Wednesday – Hangtown, California
We had a lazy start, up after 7 am for a change, but as I did not hear any activity anywhere else, I just wrote some blog stuff, I could not post due to no internet, but no worries. Ziggy came and grabbed me about an hour later and we went upstairs to Marion’s for brekky, just basic cereal.
I did some boring old washing while using the net connection to post a day or so, once this was done it was nearly midday 🙂 I then headed to town, Ziggy had mentioned a small town down the road where the gold rush had started so it was worth a look. I took the scenic road, well, I did not see much I was too busy with these and had the biggest cheesiest grin as a result 🙂
That was fun, very technical, but I soon arrived at Coloma and found a nice shady spot to park as I was looking for food 🙂
A bit of a bummer, there was no food around here, so I had to settle for a few snickers and some chips, oh well I am not here for a health kick 🙂 There was a lot of gold rush day artefacts preserved in this area and it was quite interesting walking around. Some of the information was a duplicate of what I had learned up in the Yukon, but the conditions were different down here where there was no ice!
I continued the tour, well a walk around the old buildings that are being used for the displays, a lot I already knew, because I guess in them days, they only knew a few different ways to mine gold and I had seen a lot up north.
There was quite an extensive Chinese influence down here, as in most places where cheap labour was needed, but here they were looked after a bit better by the sounds of it.
I continued to wander around the town where I spotted Bambi amongst some of the old businesses 🙂
After that I headed up to Hangtown as it used to be known where I wandered up the street and looked at some of the old buildings.
I was in search of the Hangman, this is a place where the hangings used to take place and there is a building built over the actual tree stump, a bit of gruesome history. I asked in a few shops but was told the dummy had been stolen and the building condemned, a shame as it is history, even if it is not pretty. The shop owners were not happy about the town’s name change either, I guess they will feel the loss through the till as usual when people with a power craze assume control of local councils.
After finding an empty building I headed back to the ranch and set about doing some work. I had received a lot of packages and now was the time to get them sorted out 🙂 But, first I had to use some more glue and lekky tape to fix the boot that had attacked the road the other day 🙂
While that was drying I did something totally unexpected, I washed the bike 🙂 I figured, as I was taking it into a bike shop for repair, it may be nicer to work on, but it was still dirty at the end, I guess truck wash and high pressure water still needs elbow grease to do the job properly 😉
So, for those who complained about my dirty bike, I had a go OK 🙂 I then used zero ATGATT to move the bike back down the hill 🙂 I actually found that even with thongs on, I had better control because I had taken the Airhawk off.
The next stage was to mount the new tank bag that had been sent for free by Pacsafe,a big thumbs up to Pacsafe who stand behind their product. Of course after mounting it I immediately cut two holes in it 🙂 One hole was for the 12V supply to my charging systems, the other was just to allow cables from inside to the map case, these supplied power to the iPod and music transmitter.
This job was not finished 100%, it works but needs the mounting screws to hold it to the bag, but that is a fiddley job, and I can do that anytime I have a spare moment. Curtis had finished work and we were heading into the town of El Dorado, a few miles away to have some beer and a feed and to meet Beastie. This place is called Poor Reds.
This place is the home of the Golden Cadillac which has some nice ingredients of which I had a sample 🙂
They had some nice murals on the wall and this pub turns out to have been here for a long time, although not always under this name.
Once Beastie turned up we ordered some food, I chose pork BBQ ribs and I must say they were brilliant, in fact there was so much I took some back with me for a snack tomorrow 🙂 Of course the serving wench was given some good old Auzzie humour as well 🙂
Now, you may have noticed I spelt Auzzie with zeds this time. I have only just realised it, but I am being called an ossy, not an ozzy, and that is because we normally spell it Aussie, so the Americans pronounce it with a hard ESS, instead of the way we say it with a soft ESS or a ZED(ZEE). So, to correct that, think of Ozzie Ozbourne, that is how we say Aussie 🙂 Anyway, we all had another beer at the bar before heading back. Here we are Curtiz, Ziggy, Asif and Beastie, don’t get confused, my old internet nick was Asif 🙂
This is Scott the bar manager, he was a fun guy and even gave me a shirt with the Golden Cadillac on it thanks m8, I appreciate it 🙂
After getting back to the ranch it was an early night, I was on the move tomorrow and it was a long ride, for me. I had arranged to meet up with Sandiegoland at his place after 7 Thursday evening, but this would put me in a ‘deadline’ type situation, with over 500 miles to ride, through LA and out the other side. So, instead I decided to ride until I was near the suspension bike shop that I was booked into on the Friday morning, maybe a few hours away, but it was on the way to Craigs anyway. This would mean only a 400+ mile day, an easy night in a motel and no actual madhouse rush the next day through morning rush hour. I did some more blogging before crashing around 10pm or so.
Day 30 miles and 48 km
Trip – 36,691 miles and 59,048 km
Cheers
TravellingStrom
TravellingStrom 