Week 51
It had been a while since the last time I rode. So, It was time for me to get out in the nice Southern California weather and go for a ride. I read on the Honda CBR600RR.com forum that a meet/ride was being planned on May 1st for all the SoCal CBR600RR owners. Everyone was to meet at a Fuddruckers in Lake Forest, have some lunch and then got for a ride on Ortega Hwy. I had never ridden Ortega and I thought it would be cool to meet a lot of the CBR600RR owners that I've chatted with on the Honda CBR600RR.com and 600RR.net forums. The meeting time was scheduled for 11:00 am. This is not an ideal riding time (too much traffic) but gave everyone plenty of time to get there. Considering I had a 90 miles ride just to get there, I was happy it wasn't scheduled for an earlier time.
I left my place at 9:30 am, stopped at a gas station to fill up and ride the hour and a half it took me to get there. Traffic was okay on the way down there until I got close to Knott's Berry Farm and Disneyland. It got really bad in this section. I had to do quite a bit of lane splitting in order to get through it. Once I got passed this area though, it was clear sailing.
I arrived at 10:55 am. I said hello to everyone who was already there and started to take some pictures. I thought the 8 bikes that were already there were a lot of bikes, I had not idea how many it would actually end up being. Not too long after I arrived the crew from San Diego arrived . . . like 12 of them. Then more and more bikes started to arrive. We had a room reserved for the group in Fuddruckers, so we went inside and got some lunch. Once we came back outside, we started to get the bikes arranged to take some good pictures. It ended up being 27 CBR600RRs. There were also some other bikes there, but we didn't let them get in the picture :)
Once the pictures were taken most of us decided to mount up and head over to Ortega. It was amazing to see 20+ CBR600RRs lined up at a traffic light waiting for the light to change. We stopped at a gas station to fill up and then we hit Ortega. There was a lot of traffic on Ortega (not including the bikes). I was following the lead rider, DaBeachBum, who I had ridden with before. He was carrying a fast pace. I wondered if the pre-ride announcement to ride at your own pace would be heeded by everyone. DaBeachBum made a few passes here and there on some cars to try to keep the pace fun. I was enjoying chasing him up to The Roadhouse Lookout.
Once we arrived at the Lookout, we found out that a ride in the middle of the pack had gone down :( A few people went back to see if everything was alright. We found out the Psiswarm had tried to pass a car in a blind corner and ended up clipping another car coming in the opposite direction. Luckily, he wasn't hurt too bad (a stubbed big toe) and the bike wasn't too bad either. He was able to ride it home. I took some pictures while up at the lookout of the view. I also got some pictures of the farly large emergency crew that came up to check out what happened with the accident. I guess the lady that had her car hit wanted a Police report filed.
Once the crash chaos started, most everyone decided it was time to get out of there. DaBeachBum, FOX and I were all head in the same direction (back out to the 5 FWY). DaBeachBum decided he would lead us the rest of the way down Ortega and then back up. I was game since I had never been here before. We headed down and then came back up. On the way back up and out, we hit a set of corners that were just sweet. I thought to myself, "Damn, we should turn around and do those again". Sure enough, DaBeachBum stopped, turned around and headed back for those corners. Once we got passed those corners we stopped, turned around and did them again :) We then all split up when we reached the 5 FWY.
It was a total of 260+ miles for me that day. Too bad 180+ of it was on the freeway. It was worth it to meet all the SoCal gang and ride Ortega. I'm certainly looking forward to the next neet.
