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Your riding is steady ,smooth, and clean. The deep rumble of the engine, along with the beautiful scenery, makes for a great riding experience. I'm enjoying your rides vicariously through you. Thanks.
Nice ride Robert. You are an excellent driver. Sure brings back memories of my riding days. I live in No. San Diego County and have for many years but I always enjoy a trip up over the bridges and through beautiful San Francisco. I was born just a couple of months after the Golden Gate was opened in 1937...... Doug...=)
i'm from quebec canada and i visite alcatraz around same time than you (maybe on the same boat) and if god want,. i will visite again with my roadstar motorcycle bike ! you are a amazing video !
+marcel michaud Cool, sometimes the world is smaller than we realize, maybe we were on the same boat. Great place to visit for sure. Thanks for watching!
I have a set of Cobra X-Tra longs, which I have modified considerably ( only in length, not in sound), they have the flow through baffles in them which takes away the sharpness and just leaves the deeper tones.
WOW!!! Family in SF so definitely seeing familiar landscape as you managed all that traffic. But it is one of those one and done’s on a bike. So cool you took in the main stops, Embarcadero, Pier 39, Alcatraz, GG Bridge! Great restaurants in that area and across the bay in Sausalito. Nice to see that 101 again I bet, getting out of the city and putt past Stinson Beach and the rest of those beach towns running north. Did you get a chance to ride thru Sonoma & Napa?
It was one of those days, should we go through or should we bypass? Had to see the Golden Gate Bridge so we chose through. really glad we did! We usually avoid the big cities, not generally our thing, but we would like to go back to SF and spend a lot more time there. As for Sonoma and Napa, no we didn't check that area out, our goal was the coast, and after being on the road already for 36 days we were really just heading home.
It’s a must City to enjoy a few times on a bike or no bike. Great history, restaurants, Palace of the Arts, Lombard Street, Cliffhouse Restaurant, North Beach Restaurant (epic, authentic Italian food). I’m envious of your 36, 40 day Trip. I know it’s a long haul, but can’t wait to travel that long away on a bike. Would love to hear how you planned out such a trip, how much you packed for as much, which is half the fun of actually taking such a trip!
Our packing for a long trip is really not a lot different then packing for a long weekend. We are riding 2 up so there isn't a lot of extra room when we consider that we need some space to store our riding gear as well when we are off the bike. So being limited in space limits our options somewhat. Probably the biggest difference compared to packing for a weekend ride is that our trip will be in 2 seasons, spring/summer or summer/fall, so we pack 1 change of clothes each plus some extra thermal underwear for the colder season. Laundry soap gets packed, as we will wash clothes every night. Stop for the night, unpack, start charging camera batteries. Take a shower and put on fresh clothes, the days clothes get a hand wash in the sink and hung up to dry, and then we go find supper. Also a complete set of lightweight rain gear for each. People that don't ride say to us in response to hearing we are riding for 40 or so days "but it might rain". Yes it might! We always pack a thermos for water, and keep it full, and we always pack some emergency food. Of course a small first aid kit, and a tool kit. Basically we are packing pretty minimalist, but ready for anything. One of the things that takes up a bit of space is our 3 cameras, and a laptop, and an extra hard drive. We need the laptop/hard drive to download each days video/photo files on.
Really good stuff. My trips have been thus far, 4-6 days, usually having a couple long days of riding when you’re trying to “get some place”, which means then you have to “get back” too, and that usually means a 500-550 mile day of riding, starting at 5:30/6:00am and getting to our destination before dark. But most daily riding is 200-350 miles a day. Thermals are always a must for us no matter the season, as weather in the high country can change in a blink of an eye. I need to do a better job carrying protein bars and snacks though. Always have water. And you make me laugh with the rain comment. I get that all the time from my fair-weathered “riding” buddies, when I invite them along...”ugh, but I hear it rains quite a bit up there...” lol. That’s why I have the patch on the bottom of my jacket, “If you don’t ride in the rain, you don’t ride”. 20 buddies or so would rather bar hop all day watching ball games then state their claim, “they rode all weekend” (18 miles). Having supper at the end of a crazy weather day of riding, often I get to laughing thinking of how _______ would have reacted to today’s weather! That’s why I probably only have 4 or 5 buddies that will go ride and endure the elements with me, with a smile on their face, when inclimate weather is a possibility. And do it all over again the next day if need be. And I’ve done a lot of point to point to point traveling, moving from one stop to another, making a big loop back home. Time and place for those trips, but spending no time to enjoy a certain epic stop, like a Telluride or Jackson Hole, or a Calgary or Whitefish/Kalispell. So I need to incorporate Riding all day (500/600mi) to land at an epic spot, call it Base Camp, then take wondeful, slow, day Rides out of there each day to enjoy that area for more than an overnight stay before you move on again. I love both ways of traveling, I just need to enjoy some of the latter.
So it sounds like you ride in much the same fashion as us, and pack much the same as well. On our big rides we do the same thing at the start and finish, a couple days of marathon riding, to get to the area we plan on exploring, then we cool it and put in a lot of low mileage days. For us it isn't just about the ride, and not just about the destination, it is about the whole experience. That includes whatever that area has to offer, the food, hot springs, hikes, a car show, or whatever we find. One of the things that can complicate our days is filming. We plan our rides for the best viewing experience, it might be artsy to shoot video into the sun, but ultimately the best shots for us are with the sun to our backs, so we plan accordingly. We seldom film facing south, and try to avoid east in the morning and west in the evening. It makes our planning interesting. The other complication we face with filming is getting the right shot on the first take, it doesn't always happen. Sometimes it is because I didn't know which way to turn at an intersection and chose wrong the first time, often it is because of bugs on the camera. An example is our Beartrap Canyon video, the video is actually compiled from 5 different passes through the canyon, bugs, other traffic, etc making our life difficult.
We had planned to bypass San Francisco and at the last minute changed our minds. We wanted to see the iconic Golden Gate Bridge and we were really glad that we did. We would go back, and plan to someday!
All of that scripted dialog is probably not a very good Idea; how are we supposed to concentrate on the road and traffic while reading all of the notes scrolling down the screen... huh?!
I guess I need a disclaimer on this video for people such as yourself. "Please do not watch this video while riding your bike!" Keep your eyes on the road and ride safe!
I was referring to "virtually" dealing with the motorcycle and scenery on the RU-vid video whilst trying to simultaneously read the dialog... *Joke*. In reality, I absolutely love the way you've woven all those elements together into a very entertaining video!
I too was joking in response to your comment, and keeping my fingers crossed that you would not take offence. That is the problem with the written word, you can't tell the tone, see the other person's face, when it isn't in person. I liked your first comment, and I really appreciate your kind words in this second comment, Thank you!
