Pacific Coast Highway – The ExhaustNotes Blog

Cayucos, Hearst Castle, and the Wine Country

California’s Pacific Coast Highway is one of the best motorcycle roads on the planet, and I never miss an opportunity to travel it. One of my favorite destinations on the Pacific Coast Highway is Hearst Castle. We’ve written about it previously here on ExNotes.

As the title of this blog implies, base camp was in Cayucos, California, instead of Cambria (more on that below). And from a photography perspective, instead of lugging around my boat-anchor, full-frame Nikon D810, I took the smaller and lighter Nikon D3300 with a “walking around” 18-55mm lens and a Rokinon 8mm (a super wide angle). I’ve been using that combination more and more lately.

The Rokinon 8mm super wide angle lens. Manual everything, it’s fun to use and it does a surprisingly good job.

There’s not much in San Simeon, so people who visit Hearst Castle usually stay in Cambria. We stayed a stone’s throw away from Cambria in Cayucos, which is just north of Morro Bay.

Most folks who visit Hearst Castle stay in Cambria, a touristy, kitschy spot just down the road from San Simeon (the Hearst Castle location). This time we tried Cayucos, a tiny town that’s a bit further south down the Pacific Coast Highway. It’s friendlier, less expensive, and for my money, a lot nicer and more enjoyable than Cambria. Sue and I stayed in the Sunset Inn, a bed and breakfast in Cayucos. If you’re in Cayucos, the Ludano restaurant is the place for dinner (William Randolph Hearst was a regular here while building Hearst Castle). For a more casual Cayucos dining experience, Duckie’s (near the Cayucos Pier) is an awesome walkup seafood restaurant (try the fish and chips; they were great).

Hearst Castle, as seen through the Rokinon 8mm super wide.

The Neptune swimming pool at Hearst Castle.

One of the Hearst Castle’s guest bedrooms.

The Rokinon lens is strictly a manual affair. It doesn’t autofocus and it doesn’t work with the camera’s automatic metering features. It’s manual everything…focus, f stop, ISO, and shutter speed. The focus part was easy…I simply cranked the focus ring all the way over to infinity (with a wide-angle lens, that works). For ISO, shutter speed, and f stop, I used the camera’s histogram. Shoot, check the histogram, adjust, shoot again, check the histogram, adjust, and keep going until things are just right. Too dark, and I adjusted the shutter speed, the f stop, and the ISO until the histogram showed everything between the histogram upper and lower limits. Too light, and I made adjustments in the opposite direction. For the money, the Rokinon lens is a lot of fun, and I like the effects I get with a wide -angle lens. Some folks don’t. That’s okay. It’s my gear and these are my photos.

As mentioned earlier, I also used the Nikon 18-55mm lens on this trip. It’s not the sharpest lens but that’s okay. I’m not the sharpest matzoh in the box, either, and a matching lens fits me well. When I shoot in RAW (the camera’s capture everything, sort-it-out-later-in-Photoshop mode), the 18-55mm lens works surprisingly well, like in the photo at the top of this blog. It’s a shot of the Cayucos Pier, in which I did a little bit of post-processing to darken the sky and the water. I’m pleased with the results.

While we walked the pier, we talked to folks who were fishing from it. The fishing was good: Halibut, perch, and one fellow had landed a 4-foot shark earlier in the day (I wish I had been there when that happened; that would have been a hell of a picture).

The Nikon D3300 digital single lens reflex camera and the 18-55mm zoom lens that comes with the camera. It’s not a super sharp lens, but it’s not super expensive, either.

I took the photo below with the 18-55mm lens just a few miles up the Pacific Coast Highway. These are elephant seals and I liked how this photo turned out, too.

One of several elephant seal vista points along California’s magnificent Pacific Coast Highway. The two in the water was grunting loudly at each other in a domination contest. These seals can weigh up to 5,000 pounds.

