Day 199, San Francisco CA – Los Gatos CA, Oct19th … kms 3

I(TA) got up at 0600 to head to the bridge in the hope catch the sunrise with some nice light… it was still dark out and drizzling slightly, low level clouds, normal SF weather from what I gather. Traffic was light and 20′ later I was on the bridge. I stopped at the north viewpoint briefly but quickly relocated to a spot I thought would have a better view.

By the time I got there dawn had broken and the was getting light. I set up my phone for time lapse and took some pictures in the meantime. The sunrise wasn’t as spectacular as what I would have liked but the view was nice never the less.

I headed back to the hotel just after 8 on busier roads. Zoe had gotten the bags down from the room and in the hotel storage ready to get started on our day.

First order, BMW store to pick up my new front tire, while there I spotted a nice bike… more on that maybe later.

Next stop the shop that had Zoe’s tires and was going to mount our tires for us. We got that going, then headed downtown with great plans to visit Alcatraz Island and its famous prison. We quickly found out that the next available tour was a week away and had to make new plans. 

We decided to go to the Madame Tussaud wax museum. We had our breakfast at a creperie, and went on to hang out with the celebrities. From there we walked around Fishermens Warf, had a light lunch then decided to see the city from above.  Hiked up to Telegraph hill and went up the Coit tower which had nice 360 city views. Meanwhile our bikes were close to ready so we walked back to the hotel, picked up our things and ubered to the mechanics shop.

With the new rubber on we were ready to get out of town. We had an hour and half or so drive to Zoe’s cousins place near Los Gatos and we battled traffic all the way down there. California is one of the few states that allow “filtering” for motorcycles (lane splitting)basically what is taken for granted in most of the rest of the world where motorcycle can weave through traffic. That did help us a lot in covering ground despite the fact that with our panniers we are as wide as half a car! Lucky for us, Californians are quite friendly towards us bikers and gave us the room to slide by.

We arrived at Brent and Susannas place just before sunset and dragged our stuff inside sat down and shared stories and enjoyed a wonderful dinner.

TA

Brent and Suannas place was down a long, narrow and windy road deep in the Santa Cruz mountains and forest. We had the funky upstairs level to ourselves, looking forward to the view tomorrow! -Z