Thursday 2nd August

A bit of a weird day, really. Maybe it's because it's all coming to an end? 

Got up at about 08.00 and had breakfast in the lobby. Spent the rest of the morning hanging around the room, blogging, etc.

I taught myself how to use the ashtray at the Best Western - only took 24 hours .................cool!

The old ladies waited downstairs. Not a lot for them to do today.

Eventually had a shower and we went over to see Billy. Steve (Stew D Baker) was there, waiting for a guy called Fast Eddie to bring his engine back from a bottom rebuild. Fuck knows why he's called Fast Eddie because we hung around waiting for him for hours, when he was only a couple of miles away! Still he was good value when he got there. We seem to keep meeting crazy dudes, for some reason.

Some pics for Jonny, seeing as he seems obsessed by wheels

These any good Jonny?

I opened my parcel from Jireh, which had been delivered yesterday. I'd ordered an Ultima oil pump for my Granny Glide, a single fire electronic ignition kit, which Kev owed me, and a set of front crash bars. While the other boys were waiting for Eddie's arrival, they kept talking about metal specifications, alloys and the like, so I fitted the crash bars to Ruby. They cost $60 from Jireh, cheapest on ebay UK £120 - that's triple the cost!!!

Well, Billy's employees finished work for the day and we still waited for Fast Eddie. Eventually he arrived, explaining that he'd been trying to rebuild his 77 Porsche 911's gearbox and hadn't wanted to leave it. He was a good guy to shoot the shit with, too. Steve was given his motor, Eddie was given some new Pan cases and a set of barrels and pistons he had to rework, and we decided what we wanted to eat. Italian won the vote, so we all piled in Eddie's minivan and set off for Frantone's.

In the Short Bus

Here we are at the restaurant:

Left to right: Kev, Billy, Steve, Eddie and me.

 Despite appearances, Eddie is neither an old woman nor albino, nor as fucked up as he looks in this photo!

We had a nice meal, with lots of chat about racing, great riding places and the like Yesterday's buzzword was 'gnarly', like in 'It was a fuckin' gnarly bike, dude!' which seems to mean it was either good or bad. A bit like 'sick' maybe? Today's word was clearly 'bitchin', like 'It was a bitchin' bike, dude', which could also be good or bad? If, near either word, 'awesome' soon follows, I think that definitely means something was very good. By the end of the evening, 'gnarly' was trending again, WTF?

A really  gnarly evening. You dudes are bitchin' company, man. Awesome! . 

That means 'Cheers, chaps!

Wednesday August 1st

The weather was pleasant as we loaded the bikes and set off to find the shippers, CFR Rinkens, in Paramount. My satnav got confused, in the end, finding thje right bit of Texaco Avenue, so Kev used his. 

That done, we had breakfast and went to find Bill McCahill, at Spyke, who is a friend of Rich Horn's. We found the unit and went in to introduce ourselves. Bill was having lunch so we let him eat while we sat in the reception area for a few minutes.

When he'd had his lunch, Bill showed us around. What an experience! He is full of energy and enthusiasm for his work and has a really interesting business. I knew about the motorcycle electrics side of things, but had no idea about the wide range of tuning and development engineering that they were very successfully involved in. A lot of stuff went over my head; valve angles, seat depth and shit like that, but I managed to understand much of what he talked about. The list of things they produce is far too long to cover, but it includes items made from real space-age alloy, which has virtually no thermal expansion so allows pistons, for example, to run with very close tolerance to the cylinder. If you want to no more about the technical side, look on the website - the link is just above those photos up there.


Bill had kindly altered his schedule in order to spend some time with us over the next couple of days. He offered to take us south along the coast, to the Sawdust Festival in Laguna Beach, and somewhere to eat good seafood, afterwards.  Just before we left, we met a young bike guy called Jose, who asked to be remembered to Rich Horn. Jose is really into Jesse James and had some original decorative castings he wanted to reproduce


Then we cruised down the str3eet. Here is our tour bus:

Which was nice, LOL!

