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Memorial Day weekend Santa Barbara tour - Printable Version

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Memorial Day weekend Santa Barbara tour - Ryanizzle_imp - 05-27-2014

Me and my friend with a Yamaha yzf600 just spent the weekend in socal with our bikes.

We started from our hometown in Stockton and made our way down to Santa Maria on Saturday.

For Sunday, we started our day at 10am by taking on a Santa Maria-Ojai loop that starts on Hwy 166, goes down some pretty awesome twisties and sweeps on 33 to Ojai where we happened to find an art/music event in Libbey park. Then we moved on to Santa Barbara where we wandered around Cabrillo Blvd along the beach for a couple hours, and finished the loop back to Santa Maria by 7pm.

On Monday, we started heading back north to Monterey via Hwy 1 for some pretty epic scenery and more twisties and sweeps. We ran into some pretty nasty traffic on the 101/156 junction, but we eventually made our way east on 152, then went up i-5 and back to Stockton before 8pm.

A picture of our route.
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Took off my Dart fly screen and went pure stock. Used a Joe Rocket tank bag and a Kriega R20 backpack w/ a cargo net as my tailbag
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Our first full meal at a Wingstop in Gilroy- if you're a big fan of Wingstop, I recommend coming here- their wings were pretty huge, plus they have a local specialty flavor-hot garlic.
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Hwy 166 near New Cuyama
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Hwy 33 near Reyes Peak
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Santa Barbara
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SizzlinGogi for dinner back in Santa Maria. Highly recommend if you're into Korean BBQ, the marinated short ribs was their tastiest meat
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Impressions on using the CB as a long distance touring bike:

the 2 big things that would make this a great touring bike would be highway bars & a more comfortable seat. After about 1-2 hours of continuous riding, the seat starts to get uncomfortable real fast. But if you take occasional breaks, it's fine. The highway bars are a big must- my right leg was pretty uncomfortable throughout the ride, and I'm a pretty short person (5'4) so I can only imagine how worse it would be for a taller rider.

The CB's fuel economy hampered my overall experience with constant fillups. My fuel gauge would go to "empty" every 2 gallons, and I know it's a 4 gallon tank, but I never did the research on how many miles I would have beyond that.

The CB kept up pretty well with my friend's yzf in terms of both speed and handling. Granted, they have similar performance numbers, but it's great to know that Honda's not just making a gimmick bike, but something that can hang with the rest of the crowd.

Some other interesting stuff about our trip:
California weather is very fickle; I probably had to switch between hot & cold gear around 2-3 times/day

Road conditions of socal roads>nor cal roads; very apparent especially on Hwy 1

My friend let me borrow a Sena intercom for the trip. It was pretty useful to have for gps directions, it's definitely gonna be on my wishlist along with a GoPro; my pictures don't hold a candle to the scenery I saw on the road

The Arai Defiant is a horrible helmet when it comes to wind noise; it nearly muted any music playing on my Sena speakers at speeds over 70. I'm considering getting the Shoei Qwest as my touring helmet.

On our last fill-up at a Chevron near Los Banos, 3 Hell's Angels pulled up and pumped gas next to us. Nothing happened, but me and my friend were just laughing through our intercoms saying 'Mann what are the chances of that happening haha'

This trip makes this hands-down my most memorable Memorial day weekend so far. My friend admitted to me that he had second thoughts about us doing such a long trip (we only have about 1 year's riding experience) but pulling off this trip really boosted our rider confidence and made me glad I chose the CB.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

RE: Memorial Day weekend Santa Barbara tour - Rocky_imp - 05-27-2014

Looks like you had a great ride in a nice part of the state Thumbs Up Thumbs Up

RE: Memorial Day weekend Santa Barbara tour - emptysea - 05-27-2014

Great report and pictures. Sounds like a great weekend, for sure. Thanks for sharing your impressions of the bike and your gear, too...very helpful.

RE: Memorial Day weekend Santa Barbara tour - redbirds_imp - 05-27-2014

What a nice ride and great scenery.

