CONVERSATIONS (WITH A SCIENTIST!) ON THE OPEN ROAD

State Route 128 at Lake Berryessa

IT’S TOUGH TO RIDE A NICE MOTORCYCLE and not be stopped from time to time for conversations with a total stranger. Outside of the other day over near Clear Lake when an aging man in house slippers wandered across the street, engaged me about my BMW and then tried to panhandle me for “enough money to, you know, get a hot dog or something,” conversations usually start with the bike and may move on to topics or those proverbial points unknown.

Monticello Dam

THE FIRST LEG of the “North Coast – Volcanic Legacy Tour” found me crossing the Coast Range on State Route 128. This sinewy highway leads from the hot dry floor of the Sacramento Valley, through rolling hills, vineyards and redwoods until finally emerging at the coast below Fort Bragg. An hour into this ride, I find myself at the overlook for Monticello Dam which serves as a good place to stretch legs and take on a slug or two of water.

Two gentlemen approach from the west on bikes – one on a Cannondale the other, I think, on a Novara from REI.  (I find I know bikes, but I don't really know bikes.)

Berryessa's Glory Hole

Walking back from a look at Berryessa’s glory hole, I appreciate the bare-naked geology of the area and found myself reflecting upon the upward thrusts of our earth’s rather fluid crust. I recalled how I’d taught some very basic geology to fourth graders. The vicinity around what used to be the Monticello Valley illustrates how layers once well below the ocean’s surface have been lifted and bent by tectonic forces as far away as the mid-Atlantic. I was wondering about the advisability of putting a solid concrete dam across a gorge made up of clearly mobile strata.

“How far to Davis?” asked one. “And is it down hill?” chimed the other.

I responded.

“We’re thinking of taking the Pleasants Valley Road,” one said as the other looked at his watch.

Having just ridden it myself, I explained that such a detour would add quite a bit of climbing and mileage if Davis were the goal.

The first one looked at the GSA. “Trade ya,” he said with a grin. “I’ve got a Dakar at home.”

We laughed.

“Can’t do that,” I said, “but I can put one of you guys on the seat backward and you can take footage of the other one coming down the hill. That’s what bicyclists like BMWs for, isn’t it?”

More laughter.


THE GENTLEMEN, probably each eight or ten years my senior had pedaled west from Calistoga. I calculated that this had involved more than a little up and down and was glad my bike was outfitted with a motor.

October 2010 - file

One of them pointed to Monticello Dam’s moorings across the canyon. “Some pretty dramatic tilt."

“Yeah,” I said, remembering about my days as a classroom teacher and preparing (like a fool) to show off a bit. “Seems strange to build a dam and hold up all that water where the crust moves around so much. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live down stream.”

Downstream

His riding partner shook his head. “Oh, no, no, no.” He pointed down the valley, then turned and pointed across the pool of water. “These rocks, why, they haven’t moved in the past six million years. Maybe eleven and a half million.”

“Mid-Atlantic ridge…” I began.

“…Nope. Now out eighty miles west there in the San Andreas rift zone, there’s where you’ll have some movement. Wouldn’t be smart to do a reservoir like this there. And yeah, I guess it does start back in the Atlantic, but the critical movement is on the coast.”

I decided to shut up and listen. (This is rare.)

Layers - tilted layers

He continued, “You go down the road a bit and you get an excellent view of the different layers that used to be on the floor of the ocean back about the early or maybe the mid-Pleistocene Epoch. You’ll see some thin layers of shale that had lay on the floor and compressed. In between, there’ll be these thicker layers of more granular material that had flowed down from the Sierra and settled to the bottom.” He pointed across the highway from the dam. “There’s a pretty good example right there.”

I thought I knew most of this stuff, but in no way did I know it like this biker.

“Those rock slides you see every once in a while along here? Exfoliation.”

“The onion skin effect?” I asked.

“Similar to the granite in the Sierra. Except not technically onion skin because the rock isn’t…”

Courtesy US Geologic Survey Bulletin

I didn’t catch the word he used. But it turns out he is a retired Ph.D. and taught this stuff to university students for a career. As he went on, I thought about the additional units I could use on my college transcript. I wondered if he’d sign off on ‘em for me.


AT LENGTH, his partner tapped his watch and asked if I could recommend a lunch spot, stopping the geologist mid-sentence.

A view toward the San Andreas Rift Zone

Hopefully they stopped at the Putah Creek Café in Winters. I know I had something to chew on as I mounted the Beemer and headed west toward the rift zone.

© 2011
Church of the Open Road Press

SHAKEDOWN CRUISE – NO PARTICULAR PLACE TO GO

I COULD TELL it was finally spring. The temperature had ratcheted itself you by six-degree increments over the previous three days. Buckets of rain had stopped falling. Looking the month of April squarely in the face, it had been at least four weeks since the GS saw the outside of the garage. The storm had collapsed the back fence, but the back fence could wait.

I packed the camera and a bottle of Fiji water. The line no particular place to go ran through my head. Here, then is a summary:


THE CALIFORNIA DELTA has a maze of levee roads that twist and curl between Sacramento, Stockton, Rio Vista and beyond. Getting lost in the Delta is no tragedy. It is a gift. Having briefly stopped at Elk Grove Powersports (http://www.egpowersports.com/) to check out their new inventory of Triumphs (the old dealer went under in November) and drool at a sexy Moto Guzzi Breva Sport, I found myself on a couple of secondary roads splitting the Cosumnes River Preserve. Snowy egrets stood watch in the flooded flats and flotillas of Canadian honkers rose and fell on slightest waves. In three places, water topped the pavement and I found myself tip-toeing the GS through. I didn’t stop for pictures.

