I took off pretty early in the morning from the Springs, I thought it was going to rain all day, but I stayed dry.  I ended up next to a dam, by a lake where I found a beer coozie on the beach and free wireless internet provided by the “rural phone company”.  I almost dropped the bike on a muddy farm road, and almost buried the rear wheel trying to turn around.  That would have sucked.  Here are some photos for the day.

I wasn’t planing on going to Colorado Springs, but a friend of mine just moved there and bad weather in Wyoming pushed me south.  Here I am!

Half of my Portland photos are on my dslr, which I sent back to LA.  Oooops.  This camera I got from Craigslist for $45 from a highschool kid.  It’s small, waterproof and shockproof.

I stayed the night on the side of the freeway.  I didn’t sleep well, but I did learn about this guy who pioneered the Oregon Trail.  I’ll try and add to this post more about him, but I don’t know when that will be.

The trip from Oakland to Portland took a few days, which was nice because the idea was to stay on slow side roads and camp quite a bit.

Spent the day in the Bay Area mostly getting lost because navigating is really hard on a motorcycle.  Met up with Gibbons and the Sluts in Golden Gate Park for a moment to sit in the sun and eat bread with cheese.  There were a lot of people I wanted to see but just didn’t have time to do so.  🙁  I picked up a rain suit because it’s probably going to rain.  Only one photo was taken today; my giant dslr is not really the right camera for this kinda trip.  Here is a photo that I stole from Flickr that has something to do with San Francisco.

I took this one, which is a typical neighborhood in San Francisco.

Next stop, Lost Coast.  I hope we don’t run out of gas out there!

We decided to take Highway 1 from SLO to the Bay area, which meant everything was beautiful.  I have attached a couple photos below, but they will never to the region justice.  You have to visit to appreciate it.

Raina’s bike ran out of gas in the middle of nowhere, but luckily we were able to find some cheap gas.  After filling up the tank, the bike slowly tipped over, removing 2/3’s of the front brake lever!  Crap!  Also, we noticed a little bit down the road the the speedo cable detached it’s self from the instrument cluster!  I removed the cable completely.  Oh well, the speedo didn’t work on her bike anyways.

Here is a photo of some sand at a beach we visited.  I’m not a geologist, but it looks like the quartz content of this sand is minimal.  It looks like small granite bits to me.

The trip started much later than I intended.  Larsen thought that Raina needed to adjust her valves before the trip, however there was only an adjustable wrench available to do the job.  While this minor maintenance was going on I headed to the TWBG Hub were I met up with Nicole, Ranger Brad and Mr. Rollerzz.  Nicole gave me some cereal with coconut milk, which was much needed as I was up the night before drinking and giving crappy tattoos to some members of LA’s favorite bike gang.  Once the valves were adjusted I left the Hub to get Raina and hit the road.  The traffic getting out of LA was hellish as it seemed everyone decided to make it a beach day.  Splitting lanes most of the way was not only stressful, but very slow.  We met up with our friend Jeff in Malibu where he joined us for a day ride up to SLO.

The ride up was nice, except I lost my moca pot off the back of the bike!  How am I going to make coffee now?  This is horrible!  Gahh!!  We stopped in downtown SLO and had a hot bowl of pho, which I thought was mediocre compared to what I normally get in LA.  After dinner Jeff parted ways to head back to Los Angeles and Raina and I headed over to my friend Scott’s house.  I’ve know Scott for probably 10 years now.  He builds really rad guitars.  We drank the passing time and caught up, as it’s been a couple years since I’ve seen him.  In the morning I woke up still drunk from the night before.  Scott gave me a spare tarp he had for when we encounter rain in the Pacific North West, then attempted to grab some produce from a TJ dumpster, however it was guarded by people with hibiscus print t-shirts.  Gah!!  We hit the road around 1:30, which was way too late.