Rick’s Cafe
The worst part of any road trips are the detours. On this motorcycle trip we already suffered the disappointment of having Rt. 33 down through the Los Padres National Forrest and into Ojai closed for construction. Today we had to circumvent the fantastic Angeles Crest ride. Both times we detoured through Santa Clarita and up through Palmdale. Going down we went on Bouquet Canyon Road and today we went up on Lake Hughes Road. Both roads proved to be lovely fun rides. But we still had to get across the flats from Palmdale to Lake Arrowhead. That stretch of road is called the Pearblossom Highway, which was made famous by David Hockney with his collage-like chromogenic print occasionally on display at the Getty Museum. It depicts this barren landscape with a Rt. 138 road-sign and a contradictory stop sign in the middle of nowhere.
Rt. 138 then crosses over Rt. 15 (the artery to Las Vegas) and starts the climb up to Crestline and Lake Arrowhead up in the San Bernadino Mountains. But before that, in Pinon Hills, while you are wrestling with the trucks that fly around the LA Basin, you notice a small eatery set up on the hillside. It proclaims itself Rick’s Roadside Cafe.
Rick’s Cafe American is seared into the memory of every film buff as the gin joint that Ingrid Bergman chose of all the gin joints in all the towns in the world to walk into. Rick is there with Sam, his piano player trying very hard to not play As Time Goes By.
Rick’s Cafe in Pinon has a well-tattooed waitress that looks nothing like Ingrid Bergman. There is no piano bar. But it does have a mean patty melt. And whatever Rick and Louis cooked up in Brazzaville, it can’t compare to Rick’s Cafe’s patty melt.
Casablanca is the movie of noble self-sacrifice. The fact that it comes from a guy like Rick who seems and acts as mercenary as anyone. It’s always those guys who disappoint you by being good guys underneath. The same thing happens with Louis, who rounds up all the usual suspects rather than blame the Nazi Strasser’s death on Rick.
Perhaps the best bit in the movie is the shock that is feigned by Louis when he shutters Rick’s over the issue that he has discovered gambling in Rick’s Cafe. This is now a metaphor for stating the obvious for purposes of deception. So maybe I should say that I was shocked to find a patty melt at Rick’s Cafe?
Tonight is partially the end of our 2019 SoCal Ride. Two of the five bikes will boogie off to Phoenix tomorrow and Kim and Sharon will drop down into Pasadena for a Farrell grandgerm visit. That will leave three of us by bike and two by car to head down to Lake Elsinore do we can ride down the Ortega Highway to Capistrano Pier for lunch. From there it’s back to the barn at Casa Moonstruck via the PCH down along Camp Pendleton.
All rides end. This was a good ride even though it was less than totally attended. We had good weather and good roads and those are the basic ingredients of a good ride. There are always good things that unexpectedly come out of rides. Rick’s Cafe would be one of them.
After lunch we rode up in the San Bernadino Mountains and rode The Rim of the World Highway that looks out over the many Valleys that lead through Los Angeles to the Pacific Ocean. It’s a spectacular vista from a cliff-hugging road.
When I think about this ride overall, I am more and more impressed by the great roads of California. I’ll bet it would take me a year to find and ride them all, but would be a worthy task. The world is filled with good riding roads, but California seems to be especially blessed.
I’m whipped. Motorcycle rides always whip me. I could say I’m terribly out of shape or that I’m getting too old for this, but I think it’s really about having so much damn fun. I concentrate on my riding like nothing else I do and I enjoy it like almost nothing else. The intensity and the focus just sap me and make me eat hearty and sleep soundly. That makes me feel like it’s a good kind of whipped that I’m feeling.
The markets are tanking on China trade war news. Washington is in shambles over the fight between Trump and Congress. And all I care about is tomorrow’s ride. That is a good sign that motorcycling is pure recreation for me in the literal sense of the word.
We’ve gone to the bottom of the earth, we’ve hit four deserts (Anza-Borrego, Joshua Tree, Mojave, and Badwater Death Valley), we’ve gone through six ranges (Palomar, Sleepy Valley, Lincoln Crest, Los Padres, Angeles Crest and San Bernadino), and many of the playgrounds surrounding Southern California. And we are ending on the Rim of the World. Where else can you do all that AND go to Rick’s Cafe?