Fun Times in San Deigo

After we completed the Iron Butt, we got a hotel room in Prescott Arizona. We stayed there until check out and began our 500 mile trip to San Diego. Leaving Prescott was another trip through the mountains...downhill. This part of the trip had the best roads. The view coming down the mountain was unreal. Two lanes roads that you could see wrapping around the mountain. At one point, the roads turned into one lane one way roads. No cars were coming from the opposite directions as the turns were very tight. This allowed us to be very generous with the throttle. Not trying to scrape the side stand was hard to do. When we arrived at the bottom of the mountain, we had to take a layer of clothing off as the temperature increased dramatically.  We could not stop talking about the last 50 miles of roads....AMAZING.  Unfortunately, the next day, a lightning strike caused a fire and we could not go through this area on the way back.

We stopped in Aquila, Arizona for lunch. There is not much shade in Arizona but we were able to find some.

After our first meal of the day, we headed through the desert to Parker. We stopped to re-wet our cooling vest but did not get any gas. Big mistake. While crossing the California border, we had to stop at the fruit inspection stand. We waited and waited until someone waved us buy without asking any questions about transporting fruit into the state of California. I guessed they looked at our scooters loaded with gear and thought "we really don't want to go out in that hot sun to ask these idiots about transporting fruit on those things." We did not noticed the 24 hour pay at the pump only gas station next to the fruit inspection stop. Five miles from the town of 24 Palms, Kitt runs out of gas again. This time I buy a gas tank so this will not happen again. (Yeah right). I return to the scene to the crime with gas and we get to the town of 24 Palms. The temperature was 112 degrees and the sun was going down. We filled up with gas and decided we should head towards the freeway in order to get to San Diego. This was a detour from our original plans, as we were going to ride through Joshua Tree National Park. It was getting dark, we would not enjoy the ride like we should in those conditions and also needed to get to the hotel at a decent time.
We jumped on I-10 and took freeways all the way to San Diego. On the way, we got separated as Kitt needed to stop for gas. It was too late for me to exit so I kept riding and decided to pull over later down the road. I pulled over for gas in the town of Temecula but there were no gas station near my exit. I read Kitt's text message that we would just meet at the hotel. I text back "OK" and proceeded to the next town for gas. It was around midnight and I was on I-15. I passed an exit with a gas station but thought I could make it to the town of Escondido. I made it to the city, but all of the gas station near the exit were closed. I Google for a nearby gas station and headed away from the interstate to get some gas. DID NOT MAKE IT and ran out of gas. What a dumb move on my part. Kitt was already in San Diego with the extra gas tank and I'm a**ed out. As I was pushing my scooter up a hill, a lady came by and said she would go get me some gas. I text Kitt not to turn around as the lady came back with a gallon of gas and a funnel. As I was wrestling with filling my tank, she told me she has a son and if he needed help, she would want someone to do the same. She didn't ask but I gave her twenty bucks and if she wanted a hundred I prob would have gave it to her, too. I thanked her, rode my bike several more blocks to get gas. I stopped there for some rest as the day through the desert and pushing the bike really drained me. I finally got to hotel and crashed. What a day. Another day of God Blessed riding with no real safety or mechanical problems. User issues and the heat brought the day down but overall it still was a great day of riding.
Thursday morning I was up early for the first ride of Amerivespa, The Coastal Ride. The energy from being at my first Amerivespa really took away the soreness from riding 1500 miles in two days. Kitt went to take care of  his center stand and eventually got it fixed later that day. When I got downstairs, it was a pleasure to see so many scooters and riders ready for the weekends events.

Here's a picture of Randy (Vespa Dallas owner) and his wife at one of the Coastal ride stops.
I meet some wonderful people riding and during lunch. After the ride I went back to the hotel for some much needed rest.
Friday morning, I was up again for the King of the Mountain Ride. We rode up to the town of Julian. Great roads, great views, and great people. It was hot inland but cooled down a lot when we got back to town.

After the ride, I went by Vespa Motorsport of San Diego to schedule a oil change and get the front tire looked at. I brought an oil filter as I changed the oil before leaving but did not change the filter, which is only required every 10k miles. While going through the desert on day one, during very high speeds, the front would shake more than normal and there was a loud sound coming from the tire. I thought it was out of balance. They got me scheduled for the next day and said they have an online shop manual for the Morphous. Wow, what a scooter shop.
Later that night, Mike my fraternity brother from college, came by to take me around San Diego. He asked me what I wanted to do and I didn't care. I was just happy to be moving without having to wear a helmet and gloves. We took in some sites and dinner, back to the hotel for rest as I wanted to ride on the last full day of the rally.
Saturday morning, I was up and ready for the Poker Run. There was a lot of scooters that attended this event as this was the last day of riding. We stopped under a freeway bridge to pull poker cards and I took a couple of pictures.

My poker hand was terrible so I decided to head over to Vespa to start the maintenance for the trip back. Long story short, the tire I purchased from Ebay was eight years old and was beginning to rip due to its age. I had to buy a odd sized tire from Vespa to make it home. Not too odd but purchasing tires from eBay is a lesson learned. Going forward, Motorcycle Superstore tires all the way.
Later that night, we went to the closing ceremonies. The food was great and we waited to see if we won the longest riding distance award. That would be a NO! A couple from Pennsylvania traveled 3K miles to Amerivespa on Vespa 250's in 10 days. They double our 1500 miles!!!! What a great accomplishment.
What a wonderful weekend of meeting people and riding. I can't believe how much fun we had so far with no real major hiccups. Things will happen when you travel this far but the risk is very small for the huge rewards we received. The events, people, and places at Amerivespa was a treat for a scooter rider like me.