Okay, I’m way late on posting anything the past few months. A lot has changed; I got a new job and I’ve been busy getting settled in learning some new stuff. But I thought I’d post up a few pics from my trip over the Sierras that I took back in July with my buddy. Enough talking, here’s the pics.

Here’s the route we took:

Really wanted to make it to Mammoth Lakes but we didn’t quite make it that far.

The whole slideshow here:

Okay so it took me too long to finally get this post up but it’s been kinda crazy at work and sometimes I don’t have as much time as I’d like. But anyways here’s some pics from a ride I did during the Summer.

A couple months ago we had an amazing time on HWY 25 outside of Hollister. We were blasting our way through the beautiful landscape of rolling golden hills. The clouds were spectacular that day with huge wispy smears streaking across the sky. Life was good. I even lost site of Aric a few times as he has a generally faster pace than I do. At one point it was just me and that whole valley. I could look in all directions and not see a single soul.

After some 50 miles of that I came to the turn off for HWY 198. I had been here before but was coming from the other direction and this time we wanted to explore 198 and so we did. It was as beautiful country as any we’d seen before and we stopped and snapped some shots.

It’s at this point that our luck started to change. We got into a town called Coalinga and stopped in at the first gas station. As I was filling up, I looked up noticed Aric’s tire was missing a large part of rubber and the steel was showing through. I thought it was just a smear or something that he had rolled through so I went closer for inspection. Well it wasn’t a smear, it was a bald, down to the steel bands.

After a quick check with the locals we quickly realized we were probably screwed since we didn’t think it wise to proceed on that tire. Everyone was telling us the closest place was in Fresno which is 60 miles further south. We didn’t like that idea so we thought we’d try other routes. Do we take it slow and head home or should we try to make it to a dealer or tire shop? All the places were closed being it was late Saturday. So we had it towed since we were 150 miles from home and didn’t want to experience a tire failure on the freeway.

A real friendly and helpful local body shop owner helped us out and called around for shops and what-not and told us we were SOL. The dog kept us entertained while we waited.

Once everything was settled and the bike was safe inside a rusty warehouse we hit the road again to make our way back home. You might notice that I don’t have many pics of my friends riding. I need to work on my system of pulling over and accessing my camera. I’m just not quick enough. But here’s the big A in a reflection.

Our ride back was equally as beautiful as the beginning of the day. As we carved our way back, I was thinking about pre-ride inspections. I can’t say that I’m meticulous about my pre-ride inspections but I usually check the oil, lights, tire pressure… and now I’m going to be looking at my tires much closer.

All turned out well, as the bike got new tires and no harm was done. I can’t help but imagine what would’ve happened if we didn’t catch the tire issue at all. You just never know when your number is up, but at least you can decrease the odds against you by taking a little time to look.