I was a little disappointed that I had no long rides planned for the year, but it seems that things always work out. My girlfriend Luci, was asked to attend a conference in Dana Point, CA, which is near Laguna Beach, at the end of September. She asked if I would like to come along and maybe I could rent a motorcycle while there. I swear, it wasn’t a dream! So where things really fall into place begin with Lori Clendening Payne agreeing to let me use her 2013 GS. And it just keeps getting better from there.

We fly out there on Sept. 22nd. Luci gets a shuttle from the airport to Dana Point, and Lori picks me up and takes me back to her house, 3 hours away, in the opposite direction. We got to her house and as I prepare to ride back down to Dana Point, there is a dead mouse in her garage. I put on my exterminator hat, and put the mouse into a bag and take it with me when I leave. It was garbarge day and they already took the garbage, and I told her it would wreak by the following week. So I had a beautiful 4 hour ride down the coast to Dana Point, to the beautiful Laguna Cliffs Marriott Resort & Spa. As if that wasn’t good enough, there was some sort of all girl’s fitness retreat taking place that weekend. I got there in time for a mixer for the conference and met up with Luci.

The next day, I had arranged to go riding with Dennis Godwin, a GS Trophy participant earlier that year in Thailand. As I was waiting for him to get there, through the infamous Cali traffic, I had a chance to take in the sights at the hotel.

We had lunch on the coast, which I always need to do when in Cali.

We ended up getting to go off road on a route that had been closed for years and just opened up that week. I believe it was Santiago Peak near Lake Elsinore. It was probably the rockiest terrain I’ve ever ridden, but with Dennis’ guidance, I had no problems or even drops. It was a full day of riding to say the least.

Luci was in conferences each day we were at the hotel, so I got to hang out at the pool my last full day there, along with a few of the fitness retreat girls. We ended up getting to go to the beach for only a few minutes together that whole time. But then the next part of our trip was on the agenda. We rode the motorcycle from Laguna to The Langham Huntington in Pasadena, where a Amanda, a great friend of ours was getting married. We weren’t sure we would be going to her wedding, but it all came together with being in CA at the same time.

I can’t tell you how terrible getting around in Cali is if you haven’t experienced it in person. Let me start of by mentioning that Luci only likes to ride for about an hour at a time on a bike. We had to take freeways to get there in time to make the wedding. We stopped for lunch at a great place on the water across the street from McLaren Newport Beach. I didn’t even have time to go in and have a look around. So the whole ride is 63 miles and should in all reality take less than 2 hours to do. We had to keep changing routes, one freeway was closed due to an accident, and ended up taking some city street for at least 10 miles, probably more and catching every single light due to the amount of traffic. It was easily over 4 hours. We arrived just as Luci had a bit of a breakdown on the back of the bike, and also at the same time that we should be catching the wedding shuttle to the event in another part of town. We were stressed, hot, sweaty, and one of us was upset. We rushed in, showered faster than any human should be able to, and got in a taxi. Then the driver was not sure where the address was we gave him. It was a shady part of town and Luci didn’t want to get out of the car, saying it was the wrong place. It wasn’t and we went in to a fabulous courtyard with a great indoor space for the actual ceremony, which started probably 5 minutes after we got there. It was called the Fig House in L.A. But luckily they were serving some drinks as we walked in, and each slammed about 3 in 3 minutes. Needless to say, we had a fantastic time and were so glad we made it to her wedding. The next day all the younger wedding guests swam and drank in the pool at the Langham. I was pretty sad that I couldn’t drink much, as we were heading out on the bike to Lori’s house later that afternoon, but we had an incredible time in the California sun with a fun bunch of people.

We got to Lori’s place, which is probably the nicest house I have ever stayed at and went to dinner with her, had massages the next day, more dinner, lots of drinks and hung out. Lori had planned on riding with me for part of a day, but had to work, and convinced me to ride her brand new 2016 Triple Black GS. I was sad she couldn’t join me, but instantly headed to Mulholland Drive and then down the coast to Malibu and back into the mountain roads. The riding out there really makes me wish I lived there. But then you remember if you have to be anywhere at a specific time in any big city, you’re screwed.

We really appreciated Lori’s hospitality and felt guilty that the airport was so far away from her, because we did not fly into LAX, but rather John Wayne airport, so we rented a car to get us there for our flight back. We had fantastic weather the entire time and had a great trip once again, filled with a week of riding motorcycles for me.