Motorcycle trip

I promised I would write a little about our motorcycle trip. We took off about noon on Thursday, August 16th and rode north up U.S. Highway 101 to Cloverdale and then northwest on State Highway 128 to Mendocino. The stretch from Cloverdale to Mendocino is a great ride, with lots of twisties going out of Cloverdale and over the hills, then through the beautiful Alexander Valley, which is rife with vineyards and wineries, and finally thorough a tall redwood stand to the coast.

We stayed at the Hotel Mendocino, which was established in 1872. We had a cottage room in the gardens behind. The next morning we literally walked across the street out to the bluffs and walked clear out to the point. The shots below show the old Menodcino hotel on Main Street, a shot out to the point of the bluffs and a shot from the point back into town. It was a gorgeous day as you can see.




Mendocino Hotel - Main Building

Across the street from the Mendocino Hotel

From the bluffs looking back into Mendocino

We left Mendocino about 11:00 and rode a part of Highway 1 that neither of us had ever been on before. It runs between Mendocino to Highway 101 at a tiny town called Legget. The ride was really challenging, with curve after curve, many 180 degree hairpins, and steep climbs and descents to boot. Our wonderful BMW R1200RT just ate that stuff up, although I will say that in all my miles of motocycle riding I have never gone so far and so long in first gear. Once we hooked up with 101, (at that point "The Redwood Highway"), we rode on north to the Avenue of the Giants, which parallels 101 and meanders through giant redwoods. It's no use trying to take pictures because there is no way to capture the scale. Besides, we just slowed down to about 30 mph, opened our face shields, and humbly dug the sight and smell of a world that has existed for thousands of years. It was a privilege.

We stayed Friday night in a cabin at the Redcrest Resort, which is on the north edge of the Avenue of the Giants. Below is a picture of the cabin and our trusty steed with its side bags removed to the cabin.

Our cabin at the Redcrest Resort

On Saturday, we rode south straight down 101, which is truly a beautiful drive. We stayed that night at Cloverdale. We got on the rode early the next morning, Sunday, and rode home. On the way we saw lots of hot air balloons floating down the Napa Valley.

Life is good.

~ tom

Random TV thoughts

We're back from the best motorcycle trip yet. More on that in a future post, with some pictures.

Some TV thoughts:

Big Love: I just watched the penultimate episode of "Big Love" yesterday and I was so blown away I have to plug it again for everyone. This season has been even better than the wonderful first season, but the most recent episode was deep, wrenching, exciting, poignant, and often funny as hell. And, introducing the great Ellen Burstyn as Barbara's mother was like a giant cherry on top of the worlds greatest sundae! I am counting the days until the final episode. If you haven't seen this show, do yourself a favor and rent/buy the first season and then get season two as soon as it comes out.

The Closer: Eileen's favorite show. I really like it too. Kyra Sedgwick is such a good actor, and the cast is top notch. The writing is sharp, and the plots often twisty.

Damages: One of my favorite shows now. After I believe 4 episodes I'm hopelessly hooked. Fabulous intricate plot lines with believable but totally shocking surprises, and a kick-ass cast including Ted Danson playing the bad guy to perfection. But the show triumphs on the shoulders of Glenn Close, who I can only describe as astonishing, and almost as much of a "bad guy" as Ted. If you don't have TIVO or some way to record the show so that you can skip the commercials, wait until it comes out on DVD later.

John from Cincy: I know I raved about this show a while back, but in the end, it disappointed me. I hung in there for all the episodes, but in the end I was wallowing around with the rest of the characters trying to figure out what the hell was going on, and why.

Rescue Me: Another favorite of Eileen and me. Sure, it has its flaws, but it's got heart, good writing, characters to care about, and Denis Leary trying to be a "Friend of Bill."

The 4400: Eileen and I part ways on this one -- she's not a fan. I've seen every episode from day one and I love the show. It's the sci-fi geek in me, I guess. Differt strokes, right?

Saving Grace: The jury is still out on this one. I like Holly Hunter a lot, but the show doesn't seem to know what it wants to be. Also, it's uncomfortably similar to that show (the name escapes me now) where Amber Tamblin talked with God, who appeared in various human forms.

Weeds: Hilarious.

