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27 December 2004

What with missing turn-offs and having a head full of wool, passing landmarks without recognizing them or not being able to find a parking spot, as I set out on this trip, I knew that I was looking for just one landmark which hadn’t been previously attempted.

The day dawned a typical Decembery day in California: a bit of fog and some token cold that later became a 65-degree haze. I’d been itching to go questing for some time now, and Barb hadn’t ridden in a while and wanted the practice, so I invited her along.

After a quick lunch, sitting outside next to the motorcycles, I took the lead. As we got ready, a small boy tugged at his mother’s sleeve to inform her that here, indeed, were two motorcycles; the mother noticed me sitting there and grinned.

Leading is more difficult, because it involves thinking for two, and there are set rules for what is expected…it’s a kind of dance. When you want to change lanes, you indicate, and the person behind moves over, securing the lane for you; you have to stick close together so you don’t get separated at the lights. Those kinds of things.

It’s rewarding, too: not only is there someone other than the saddle of your bike to take pictures of you, for a change, there’s also feedback, friendship, and the overall happy feeling of “look at us, we are a team.”

I brought us down Saratoga Avenue, a semi-rural “heritage highway” which runs through enough vineyards and orchards that you don’t quite feel that you’re still in Silicon Valley. But then, the valley has only been producing silicons since the Sixties or so…before that it was farmland, and down this way you can still get a sense of what it used to be like. That is, if you take away the hundreds of cars full of frustrated and distracted Christmas shoppers, and forget that land goes for around a million bucks an acre here, now.

I pulled over into a parking lot. I’d spotted the white Saratoga gateway arch, something I’d already visited but knew that Barb hadn’t. The arch had been one of those landmarks that got moved around a lot, making it hard to find, but I think it’s here to stay for a while, now. We scampered down there and I got a slightly better photograph than my last one, taken at roughly a 45-degree angle.

Then it was back onto highway nine, a straight patch, and this time I not only found my turnoff onto the Austin heritage lane (you can tell because the road surface is paved with bricks and your teeth bang together), but managed to remember to turn off so that I could find Ravine Road.

Ravine Road was a surprise. So close to the main road, it was almost a single lane highway and even had some token mud on it. It was as if we had moved from one world to another–the back of beyond starts a hundred yards away from the main road! Not quite confident, and feeling as though we were somehow intruding on the world of some very rich people, we rode up the steep incline. If bikes could mince their steps, ours did just that.

After a while, the road growing narrower by the minute, we pulled over and I asked if Barb wanted to continue. She didn’t, so I took a quick hike up the lane, feeling decidedly out of place and all trespassy and bad.

At the top of the hill the road stopped and only progressed behind “this is private property, bog off” type signs. There were lots of them. I couldn’t see any plaques for Kotani-En, the famous but private Japanese gardens; I could, however, smell eucalyptus and enjoyed the lush green scent of damp woodland. I shrugged my shoulders and returned.

I have now attempted to find this landmark on four separate occasions, and have since found out that not only are the gardens on private property, so is the plaque. Personally, I think that’s a selfish waste of a perfectly good historical marker, but that’s me. I decided that I was done with Kotani-En and would count it. We left this little haven of country living and got back on highway nine.

For the fun of it, we took Shannon and Hicks, a lovely ten miles or so of twists and turns, hills and slopes and even a nice switchback bend to play with. It bursts in and out of the wood into sunlight and back again so you never know whether to wear your shades or not. When I first did this road, it seemed really long. It seemed scary. Now, it’s just fun and I often use it to blow the cobwebs out of my mind. There had been no rain recently so the deposits of slippery leaves and mud in the middle were more or less gone, yielding a nice smooth ride.

Just around the corner was the plaque for Old Almaden Vineyards. I had spotted it before but couldn’t park. This time we found a place to park, and then had to wait out three separate sets of lights because the direct route had no crossing. Go figure.

I left a book about top wines in California which included wines from this vineyard. One small photo shoot later, Barb had had enough and I was still bubbling with ride energy so we parted company and I set off alone. Now, my pace changed in line with only having to think for myself and everyone else on the road, and it all felt a little bit lonelier.

I rode the whole length of Blossom Hill Road, over the freeway and up into the hills. What fun Silver Creek Valley Road is! It’s a 45 mph two-lane highway which goes up at a huge, sweeping, almost impossible-seeming angle. Because it is so broad, it does not seem remotely threatening, and I had fun switching between gears to find which ones Arnie liked best. Then, we swooped over the top and looking down on the very edge of San Jose, towards the hills. Whee! The view was wonderful and I rode with a mile-wide grin.

I made my way to Evergreen Community College, parking where it said I shouldn’t to visit the landmark in its entrance way. Montgomery Hill is not far away, and many pioneering aviation experiments were done there.

Alas, my route took me back towards the city, with its bumper-to-bumper traffic. I risked life and limb by cutting through downtown Willow Glen, an incongruous little historic village in the middle of the greater San Jose conurbation. Christmas shoppers of doom and cars, looking anywhere but at me, threatened my very existence every few feet. Feeling as though I were in my very own video game with demonaic programmers, I made it through, and parked at a handy credit union. The landmark I sought was right next to blaring “absolutely no stopping” signs and I hiked under the freeway overpass, well aware of the homeless people staring at me from the shelter above, the broken bottles and endless trash. The Alberto-Sunol adobe was now home to a well-heeled lawyer’s office and I’d missed it on at least two other occasions.

After some while spent vaguely lost in the spaghetti of streets, I found the Winchester Mystery House. One of the best (and priciest) tourist attractions around, the widow of the inventor of Winchester guns was told by psychics that so long as she kept building the house, the ghosts of the gun victims wouldn’t get her. So she kept building, and building, and building. That’s why it has “features” like outside doors with no steps on the second level, and a winding staircase of steps that are around an inch high.

I didn’t take the tour; by now it was close to sunset and I was dog tired. I did my landmark thing and left “Dave Barry Turns 50″ – in honour of my fiftieth landmark in Raven’s Quest.

Then I went home and got out all my maps. Again.

Summary

#46: #0903 Kotani-En Garden
#47: #0505 Almaden Vineyards
#48: #0813 Montgomery Hill
#49: #0770 Robert Suñol Adobe
#50: #0868 Winchester House

Linda R. Moore

Author, motorcyclist, RVer, petter of cats, mighty huntress of historical markers.