April 19th THE BIG BEAR/RIM OF THE WORLD BIKE TRIP MAY 17 2009

I planned a ride for the Sunday the 17th, the day after Barry’s birthday, after we got back from Provo and after The Wrench went above and beyond, no, BEYOND beyond and fixed Barry’s 1100’s starter clutch and idler gear. Above and beyond I say again, because he treated Bub’s bike like it was his own child, and…and…well, maybe he treated it like his own bike, because we’re NOT SURE about Johney’s son Wes at this point! Just kidding, Johney, just kidding…Johney practically took the whole damn thing apart and put it back together better than new. We owe him so much, he’s such a generous and loving friend, I feel so blessed to have him in our lives.
ANYWAY…
Taking a chapter from my experiences i.e. NEVER reinvent the wheel, I looked online at different forums and newsletters for neat rides around SoCal. FOUND a nice one-up Hwy 18 Rim of the World Drive, past Lake Arrowhead (if we’d had more time, I would’ve done the hwys 189/173 loop around Arrowhead Lake), through Skyforest, Rimforest, Running Springs and then continuing on Hwy 38 around the North Shore of Big Bear Lake through Fawnskin. (I won’t tell you how one of the ‘muttz’ totally BUTCHERED that town’s name, but I’m sure you can guess what he said)
Since Sundays are church days for a lot of people, I scheduled the ride to being at around 12:45, with the duration about 4-5 hours, not including the care and feeding of carnivores or iron horses.
You’ll notice that I have quite a few stops on this route, up the 57 to the 210 to Waterman then up Hwy 18, around Running Springs to Fawnskin, then Big Bear then Redlands-I do it that way to calc out the mileage, to make sure we have enough gas to make the ‘legs’ of the trip, with some leeway. For instance, we got gas when we got off the 210 at Waterman, just to be safe, then got gas in Mentone at the bottom of hwy 38 just before the freeway. I don’t like to go past about 120 miles on my gas tank (reserve is at about 145), especially with windy-twisty-downshift-upshift roads.

PLANNING, PLANNING, PLANNING:
The planning is extremely important since I usually don’t get to do/don’t have time to do a pre-ride. I’ll do a blog entry about planning rides in a little bit.
Just a few things I do:

**I plan the route to be varied and interesting, with scenery and photo-ops. I mean, c’mon, I HAVE a blog to put them in!
**I plan what the weather will be at any particular area-sometimes the weather and temps can vary quite a bit so I want to make sure we hit the traditionally hot places in the morning and the traditionally cooler places in the afternoon.
**I plan what I’m going to wear at any given time, based on the weather. I have taken Barry’s idea and I now wear a short sleeved t-shirt under a long-sleeved t-shirt for extra warmth and if it’s hot, I can take off the L/S one.
**I plan the mileage and the gas stops/needs. We don’t want to stop in Podunkville and pay $3.89 for a gallon of gas, plus we want to be safe and not have anyone do the ‘reserve’ thing.
**I plan potential places to eat on the route; again, carnivores are on the prowl, and it gets kinda chancey when SOME of the muttz have to live off their own fat for any amount of time. You’d need to keep your hands and arms away from their mouths when that happens. I usually check to see when the last time anyone ate was, so I can figure out how long they can go. Motorcycle tanks and tummies can only go so far on so much fuel!
**I plan the timing of the route, i.e. the time we’ll hit a certain point. This allows me to get an overall view of the trip duration as a whole, thereby leaving room for modifications. IN OTHER WORDS, IF I WANNA SHOP, I’M GONNA STOP! Which, by the way, we DID NOT DO-we did not shop. Damn, am I feeling ok??

