NCTRF_2006_Apr30

WOW. What great weather for a Ride. We are meeting with some of the Santa Rosa RAT Pack to Ride from the Corners to the Lakeview Inn Pub near Kelseyville.

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I get to the Corners at about 10:40 AM for our 11:00 meeting time. Tiny and Tom P. are already there. Duece and his troops from Marysville arrive a short time later.


Donny from Healdsburg gets there, but the rest of the Santa Rosa group arrives a few minutes after Pdub and his group. {Pdub you need to allow gas station time for a bunch of bikes}

We have soooo many bikes, about 28 to 30 that we split into three groups. {four if you count the two Daytona riders who rode their own route to the Pub} We were warned by some riders of the CHP car about a mile up the road, so we start out at the speed limit. We turn off for Berryessa-Knoxville Road and get behind a little traffic for awhile, but it is moving at the speed limit. After losing the traffic we open up a little, not real fast. We make the obligatory left turn onto Pope Valley Road and knife our way through the mountains. At Pope Valley the General Store does not have enough room to park a bunch of bikes, so I head up to the school. But the school parking lot has a locked gate. But we stop in the driveway for our Rest Stop. People complained that we had "just started". Well it was 45 minutes into the ride to the pub and right at the halfway mark timewise.







We reset the groups at Pope Valley and the quicker riders take off, unfortunately they are the last to reach the pub as they blasted by the turn off for Point Lakeview Road and needed to stop and get redirected.

Our "slow poke group one" runs into three riders that Tiny is leading and merge with them with Tiny in the lead. It seems that the rest of his group had dropped off at the Pope Valley School and were now mixed into the other groups. The scenery is remarkable with lush green from the Spring rains. The roads have dried out and are in real good shape considering the amount of rainfall. The roads have been relatively traffic free. But then we Tee into Hwy 29 which is a main highway of two and sometimes four lanes. It is the highway that runs through the heart of the Napa Valley Wine Country then heads to Lake County. That is a pretty boring part of the Ride. But about two miles west of Lower Lake we head off onto Point Lakeview Road and a bunch of up and down twisties as we wind our way to the south shore of Clear Lake.

"Slow poke group two" exits Hwy 29 at Lower Lake where Hwy 29 makes a left turn at the signal light. They go straight onto Hwy 53. They right themselves stop for gas and are the next group to reach the Pub.




Rod Llyod, owner and barkeep

Merry Llyod, owner and cook

Sonoma Joe

Pdub

Mark and Donny

Deuce and troops


Being a copy of the Smallest Pub in Britain it takes us awhile to all get drinks and order our lunch. There is an added room and a deck patio so that now about 100 people can be accomodated. Ron "steals" Tom's lunch as they had both ordered Curry. Tom a good bit later almost gave up his lunch since Tom kept insisting that his name was not "Ron". As Rod Llyod had placed our names with our lunch orders and the young girls who brought the lunches out had no idea who was who. The poor young things just called out a name and hoped that someone would claim the plate.



After lunch we split up with some heading back to Sacramento, the Santa Rosa riders went on their way back home. And the NCTRF group after some bickering about back tracking instead of riding around Clear Lake wind up taking the prescribed Route to Esparto. I was leading a group of five plus the Marysville troops until the Highway 16 turn off. The Marysville boys {the two sports bikes had left after the gas stop in Nice (pronounced like the French "neese")} and Dan A continued along Highway 20. Dan headed south on I-5 as he had to get home and his new Goldwing would get him back to South Sacto in a hurry via I-5.







So Tiny, Phil T, John A and I reach the hamburger stand in Esparto to find that it has been sold and the new owners have not opened it yet. So we walk across the street to the Porta-Potties in Esparto Park. Get the bottles of water out of the saddle bags which are now at about 85° and wet our whistles.

Pdub and Yvonne, Eric, Mark, Tom and Ron arrive about 10 minutes later and they too are really disappointed that the place is closed. The Sacramento folks are deciding where to stop in Woodland for a drink or ice cream as Tiny and I head off for I-505. I leave Tiny at Midway Road to head over to Hwy 113 and Hwy 12 to I-5 and home to Stockton. Tiny continues to I-80 and home to Pinole.

The Ride Route covered 175 miles. For me to get to the Corners was 76 miles and then getting home from Esparto was another 82 miles. So I put on a nice round 333 mile day.