Where the Autopista Ends
Two motorcycle bloggers in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Coalinga California
Posted on October 9, 2013
Welcome to Coalinga. (Photo: Alex Washburn)
In the last few days leading up to, what in our minds was, the glorious start of Autopista End Nathaniel and I have had some bad luck with our bikes.
It started when he took his bike to a mechanic in Sacramento and had them do a complete overhaul to get it ready for the trip. New air filter, new tires, new chain, they made everything new and shiny and perfect so of course it had to malfunction.
Less then two miles from the mechanic’s at 7:30 at night the bike started sputtering and eventually ceased to be ridable. Good piece of advice, AAA will only tow motorcycles if you have the premium service, so make sure and plan ahead if you have a motorcycle.
Nathaniel took the KLR back to the mechanic the following day and eventually the guy told him a piece of hay had somehow gotten into the intake valve – they removed it, flushed out the system, and it seemed to ride fine.
The day he got his bike “fixed fixed” (Saturday) my chain snapped on the freeway just hours after someone told me it was too loose.
I was told that a chain breaking while you are riding can be really dangerous but thankful nothing happened and a Kawasaki dealership near my house had an extra chain.
We are not mechanics. Before a month ago we had never taken any type of tool to a motorcycle. However, Sunday we replaced my chain and sprockets in my garage with some tools donated by my wonderful neighbors.
Donnie fixed some of my wires that were severed when my chain snapped… and thankfully babysat us as we spent 6 hours replacing my chain and sprockets.(Photo: Alex Washburn)
One of them is actually a mechanic by trade and he was awesome babysitting us through the process!
Anyways – these issues kicked our departure date back from the 7th of October to the 8th.
This morning we got on the road around 9:30 and started cruising south on I-5. Our goal was to take a break and get something to eat after hitting 150 miles.
Somewhere around the 60 mile mark Nathaniel’s bike started sputtering again while cruising at 70 mph. After a brief stop to discuss the situation and have our first bike tip-over of the trip (Nathaniel) we decided to try and hit the 150 mile mark and assess our options.
We ended up on a beat up patch of asphalt just off I-5 called Coalinga. After talking on the phone to the mechanic who had worked on Nathaniel’s bike in Sacramento we decided to try a few fixes ourselves.
We spent about an hour and a half next to Denny’s disconnecting the tachometer and playing with a few other things before calling it quits and heading to the nearest Motel 6 (which happened to be just a block away).
By this time the winds had shifted and the smell of cow was strong in the air.
After some fruit loops for dinner (thanks Chevron!) our spirits are a little higher and we have plans to take Nathaniel’s bike to a mechanic first thing in the morning.
“I didn’t know where I thought I would be spending tonight – but I didn’t think it was going to be a Motel 6 in Coalinga.” -Nathaniel
Sorry for the blandness of this post… Hopefully we will be eating fish tacos within 48 hours! And always remember, even if its not part of the plan, it’s always part of the adventure.
Why
Posted on October 3, 2013
Before we began planning Autopista End Nathaniel and I were already very well traveled. It was one of the things that first attracted us to one another. Before leaving on Autopista End Nathaniel had traveled 11 countries and I had traveled 24. (Photo: Alex Washburn)
Several Months ago Nathaniel and I were lying side by side staring at the ceiling of our nice apartment and mentally preparing to go back to our nice jobs the following day. Jobs- made possible by our nice college educations, stable lives and generally agreeable existence.
Despite all of this we had this overwhelming sense of being overwhelmed and sad. As I write this I realize it could be called bored housewife syndrome. There’s no particular thing that should be causing you to feel helpless or depressed but you do.
This is the ultimate #firstworldproblem.
Staring up into the dark Nathaniel inhaled a slightly deeper breath and in the form of a question said “We should just get some motorcycles and ride to Tierra Del Fuego.”
In our relationship and in life Nathaniel is very much an accountant and I am very much a photographer. When he is the one to come up with a nutty idea like taking up running, loosing insane amounts of weight or riding to Tierra Del Fuego there is no backstop for the idea to bounce off of. The idea just keeps going.
I laid there thinking… I inhaled deeply a few times to respond with “But we…” and realized there was no truly logical reason why we couldn’t make this happen.
We could afford it.
I speak spanish.
Our apartment was month to month.
My Mom could watch the cat.
“Yeah, okay. We can do that.” And we went to sleep.
The next day I presented Nathaniel with a logical departure date based on weather patterns and life events and a list of entry requirements for every South American country. I began bombarding him with travel concerns and logistics and his wide-eyed look usually reserved for my most frustrating and insane plans started to get bigger and bigger.
We had to have at least one more discussion about the trip before that look of his disappeared but it really didn’t take that long.
After our decision was truly made the path to actually leaving was made up of a relatively basic but long check list.
First: We needed motorcycles.
Where the Autopista Ends 