Peenie Wallie

Last night, when I was kicking around for a hotel room in Eureka, I went into one of the hotels, plugged in my laptop, connected to the internet via their wireless network, and went to hotels.com to check out rates.

Lots of hotels are booked up, because this is peak season on a Saturday night, in this case. The cheapest Hotels.com could find for the night was $80/night, and I'd have to backtrack north about 12 miles in the dark to the last town I came through.

Instead, I drove around and just walked into one of the little run-down motels and got a room for $50 a night instead. So, this sort of surprised me. I think that the lesson is that hotels.com doesn't have all of the hotels in it, certainly not the cheapest ones, anyway. I found this interesting, and thought I'd share.

Needless to say, the woman I met last night didn't call me, but it was fun to flirt with her, and fairly harmless, all things considered, I'm sure.

After my big loop around the bay, I fill up the tank in Eureka. Now, I should point out that I'm filling up in California, and each place I've been is a little different. In California, I can pump my own gas without the retarded gas station attendant helping me. Having a man pump your gas feels to me like I'm an adult being spoon fed while wearing a bib. It's so gay I don't know where to begin.

But, in California, what they do have is those idiotic vapor recovery contraptions on the gas pump. This doesn't work with a motorcycle, of course, so I eventually learned that you have to grab the vapor recovery plastic shield and pull it back so that it will pump gas, and at the same time, you can see into your tank to tell when it's full. So, California has their own issues. You'd think it would be easy pumping gas, but it's actually fairly tricky and every single state (and country) I was in was different.

So I top off the tank and roll south.

Today, I have only about 300 miles to cover. Should be a fairly easy ride. I plan on driving down Trail of Giants and seeing the Coastal Redwoods, then on following the coast in Mendocino county. Lunch in Mendocino, then San Francisco before dark.

This is the plan. Not much of a plan, but this is what I have.

Now, I should point out a few things. I've told plenty of people that I think the Oregon coast is nicer than the California coast. Technically, that's probably true, and probably I'll stand by that assertion, in most cases.

However, I should also point out that, now that I've driven the western coast of North America from Cabo San Lucas to Alaska, I have a better perspective on the California coast than I did before.

So, as a caveat, let me state for the record...the coastal redwoods are stunning. They don't have them outside of California. Washington and Oregon have the Sitka Spruce trees, which are also breathtakingly large, but the Coastal Redwoods are the tallest trees on the planet and California is full of them. I've just become so jaded to their presence, that I hardly notice them any more. I've driven past so many 300 foot tall Coastal Redwoods with 12-16 foot diameter trunks that I'd sort of become blinded to them.

And I did see a lot of Coastal Redwood stumps. These trees live as long as 2,000 years, and I don't see any new growth to speak of. The tops of all of the existing trees are dead. Why? I dunno, but they are. These trees are not growing any more, I think. Most people say they'll never grow back. Never is a long time, but their crowns don't appear healthy. This is all I know.

When I re-entered California from Oregon, and drove down the Trail of Giants, I was shocked back into submission. These trees are stunning. They should not be discounted or overlooked. They're breathtaking. Oregon doesn't have them.

California does have some beautiful rock formations with arches in the coastal waters, similar to the promontories that you see on the Oregon coast.

What Oregon has, in my option, is massive stone monoliths rising vertically from the oceans, covered in grass, trees, and shrubs, along with rain forests growing right down to the beach. Haystack Rock, off Cannon Beach, is 235 feet high and is the largest monolith on the west coast, and the third largest coastal monolith in the world. So, this is impressive, I think.

As a general rule, California coast does not have as much foliage right down to the coast. In many cases, the plains actually meet the coast. Still beautiful, but not quite as dramatic as the Oregon coast.

When I was out of California, I missed the Eucalyptus and Monterey Cypress trees, as well. Now that I'm back here, I recognize the Fox Gloves when they go screaming past my eyes. Even as a blur, I recognize the Fox Gloves and Fire Weeds and the blackberry brambles.

The roads down the coast often smelled of honey, I don't know why.

