From sea to shining sea, an Irishman rides coast to coast across the USA.

Back in October 2008 Sgt Bilco on UKGSer suggested riding the US from San Francisco to Baltimore in June 2010. I signed up right away. This is the story of our ride.

The intervening eighteen months passed all to quickly and it was time to get the bike ready for shipping. By now there were 12 people signed up with 11 bikes for the trip. 2 Irishmen, 1 Scot, 8 Englishmen and 1 English lady riding pillion with her husband.

Saturday April 10 was the day that my 2001 R1150GS had to be loaded for the short hop to Stratford-upon-Avon in England to join the other bikes to be containerised for the journey across the Atlantic.

Why, after a long hard winter, on the day you become bikeless for four weeks, does the weather take a turn for the better. Ah well, no pain no gain I guess.



I am a transport manager (despatcher) for a large transport company, so getting the bikes to the UK for shipping was simply a matter of loading them onto one of our trailers. I was also transporting a 1200GSA for Lloyd, the only other Irish guy on the trip, so I had organised a little truck to collect his bike on the Friday and take it to our warehouse ready for the Saturday departure.

Lloyd's bike being collected;



With Lloyd's bike already loaded onto the trailer



It was time to get mine loaded too;



Ready for the off;



The next time I will see my bike will be Tuesday June 8 in San Rafael, California. Or will it?....................

Interesting. What's your route?

I'm in!

Aidan, please flesh this one out or I'll be late for work!

I'm in too, especially as I want to see what he says about me as I'm on the trip....

Four weeks is a long time to be without your bike especially when the weather is good. If ever there was a reason needed for having a second bike.

Monday 7 June saw me board a flight from Belfast to London, then on from there to San Francisco where my daughter Natasha would be waiting to collect me.

Looking down on the pacific northwest from 32,000ft.



The plan was that the bikes would be delivered to Moto Marin in San Rafael on Tuesday morning to be unloaded from the container, the rest of the group would fly in later in the week and we would depart San Francisco on Sunday 13 June. Natasha and I would have a week riding found SF and the Bay area.

But there was a problem.................
The container was to enter the US via Houston Tx, then be transported to Oakland in readiness for delivery. It had arrived in Oakland alright, but it was then discovered that it had not cleared US customs in Houston which raised lot's more questions.

Anyway, to make a long story short, after a couple of days running around Chris (Sgt Bilco) eventually managed to have the box released from Oakland on Friday afternoon and delivered to San Rafael.

On arrival we opened the container, all excited at finally getting our bikes.



Oh shit.

Looking forward to following this.
mcc66
Michael

+1


I'll catch up when I'm back from CO. Gotta go.....

Looking forward to this

I'm already lovin' it! Subscribed!

Keep it coming...

As mentioned earlier my initial plan was to have my bike on the Tuesday so that Natasha (my daughter) and I could ride around SF and the Bay area. With that plan now scuppered we just did touristy stuff round SF itself then hired a small car to visit the Winchester House in San Jose.

We had a great time together doing all the touristy stuff as well as just hanging out together eating & drinking. Well, we are Irish after all.





One of Natasha's friends even offered me his 916SPS Ducati, but unfortunately it was only a single seater.



Anyway, back to the main story.

Lloyd's GSA and my 1150 arrived in the UK on Monday where Chris had them offloaded and securely stored ready for loading into the container on the Wednesday.





When the container arrived on Wednesday Chris loaded all the bikes and strapped them all down ready for their Atlantic crossing.

Opening the container in San Rafael, Ca was an exciting and nervous time. Having not seen our bikes in four weeks we were itching to get started with our coast to coast trip, but that was somewhat tempered by what we would see upon opening the container doors.



At first it looked like carnage. My 1150 and Chris's 1200GSA were lying on their sides, as were a few of the other bikes. On initial inspection none of them seemed to be too bad, so we set about getting them unloaded.



My sidestand was bent to a hideous angle. Instead of tucking up under the footrest when not in use it was like this;



I had no option but to cut it off with a disc cutter and have it repaired along the road somewhere. The sidestand on Chris's GSA was also bent, but not to the same extent as mine. The couple of other bikes which had fallen over had luckily only sustained very slight damage where they had rubbed up against each other.

