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Friday morning my brother Chet and I started our journey to San Luis Obispo for the Central Coast Classic Motorcycle Show and the last round of the Vetter Challenge fuel economy competition series. We met up at my home in Livermore and proceeded to Hwy 84 to Hwy 680 to Hwy 101. It was late enough that we missed the bulk of the heavy commute traffic between Fremont and San Jose. The weather was warm and clear and we had smooth sailing at 70-75 mph for most of the way. Hwy 101 is quite scenic after leaving the developed areas of San Jose. We stopped to refuel Chet's '86 Nighthawk 650 (I, of course didn't need to refuel) in Gonzalez. A guy came over to look at my streamliner and it turned out he knew Craig Vetter and asked to say Hi to him when he saw him later in SLO. From there we went up the steep climb near Paso Robles. I pulled off 101 as my temperature gauge was right at the upper limit. We stopped in front of a National Guard base and the gate sentries had to check it out. After a brief cool down we resumed the ride to SLO and checked into our motel.
We met up with Craig Vetter and Alan Smith and rode over to the world famous Madonna Inn for some coffee and pie. It is quite spectacular and well worth a visit.
We met up later at the motorcycle show host hotel for a get-together and some presentations where Craig also spoke. Lots of interesting stuff about collectible motos and other topics.
Saturday we awoke early so that I could repair some cooling ducting that had come loose in the nose of my streamliner and was rubbing the front tire. After that we topped off our fuel tanks and reported to the show. There we saw hundreds of rare, unique and beautiful motos; Ariels, Velocettes, Hendersons, Crockers, Nortons, Bultacos, Indian, HD,, Brough Superior, Vincent, Triumphs, BSA’s, NSU, Ducati, Laverda, Moto Guzzi, Puch, Amazonas etc. Amazing!
We also displayed our streamliners and lots of people peppered us with questions about them. We ended up with 5 streamliners; Craig’s Helix 250, Alan’s Ninjette, Terry Hershner’s Zero, Rohit Sahdev’s Suzuki Burgman 650 and mine. We also had Glen from Alberta Canada with his Royal Enfield 500 with a partially streamlined 1-wheeled trailer. We commenced the Challenge by heading North on Hwy101 before turning off into the twisty back roads between Santa Maria and King City. Enroute Terry had some handling problems so we stopped to check it out. He had installed a new front fork just before the event. We found a loose front axle clamp with a missing bolt. We were able to fix it by removing a bolt from Chet’s handlebar clamp and resumed riding. The roads were pretty bumpy and Terry continued to have problems, hearing some clunking in his forks. We stopped again, rechecked and tightened every bolt in the front suspension. We continued the ride at a reduced pace to King City where we had lunch and Terry recharged his Zero. We got back on 101 and completed the ride at Salinas.
We refueled and collected our fuel receipts so calculate the results. I went 160 miles and only needed .855 gallons to top off my tank. It worked out to 1.9 cents /mile and 187 MPG. I was surprised that it was this good; it ended up being the winning performance. Alan finished in second with ~ 156 MPG and Terry finished third with just under 3 cents/mile. We rode from Salinas to Craig’s ranch in Carmel where we got to see his shop and do some more visiting and bench racing.
Sunday morning we got together at a Starbucks in Monterey before parting ways to head home. It was uneventful other encountered some strong winds that almost pushed me out of my lane near San Jose and Fremont. I had a great time and will cherish this as one of my best motorcycle adventures ever.
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