We had a short (450 mile roundtrip) 2-day trip to Lake Tahoe this weekend, which was also the first multi-day ride with Priti on the ST1300. The bike performed technically flawless on the ride, but some comfort factor for me went missing. I enjoyed the ride on the highway less than what I was supposed to, and found myself thinking more of the ultimate 2-up touring machine - the Honda Goldwing GL1800 !!!
Here is my post on the st-owners.com forum.
Pictures: Priti’s flickr link
What a fantastic way to spend the longest day of the year. Vipin of RTMC at Sunnyvale and Captain Nandu Chitnis of Bikenomads at SF, it is just impossible to not have a ride.
So it happened, Vipin rented a monster of a bike, a Harley Roadking 1400cc, a long jump from his 350cc Royal Enfield at home. It shakes a human like giving a reality check, but the v-twin torque is simply out of the world.
We had a pretty big gang ready for a day long fun. Pravin and Suyash of Bikenomads came on a rental car. Nandu’s wife Medini, daughter Rucha and son-in-law Sai also tagged along. Vipin and Nandu shared the bike rental and we were off to Big Sur.
We had superb lunch break at our favorite restaurant Dennys in Santa Cruz. After that the road was a bliss. The temps went down from a scorching 100F to 72F. It rained a bit while we were eating, and all we had was the refreshing smell of wet earth, a blue sky with scattered clouds and most importantly, hardly any traffic.
We enjoyed the CA-1 paradise all the way till Julia Pfeiffer state park when the temps went up as we diverted from the ocean a bit. So a quick U-turn and we were beside a pristine aquamarine beach. Incredible colors. Too bad the beach was private. We had the usual photoshoots and banter before Nandu and family took off for San Francisco.
Me, Vipin and the other cage went to enjoy the Carmel beach before the final ride home. Vipin was getting scared of riding in the dark but it was unavoidable. We had to take 101 and Vipin thought he must remain below the speed limit, no matter how fast the cars passed him. I tried to make him speed up to at least 65, the limit, but he somehow stayed around 50, arghhhh 
But I do remember how slow I used to be when riding with my local buddy, I used to ride the limit while he did limit+10 or more !
Back to town at 9:20pm after a 230mile of grinning ride.
Looking forward to multi-day rides with the gang sometime.
Special thanks to Rocky for introducing me to Nandu, otherwise this fun and camaraderie would not have happened.
Pictures:
-From Suyash: link to flickr
-From Priti: link to flickr
-From Nandu: link to picasaweb
The epic wait is finally over. Almost 3 years of marriage and 12 years of knowing each other and never having the feeling of living together “forever”.
Priti is here now, and first time in her life on a one-way ticket.
A lot of catching up, tons of things to do to make up the lost time together. Taking it one day at a time and trying hard not to get overwhelmed.
Photographs are the best way to remember these euphoric days. My flickr sets of her will continue to grow in the coming weeks.