54 / CYCLE WORLD
For approximately the past decade, Editor Mark Hoyer
has been telling me, “We’ve got to get you to the Quail.”
His tone of voice always reminds me of one of those
worldly college guys telling his naive and innocent
freshman roommate, “We’ve just gotta get you out to a
bar!” It’s a mixture of sympathetic concern and genuine
mission.
And that metaphor is not entirely strained, because a
ride up the Coast Highway from the CW office to the Mon-
terey Peninsula is nothing if not intoxicating. Once you
escape rush hour in Los Angeles, the seacoast, vineyards,
and sprawling hills have an almost Tolkien-quality gran-
deur and scale—especially if you take the right roads. And
there are many right roads to choose from. I’ve made the
trip many times in my life, but have never managed to
make it to the Quail Motorcycle Gathering.
And why not?
Well, this is the 11th year for the Quail, and that event
did not exist before my wife Barb and I moved back to
Wisconsin in 1990. And California is a fur piece, as the
Joad family would say, particularly if you hate commer-
cial flying and it’s too cold to ride a motorcycle over the
Rockies in May.
But this year the excuses finally ran out. I had a book
launch and dinner to attend at the Quail Lodge & Golf
Club, and Hoyer called to say Barb and I could fly into
Orange County, borrow a bike and ride up the coast
with him and photographer Jeff Allen. This on the heels
of one of the most dismal Wisconsin winters in the
dark annals of Midwestern dismalism. We were ready
for California.
F
There are few places on earth as fine for riding motorcycles as
California’s central coast. And there are few traveling motorcycles
as good for exploring them as the BMW R 1250 RT.