I missed the Agapanthus, as there are zero north of California.
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Along the Trail of Giants, I stopped at a few roadside fruit stands and ate fresh plums and and even found a Blackberry Popsicle. I never buy any to take with me. Only I eat as much as I want, pay for the fruit, and then drive on. A delicious way to see the country, I think.

After the Trail of Giants, I pick up the CA-1 highway at Leggett and race the 22 miles through a grinding series of switchbacks which is hard to describe.

Now, maybe my choice of transportation wasn't the best vehicle to choose for a 4,000 mile journey across North America. However, it's much better than driving a 40' land yacht RV and pulling a jeep behind it and trying to make it through the switchbacks up and down the coast. I can promise you that very few people ever passed me on the journey. Once, I was passed on Vancouver Island, but I was going 95 mph when it happened. As a general rule, I didn't let people pass me. If someone comes up behind me, I just speed up.

So, when on these twisty rollercoast hills and switchbacks, the bike I was on was ideally suited for the roads.

My biggest problem was staying awake and staying focused on such a long journey. In hindsight, I probably should have done like Doug and planned on taking a day or two to rest along the way. I was so tired today, that I'd find myself missing the hairpin road signs, and I'd suddenly be in a nasty swtichback going 65 mph or something like that. Now, the bike is amazingly forgiving, and it will stop on a dime. So, the bike saved me a lot of times, but...yeah...finding yourself going 70 into a hairpin and not really paying attention is a very real possibility when you're as tired as I was today coming back from a long road trip.

When I drove across the Klamath River yesterday, I forgot to mention that the whale was gone, apparently. I was so hoping she was still there. Only now do I read the the whale died, a week after I saw it.

I slowly wander down the coast from Fort Bragg to Mendocino.

I should mention here the Lost Coast. For some reason, the road doesn't follow the coast between Fort Bragg and Eureka. There are various reasons for this, but one man told me his dad worked to build CA-1 out to the Lost Coast, at some point in the past...back in the '50's I think. But the project was scrapped, so there is a large stretch of coast that you can't access very easily, which is kinda sad. Maybe it's for the best. I don't really know. Probably it's not for me to say.

I found the Bed and Breakfast where I stayed the last time I was in the area. It's called the Howard Creek Ranch Inn. I didn't stay there on this trip, as my schedule didn't work out that way. But the owner was as cool as the other side of the pillow when I stayed there last time. Dunno if it's still run by the same folks. But I did find it again, which makes me happy.

Mendocino is a turn of the last century fishing village turned artist colony. Very cool little spot on the North Coast. So I stopped in to a little cafe for lunch. This is something Igor always made time for. We'd drive all day through the Mexican desert, through the wildest places you've ever seen, but always he'd padded our schedule with enough time to stop at a little local restaurant and have a sit-down meal. We didn't choke down food like dogs and keep riding.

So, I sit down and order some clam chowder and a Thai burrito and walk around to shoot the flowers. It's so nice to have a big lens. It draws a crowd and people come over and start up conversations and it's about like carrying a little mouse in your shirt pocket, I think. It's an excuse for strangers to come up and be sociable, which is always nice when you're on the road for weeks at a time - for so long that you can't remember what day it is or what state you're in and when you're wondering if you'll ever make it home again anyway.

So this. I walk around shooting the birds and the flowers and strangers come up out of the fog to talk to me about who I am and what I do and always I tell them that really, I don't do anything but travel and shoot, which is very close to true.

And now, I cut over on 128 back to the 101. Now, along this cutoff, I've been before but it's been many years. Maybe this road is 50 miles long but I come to a spot and I recognize the house and the barn but there's a problem. I remember it too well. I remember it like I was here yesterday. Everything about the house and the barn is so clear and now I have to wonder...have I been here more recently? Have I been here this year? No. I'm sure. I've not been up here this year. I've not been up here since the last trip up the coast when I shot it. That was 7 years ago. It's funny how the brain works. What it stores and what it throws away. Funny how it works. And I drive on.

