Death Valley and Bloom Zoom 2024, Day 1

2024-04-07 — Part of Death Valley and Bloom Zoom 2024 — ← prev next →

Start of day: Home, Redwood City, CA
End of day: Holiday Inn, Ridgecrest, CA
Distance: 385

I set out around 9:30, later than I hoped, but that’s always the way of it. There’s always one more thing that I just can’t find, or forgot to pack the day before.

After some boring Highway 101 down to King City, I turned east on Highway 198 to Coalinga, which is quite nice! Mid speed road with sweepers. Only a couple of properly twisty turns. Great view as I rode down and across the CA-25/Peach Tree Road valley. Yellow and purple wildflowers sprinkled on the green grassy hillsides.

After lunch in Coalinga, I’m going down the road, with a bit of a headwind coming diagonally across the road. The car behind me pulls out to pass me, totally normal. Just then, a tumbleweed probably 2 feet wide blows out from the shoulder, and it’s coming across the road directly at me. It’s something straight out of a western, the Platonic ideal of “tumbleweed”, and I’ve got just enough time to ponder how it’s going to feel to hit it. But as the car passes me on my left, it takes the blow for me. Plows right into the tumbleweed. Thank you for your sacrifice, car.

From Coalinga I went south on Highway 33 down the west side of the San Joaquin Valley. The hills here are still golden, not wet enough for the grass, except in the little draws and gullies where enough water pools. It reminds me of zebra stripes in gold and green.

From 33 I take 5 to 58; more boring highway through Bakersfield. Along Comanche Road connecting to 178 are orange orchards and the smell of the blossoms is overwhelming.

Then 178 up the Kern River Valley. Before the trip, I was worried about the storm on Thursday and Friday, whether the passes would be too cold or how much snow would be on the road. The forecast for the passes was as low as 30° F. I postponed the trip from Saturday to Sunday to give the passes time to defrost. But after all that, I was plenty warm going over Walker Pass. The lowest temp indicated on the bike was 53° F. I didn’t see any snow even on the peaks above the pass except the very very highest. Just rocks and Joshua trees.

The adventure finally began with Bowman Road just at the bottom of Walker pass, a little 5 mile dirt warmup suggested by Ted. It started easily enough, but soon it became sandy. Mostly I could follow tire tracks that compacted the sand down. Then there was a stretch of soft sand maybe 50 yards long where the bike actually got into a serious oscillation. I was terrified the bike would fall, but I just held on with my legs and kept the throttle open and gradually wobbled through to shallower sand and slowed gradually to a stop. That was plenty enough adventure for today. It wasn’t even very deep sand, but it was enough.

Without further incident I reached the Holiday Inn in Ridgecrest, where there were maybe 5 other cars in the parking lot. Dinner was Chipotle. The evening’s theme was: predictable comforts. The next few days would be more exciting, but this first day was just about getting the miles done.