Thanksgiving Day Ride

I headed out early(ish) Thursday morning for a Thanksgiving dinner in Sacramento. As you can imagine, holiday traffic is a bitch. It is bumper to bumper from SF to Sacramento on the 80 and depending on timing etc.. it can easily be a 4 to 5 hour / 120 miles trip by cage, err.. I mean car.


I split traffic until Livermore and then headed north on Vasco Road, up Highway 4 until 160 and then kept going north through the Delta to Sacramento. I loaded up the Road Pig (1979 Honda GL1000 Goldwing), plugged my iPod into my $30 Kraco and was blasting a road tunes mix I made for the trip. She is not much to look at (to say the least) but runs well and is great at hauling crap around and keeping the bugs out of my teeth. You can't tell from this photo but there is a mud flap that I'm threatening on changing to one of those trucker girls or Yosemite Sam designs.

So this route avoids most of the holiday traffic and also happens to be my all time favorite Nor-Cal route. Riding along the cool Delta levees during a hot summer day was the only way I kept from going crazy growing up in Sacramento. The incredibly oppressive heat and traffic were unbearable (not to mention the hillbillies and the smog). It was a quick escape to head south through town to Freeport, get on Highway 160, take a few of the ferries across the rivers and islands and end up in the little town of Locke for a beer and some eats at Al the WOPs Place. I can't say that Al's has great food but it is an experience you shouldn't miss. For dinner, there is basically one thing on the menu; steak, spaghetti and fries.


Al's is located in the town of Locke, which is the last original Chinatown still standing in California (I've read on a website). "Still standing" is a bit of a stretch as the place is literally falling over. The buildings are leaning dangerously and the floors in many of the shops feel much like a trampoline. If you go, make sure to spend the time to walk off of the main drag. The town is only about 1 city block but is a real slice of the sub-culture that exists in the Delta. My guess is that this won't be around too much longer as the housing developments are slowly creeping in and it looks like the McMansions are popping up more and more frequently along the Delta Highway.