…where was I? Oh, yeah, the Big Bear trip.
Gregg and Johney met us at Denny’s at 12:45, gassed up and ready to go. I’m glad Gregg got to come, and he was glad that he wasn’t the only 650 cc there!!! His Joe Rocket jacket even matched his bike, a beautiful blue. I was sorta planning to go the 57-60-15-210 route, but Johney was saying that the 210 all the way was better even though it was 4 miles longer because there’s more road. Hey, I’m easy, I take suggestions, and this one sounded good, especially since he travels all over the SoCal area a LOT. He knows SoCal roads like Barry knows electronics and lasagna and tuna. Did I ever tell you that Barry makes the most dynamite tuna salad and lasagna???
Got to the Waterman offramp, gassed up and started up hwy 18. I was pretty casual, enjoying the ride, but I thought Gregg would want to tear through the curves (since he has his new sportbike) and I knew Johney would, so I told them to go ahead, have fun, enjoy. They did-they took off. Cool. Below, some of Hwy 18 & Bub enjoying the view. That's what a ride is SUPPOSED to be-everybody enjoying themselves, stopping when they want to, no pressure, just good times, good fellowship. If you want to take off, cool! If you want to kick back, cool! We kinda set a place to meet, then you can rein in or let your horses run free.
I decided to stop and take some pics for a few minutes, couldn’t been more than ten minutes, and we start back up the road and here comes Gregg the other way. He noticed right off that we weren’t behind him so he made a U and came back around. So we waited for him until he made another U, then the three of us went on. Next up we see JOHNEY coming down the other side of the road because HE noticed right off that nobody was behind HIM, so HE did a U and started looking for us. NOTE TO SELF: make sure everybody knows that if they don’t see someone in the rear view mirror, to just pull over and wait for about 10 minutes. If they STILL don’t come, THEN make a U. Of course, if you hear sirens, that’s kind of a tip-off that something happened.
We all pulled over at a No-Stopping area (‘way to GO, Lynne! DUH) for some pics and explanations, and some kudos to Gregg and Johney for noticing so quickly that we weren’t behind them, then continued on. Below right, Johney telling me that I can't read. Above, pics of the scenery and to the right, we were across the street from the Rimforest High School.
Going past Skyforest, I could see the skeleton of the old Santa’s Village. Some of the buildings are there and recognizeable-the Welcome House gift shop, the huge Candy Cane in front, and the pylons (supports) for the old Bumble Bee Monorail. The parking lot is now a repository for logs and lumber. I remember such good times there, especially when we’d go up when there was snow. There was the Christmas Tree Ride, Santa’s Train, the animals, the Doll Shop….

One of the kind of difficult things of having others go ahead of you is that they sometimes aren’t sure of where we’re all going. They’ll wait at a stop sign for you and then they’ll realize that instead of turning right to Big Bear Lake via Big Bear Blvd., y’all are going straight to the North Shore and Fawnskin.
RIGHT, J-MAN???

It was a beautiful ride around the north shore and I was constantly looking for a place to stop & take pics. We turned on Stanfield Cutoff and stopped on the bridge. Bub asked a guy how the fishing was, and just as Bub walked away the guy landed a nice 5-6 pound trout. I think the fishing on that east side of the bridge where this gentleman was better than the west side of the bridge where we were parked, because I think some of the fish got killed while we were there on that side. Asphyxiation, I believe, or lack of oxygen, maybe even air pollution. And that’s all I’m gonna say about that. And you know who you are, Mr. "Barking Spider" man.

I had a place to eat in mind, the Barnstorm Café in the Big Bear Airport Terminal, but they’re only open until 3 PM and don’t reopen until 5 pm (Sunday’s 4:30pm) It was about 3:45 so we just went to Sizzler. Not bad, but how can you screw up a buffet? Hey, I just shovel it in.
I saw something on Hwy 38 around Fawnskin that made me laugh, so I wanted to go back up that Stanfield (whatever) cutoff and go back around and take a picture. Here it is.
Hope I don't get into trouble for this pic...

We continued on 38, pretty nice scenery, and one of these days I’m going to rig something to take pics from the handlebars of my bike where all I have to do is yell, ‘TAKE’ and the camera would take a pic. I swear I’m gonna invent something like that.
All of a sudden Johney wants to pull over because his cell phone is buzzing up a storm in his pants.
Just think about that statement for a moment…I mean, would YOU want to STOP if your phone was doing that?
But he had to get his calls, Barry noticed that he had a call and I noticed I had a call, & mine it was from my friend Noel wanting our IT Director’s cell phone number. That turned out ok. Barry's was from his sister. That was more of a pain.
We got down to Mentone and got gas then I did a little oopsie-I was supposed to turn left on Orange to go to the 10 fwy but I continued down and kinda got a little lost. Gregg pointed this out that we were supposed to turn, then he and Johney told us that all we had to do was go down another light or two, turn left and we’d hit the 10, and we did. He goes ALL over SoCal for his business, so he KNOWS the freeways and streets and areas. I'm really glad he's around sometimes-my route backup.
Took the 10 west, and this is again where I kinda screwed up a little bit more, personally speaking, because I TRY not to be on the freeway going west anytime within 1 – 1 ½ hours before sunset because of the sun in the eyes. It wasn’t too bad, but I’m not too crazy about it.
From the 10 to the 15 to the 60, we zipped home like salmon up a waterfall and got home around 7 PM. A really nice ride, perfect weather (I have to tell my potential riders the hourly weather now, since they don’t like the "AB Ass Freezer "rides. You know who you are).
Awesome ride. Really nice, gonna do it again, maybe from the Yucca Valley side, maybe from the 138 side, and this time go around Lake Arrowhead and Lake Gregory & have a picnic lunch around Lake Gregory. We’ll bring some of Barry’s Special Tuna.