In a few days Ill be leaving warm and sunny Southern California to go visit family for the holidays in snowy Michigan, so I went to get some last riding of the year in. This wont be much of a ride report, but I thought I would post anyway since this was the first time I was out on my bike carrying my DSLR.
The plan was to ride up through the San Bernardino mountains following this track, making some stops around Silverwood Lake (the lake you see at the top of the route).
This would have made for a nice ~100 mile ride with awesome scenery. Unfortunately, the day I had free to do this also lined up with some intense Santa Ana winds in southern california. As a result, as soon as I got to the twisty sections of CA18 climbing the mountain, the winds really started to scare me. Likely because I am new to this, Ive never really ridden in very strong winds. I would find myself taking a turn at 30-40mph with adequate lean when everything is fine. Then an open area of the road would open up and suddenly a gust of wind would almost push the bike from under me. A few times I thought I wouldnt make the turn because Id be afraid to lean more, forcing me to slow down to a crawl through the turns. Maybe a better rider wouldnt have thought anything of it, but this was enough to make it not very fun for me, so I decided to turn around. Instead I explored some twisy less traveled roads at the foothills of the mountains and still had a blast. I did happen to snap a couple of pictures while out there as well:
