Quail Motorcycle Gathering

David Coffey and I met en route to The Quail Motorcycle Gathering a decade ago and have attended it together every year since. This year, we added another David: My younger brother, a lifelong motorcyclist whose birthday was approaching and who knew nothing about the Carmel Valley motorcycle experience except that it was my favorite event of the entire year.

Coffey lives in Bakersfield. My brother and I set out from Los Angeles. We converged in the oil town of Taft, as Coffey and I have always done, at a breakfast place called Jo’s.

We try to take a different route from there to Carmel Valley every year, and to make the three-and-a-half-hour trip into an entire day’s ride. But this year represented a challenge: Highway 1 was still closed from winter storms and landslides, as was Nacimiento-Fergusson Road. So, the coast was out.

But California offers a lot of alternatives.  I crafted an illogical, indirect route through McKittrick and Wilson Corner, skirting Paso Robles and San Miguel, then up new-to-me Vineyard Canyon Road into Parkfield for lunch at the café that bills itself as the center of the most active earthquake activity on the planet. (“Be here when happens” the restaurant invites you, as if a ringside seat at The Big One would be a good thing.) Beside us the whole ride were fruit orchards vineyards and rolling green hills dotted with poppies, lupines, bluebells and other wildflowers.