With its usual annoying *BONG*, a text message from my friend Jessica arrived this past Monday.

“Hey! Got Thursday off. You guys wanna go for a ride?“

This short text from Jessica, of Milk Run Marathon and Death Valley Damsels fame, forced me to start thinking.

A ride?

Go for a ride?

Hmm… That’s something I used to do quite regularly. But somehow, after the epic Road to Wrestlemaina ride early this season, other than a few day rides or Milk Runs, my exuberant love of conquering the road and distant lands on two wheels has seemingly ebbed. Sadly, for most of this riding season, Rain Cloud Follows has been parked, all alone, basically shunned, in the garage.

What the fuck happened? I’m not really sure.

Maybe, after Dark Meat Snack and I finished our 8000 mile Southwestern and Northwestern tour, I was a bit burned out. Maybe its the fact that textsfromlastnight.com has replaced advrider.com as my most-visited website. Maybe the past five years of running around at full speed finally caught up – a reason I immediately dismiss on account of its true meaning, that I am not only becoming a pussy, but *wince* getting older. Finally, I settled on a plausible and acceptable excuse; maybe all the great unridden roads are just too far away now, because in my exuberance, I’ve ridden all the good, close ones many times.

Then I started thinking harder, always a dangerous condition for me. Have I really ridden ALL the good roads? C’mon now, Mr. Stupid, how could that even be possible? I set out to find out. After tearing myself away from the latest and greatest texts from last night, I performed some exhaustive, work-sponsored research. In this research, I found what I was looking for; one twisted little sliver of interest on the map that I couldn’t recall riding, one that, as a bonus, was fairly close to Jessica’s house.

*BONG* “Jessica, we’re in. Let’s ride! See you Thursday!“

Thursday started out the way every Thursday in Southern California does, with bright blue skies and perfect temperatures. My girlfriend Fiona, a.k.a. Sleeping Beauty evidently missed riding as much as I finally realized I did, because she was up early, before me in fact, raring and ready to go.

The San Gabriel Mountains are a very effective natural obstacle between us and Jessica’s. There are basically two options, go all the way around them, a distance of about one hundred ten miles, or go straight through them, a shorter, mostly straight, yet very curvy route.

Guess which route we picked.

Jessica and her Ninja, ready to ride.

Jessica met us at a nearby gas station, and, after catching up for a few minutes, we were off, heading north on Route 14 through the hot Mojave desert.

Our first stop of the day was for lunch in the small highway town of Pearsonville, which Fiona more-or-less correctly misinterpreted as ‘Prisonville.’ I didn’t see any houses in this town, and what I did see in this desolate outpost was run down looking and mildly depressing. The FJR thermometer read 106 degrees as we pulled into a Subway, the only restaurant in Prisonville.

Parked and off the hot motorcycles, we were nearly attacked by one of those little hybrid rat-dogs that seem to be every lunatic’s requisite accessory. This dog’s owner was no exception, a heat-shriveled old woman in a beat up mini-van, with a crazy stare and a cardboard sign on the windshield simply stating, “Need Gas Bad.”

She started her ramble saying, “My dog here don’t like motorcycles much. Nope.” As we tried our best to ignore her, she continued, “Has no real use for machinery at all, really. Good guard dog though, woke me up jus’ the other day to warn me ’bout a bear, an honest to God brownie, ’bout a hunnert pounds, in my campground. Damn bear was gonna eat my last sammich, but this old dog scared him away, he did.”

We walked away before either the obligatory begging for gas money began, or my foot launched her precious yapping Fido deep into the desert. As we walked inside, her ramble continued, directed at our poor motorcycles. Baking in the desert heat does strange things to people.

Someone must have helped her with her gas need, because she was long gone when we returned from our delicious gourmet meal.

The turn off for Sherman Pass was well hidden, so I led us far past it. Did I mention I was flying blind on this trip, having left my GPS at home? Yup, this ride was undertaken only with a good old-fashioned analog map. Usually I just count on my little Garmin unit to get me lost, which I call ‘Going on a Garmin Adventure.’ With me and my amazing sense of direction in the lead, we were off on a Garmin adventure all right, just without the Garmin.

Once turned back around, and on the right road, or at least what I thought was the right road, it ceased to matter. Riding is riding, and an adventure is an adventure, and, whatever road we’d found, it was good. The ribbon of pavement snaked and twisted deep into the mountains, leading us high above the desert below.

