Memorial Day weekend Santa Barbara tour

[Ryanizzle_imp]

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.


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


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.


Hwy 166 near New Cuyama


Hwy 33 near Reyes Peak



Santa Barbara



SizzlinGogi for dinner back in Santa Maria. Highly recommend if you're into Korean BBQ, the marinated short ribs was their tastiest meat




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.

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