Pete's Hangout

1) Travel 2) Automobiles 3) Aviation 4) Marine 5) Books 6)Launch   Another Excellent Deragon Adventure: Ken Fujita from Newport Beach brought his Ducati 749s up to San Luis Obispo County on Thanksgiving Weekend to join Pete Deragon on a "borrowed" Honda Hurricane 1000, and long-time friend Dave Dawson and his son Kevin contributed a Honda VFR 800 and a Honda 600 RR for nice long Saturday ride on our county's beautiful back roads. Friday's weather dampener, with showers and cold, yielded to a sunny, but chilly and windy, Saturday. The boys gathered Saturday morning, fueled up, and headed up the Cuesta Grade Northeast of San Luis Obispo, and peeled off the freeway at Santa Margarita, heading out on highway 58 into open country, then on to Creston, adjacent to agricultural and cattle country. Thankfully, many of the roads were drawn by a ruler, some were squiggled on the edges of a creek to follow the contours of a canyon, but all of the roads seemed to go on and on and on, an "E ticket" ride that went for hours. We throttled on through Atascadero, North through Templeton, and into the West Side Wine Country, avoiding the stoplights and congestion of towns through experience, and enjoying clear dry weather. Too many limos and wine-tasters inspired a diversion route midway through our day, and led the gang on to a side-track roadway called Peachy Canyon, up toward Lake Nacimiento with some long climbs, some curvy ravines, more shady oak territory, a few dangerous chilly canyons in the shade that encouraged some wake-up slides, and continued on to some nice windy, and up and down, hilly stretches of unpainted roadway. The group then headed back down into "civilization" to Route 46 Westbound, to the coast. Views of Morro Rock were available from some of the loftier vistas on this late afternoon route, and we ducked on to roads leading along and by the Whale Rock reservoir, which ducked down into more shade and oak trees following ravines cut by creeks and streams, and the road finally opened up to the coast by the towns of Cayucos and Morro Bay. The last section of the run was up infamous Turri Road, bypassing and shortcutting Los Osos on yet another river road, into the hills, and finishing up at sunset in the town's Los Osos Valley, in San Luis Obispo again. Burning fuel has never been more rewarding than following three high-performance bikes through some of the best open country in California: with stands of oaks, creek beds, golden rolling hills, vineyards old and new, following the gray undulating and flowing bands of pavement laid down like taffy- in canyons that had been cut, in many cases, by old stagecoach roads and moving water....