{"id":713,"date":"2008-10-29T00:05:08","date_gmt":"2008-10-29T07:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.deadpan.net\/ridereport\/?p=713"},"modified":"2010-03-21T00:07:31","modified_gmt":"2010-03-21T07:07:31","slug":"death-or-la-verne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.deadpan.net\/ridereport\/2008\/10\/29\/death-or-la-verne\/","title":{"rendered":"Death &#8230; Or La Verne?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today is my birthday but I\u2019m not much in the birthday mood, so I decided to celebrate by going for a solo ride.  I\u2019ve been wanting to ride through Death Valley for awhile now, but I never can seem to find the right time to do it.  Today looked like the day \u2014 I\u2019m off work for the next two days, I\u2019m grouchy and anti-social so it\u2019d be doing my friends and family a favor to go off by myself, Death Valley has cooled off enough to where I won\u2019t get completely baked\u2026  I decided there\u2019s no time like the present, and what better way to celebrate a birthday than to spend it facing Death?<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s the route I planned:  Ride northeast to Baker and enter Death Valley from the southern end, ride up past Badwater to Furnace Creek, exit the west side of the park, cut through the pass to Owens Lake and Lone Pine, then ride 395 south to home.  620 miles and almost 13 hours in the saddle, according to Google Maps. Check it out:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginheight=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps?f=d&amp;saddr=Sherman+Oaks,+California&amp;daddr=CA-178%2FJubilee+Pass+Rd+to:death+valley,+ca+to:lone+pine,+ca+to:Sherman+Oaks,+California&amp;hl=en&amp;geocode=%3BFfzJIwIdkvoL-Q%3B%3B%3B&amp;mra=ls&amp;via=1&amp;sll=34.746126,-117.268066&amp;sspn=2.906631,5.822754&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;source=embed&amp;ll=34.777716,-117.268066&amp;spn=2.52307,2.43667&amp;output=embed\"><\/iframe><br \/><small><a href=\"http:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps?f=d&amp;saddr=Sherman+Oaks,+California&amp;daddr=CA-178%2FJubilee+Pass+Rd+to:death+valley,+ca+to:lone+pine,+ca+to:Sherman+Oaks,+California&amp;hl=en&amp;geocode=%3BFfzJIwIdkvoL-Q%3B%3B%3B&amp;mra=ls&amp;via=1&amp;sll=34.746126,-117.268066&amp;sspn=2.906631,5.822754&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;source=embed&amp;ll=34.777716,-117.268066&amp;spn=2.52307,2.43667\" style=\"color:#0000FF;text-align:left\">View Larger Map<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n<p>Nice route, eh?  I wish I\u2019d done it.<\/p>\n<p>My plan fell apart early.  I intended to do it all in one shot, in a single day, and that meant getting an early start.  I was going to get up at 6:00 and be on the road by 7:00 \u2026 but everyone knows you get to sleep in on your birthday, right?  So I didn\u2019t get up until 8:30.  And then I screwed around for awhile taking care of some really important tasks, like watching TV and checking my email, so I didn\u2019t get on the road until noon.<\/p>\n<p>I headed east on the 210 and started doing the math as I moved.  With my late start I wasn\u2019t going to get to Badwater until at least 5:30, and that was without making any stops for pictures or piss breaks along the way.  That would be right around sunset, and I didn\u2019t really want to be traipsing around in the desert at dusk, or riding through the mountains on my way out after dark.  And even if I did, I wouldn\u2019t get home until around midnight and I\u2019d spend half the trip in the dark, and I had brought my camera intending to take pictures.  Plus which, the further I got from home, the more I realized that as cranky as I\u2019m feeling today, I still wanted to see my daughter and hear her wish me happy birthday.<\/p>\n<p>So I settled on La Verne.  That\u2019s where I decided to bag Death Valley, got off the freeway, found a movie theater, slept through Body of Lies, and then rolled for home again.  The real totals? About 83 miles and an hour and a half on the road. Here\u2019s the actual route:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginheight=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps?f=d&amp;saddr=Sherman+Oaks,+California&amp;daddr=1950+Foothill+Blvd..+La+Verne,++CA+91750+to:sherman+oaks,+ca&amp;hl=en&amp;geocode=&amp;mra=ls&amp;sll=34.098728,-118.144226&amp;sspn=0.3349,0.727844&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;source=embed&amp;ll=34.089061,-118.006897&amp;spn=0.04531,0.68717&amp;output=embed\"><\/iframe><br \/><small><a href=\"http:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps?f=d&amp;saddr=Sherman+Oaks,+California&amp;daddr=1950+Foothill+Blvd..+La+Verne,++CA+91750+to:sherman+oaks,+ca&amp;hl=en&amp;geocode=&amp;mra=ls&amp;sll=34.098728,-118.144226&amp;sspn=0.3349,0.727844&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;source=embed&amp;ll=34.089061,-118.006897&amp;spn=0.04531,0.68717\" style=\"color:#0000FF;text-align:left\">View Larger Map<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n<p>Granted, it\u2019s not nearly as adventurous or picturesque as the first route, but this one ended with dinner with my wife and daughter.  That\u2019s pretty cool too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today is my birthday but I\u2019m not much in the birthday mood, so I decided to celebrate by going for a solo ride. I\u2019ve been wanting to ride through Death Valley for awhile now, but I never can seem to find the right time to do it. Today looked like the day \u2014 I\u2019m off [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-maps"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deadpan.net\/ridereport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deadpan.net\/ridereport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deadpan.net\/ridereport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deadpan.net\/ridereport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deadpan.net\/ridereport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=713"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.deadpan.net\/ridereport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":714,"href":"https:\/\/www.deadpan.net\/ridereport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713\/revisions\/714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deadpan.net\/ridereport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deadpan.net\/ridereport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deadpan.net\/ridereport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}