The Friday of Labor Day weekend of 2006 changed my life forever. After one glass of wine, too many, I answered an ad on Craigslist… “Lost Coast Adventure… Join me on a long bike ride. I’ll have you back in time for your Labor Day BBQ.” Like the risk-taker I am or the fact that I’m “that girl,” I said “yes”. The next day a man showed up on my doorstep riding a 1985 BMW K100RS (like I had any idea of what that meant) and off we went. We cruised up 101, turned left and into the fog and ended up in Shelter Cove. Six months later I had a ring on my finger and six months after that on Sept. 15th, 2007, I said, “I do.”
While checking my email roughly three weeks ago, I saw the GGC Lost Coast Tour. “Hey, Kevin… Lost Coast Tour with the car club?” “Let’s do it!” was his instant response. I immediately emailed Paula and made our reservation. This would be our first return to the place where it all begun and so it was fitting that a BMW would once again be our chariot. We chose to join the tour early Saturday morning knowing we’d break off after lunch for a night alone…Oh, yeah we brought our two sons ages two and a half and eight weeks.
Meeting at Jensen’s in Ukiah we were greeted warmly by exactly three other people due to some late cancellations. Our family thus outnumbered the other drivers and our E39 outweighed both their mounts as well. We’d originally planned to make the drive in my E61, however, it was in the shop recovering from a wildlife incident — but that’s another story. As we ordered breakfast another couple joined the group bringing our merry caravan to four. The food was that perfect truck-stop fare that you know will tide you over for a good long time in the driver’s seat, which by the way I never sat in during this trip.
After handing out the maps and discussing the plan, Paula led the troops out in her red M3. It would be an easy lead to follow. The two-year old in the back seat chimed in saying, “Paula drives a race car and it goes really fast!” Yes it does Charlie, yes it does. She set a leisurely pace up the Redwood Highway, which brought back so many wonderful memories. What I mean is the “what the hell were you thinking jumping on the back of a motorcycle with some guy you don’t even know?” memories of our last tour of this stretch of 101.
At one point a tricked out Acura decided he wanted to join the club, but he was shunned. A bit less than two hours later we made our first stop, one of those roadside attractions that once defined our highways, a drive-thru tree.
You haven’t known kitsch until you’ve driven through a tree and you define kitsch when you stop to take photos of graffiti the inside of the 5,000 year-old Redwood tree. We certainly took our share of photos. Yeah, it’s fun to be a tourist in your own back yard. At Shrine Drive-Through Tree, we were joined by two roadsters and a gorgeous E21. Now we had we had full squadron of spinning propellers. Once we had taken the obligatory group shot our augmented band headed for the twisties.
Our next stop was the Humboldt Redwoods Visitors Center where I took some creative shots of the scenery and had a wonderful talk with Mike, Mr. 328, about life, kids, and grandkids. Have you noticed yet that I’m just the girl who loves to drive her 530xi touring, and let’s her husband do all the “shop talk?” I prefer to skip the gear ratio discussions, as I know little about cars, and get to know the people I’m meeting. The car club accommodates us all. After going in to the Visitor’s Center, Paula announced that Charlie had to see it. Kevin took our 2 year-old in to see stuffed versions of all the critters in the forest.
As we packing everyone into the fiver, I realized we were the only ones left at the visitor’s center. I guess that’s what you get when you have to strap two kids into car seats. Off we zoomed to catch up with the group, only to find that half of them had stopped at a fruit stand to enjoy blackberry popsicles. A bit later I asked Jeff where mine was and was greeted with, “Do you know what melted blackberry would look like on my car seats?” My only thought at the time was, “well, I have baby wipes to clean up any mess.” We blew past this stop to catch up with Paula, Rob, Nick and Della (the M3 group). Apparently they made it to the end of The Avenue of the Giants in 2 seconds flat. They finally had the road to themselves and were going to enjoy it. It was here where Paula explained to me why BMWs are also called E “something”, as I thought they were all 3, 5 or 7 series with M here and there. My husband explained it to me once, but obviously I tuned him out. I needed to here the explanation from another woman.
Back onto the 101, the pace eased again as we cruised to Eureka for the lunch stop at the Lost Coast Brewery. My husband was ecstatic to try a new beer, then crestfallen when he saw a couple of the passengers with a flight of all ten beers currently in the kettles. I almost got to drive. This was the end of the road for some and so we bid each other adieu and made our way individually to our various destinations. We had a blast and can’t wait for the touring season to resume. A big thanks to Paula for organizing and leading us to new memories in an old and fondly familiar place.
By the way, this was Michael’s first “road trip” and after 12 hours in and out of the car, we know our boys are rock stars.
Written by Kevin Riant and Charlotte Noon from the wife’s perspective.
We were asked to write an article and take pictures for Bombe. the Golden Gate Chapter of the BMW car club. This will be our second article published. Very fun!
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