Mid-Week Rides: Pics from a GREAT Ride

18 March 2010

Chris writes:

What a ride! We were to meet at the Golden Egg Omlette House, only it ’tis no more! Now, it’s the ‘Main Street Bistro’. Same cook, staff etc., but with a new menu, one that reflecks more’n just breakfast dishes. We had the same funny waitress, but we were only five in number, Bob Burns, Randy Hendricks, Brent Hansen and yours truly, Chris Weld. [Either Chris can’t count or he can’t remember names. The pics suggest that Jerry was the 5th rider.]

We rode up to Mark West Springs for Calistoga but bypassed on Tubbs Lane and turned S. for 500 yards for Lawler Rd up to Hwy #29 and Mt. St Helena and Middletown (gas). Then, it was on to Butts Canyon, which turns into Pope Valley, which we left (right turn) at Ink Grade, this for White Cottage and down Howell Mtn. (a road I’d never been down). When we reached the intersection of Conn Valley Road, the sign on Conn Valley clearly stated, ‘No Outlet’. What an enticement! A ‘Wendy!’ Bob’s head was’a bobbin! It said ‘Go!’ and go we did. This route was one none of us had been down before and we rode it to the end, the entrance to the Moore Ranch. However, on riding this wendy (read ‘dead end’), we say a sign for yet another 2 mile ‘wendy’ so on our return, we did that ‘wendy’, off a ‘wendy’. We wended our way back down to the Silverado Trail, rode it for maybe 150’, and took Pope Road into downtown St Helena, this for but a block’er two and found our way to Spring Mountian Road (one which turns into St Helena Road at the county line).

We thus found ourselves on the outskirts of Santa Rosa, but at Hwy #12, turned south for Sonoma, ducking off for Glen Ellen (Jack London’s Valley of the Moon), and a collection of roads (Presley and Roberts come to mind), that took us through Penngrove and back to US#101 at the north end of Petaluma for the Golden Gate Bridge and home. Lots’n lots of back roads, no traffic on any of ’em.

240+ miles for me on the day. Great weather! So warm we shed liners’n cold weather gloves over the course of the day. I got to ride three roads I’d never covered before and even Burns admitted he hadn’t ridden’em all. (It’s a good day when you can show a fellow rider a road they’d never been down!).

Good company, though the likes of Grass, Hyman and Unreal were missed.