San Francisco Bay Peninsula: Alice's Restaurant (Woodside, CA)

[Cormanus]

Speak up everyone. Please?

[the Ferret]

See Id be worried listening to something in my helmet that I'd miss a strange noise my engine was making right before it cause catastrophic damage.

Preface:  I'm not trying to convince anyone to have or not have audio in their helmet.

In all the time and over all the miles you've ridden, how many times have noticed a strange sound your engine was making and were able to stop your bike before it caused catastrophic damage?  And, of those times (if any), how many of those strange noises were soft enough that you wouldn't have heard it with audio in your helmet?

60 years riding on the street, 36 motorcycles (incl 1 rental), 7 different manufacturers, an estimated 875,000 miles, 48 states, 2 provinces of Canada, 5 countries in Europe and I've never had a catastrophic motorcycle engine failure but all I can tell you is, in my head, the worry is real  

[Gone in 60]

I have only seen one catastrophic, and actually spectacular engine failure.
Driving up the 101 with Mrs. G in the Calabasas area, which is the route one would take if they were planning to drop down into the Malibu Canyon roads, like Mulholland, Latigo and the other famous and fun twisties. You'll typically see sports cars and sport bikes on the 101 in that area, which is a very wide and fast freeway, heading toward the exits to the roads that drop into the canyon.

Mrs. and I were cruising along at around 75mph when a BMW S1000RR passed us like we were standing still. While Mrs. was commenting about how unsafe he was, and I was assuring her that I don't ride like that, we saw a huge cloud of smoke up ahead, and all of the cars ahead of us were braking hard.

Looked like our BMW friend must have crashed. As we kept travelling, we could see a distinct trail of oil, and aluminum chunks twinkling as they tumbled down the freeway. The oil trail veered off to the right shoulder, ending where the BMW sat, upright on its side stand, with about half of the engine missing, and the rear tire coated in oil.

[Cooldrum305]

Great pics David of Alice's and Skyline (the road). You can also ride Skyline north too Highway 92 to take you out too Half Moon Bay.( Avoid it though during the pumpkin festival in October) 92 connects to Highway 1 and you can take your pick, south to Santa Cruz or north to San Francisco and beyond.

Another route from your place is catch 84(Livermore) to the Dumbarton bridge, north on 101 to Woodside road and catch 84 through Redwood city and Woodside road which takes you up to Skyline and Alice's (84 and 35 intersect there) 84 continues out to La Honda to highway 1 too.

The bike culture at Alice's has changed through the years. The sport bikes use to park at the Trading Post across the street and the cruisers at Alice's , things change I guess. There's been many press releases of vehicles staged at Alice's and car commercials on 84 too.

We lived in Newark before Sun built campuses on either side of the Dumbarton bridge. Then Facebook, now Meta came in and changed everything on Bay Front expressway. One thing that didn't change was the wonderful road access to the many roads in the area.

In Portland, I often ride to the Columbia river gorge on the historic highway (30) You can ride the interstate (I 84) but you just miss so much. The waterfalls, the fresh air sent from the forests, and of course, the bends of the open country roads, it doesn't get any better. Good memories of living in the BayArea with many new roads to discover in the Pacific NorthWest. Thanks for a Great Job on preserving the CB1100 forum! Russ