Oakland to Toronto ride - H3

Well, it's started.
Stardate: August 17th, 2005.696969: Extremely hungover, I don't know why I talked my friends into buying a larger bottle of jaegermeister last night, but it seemed like the thing to do. "Slow" (his H3 name) from the Santa Barbara H3 has shown up, the bikes are packed, so we went to dinner with some friends of mine. lots of sushi, sake, beer, and the jaeger were only fitting for this send off. Cleaned out my apt. so about 2:30 in the morning when I finally passed out, there were no sheets, and I froze my ass off. And NO, I didn't think to turn on the heater...duh!

0700: the search for the fucking cat begins (who shat in my mouth)
After power puking whatever little bits of saliva I had in my stomach, after trying to blow my nose and inducing emesis, I figure we're good to go. (mental note: always power puke early, as your stomach will continue to digest stomach contents, regardless if you want it to. end mental note) we check bikes, and do the neccesary repairs to Slow's bike, his blinker is falling off, and held on by bungee cord, so we reinforced it with chopsticks and duct tape. looks good. we brought along 6 more chopsticks just in case.

..sneaking the chopsticks out of the sushi joint was no small task! Nobody noticed by the way......

repairs made...

East on the 580, out of Oakland, and over the first mtns..into the central valley where it is hotter than balls at 1000, so first things first....feed the hangover. done. we continue along the 205, and onto the 120 which heads east to Yosemite N.P. Uneventful, but fun ride, very scenic, and I have to say, I love this country! If you don't like that, then fuck you!



We cruise thru the park, and take our time, taking photos, and generally being tourists. No camp sites available, it's summer and everything is booked. the ranger says there might be something about 1/2 mile outside park (just a bit over a km) at 9400 feet I think, so we cruise there, and find a perfect campspot on the lake, overlooking the mountains. set up tents...i should say tent...as Slow, brought a sleeping bag and a tarp..more on that in a bit.

...repairs not holding up so well....

...photo at a scenic overlook...along the 120 in Yosemite N.P.

....watching rock climbers up the rock....

...we find this campsite, with an awesome view. 9000+ft elevation.

We take the bikes down Tioga Pass to Lee Vining, and load up on essentials and firewood.
List:
1 bag of chips
6 pack sierra nevada
1 extra large can chili
1 pack hotdogs
1 cheap cooking fork
2 veggies
4pack coffee drinks
3 bundles of wood..............strap it all on motorcycles, and hump it back to campsite.

...the ride back up to the campsite. hit with rain. small hail at the campsite, cleared up pretty quickly.....

.....

...another view from our campsite....

...more repairs to blinker....

...so we're running out of chopsticks, we'll just have to get more sushi.

hang out, drink beer, enjoy the almost full moon casting shadows on tents, open up chili and heat.. eat the chili out of our mugs, with no utensils....of course we didn't think of that, and I left my spork at home.
crash out, to a nice breezy 39 degrees F. (4 degrees C)
Now, I was way comfortable in my 2 man, sorry, 1 man, 1 woman tent, in my sleeping bag. It's at this point that Slow informs me that his tent won't stay up. haha. insert stupid hash joke. seeing he's not joking, I go to check it out, and have to break the sad news to him, that it isn't a tent they sold him, but a motorcycle cover....so.... dejected and cold, he crawls into his motorcycle cover with his sleeping bag. all this after we couldn't get the FUCKING fire started. attempt number 5 (the fire kept blowing out) brought on a genius idea to pour gasoline on it. should have seen our camp neighbor, who seeing our pathetic attempts to start said fire was bringing us kindling, and I put fire to the log doused in gasoline, he jumped back a step, and I had a grin on my face. On On and some sleep. 236 mile day.

photo: bear deterrent......

...our refrigerator....

...poor mans tent....

....food..

...almost full moon....

August 18th:
Up at 0740. can't sleep, it's cold, I need coffee, and I can't find my toothbrush. shit.

we pack up leisurely, go to Lee Vining, get some breakie. Then north on the 395, with elevations in the 6k+ range. cool, and sunny. cut off to Bodie state park about 29 miles northeast of Lee Vinning. Old mining town...now a Ghost town, and took some cool photos. from the information provided, there was 900 million dollars worth of gold mined from this town alone in 1880's about 3 miles of dirt road before the town. lost my sunglasses. fuck me.

...