A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to go on a ride with a truly wonderful man and his friend up to Tahoe, or at least that is where we wanted to go. More on that in a bit. This all started because one of my favorite places to go and spend money is the local BMW dealership. One of my favorite dealerships is San Jose BMW for a couple of reasons, great people, awesome owner, and great people. Yes, I can’t say that enough, great people.
My friend Sergey is a tech wizard at San Jose BMW where I bought Bean and one of those great people. He so kindly invited me to join him and his friend Sonya on a back road ride to Tahoe. You can see that both Sergey and Sonya are hardcore BMW riders. Sergey has a new GSA 1250 that he did his 600-mile break-in in one weekend and Sonya rode her BMW all the way across the country. Which is amazing in itself and just proves that girls are as tough as guys, although that really does not need to be proven because they are.
A FREAKING SNOWBOARD
As you can see she is well prepared. When I met up with them in Grass Valley I was floored by what I was looking at. That girl not only had a 2 gallon (7 litres) spare container of water mounted to one side of her ride but she did the same in gas on the other side. And the bag she had strapped to her rack was nearly as big as she was. What really knocked my socks off was that she had a FREAKING snowboard strapped on the side. Oh my goodness this girl means business.
Sergey, the Dude
Sergey was every bit as impressive with his ride because that man had huge boxes mounted on his GSA which I’m sure has every option possible. I admit I was a little intimidated because I know from listening to some of the shop stories Sergey is a really good rider and this was my first time out with him. I was hoping they would be gentle with me because I was clearly the odd duck on this ride.
The Plan
Sergey told me that the plan was to take the backroads from Grass Valley to Tahoe and that Sonya was planning on doing some snowboarding in Tahoe once we got there. Just one little problem, there was a lot of snow on the roads going there and we were not sure how far we could make it.
Leaving Grass Valley was fine, with good roads, pretty scenery, good clean cold air. As we got closer to the lakes above Grass Valley the snow started to pile up on the side of the road. When we turned off the main travel ways the road started to get very narrow and snowy. Sergey and Sonya were having no problems and riding like real professionals and it was great to be in their company. However, the condition of the road just kept getting worse and worse, snow and black ice everywhere which made things treacherous.
Mayday, Mayday, Rider Down on the Ice
As you can see Sonya wiped out right in front of Bean and me. We were threading a single track on the pavement that was snow-free and came upon some parked cars. She made the mistake of trying to cross over into the other lane, hit black ice under the snow, and lost it. Fortunately, she was going real slow and just slid down on her side. The real luck was that her board was on the downed side of her bike and although it got a scratch nothing was badly damaged.
Sergey to the rescue
I knew just by looking at the two of them they were loaded for bear, however, after the crash when Sergey whipped out tire studs I knew for sure this is the man you want to take with you on any deep back road adventure.
~Epilogue
Well, we didn’t make it to Tahoe, okay I didn’t make it to Tahoe, Sergey and Sonya did but we had to backtrack down the mountain a bit because of snow and ice. They got on the freeway which to me isn’t as much fun so I turned around and headed back to the barn. However, my day with Sergey and his friend was absolutely great and I really hope we ride again soon.
Thanks, buddy and see you soon.