c-breezy_imp said:
Rode to Santiago Canyon again - here's a shot on Portola:
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WOW! Santiago Canyon. Our old motorcycle stomping grounds.
Back in the late '70s and early '80s, that was a fantastic, tight, windy little two-lane country road that we used to go bombing through on weekend mornings almost every single week. We'd blast out the 22 from Huntington Beach to Chapman Ave., cut across Orange Hills to the beginning of Santiago Cyn. Rd., and down to El Toro and back. Just a few country homes, the road canopied in trees, with light dappling through them through much of it. I knew every curve of that road, where the potholes and crappy repairs were, where little trickles of water would sometimes run off a hillside and across the road...
I remember being blown away when they opened up a stretch to four lanes. It looked like a piece of freeway at the time. The nice thing was, it made it WAY safer to pass slower traffic than what we usually did before. But little did we know that meant that they were preparing for several thousand houses about to be built there, and our incredible country road was about to become a major, overcrowded thoroughfare.
The times I remember best are '84-ish. I had a Yamaha Seca Turbo, and my buddy had a new Kawasaki Ninja (the very first one), and two of his friends both had Kawi GPZ550s. We saw (an indicated) 130-140mph many, many times on that road. Can you imagine that now? LOL
Wow. Thanks for the great memory flash!