Up until now, our experience of California had been desert, huge, really busy freeways and commercial or industrial areas - not at all like your mental picture of what California would be like. Our afternoon with Bill rectified that, as we were driven along wide, palm-tree lined boulevards and down the Pacific Coast Highway, with the Ocean on one side and expensive property on the other.

My photos don't do justice to the actuality, but unlike Vegas or the Arizona desert, you can picture this without having to have done it. The views are what you've known all your life!

No way were we going here! 

We were going to the Sawdust Festival, an artsy fartsy thing in Laguna Beach, which Bill hadn't been to for years. They wanted you to buy stuff from there, but they charged you $10 for parking and then $7.50 for admission, not at all what we were used to.

 I can do that

Once we'd had a beer, Bill suggested we soak up the ambience created by a local band. WTF?

This is must  play!

It wasn't all, bad, sitting in the sun and downing a cold one, or two .........................

NIIIIIIICE LEEEEGS!

There was a guy making glass

 Pussy pass-out so one could go outside for a fag!

Having had a culture overload, we were hungry. We headed out to Dana Point for some seafood. On the way, we came across this Saleen Mustang. Wooohoooo!

We went to Cannons, overlooking the harbour, The view was superb, my photo was a bit naff so I nicked one off the web:

Bill said the condos on the cliff, next to the restaurant, fetch $30 million - despite the economy. Ouch!

The food was brilliant, as it should have been for what it cost! Kev and Bill had Surf n Turf, one had lamb and the other fillet steak, both with king crab legs. More modestly, I had Maryland crab cakes:

Luckily for us, Bill picked up the tab on his company card. Phew!

Wined and dined, Bill took us back to Downey. I slept in the car - as usual - with the irritating England Boy poking me if I snored. Cnut! 

We collected our bikes from Bill's unit and checked in at the Best Western, on Firestone in Norwalk. Huge rooms and good WiFi, so we booked in for two nights, even tho' it was a bit pricey.

Uploaded photos to Picas, then zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!

South to the Pacific, Yipee!

Tuesday 31st July

 Went outside for my first smoke of the day, to find the Antipodeans packed and about to set off. The lying bastards said that they didn't get rolling until midday. Just trying to be cool, like us!

They had a really good tour planned, including the Grand Canyon and Sturgis. Good luck to them.


Kev and I sorted our stuff and hit the road about 10.30, only to go a few hundred yards for breakfast at IHOP.

After breakfast, we set off along Historic Route 66 out of Barstow.

A touch of left handed shooting, showing a bit of this stretch of Route 66. Look how long the train is..

We rejoined the Interstate, to head towards Los Angeles. We went to the Harley dealer in Victorville, where Kev bought a spare set of screen bobbins. Whilst there, we had a chat to a girl who'd spent a few weeks living in South Kensington, when her dad was shooting 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Back on the slab, we seemed to have been heading to LA for ages, so we turned off at Via Verdhe; to get our bearings, refuel and use Ronald's WiFi.There was another Shovel in the parking lot, but Kevin felt that the owner was too foreign to have a conversation with.

 I texted Nitro Bill, in Downey, to arrange to visit him and used Booking.com to get accommodation in Paramount, where we have to deliver the bikes on Friday. We stayed at the Bristol Motel, which is run by Asians, whose cooking smells were divine. We wanted to eat at the Chinese, opposite, but it was shut. Mexican again! I had a couple of Rellenos, which were really good.

We bought a few beers, from a Mexican supermarket, and we sat outside our rooms to drink them. The temperature was really cool and pleasant, after the day's heat and humidity.

Teach yourself Spanish

Kev went to bed early, cos he was bored, whilst I got my blog up to date. Good WiFi, anyway!

Today's Route

Monday 30th July

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JONNY!