Upon reflection, it may have been a better idea to have Chris's bike and mine stowed and strapped on their main (centre) stands, but we'll never know.

We were now ready for the off on Sunday morning.

This should be good, looking forward to it.

The whole group went to Alcatraz on Saturday to do the final touristy thing in SF before we set off on our ride. They were all staying at Novato, whilst I was staying with Natasha in the Sunset district of SF.

An so the day arrived, Sunday June 13 and after a very emotional farewell to my daughter I set off to meet the others at their Novato hotel.

Our route took us through some stunning north California country, stopping at Point Reyes Station for a break before the obligatory ride along Hwy1 which was a nice run blighted by the huge amount of car traffic out for a Sunday drive.



We said our goodbyes to SF at a viewpoint near the Golden Gate Bridge before crossing it for the last time on this trip as we headed south.





Leaving SF behind, some cracking roads led us through forested country to Alice's Restaurant where we enjoyed a good lunch.



Monterey was our stop for the night, but because of the US Open golf tournament some of the hotels were asking for $250 per room, so we retired to a Days Inn on the edge of town where we got a much more affordable rate.



My first impression of riding in the 'States was the heat in California. A good summers day in Ireland would see us get 25C (77F) and here we were riding in 34C (94F) with the promise of hotter to come.

The other thing that struck me was the friendliness of the people and other motorcyclists who were genuinely interested in where we were from and what we were doing and were hugely supportive of our effort.

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 9"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 9"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/MARCBO%7E1/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/msoclip1/01/clip_filelist.xml"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <woNotOptimizeForBrowser/> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><style> <!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:595.3pt 841.9pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:35.4pt; mso-footer-margin:35.4pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style> Leaving Monterey on Monday morning we took the Carmel Valley road in the general direction of King City. I was riding alone out front and was really enjoying the road when a small deer jumped the fence to my left, ran right across in front of me, then cleared the fence on my right. How I missed the wee fecker is still beyond me, there couldn’t have been more than eighteen inches in it altogether. He gave my heart a good workout though.





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After a hearty breakfast at a truck stop near King City we rode mostly flat roads to Coalinga and Visalia before turning towards the hills and our stop for the night at Three Rivers.








Lake Kaweah, Three Rivers, Ca

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It's always interesting to get a visitor's opinion of country!
Enjoy your trip!!!


Lance

We were on the road before 8am again today, as there were roadworks on the road in Sequoia National Park which use a convoy vehicle to escort traffic through the construction zone. The trouble for us is that the convoy vehicle runs every hour on the hour, so if you arrive at the start point a few minutes late then you have to wait a full hour for the next escort. We were 20 minutes early, so we were at Morro Rock shortly after nine o'clock.

Entering Native American country



This park ranger had some great stories to tell us as we waited for the next escort through the roadworks.



Riding through the huge trees


The car park at the base of Morro Rock is at 6500 feet above sea level and the climb to the top brings you up to well over 7000ft which made for a breathless climb for us, but it was worth it for the views.









Next up was the General Sherman Tree, a giant redwood that they reckon is the largest living tree on the planet and an impressive sight it is. All of the giant redwoods are incredibly large and riding amongst them with the smell of the trees is a great experience. The young park ranger on duty at the tree was well informed and it only took her a minute to catch on to the joke when one of the guys asked her if there were any cougars in the park.



Me riding through the Tunnel Tree



Lunch was taken at the Kings Canyon visitors centre before dropping down into the canyon. The road descends quite steeply down to the canyon floor and the King river with bends that flow perfectly from one to the next. It is probably the finest road I have ever ridden on a bike and is one that I don’t think I would ever tire of. A stunning ride.







Our route to Oakhurst CA took us via Hume Lake and through rolling countryside on twisty, well surfaced roads that had us using all the tyre all the time. California is biking nirvana.

Excellent start, looking forward to the rest of it. Glad the bikes were OK.