You know, the discussions about lenses, cameras, and photography can go on endlessly. Sometimes all you need is a cell phone. I was blown away by the photos Joe Gresh grabbed when he recently visited Laguna Seca after riding his Kawasaki ZRX from New Mexico. Joe shot all of those with his iPhone, which is a much easier way to go on a motorcycle. When I travel with a digital single lens reflex camera on a motorcycle, the camera and a couple of lenses steal a lot of saddlebag space. There’s advantages and disadvantages to everything, I guess.

Old Creek Road out of Cayucos is a fun ride.

Riding the Pacific Coast Highway is a bucket list ride, and if you get an opportunity to do so, you should grab it. The area I’m describing in this blog is roughly halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. The Pacific Coast Highway is currently closed around Gordo (well north of San Simeon), but that still leaves a lot of nice riding on the table. One of the best rides is Old Creek Road northeast out of Cayucos. It’s a lightly traveled and grand road, full of twisties, and it cuts through the California wine country to link up with State Route 46 (another fine road through the wine country). A few miles further east, 46 intersects Highway 41, and that’s where James Dean lost his life in a car accident (there’s a sign marking the spot). There are a lot of interesting things and a lot of interesting roads in California.

More Epic Rides are here!

Moss Landing Moto Art

By Joe Berk

If you’re on the Pacific Coast Highway and you’re riding through the little fishing village of Moss Landing, it’s nearly impossible to miss the moto art at the J&S Eagle Iron and Leather Shop, although that’s exactly what I did on a trek north a few years (no doubt because it was raining so hard). On the way back, though, the sun was out and I when I saw these I knew I had to stop for a few photos. I shot these photos about 5 years ago and I don’t know if these moto sculptures are still there. It might be worth a ride to check it out.

Ernie Buck, the store manager, told me these gigantic bike sculptures are Hecho en Mexico and go for about $20K each. I guess that’s not that far-fetched considering what a new Harley or BMW costs these days, and these things are easily three times the size of those bikes.

The first moto gigante was constructed mostly of license plates. Bear in mind that all three of these sculptures use giant tractor tires (that will give you a sense of their size). Like I said above, they’re huge!

The next one was fabricated from horseshoes. Horseshoes! Imagine that! Where do artists get their ideas?

It was cool. I liked the gangster whitewalls. I had a set of those on my ’92 Softail. You know, the top of those tires was about the same height as me!

The third bike was fabricated almost entirely of shovels.

Maybe the bike above is a Shovelhead (you know, the one that came after the Panhead). It was cool.

You know, the bikes above make for interesting displays, but I wondered where I would put such a thing if I owned it. You’d need a huge lawn or a spacious home in which to display this kind of art, and even then, I’m pretty sure Sue would have none of it. They sure were interesting and they made for cool photos.

The Pacific Coast Highway is an amazing road and it’s always been one of my favorite rides.

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Hearst Castle

I had my RX3 out this Memorial Day weekend. It’s an iconic motorcycle, and it’s one I’ve ridden on three continents. I hadn’t ridden the RX3 in a few months, and it felt good to be on it again. Light, responsive, fully equipped, and five years old, my RX3 can and has gone the distance.

I’m thinking about a motorcycle ride up the Pacific Coast Highway to Hearst Castle, and Hearst Castle is a bucket list destination on a bucket list road. I’d like to do it on my RX3. Trust me on this: It doesn’t get much better than the Pacific Coast Highway and Hearst Castle.

The Pacific Coast Highway. Life doesn’t get much better than this, folks. Any motorcycle ride on the PCH is magnificent, and a stop at Hearst Castle makes it even better.

What’s Hearst Castle all about? Here’s the Reader’s Digest version: William Randolph Hearst is a dude who had more money than God. His dad came to California during the Gold Rush and somehow managed not to find any gold, but he went a few hills over and hit it big with silver. Ever hear of the Comstock Lode? Well, that was George Hearst back in the 1800s. Father George was a mining guy, and he sort of fell into the newspaper business when he accepted the San Francisco Examiner as payment for a gambling debt. While all this was going on, young William Randolph Hearst (George’s son) got himself expelled from Harvard, and somehow after that landed a job on the Examiner (ah, nepotism in action). And while all that was occurring, George bought 40,000 acres in the Santa Lucia Mountains (on the central California coast) so the family had a place to go camping.

