SHOOTING the COAST 2

For approximately the past decade, Editor Mark Hoyer has been telling me, “We’ve got to get you to the Quail.”

His tone of voice always reminds me of one of those worldly college guys telling his naive and innocent freshman roommate, “We’ve just gotta get you out to a bar!” It’s a mixture of sympathetic concern and genuine mission.

And that metaphor is not entirely strained, because a ride up the Coast Highway from the CW office to the Monterey Peninsula is nothing if not intoxicating. Once you escape rush hour in Los Angeles, the seacoast, vineyards, and sprawling hills have an almost Tolkien-quality grandeur and scale—especially if you take the right roads. And there are many right roads to choose from. I’ve made the trip many times in my life, but have never managed to make it to the Quail Motorcycle Gathering.

And why not?

Well, this is the 11th year for the Quail, and that event did not exist before my wife Barb and I moved back to Wisconsin in 1990. And California is a fur piece, as the Joad family would say, particularly if you hate commercial flying and it’s too cold to ride a motorcycle over the Rockies in May.

But this year the excuses finally ran out. I had a book launch and dinner to attend at the Quail Lodge & Golf Club, and Hoyer called to say Barb and I could fly into Orange County, borrow