Somewhere near Salinas Lord the trailer slipped away....

We made it to Salinas by 3pm. While having a smoke and checking on the bike Marty discovered that our trailer just wasn’t up to the job and the front support was bending and twisting. Crisis time. We rang Marty D, as he knew a guy who had a trailer we could possibly beg, steal or borrow. We headed back down to his place. Jim Williams was his name and yes, we could borrow it.
We went with Marty the next day to get the trailer and meet Jim, the owner of a nice collection of mostly earlier Japanese bikes. Turned out he had ridden through Canada with Micheal Ruegg, a long distance rider from Katikati and had also been to Kati to visit Michael in the past. The world gets smaller. The only other Kiwis he knew were a couple he had met who were traveling for a 10 months with their teenage children. His name was Walter Immink from Whakatane and Marty was fairly sure he had known Imminks when growing up in Kawerau. Had a brother called Lex ? So, having known all the Kiwis he knew, we departed Jims with the trailer.
Marty spent the next morning sorting out the trailer and camper while Marty D and I drank 2 Buck Chuck and watched. (2 Buck Chuck is a very cheap wine available at any Trader Joe store - and yes I do have one or three bottles on board!).

All ready to go when a change of plan saw us staying to ride with Marty down to Redlands, east of LA for a SoCal VOC section get together Had a great time with good people but feel quite sure we wouldn’t ride from Katikati to Wellington for a BBQ if we were in NZ. That was the equivalent mileage.

We stopped at a little bar on the return trip called the “Penny Bar”. It is one of Marty’s waterholes – or should I say breakfast bars – and the bar is covered in pennies, (1c pieces to you guys). Even the pool table is covered. There are over 1 million of them. That is $10,000 worth. I’m glad I didn’t have to stick them down.’
Marty took us over some lovely windy bike lovers roads. We are lucky that age has slowed him down (or so he says) otherwise we would never have been able to keep up with him. Actually we could only keep up with him on the straights and sweeping corners, the tighter roads had us way behind. It was the first time he has been out on his bike for quite a few months and he certainly blew the cobwebs out. Our BMW did not have very good fuel consumption for the trip. Marty’s bike, a 650 Cagiva (Ducati motor) on the other hand did!! The average speed for the return journey was around 70 -75mph. All good fun.

We left Marty’s a couple of hours after our return and headed back up the 101 (our favourite road it would seem) and back to Salinas. We meet my sister Rachelle and her hubby Grant and the kids here and went to tea at “The Outback Steakhouse”A supposedly Austraslian type restaurant. We were all very disappointed with the food and service. Both Marty and Grant’s meals were cold when they eventually got them. Guess we should have expected as much when the waitress asked Marty if he would like Australian Chips or baked potato, then asked if he’d like tomato sauce on his fries. She was clearly confused from the start which probably also explains why an orange juice turned into a long tall glass of beer. Oh well I guess it’s all part of the experience but I have to sat we won’t be going there for a meal again.

Grant noticed that the camper was on quite a lean ( and no I wasn’t sitting in it!!) so that looked like another problem that would need sorting. A navigation error by me while trying to find a campsite shown in our camping book, led to Marty stopping at a little garage in an even smaller town to get directions. Turns out the camp was miles away but he did know of a very good garage in Ukiah who would be able to look at the camper so we headed for the Walmart carpark there and waited for the morrow.

Sure enough they would be able to do it. Turned out we needed new airshocks and shock absorbers in the front, new axle seals, brakes and brake shoes in the rear. We had next to no back brakes. A scary thought considering some of the hills we had come down in our travels.

The job would take a couple of days so nothing for it but to unload the bike and go tiki touring....