Not offended at all. They've enlisted me to help them accomplish their goal. In a way, I'm their conditioning coach.
I never imagined any IBA ride would be anything but intense, but yeah, our ride route up Pacific Coast Highway (CA-1) from Petaluma, CA, to Crescent City, CA, isn’t on many, if any, IBA ride routes for a reason. It is demanding, intense, and over-the-top gorgeous. It is the one THEY chose above all the other proposed routes we’ve discussed. It’s this ride or bust, for them. I’m just their chaperone, pace keeper.
Well, I've found that the easiest and most enjoyable way to accomplish such rides, is through physical conditioning, eating right, and extensive planning...something that when it comes down to it, they will not do.
They’ve also restricted our criteria. No riding pitch black tree-line two-lane mountain highways after dark. Before dawn on multi-lane I-80 over Donner Summit is okay, but we see too many deer and forest animals wandering near the roads at dusk on two-lane highways.
Any freeway IBA is out of the question for us. Bigger bikes make it look easy. But for us, it’s our Achilles heel. It takes a pretty special sportbike rider to ride LD on one without shifting riding positions. And I’d argue, there isn’t a freeway IBA I’d care to do anyway.
It is in this regard that I'm watching them head down the road of turning their IBA quest ride into a disaster death ride of mind over matter. I've never gone cold turkey into one of these rides and I've already witnessed their miserable failure to even accomplish 400 miles, doing it their way.
Our clockwise twisty road route is a shorter version of an annual two-day Oregon or Bust group ride we once loved doing. I often find myself questioning whether to scrub my IBA ride so I could stop and soak it all in. But ironically, it is because I don’t that not only do I go back for multiple overnight coastal trips, but other riders enthusiastically want to join in too.
The 2018 SS1K. The one they have their sights on.
Reno, Petaluma, Bodega Bay, Fort Bragg, Leggett, Orick (redwoods), Crescent City, Fortuna, Mad River, Red Bluff, Chico, Belden, Quincy, Hallelujah Junction ==> Reno or Sierraville, Truckee ==> Reno. (
Google Maps)
And what it looks like from my sportbike.