Bay Area: Alice's Restaurant (Woodside, CA)

[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.