Ranger Smurf and Tekillya Tits
