The Commute

For those not familiar with US road designations there is a not so brief description at the bottom of the page.

When I moved to the San Diego area I wanted to live in a more rural environment than I had in the SF Bay Area. That meant a longer commute so the place I picked had to have the possibility of an interesting motorcycle ride to work, I don't think I could have reasonably done much better.

The commute was from Fallbrook to Poway, the most obvious route is to get onto I15 and zip south some 30 miles at the standard 85mph+ that I15 seems to move at - I almost never went on the freeway...

My fun ride started on the street I lived on, from my house to the south end of the street was 2+ miles of curves, I probably rode too fast for the road but it was a great start to the day. My house was at 690ft above sea level, Alta Vista Dr and Via Monserate took me down to the San Luis Rey river at 220ft in about 4 miles with some ups and down along the way. The ride often started out in fog which sometimes didn't quite make it to the ridge which Alta Vista runs along.

The few miles on Valley Center Rd (S4) are not so interesting as I went through the rural area south of Valley Center itself, there are a couple of hills up over a thousand feet but there was usually some traffic getting in the way. Eventually I got to the outskirts of Escondido where I diverted onto Bear Valley Rd for a short way onto Citrus Dr to say hello to the bison grazing in a field there. Citrus dumped me out onto San Pasqual Rd which I took down the hill and past the Wild Animal Park. Continue past the monument to the soldiers that fought in the battle of San Pasqual (1846) and along Hwy 78 for a couple of miles

After that the ride got way more interesting, a right turn onto Bandy Canyon which passes through orange orchards and then climbs the valley wall and dead ends into one of the legendary local motorcycle roads, Highland Valley Rd. This is a narrow two laner that has a whole series of interesting curves and hills and winds in and out of tree covered hills while climbing up to over 1500ft near Eagle Crest. There are some incredibly tight one-two type turns that were great fun to flick the bike through. After about 8-9 miles the countryside opens up and it was time to turn towards work on Archie Moore Rd, Archie Moore was a famous boxer in the 1950s from this area and he has a nice road with some good views of the valleys to the east. Archie Moore ends at CA67 where I turned right and climbed to the highest part of the route at 1855ft where I could look southwest over Poway. It was occasionaly foggy on CA67 but I could often look down at a thick bank of fog covering Poway, one day there was so much that it was almost like flying above the clouds. From there I turned down Scripps Poway Parkway and descended into the sometimes gloom to work which is a few miles down the road but still over 800ft above sea level.

The total trip was 55.8 miles according to my GPS and I averaged around 47mph which meant it took me a little over an hour to do, if there is no traffic on I15 it took me 45 minutes but there is always traffic at work time so my extra 5-10 minutes was well worth while. One morning (8/12/02) I managed to ride the whole way from home to work without putting my feet down, pretty amazing.

On the way home I took a slightly different route, instead of continuing down Lilac Road to Couser Canyon I turned on West Lilac road which winds its way over to the Rainbow Bridge, then I headed north for a mile or two on old 395. I have ridden US395 from end to end which is almost Mexico to the Canadian border, I've always liked the road. This stretch is called the Avocado Hwy (though I15 might have taken that name from it).

In those 55.8 miles I negotiated 374 turns, on the way back it was a couple of miles less with 339 turns, a lot of those turns are "interesting" - what more could you ask for?

One day when the warm Santa Ana (offshore) winds were blowing I decided to take the long route to work which took me up Mt Palomar and down the back past Lake Henshaw. Then onto Mesa Grande Rd and over to San Pasqual and into Julian just because I was there. It was a really clear day so I took some photos from the top of Mt Palomar (~6000ft)

One cold day I took the long route because there was road work on the normal route, couldn't go up Mt Palomar as there was snow up there but it got pretty cold to the East of the mountain anyway.

Latest Pages

Explanations:

Non-road abbreviation: SF = San Francisco

Freeway - technically a limited access road but is used interchangeably with the word interstate, at least in California.

Roads in the US are delineated by a leading letter and following numbers so that:

I15 is Interstate 15, the interstates (freeways) are major multi lane divided roads (motorways) that cross the country from north to south and east to west. They were built with military transport in mind and many of them seem to perniciously avoid bigger cities causing there to be a lot of loop and spur roads with related numbers. They were developed most in the Eisenhower administration after the 2nd world war, Eisenhower had crossed the continent with the army when he was a young man and it taken over 80 days so he saw the need for a better system of roads. I read once that the system was designed with a speed of 85mph in mind but the limit is now usually 70mph outside of cities and 55mph in cities. Thank goodness the 55mph blanket speed limit is gone now. In southern California the traffic moves significantly faster than the speed limit and nobody seems to care much. Even numbered interstates travel east/west with the low numbers at the south, odd travel north/south with the low numbers to the west.

US395 is United States Highway 395, these roads normally pre-date the interstate system though I suppose US highways must still be being built somewhere. The most famous is route 66 which used to go from Los Angeles to Chicago or some such, it's mostly been replaced by I40 but there has been a revival in recent years and people intentionally try to travel historic US66. It was immortalized in the song about it featuring the line "I Get My Kicks on Route 66".  US highways follow the same navigational numbering scheme as the interstates except that the low numbers are in the east and north.

CA76 is California Highway 76, just as the country has numbered roads so do the states, I don't know if there is a standard scheme for numbering but in this area lower numbers are to the south and west. These can still be quite major roads and in California are often indistinguishable from the US highways. The best is probably Hwy 1 which hugs the Pacific Coast although 2,3,4 are all very nice roads. I sometimes play a mental game where I try to list as many Ca highway locations in numerical order, e.g. 1 is coast, 2 is LA mountains, 3 is Trinity Alps, 4 is SF to Sierras, 5 is the interstate and so on. I used to be able to get into the 40s but tonight I can't remember where 6 or 7 are.

S4 is San Diego County Highway 4, the county roads are usually much smaller roads serving rural areas and are often the most fun to ride on.

After that there are the roads only known by name which can be in cities or the country, in this area many of them have Spanish names. There are always a few oddities like the very boring road I sometimes pass called Suburban Hills Drive - really, is that the best name they could think up?

Cities - a city is a legal designation that means the "town" is incorporated with its own economic and governmental system. Unincorporated areas are governed by the county they are in even though they often appear to by cities, Fallbrook is unincorporated despite covering 70 sq miles and having a population of 45,000.

Comments to bob@bobpalin.com are welcome especially from you visitor number
Updated 04/27/05