Of course when it comes to motorcycling, there’s always a big difference between tooling around the city in stop-and-go traffic vs. enjoying some good speed out on the open road.  As I’ve lately been all the former and none the latter, today’s small-group motorcycle excursion proved most enjoyable. Plus, given the ideal weather conditions, the scenery presented itself in top form as well.

Altogether, today’s route south on a practically car-free (fast) Hwy 280, west through the tree-lined mountains all the way to Pescadero State Beach, and north back to San Francisco on beautiful-yet-windy Hwy 1 covered right around 100 miles, for me door-to-door 103 to be exact.  Suffice to say, this was by far the easiest “century” I’ve ever done, considering almost all my others have occurred with merely my leg power, sans motor.  I need not mention yet again the obvious difference in calorie burning between pedal and motor, except to remind myself one more time of the paltry, though still hilly, 22 miles I bicycled yesterday.

From lunch in the forest at a relatively quiet Alice’s, to a stroll along the wave-front cliffs of Pescadero via some challenging canyon twists and turns , this turned out to be the perfect “Thursday century,” all the more in the absence of  the typical weekend crowds and traffic.  I can’t recall exactly the last time I saw my speedometer hit some of the numbers it did, though some of you might be relieved to know I remain a slower motorcyclist relatively speaking.  Then, considering I’ve now throttled all of a mere 1,400 miles in the past six months, today’s 100 of them came as quite a welcome, however rare, delight.

With skies like these...

... the coast was a must!