My trusty analog map, a ten-folder of the entire state of California, was about as useful as socks on a rooster. The road we were on, even if it was marked – which it wasn’t – certainly wasn’t on my map.

After about fifty miles, this amazing collection of curves dead-ended in, of all things, a campground. Time for the second U-turn of the day!

We headed back to the nearest, and in fact the only intersection, took a chance and made the turn. Noticing a bright red General Store in the nearly non-existant town of Kennedy Meadows, we unanimously decided to stop for a cool, refreshing beverage.

Three old characters sat on the porch, following what appeared to be a very time-worn tradition. Crack open a cold beer, drain it, crack open another one, drain it, then go inside the store and grab an ice cream sandwich, gossiping and bullshitting the entire time. Repeat said procedure for a lifetime.

As we sat in the shade drinking our cold beverages, we naturally eavesdropped. Between wheezing laughs and long swallows of Coors Light, we heard snippets of conversation from one of the permanent porch residents. A question I’ve always had about people that live in such remote areas – “What the hell do these people do for a living?” was finally answered.

“Yeah, so this guy came right up to me, askin’ to see my fields. I couldn’t believe it!” After another raspy cough-laugh and another long pull on his beer, the old guy elaborated, “How the hell, I wonder, did this guy all the way from San Francisco find out about my pot crop?”

Mystery solved.

Before leaving, Fiona and Jessica wandered into the General Store Amphitheater in an attempt to take in some more local culture.

Sadly, it was too bright to pull the string to reveal the movie screen and take in a flick or two, and, even sadder, the popcorn stand was closed.

Properly refreshed and highly amused, we got back on the road – if you could call it that. The cracked, weaving asphalt path that led us deeper into the mountains was in desparate need of some federal stimulus money. Large portions of the road were missing, rutted with deep potholes, or covered with washouts and rocks.

As our Garmin-less adventure continued, the road slowly improved, and I slowly started to recognize where we were. Last year Fiona and I, equipped with our GPS, explored these very same roads. And by explored, I mean ‘got hopelessly lost for several hours.’

Continuing past the 9200 foot summit, we skirted down the backside of the mountain.

Reaching the intersection at the bottom, I found our position on the map, on the North Fork of the Kern River. We pulled over near the river, intent on taking another little break.

Jessica was happy for the stop. Seemed on the way down the mountain, she managed to get stung in the ankle by an angry bee – a bee which left it’s pulsing stinger behind as a gift. She waded into the river to cool off her painful sting.

Being so close to water gave Sleeping Beauty a chance to try out my new camera, which is supposed to be water proof. She immediately plunged the camera into the river and took these photos:

Not bad. We pulled the camera out of the North Fork of the Kern River and tested that it still worked:

Beauty….

… and the Beast.

Yup. Works as advertised!

Refreshed, we continued with our improvised analog route.

Down off the mountain, the temperatures climbed back into the high nineties. As we learned earlier in Prisonville, and had reinforced again in the town of Kernville, the heat does some strange and unexplainable things to people.

This, I think I can explain as being a by-product of too much time in the heat:

This, however, I can’t explain at all:

At this point may I just interject that, hot or not, obviously this day was, in fact, the Best Day Ever?!?!

As it always does, the Best Day Ever began to draw to a close, and Sleeping Beauty, Jessica and I soon found ourselves in a race with the rapidly setting sun.

Turning off the exciting Route 178 for the straight, flat and mostly boring Route 14, we found that when the sun sets in the Mojave, the winds pick up. Soon we were hanging on for dear life as hurricane force gusts tried, and, several times, nearly succeeded to blow us off the road.

Making a promise to do this again “real soon”, we said goodbye to Jessica and endured the long slog home, taking the long way around the San Gabriel Mountains. Four-hundred eighty miles later, hot, tired and supremely happy, we finally arrived home.

When we walked in the door, Fiona eyes were glowing. I asked her if she was all right. Her response was a complete shock.

“I’m ready. Tomorrow, I want to take my bike,” she said, referring to her still brand new and, except for a few laps around the neighborhood basically unridden Ninja 250, “up Azusa Canyon and go on my first Milk Run!”

*Gulp*

To be continued…