Kev was up early. He'd made coffee and packed most of his stuff. Bruce had wanted to ride at least as far as the California line with us, but hadn't appeared by the time our bikes were loaded and in the street. However, when Kevin pushed the garbage bins back into the yard, the noise flushed Bruce out. He got ready to ride with us and we all set off for breakfast at the Aliante Casino buffet - our last breakfast in Vegas and our last in a casino.

.Kev tried his luck for the last time, too.

We followed Bruce around and out of Las Vegas, heading south and west on Interstate15. Unfortunately, just before the Halloran Summit exit, Bruce coasted onto the hard shoulder. Electrical gremlins had struck again and Bruce's bike was dead. Also, his coil had completely cracked around its circumference, but nothing had leaked from it and it wasn't the cause of the complete lack of  electricity. Poor Bruce, 80 miles from home and just keeping us company on the road.

In his usual determined fashion, Kev wanted to fix it, but Bruce just wanted it off the road and hidden. It was hot and bleak there, in the Mojave Desert. We tried for a tow truck, but they wanted $400 to take it 20 miles, the robbing bastards. Eventually, Kev had to stop trying to fix it, at Bruce's request. He was feeling bad because he was delaying our trip and we felt bad because his bike was buggered and 20 miles from a town. We (mainly Kevin) pushed the bike the four hundred yards, or so, off the Interstate and up the off ramp at exit 265. there was a small highway maintenance depot a bit further along the road and Bruce freewheeled the bike in there. 

We waited with Bruce until Shirley finished work and got their son in law to pick up the Explorer and trailer. Once we knew it was all set, at Bruce's insistence that it was pointless three of us just hanging around, we left to head south. We felt really shitty that this was how we had to say farewell to Bruce, but there was nothing we could do except leave him water. We said our goodbyes and hit the super slab again.

He had shade from the gravel hoppers and could sit on one of the machines, while he waited for rescue. We stopped 70 odd miles down the road, at Peggy Sue's 1950s Diner, at Yermo, CA, but didn't think much to it. We phoned Bruce from there, tho', and he confirmed things were happening as planned, so he was reasonably OK. Another downer at Peggy Sue's was  that the first Englishman we'd met in the States, arrived with his wife as we were leaving - and they were NORTHERNERS, bloody Yorkies. As you can imagine, we left, as quickly as we could!

We went just a few miles further until we found a McDonalds where we could have WiFi. We put a couple of posts up on the forum and looked up nearby accommodation. The Days.Inn, at Barstow, seemed a good bet, so we headed there. We were greeted by some guys at the pool, who'd ridden down to Laguna Seca, from Delaware. They were interested because of our Pennsylvania plates. There were also three Aussies there - well one was a Kiwi who lives in Oz - who were touring on Twinkies.

Of course, their humour is very much on a par with ours, so we struck up an instant rapport. Eddy, races Sportsters and a Buell back home and owns Australia's largest bike hire business and runs Aussie Bike Tours. Eddy very knowledgeable about Burt Munro, of 'The World's fastest Indian. Eddy rode in some scenes in the film, which starred Anthony Hopkins. Sebastian was quieter than the other two, when we met him, but also races Sportsters. The other guy, Ern, has a long affiliation with circuit racing. He was a close friend of Kirk McCarthy, the Australian Grand Prix, Supersport and Superbike rider, who was killed racing in Australia about 8 years ago. I wish my mate Gladys could have met Ern, who has been part of the various World Championship circuses. Gladys has been a huge racing fan for years and could have had a good chinwag with Ern.

We went to dinner with them at Los Domingos, the bar and restaurant of the Quality Inn, next door to Days. They were great company and we had a really good laugh. My steak was good, too. Ern smokes  even more than me, so that was cool, too. Here they are with Kev and Kay, our waitress:

We kept the bar going until 02.00, finishing off with tequilas, which was clever. A very sociable evening all round and Bruce had called to let us know he got home OK.

Today's Route