The traffic starts to back up. I dunno why. But it does, so I start "lane splitting". This is legal in California. Basically, it means you drive down the line that divides two lanes of traffic, and drive in between the rows of cars. It's basically as dangerous as anything you've ever thought about doing in your life. But, when the traffic is stopped, this is what I do. I alternate between "lane splitting", which is legal, and driving down the shoulder, which is clearly illegal. Safer, but illegal. There you have it.

Also, I should mention that, when I crossed the state line, from Oregon into California, there was a checkpoint. They tried to wave me on, but I insisted on stopping and asking them, under who's authority were they operating, and what was the purpose of the illegal search. The 4th Amendment is very clear on this. They said it was an agricultural inspection, and I drove on. But, this is the thing that bothers me. This is a huge violation of our privacy. But I drove on without making a scene.

Finally, I roll across the Golden Gate bridge and back into San Francisco. I stop on Lombard and Divisadero and call Carol.

"Dude...where are you? We're having a huge party for Jeff's birthday. Get over here now!"

So I drive straight to Carol's and change and then go down to the party and they're all like, "You drove your motorcycle to Alaska?" and I'm like, "Yes I did."

And this is sort of fun. Like, if everyone at the party thinks about what they did over the last two weeks, I think I win this one. Probably by a long shot. Some of the girls went to Vegas. Ho. Hum.

And then, someone mentions "Burning Man". They're going on Tuesday week. And I'm like "I think I might go also" and they're like "You can't. You don't have a ticket."

And see, this is how most people think. They see the lines that are painted for them to follow. They stay inside the lines. And they don't question who painted the lines or what their purpose was for painting them. Or how they decided where to paint and what color to use.

I can tell you that, after driving a dirt bike to Alaska, my belief is very much that we are only limited by our own imaginations. I really do think that, pretty much anything is possible, if you have the ambition and the desire. I think there are very few things we couldn't do if only we tried.

"I promise you that I can go to Burning Man if I want to," I offer

"But you don't have a ticket," he whines.

"I've been before. I can go tomorrow if I want to. You can get tickets. People are scalping them. All it takes is money and they print more every day."

I honestly think that, the ultimate challenge we face on this earth is deciding what we do with our lives. We're allowed such a brief amount of time in this world, and yet we all go about our business as though this life is just a dress rehearsal. This is it. All we have are a few years left on this earth. A few precious years. And they're slipping away day by day.

I met a beautiful woman on the trip. She got some bad news in her life, and decided she needed to change a few things. So, she bought her a Suzuki street bike, and flew to Ohio, picked it up, and drove it back. That was last year, I think. Doug and I ran into her this year on the ferry from Port Hardy on Vancouver Island, to Prince Rupert on the mainland in B.C., Canada. She was as cool as anyone you've ever met. I think she just decided she'd spent enough time on the sidelines, so she went out and got herself a shiny new Suzy.

This is our challenge, I think. To live our lives to the fullest, and not try to paint those around us into the little boxes we all fall into. To not try to shove those around us into the ruts and pitfalls we all see and know and fear.

Don't tell the people around you that they can't go to "Burning Man". That's gay. That's dumb. That's the way a loser sees the world. Tell people to "Get a ticket and come on." The world is your oyster. Climb on board. Let's get going.

We need to encourage those around us, not beat them up and push them down.

I saw this girl at the party tonight. It's the one I went out with a few weeks back. And she tells me I look tired. I look beat. I should go home and get some rest.

I know I look tired. I am tired. I'm exhausted. My left hand is practically useless from shifting gears countless times over the last two weeks. My left leg hurts from shifting up so many times. I can barely hold my eyes open.

But this was a shot. She wanted to get her digs in and put me down, and she did. She didn't say "That's awesome that you made it". She said I looked like hell. Thanks a lot. Thanks for that, blondie.

That's good. Put down those around you. That helps. That's what we need. She called my bike a moped. I don't need that. I don't need her. I don't need people putting me down and taking shots at me, just for sport. I don't need people placing boundaries and parameters on what I can do. There's no room for negativity in my life or in yours either.

When the birthday cake came out, I was the only one taking pictures. And in the pictures, I saw the same girl standing alone in the background. Win.