Bilco's USA tour summer 2020 virtual trip report.

Sgt Bilco

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Well, we should have had a great 3 week trip starting last Sunday but for obvious reasons it didn't happen.

I'm so used to being away at this time of year leading a trip I can't get all the planning etc out of my head so most morings I wake up wishing I was on the trip and running through the route etc etc.

I generally do a trip report and update it as we go which I think is a great way of capturing the atmosphere etc etc

So to get this out of my head I thought I'd do a virtual trip report with pics etc of where we should be and as I've been to all the locations I should be able to dig out a few pictures which you may not have seen.

Here we go:

Bikes unloaded from the container in Santa Rosa California in the stifling heat and all the fine riders have turned up and are enjoying the great facilties at the Hillside Inn and the surrounding bars eating a drinking establishment. Santa Rosa is a brilliant town just north of San Francisco and a perfect place to start and finish a trip.
 

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I'm already on my USA road trip, part way through this excellent book
 

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Saturday nights are for dancing so at the local town of Sebastopol, they always have a music night on a Saturday with great bands playing outdoors. Now Sebastopol is hippie central and if you ever wondered what happened to all the 60's hippies, I can now tell you they all ended up here. It's called Peacetown USA and people wander about with that strange smile people have when they are either very content or just stoned.

It's actually a great little town, just as you would expect California to be and you are frowned on if you dare say you eat rare steak. My cousin lives there and very chilled out. There is some great art about the place and always worth a visit if you are in the area.
 

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So, all aboard the skylark and it's time to head off on the trip. I give my usual first day speech of the do's and don't's of riding in the US, how to behave when stopped by an armed cop, how to deal with hillbilly's and most importantly I should never ever have to pay for a beer and it must be cold.

We go west across to a small town on the coast called Jenner which has the most fantastic cafe right on the water front and of course there is the best part of the PCH in my opinion anyway. You can keep your SF to LA because the northern section offers way more for a rider with great roads and generally fairly empty.

We head down to the Golden Gate bridge which is the first of many bucket list stops. If you catch it without the misty it's absolutely stunning!
 

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Brilliant idea Chris, are we heading to Prudhoe, or should I just wait and find out? Do I have to sleep with Gaz again?
Mark
 
Splendid pictures already :thumb

One of these days...
 
Of course the Golden Gate comes in two guises, one whetre you can see it and one where you can't and I really don't mind which one. Seeing it in the mist that rolls through is quite eerie but it's still hugely impressive.

For those that don't know, when the mist rolls in most days, the temps drop by around 50f and it gets bloody cold in the Bay area and catches a lot of people out.

You also meet some interesting folks out and about and I met these guy in around 2005. He was from Belarus and totally deaf. He had been riding around the world and started on a Jawa which he wrote of somewhere in the States. The BMW club of America kindly stepped in a supplied him with a second hand F650 which is teh kind of thing we've been known to do.

Note his panniers which were two big suitcases!!
 

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