Sunday, 2 Jun 2024
Mike writes
4 of us made it out for breakfast this morning at Flapjacks down in Tres Pinos. I caught up to Rich on US-101 around Morgan Hill, and noticed him riding a brand new BMW R1300GS! Marco and Carl joined us not long after. Lots of new GS bike-oggling later, we finally found a nice spot on the patio and ordered pancakes and breakfast tacos.
After a great breakfast, some more new GS fiddling and photography was done before Carl headed north from Flapjacks while Mark led Rich and I south to try riding Cienega road up to CA-156. It was a fun, twisty road. We then all headed west on CA-156, with Marco catching US-101 north, while Rich followed me onto US-101 south. I had thought that CA-156 took its own route into Watsonville, but instead it is twinned with US-101.
I got us off the freeway as soon as possible onto San Juan Road, passing through strawberry fields forever until we got to Watsonville for gas. I plotted a backroads route back to Skyline via Corralitos. We stayed on Eureka Canyon Road north out of Corralitos, which I don’t think I’ve ridden before. The road is awesome! Pretty tight and twisty single-lanre without much traffic, aside from mountain bikers, and some amazing views looking down the canyon toward Santa Cruz.
At CA-17, Rich split off to head home, a bit late for his noon curfew, while I continued on up the whole length of CA-35 up to Alice’s, which was absolutely packed with bikes and cars with the great weather. A quick sip of water and a leg stretch and I was back off again. I made it to CA-35 and CA-92 to find hundreds of sport bikes and riders parked on the westbound side of CA-92 at the Skylonda junction. Anyone know what was going on there?
I made it back to the East Bay by CA-92 and up to Alameda by I-880 and Doolittle Drive and was back home just after 2:00.
It was a great day of summertime riding, finding two fun new roads! Congrats to Rich on the new bike!
102 miles to get back to Alice’s from Flapjacks with only 2-3 of them on freeway!
Rich’s new bike