I guess some folks run out of things to do when they’re rich, but not young William. He decided to he needed a castle. So he built one. On the family property (which he inherited in 1919) in San Simeon. It’s one hell of story, and there’s more to it than I can cover here in the blog, but it will soon be in a major motorcycle magazine (and when that happens, I’ll give you the link here). In advance of that, though, I’ll share a few Hearst Castle photos with you.

The front door to Casa Grande. Bill Hearst liked big doors.

Art, tapestries, ceilings, and more…all this stuff is the result of Hearst’s agents scouring the castles and churches of Europe, and returning the good stuff to California. It’s good to be the king.

One of two Olympic-sized pools at Hearst Castle. This is the first one Hearst built, but guests complained they could hear the staff working upstairs. Undaunted, Old Bill designated this pool for staff only, and built an even larger one outdoors for his guests. The indoor pool makes for a stunning photo op, I think. The blue tiles are custom crafted. It really is amazing.

Dinner was a big deal when Bill held the Hearst Corporation reins. The word “impressive” just isn’t adequate here.

The view from La Cuesta Encantada (the Enchanted Hill) looking west to the Pacific Ocean.

So there you have it. But there’s more…lots more. You have to see Hearst Castle to believe it, and it is a stellar thing to see. Hearst Castle and the Pacific Coast Highway make for a great motorcycle ride.

Catching up and what’s coming up!

Snacks at an engineering seminar in Singapore. Those are hard-boiled quail eggs and they were good!

I’m back after a 3-day hop over to Singapore, and it’s good to be home. I thought I’d do sort of a catchall blog to mention a bunch of things. For starters, Singapore was fun (it always is), but that 15-hour time change is a bear. I was over there to teach a class, something I do two or three times a year. They treat me well in Singapore and I love traveling to Asia. I think I’m back on California time already, thanks to keeping an altered sleep schedule while I was in Asia and a good sleeping pill that let me sleep through the night last night. If you’ve never been to Singapore, you might want to add it to your bucket list. It’s one of the world’s great places.

I kept up (as many of you did) with Joe Gresh’s Endurofest fun in Flagstaff, and it looks like the only downside to that adventure was his good buddy Hunter crashed and cracked a bunch of ribs. Hunter, we’re thinking of you. Get well soon.

At the spot where Joe’s buddy Hunter crashed. He got through it with six broken ribs. Ouch!

And speaking of cracking things, you’ll remember the story on my .257 Weatherby Ruger No. 1 cracking its Circassian walnut stock and me shipping it back to the factory. I called Ruger, but I still don’t have an update on the fix. They were supposed to get back to me later today, but it’s already later today so I expect I won’t hear anything until tomorrow or Monday. I’ve got a bunch of .257 Weatherby brass polished and primed, and I’ve got the Barnes monolithic copper bullets my good buddy Mississippi Dave recommended. I’m eager to get that rifle back and continue the load development for it.

A 200th year Ruger 77 in 7×57. You’d think with all those 7s I’d get lucky, but I haven’t found a way to get tight groups yet. I’m working the problem.

In the meantime, I’ve been playing with a beautiful 43-year-old Ruger Model 77. It’s a 200th year Ruger in a very classy chambering, the 7×57, which is the old Spanish Mauser cartridge. I bought it used in 1977 and it is in pristine condition, and I think I know why the previous owner sold it. It doesn’t group worth a damn. But that makes it more fun (half the fun with these things is searching for a good load). Stay tuned, because if I ever find a decent load, you can be sure there will be a blog on this one.

The carb on my TT250 is gummed up and it won’t idle. That’s not the bike’s fault. It’s mine. I sometimes go months between rides on that bike, and that’s what happened here. I’ll take the carb apart to clean out the passageways, and when I do, I’ll photodocument the approach so you can see how I go about it. I’ll have to re-read the tutorial I did for CSC Motorcycles on the TT250 carb first. These bikes are super easy to maintain, and they have to be one of the best deals ever on a new motorcycle.

