Back from the ride

In honor of our beloved friend Bryan Joplin AKA "The Champ", who passed in a car wreck on the way to Lake Havisu on September 10th, a few friends and I put together a memorial ride up to Big Bear. There wasn't much time to plan the ride, and we didn't exactly know how many people would be able to go, so we set a date and booked a few rooms up in Big Bear Lake.

Once others heard that there were actual plans made, dates set, and a secured destination, others started to join in. Before I showed up at the meeting spot, we had only 10 people going. When we finally left the meeting point we had about 25 people.

We met up in Huntington Beach early Saturday morning had breakfast and then hit the road.

I learned a lot from this ride. With this many people the group moves slowly. We lost half the group on freeway changes, our buddies old knucklehead broke down for a bit, but we were so far ahead, half the group didn't realize it. We all like to run fast, some faster than others.


We met back up again at a gas station off the 215 and regrouped. One of our other friends went rouge on us, and we ended up meeting up with him in Big Bear. We rolled up through the 15 to the 138 down through Crestline to the 38 to the 18.

We stopped off at Rim of the World Sports Bar in Crestline, to have a few Budwiesers for The Champ. They had a few impressive flat track bikes on display and a ton of memorabilia hanging on the wall. The owner, Cliff was working the bar and was one of the nicest and knowledgeable guys I had ever met. He was very accommodating to our group, and even let us know that he would be happy to help host a poker run next year.

After we said our goodbyes there, we headed over to Chad's place to meet up with Neil who had gotten lost from the group at the 15. We broke off from those that were not planning to stay the night, and headed over to the motel to unpack. Only about half the group ended up staying the night. We found a motel that was very friendly to the bikes. They let us park under the awning directly out front of the front doors, and gave us rooms that had views of the bikes from the rooms. They even had towels up front to wipe your bikes down.

We went to Murray's bar next to Chad's and had some dinner and beers. We got smashed and sang some kereoke and took the party back to the motel.

Woke up quick, at about 8am, hungover and not looking forward to the early take off ride. We got packed up and took off for the ride home about 9. Hit some breakfast and got on it. Beautiful ride down the hill, and split at the 10. I headed back to Downtown, and them to Huntington Beach...

Awesome ride, really glad the folks were able to pull it together and make it work. Good times...