RE: Memorial Day weekend Santa Barbara tour - HikerToo_imp - 05-27-2014

Why did you take off the wind screen, seems like most people would put one on for a long trip like that?

RE: Memorial Day weekend Santa Barbara tour - Pterodactyl_imp - 05-27-2014

Enjoyed that. Thanks.

RE: Memorial Day weekend Santa Barbara tour - the Ferret - 05-27-2014

Very cool ... Love the panoramic shot Thumbs Up

You have to quit looking at that inaccurate fuel gauge and learn to go by miles. Fill up just like normal, zero your B trip meter., ride how you normally ride for 100 miles, fill up again, just like normal, see how much it takes ( lets say 2 gals ) compute mileage lets say (50 mpg.. 100 divided by 2). You know you have a 3.9 gallon tank. 3.9 gals x 50 mpg = 195 miles. Now you don't want to go 195 miles and start looking for gas, but you know you can go 150 to 175 and still have some in reserve. 150 miles will get you about 3 hours of riding on average. Time to rest the butt then anyway. Anytime you refill zero trip B and let that guide you how far you can go. I went around 180 miles on a tank several times on my 13 and still had 1/2 gallon in the tank. Should be good for another 25 miles, but that was my emergency cushion.

I've gone over 200 on my 14 DLX with the 4.6 tank and still has 1/2 gallon left.

Your mind wants to panic because that dang flashing bar is on forever, but math is math. Trust it. I'd certainly trust the math before trusting that wildly inaccurate fuel gauge.

Oh and thanks for posting your pics and report.

RE: Memorial Day weekend Santa Barbara tour - shysue2_imp - 05-28-2014

Looks like a great trip and the photos were creative. Thanks for posting!

RE: Memorial Day weekend Santa Barbara tour - Ryanizzle_imp - 05-28-2014

(05-27-2014, 10:22 PM)HikerToo_imp Wrote: Why did you take off the wind screen, seems like most people would put one on for a long trip like that?

A few weeks ago I had my bike go through some freeways with typical high winds, and the flyscreen was surprisingly disappointing; it gave me a lot of wind noise and even buffeting because all that strong wind was directed straight to my helmet. I've removed the flyscreen since then, and so far the wind hits me evenly with no helmet buffeting. My grip on the handlebars is expectedly more firm, but to me the tradeoff is worth it.

I do intend to get some wind protection for the bike in the near future; i'll be getting a conventional memphis shades-style windscreen, or if I score lucky in craigslistland, get a vetter/vesco faring to fix up and retrofit onto the CB.

(05-27-2014, 10:57 PM)The ferret_imp Wrote: Very cool ... Love the panoramic shot Thumbs Up

You have to quit looking at that inaccurate fuel gauge and learn to go by miles. Fill up just like normal, zero your B trip meter., ride how you normally ride for 100 miles, fill up again, just like normal, see how much it takes ( lets say 2 gals ) compute mileage lets say (50 mpg.. 100 divided by 2). You know you have a 3.9 gallon tank. 3.9 gals x 50 mpg = 195 miles. Now you don't want to go 195 miles and start looking for gas, but you know you can go 150 to 175 and still have some in reserve. 150 miles will get you about 3 hours of riding on average. Time to rest the butt then anyway. Anytime you refill zero trip B and let that guide you how far you can go. I went around 180 miles on a tank several times on my 13 and still had 1/2 gallon in the tank. Should be good for another 25 miles, but that was my emergency cushion.

I've gone over 200 on my 14 DLX with the 4.6 tank and still has 1/2 gallon left.

Your mind wants to panic because that dang flashing bar is on forever, but math is math. Trust it. I'd certainly trust the math before trusting that wildly inaccurate fuel gauge.

Oh and thanks for posting your pics and report.

Thanks for the numbers. Yes, that flashing bar does make me paranoid on the road lol I'll have to just ignore it and use my trip meter instead.

RE: Memorial Day weekend Santa Barbara tour - Cormanus - 05-28-2014

Good report and pics. Thanks Ryan.