Hey, another cool motorcycle deal…my good buddy Ben recently published a book titled 21 Tips For Your First Ride South Of The Border (and it’s free). You can download it here.

Let’s see…what else? Oh yeah, we have a bunch of stuff in the blog pipeline for you. There’s the Yoo-Hoo product review (we haven’t forgotten about that one). There’s a very cool watch company (Gear’d Hardware) that follows the ExNotes blog, and they recently sent two watches to us for review. The review will appear here in the near future. That’s good; we’ve been meaning to start a watch review series and this will get the ball rolling.

A Gear’d Hardware watch, one of two Gresh and I will review for you here on the ExhaustNotes blog.

More good stuff: I’ve been playing with another Ruger No. 1 chambered in yet another Weatherby cartridge (the mighty .300 Weatherby), and I’ll be posting a blog about that soon. Another product review that’s coming up is one on turmeric, the dietary supplement that’s supposed to work wonders for arthritis. I don’t have arthritis, but that crash I had on my Speed Triple 10 years ago has bothered me mightily for the last decade, and taking turmeric is getting it done for me. I don’t normally believe in these supplement wonder pills, but folks, it’s working. Watch for the blog on this stuff. And we haven’t forgotten about a near-term ride up the Pacific Coast Highway (good buddy TK and I have been talking about that one).

California’s Pacific Coast Highway: It doesn’t get any better than this.

Stay tuned; there’s always good stuff coming your way here on the ExNotes blog!

On being a Gym Rat, the RX3, Yoo-Hoo, and Lucas Fuel Treatment

I’ve been drinking my stash of Yoo-Hoo (the review is in the works), but wouldn’t you know it, each of those little containers is 100 calories. To a male model like myself, that means more time at the gym, and that’s what I’ve been doing. Usually I roll over there in the Subie, but today was a bit different. I rode to the gym on my old RX3.

It sounds funny to refer to the RX3 as old. Four years ago, it was the hottest thing since sliced bread, and news of an inexpensive, fully-equipped, adventure touring machine was big news indeed. The RX3 price has gone up since then, but the RX3 is still a hot smoking hot deal. Mine came in on the very first shipment from Chongqing, it has about 20,000 miles on it, and it’s still going strong. I don’t ride my RX3 much these days because I’m usually on someone else’s motorcycle for an ExNotes blog (the RX4, the Royal Enfields, the Janus bikes, the Genuine G400c), but every time I get on my bike I still feel the excitement I first felt when I rode an RX3 for the first time. That was in China. You can badmouth small bikes and Chinese bikes all you want, but I know better. The RX3 is one of the world’s great motorcycles.

I’m going to do a trip on my RX3, most likely up the Pacific Coast, in the next couple of months. I’m thinking something leisurely, around 200 miles each day, with stops at the La Purisima Mission, Jocko’s in Nipomo (best barbeque on the planet), a run up the Pacific Coast Highway to Carmel, and then a jaunt east through Hollister to Pinnacles, Highway 25, and the 198 down the center of California. I’ll probably swing further east for a Del Taco burrito in Barstow (it’s the location of the original Del Taco, and if I had to explain why that’s significant, you might not get it). Yeah, that could work. Lots of photos, lots of meeting new people, and lots of fun.

What would be particularly cool on a trip like that is the RX3’s fuel economy. We’re up around $4 per gallon here in the Peoples Republik of Kalifornia (about a dollar of that is taxes), and being on a bike that sips fuel always makes me feel like I’m getting away with something. I consistently get better than 70 mpg on my RX3. That’s a good thing. Gresh seems to have stumbled on to something on his B0nneville adventure using Lucas fuel treatment in his Husky. His fuel economy improved significantly after adding Lucas. I’ve always used Lucas fuel treatment in my bike, and I’m wondering if that’s part of the reason I’ve always had great fuel economy.

Anyway, lots more coming up, folks. Stay tuned.

Read about some of our other adventures on the ExhaustNotes Epic Rides page!