I motored on to Walnut Grove to glimpse a Sacramento River well within its levee constraints, but higher than I recall ever seeing it. Catching SR 160 I traced the embankments down to Isleton. In a normal year, the pear, peach and plum blossoms would appear as a carpet over the fertile bottomlands, but this year, the heavy rains washed many of the pink and while petals away. Isleton, Sacramento County’s smallest “city” provides a sturdy and clean public restroom just a few steps from the river. Its streets are Mayberry quiet – nice for strolling – and the Levee Café provides a fair hamburger.


I HADN’T CHECKED OUT the Western (formerly California Electric) Railway Museum in a dozen years, so that would become my next non-particular destination. Trough Rio Vista and west on SR 12 about sixteen miles, one comes to Vista Junction. A hundred years ago, the Sacramento Northern (nee Northern Electric) ran through these parts as electric inter-urban trains ran from Oakland to Sacramento and up to Chico. Before the automobile became ubiquitous, folks could catch an electric train and easily travel from point to point throughout the Sacramento Valley and down to the bay. At Vista Junction, some of this history is preserved and in May, most of the rolling stock is powered up for public rides. This day the museum was closed, but through the gate, I could see they’d constructed a nice new building. Didn’t stop for a picture. Must go back on the weekend when it is open.


I DID CHECK my DeLorme’s California Atlas and Gazetteer and realized that Suisun City was a brief jaunt up the highway and that there a tiny road I’d not taken before begging my attention. Rolling past legions of three-propped aliens, it appeared that the Solano wind farm would go on forever. I thought about Battlestar Gallactica and wondered if these creatures were actually Cylons in their native form. I didn’t stop for a picture.

Continuing west-northwest, a huge, gray L-1011 (perhaps) converted for military use practiced touch and go at Travis Air Force Base. Riding the BMW feels like flying, we’re told, and it felt as if my flight was far faster than the lumbering activity of the jet. I paused in line with the end of the runway, several miles off, and watched the beast touch the tarmac and ascend for another go.


WEST OF FAIRFIELD – turn of I-80 at the weigh station – Suisun Valley Road courses north into the Coast Range. This road was new to me. It begins as a four lane but quickly downsizes to a pair just past Solano Community College. A few miles up the road a four-corners named Rockville invites pause. There’s a nice nursery, a coffee place and, I think, a little mom and pop. From freeway to farm life in about six minutes, this community would support the bucolic vineyards further up the road.

The Suisun Valley Road is a delight. In the lower reaches, it traces the angular boundaries of property. Further on it changes its name to Woodinville Road conforms to route of a stream course. The road rises and falls away and twists through stands of oak. Every flat half-acre is planted in vineyard. Years ago, there was but one winery in these parts, the Wooden Valley Winery, but over the course of three-plus decades, more have sprouted up with new tasting rooms constructed to look old and quaint. I wish I’d stopped for a photo.

Woodinville Road dead-ends into SR 121 five miles east of Napa. This route I know well having taken it so many times when Auntie DeVonne was hospitalized last fall. The SR 121-128 combination carries much more traffic and many bikers. Coming my direction were two fights of about 20 motor patrol officers each, I’m assuming in training. As their Harleys roared by, I shared a salute with many of them.


THE LAST STOP THIS DAY would be the Monticello Dam confining Lake Berryessa. In deep need of a stretch I paced the viewing area and discovered, much to my horror, that Berryessa has a “Glory Hole” instead of a spillway. A spillway allows excess water to slip into an engineered channel rather than over top the dam. A Glory Hole is like a huge concrete tube, perhaps thirty feet across, that sticks up in the middle of the pool a hundred yards or so back of the dam. Water eclipsing the rim of the glory hole rushes down into this darkness and shoots out into the creek. I picture myself in a rowboat, feverishly paddling against a lake top current, only to be sucked into the glory hole and spit out at the bottom. Engineering feats to be sure, these things scare the hell out of me.

Google Images

The remainder of the shakedown cruise was on roads I too-commonly know. 128 through Winters; 113 to Davis; I-80 home. The eighty-degree day, clear sky, dry pavement, camaraderie with others and the burger in Isleton, made the first two-hundred miler of the year a nice day and another chapter for the Church of the Open Road.

Tomorrow I would fix the fence.


RESOURCES:

Since I left my camera firmly strapped to my belt for this entire excursion, you might be interested in further photos and facts found by clicking:

California Delta Visitor’s Bureau: http://www.californiadelta.org/

Western Railway Museum: http://www.wrm.org/

Wind Farm of Solano: http://www.thewindpower.net/wind-farm-2787.php

Jimmy Doolittle Air and Space Museum: http://www.jimmydoolittlemuseum.org/

Suisun Valley Wineries:  http://www.suisunvalley.com/

Lake Berryessa and really scary pictures of that “Glory Hole:” http://www.google.com/search?q=Lake+Berryessa&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=9H5&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=ivns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=0FmXTaCQL4mosQPukbG7BQ&ved=0CC0QsAQ&biw=1218&bih=755

© 2011

Church of the Open Road Press