~ Tom

Avenue of the Giants

We're taking off on another motorcycle trip tomorrow and getting back on Sunday. This time we are heading up to Mendocino tomorrow and staying overnight there. We're staying at the Mendocino Hotel and Gardens, mentioned favorably in this article.

Then on Friday we will head northwest, via Highway 1 to Legget, and north on Highway 101 to ride The Avenue of the Giants. I've done The Giants a couple of times in a car, but riding it in the open air on a motorcycle should be a religious experience. Well stay Friday night at the Redcrest Resort, a funky old place in the heart of the redwoods.

Saturday, it's back south on Highway 101 to Legget, continuing on through Laytonville (a pretty town in the foothills), to Cloverdale for a Saturday night stay. Up Sunday for the short ride back home.

I hope to have some pictures to post after we get back.

So, farewell for now,

~ Tom

Powell Agonistes

My latest fantasy. Wouldn't it be cool if Powell just let it all hang out? I realize the possibility is unlikely, but, as Sidney Blumenthal points out, it's by no means beyond the realm of possibility.

~ tom

Agitation

What a sad, sad difference 150 years makes. This would get all these guys wire tapped for sure today, if not worse.

Whitman was adopting the spirit of agitation popularized by reformers who were trying to arouse the moral conscience of the nation. The Brooklyn preacher he most admired, Henry Ward Beecher, declared in an antislavery speech of 1851: "Agitation? what have we got to work with but agitation? Agitation is the thing in these days for any good." The next year the abolitionist Wendell Phillips declared: "Only by unintermitted agitation can a people be kept sufficiently awake not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity . . . Republics exist only on the tenure of being constantly agitated." The antislavery leader Joshua Giddings used similar language: "Agitation is the great and mighty instrument for carrying forward . . . reforms. Agitation is necessary to purify the political atmosphere of this nation." And Whitman's correspondent and favorite speaker, John P. Hale, told the Senate: "I glory in the name of agitator. I wish the country could be agitated vastly more than it is."

Whitman was coming to think that that he, above all, was the one chosen to agitate the country. He wrote in his 1856 notebook: "Agitation is the test of the goodness and solidness of all politics and laws and institutions -- If they cannot stand it, there is no genuine life in them and shall die {sic}. He once declared, "I think agitation is the most important factor of all -- the most deeply important. To stir, to question, to suspect, to examine, to denounce!"

~ What Whitman's America, by David S. Reynolds, Vintage paperback edition, pp. 138-139.

A Karmic Trip

The trip we took to Silver Lake was truly one of those karmic events. The day before we were to leave, we looked at the weather reports for the Sierras and saw that there was a real possibility of thunder storms. Not wanting to get caught in such storms while on a motorcycle, we decided to take Eileen's Infiniti FX-35. We had a great drive up to Silver Lake (of course no thunder storms) and spent a very relaxing two days at the Kit Carson lodge. On Thursday we hiked into Granite Lake. It was just a little over a mile in, but worth the walk. I'm including pictures of Silver Lake and Granite Lake.

Silver Lake

Granite Lake

We then went to our place in Truckee, and on Saturday we went into Reno to look at the BMW X3, which Eileen was thinking about leasing to replace the FX-35, her lease ending in September. To make a long story short, we got a tremendous deal on an X3, including them buying out Eileen's lease so that we could take the X3 home and be done with the Infiniti (which was a great car, by the way).

Anyway, the point is that none of that would or could have happened if we had taken the motorcycle as originally planned. It's so weird and wonderful when that kind of stuff happens. When we left, we had absolutely no idea that we would be driving a brand new BMW home. Life is such a gas sometimes.

~ Tom

M. C. Escher quotes...

M. C. Escher has always been one of my favorites. When my children were each about six or seven, I showed them many Escher prints and watched with awe as the "child mind" grooved with M. C. on a level I was never going to get back to.

Here are some neat quotes from the master himself from the official website.

" To have peace with this peculiar life; to accept what we do not understand; to wait calmly for what awaits us, you have to be wiser than I am"

" I don't grow up. In me is the small child of my early days"

" So let us then try to climb the mountain, not by stepping on what is below us, but to pull us up at what is above us, for my part at the stars; amen"