10/28/2006
I recently found out about Panoche Rd. A veritable must-do for
motorcycle riding they claimed. Since I live in Fresno County,
and this road is in our backyard, I figured we have to try it.
This is not the easiest road to find -
Road Map:
Runs between Highway 25 in San Benito County and Mendota on
the Western side of Fresno County.
On a cold Saturday morning, 4 of us took to the road heading West.
The trick is to catch a road called Little Panoche heading West
from Mendota, it might add a few miles, but well worth it. Little
Panoche then dead-ends into Panoche taking you all the way West to
Highway 25 in San Benito County, 65 miles.
The path is very scenic, and extremely challenging. A technical road
with constant elevation changes and plenty of off-camber twists,
varying diameter turns and just about any other sadistic addition
you can think of on a path. Oh, and I forgot the long sections of
very bumpy road patching.
If there is ever a need for adjusting your suspension setup, this
would be it. The potholes, dips, ridges, and scarred surfaces mean
that you need some wheel travel under you, and the mid-turn
road-induced wallowing mean that you need as stiff of a setup as
possible to keep from flying off while committed. So good luck with
the settings.
In my opinion, there are 2 ways to take this road: Slow and easy,
taking in the scenery, or full-on and committed, in which case
you'll get a real workout. Going mid-speed just means you'll get
beat up and makes this particular road pointless.
25 South is another beautiful ride, very smooth road surface, and much less physically challenging.
Once on HWY 101, we took an excursion towards Pinnacles National monument, reaching a couple of dead-end roads via 146, which turned out to be more suited to a dual-sport motorcycle.
Finally, we took the same road back, made it home after dark where man and machine needed thorough cleaning.
BMW R1200C
Ducati Monster S4R
Honda VFR750
Suzuki GSX1000R
