Sorry, You Cannot Come In Here, plus Jeanne Gets Her Prize

I left the slightly inland Salinas and rejoined the Pacific coast near Monterey where I went to see Fishermans Wharf and Cannery Row. Fishermans Wharf does exactly what it says on the tin – it is a wharf for fisherman. Fishing boats tie up and unload their catch and the smells in the air told me quite a few fish had been caught recently. The wharf is old and made of wood, so perhaps the smell of fish was ingrained in the timbers.

The wharf also runs alongside the marina where boats used for fun greatly out-number the working boats....

Cannery Row is a road that contains a number of now closed factories that used to can sardines that were landed at Fishermans Wharf. The road now mainly caters to the tourist trade and its name was changed to Cannery Row after the novel by John Steinbeck of the same name. This is one of the old factories....

I liked this mural painted on an old concrete wall....

One of the Cannery Row piers, now a restaurant....

A grand looking statue at one end of Cannery Row....

This is perhaps the smallest Harley-Davidson shop I have ever seen. It mainly sells t-shirts, but no bike parts are sold there, no bikes are serviced or sold. I don’t like these clothes only H-D stores, so I walked on by....

A bust of John Steinbeck....

The plaque below the statue copies part of his book Cannery Row....

“Cannery Row in Monterey is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses....”

I have never read Cannery Row, but perhaps I will now. John Steinbeck was born in 1902 and died in 1968.

I rode around part of the Monterey Peninsula looking at the waves crashing on the rocks. The swell wasn’t as big as the day before, but impressive all the same....

My plan for the morning was then to ride around Pebble Beach and the Del Monte Forest on a road that is commonly known as 17 miles drive. You have to pay to drive on the road which contains many large houses and terrific views of the ocean – two of my favourite things! I approached the pay booth and got nine dollars out of my wallet ready to pay, to be asked where I was going. “To ride around the 17 miles Drive” I answered. “Motorbikes are not allowed in here” I was told.

I couldn’t believe it. You can drive any vehicle in, no matter how old, loud or wrecked it is, even a huge truck. You can be a criminal and be allowed in, providing you are in a car. But, if you ride a motorbike – no way – you are not coming in. My complaints fell on deaf ears and I was turned away being told “This land is privately owned and the residents have voted to keep motorbikes out”. Anybody who lives there is allowed to take a bike in, but no visitors.

So, here is a picture of 17 mile Drive....

At least, that is what I saw of it.

Some of my readers may recall I previously wrote about playing a game with people who talked to me about my bike. I was running a competition to reward the first person who could name all 10 of the portraits of the movie actresses on my bike. In Jackson Hole, Wyoming, I met George and Jeanne who could name 9 of these and Jeanne clearly knew the 10th, but couldn’t remember her name. They suggested we meet when I passed through Carmel and we parted promising to keep in touch. The next day, George wrote to me saying that Jeanne had remembered the name of the last actress, so Jeanne became the winner of my little competition.

We kept in contact and arranged to meet for dinner in Carmel. George asked along some of his friends some of who rode motorbikes and we all met at Baja Cantina in Carmel....

It was great fun to see George and Jeanne again and to meet some of their friends. One of these was Craig Vetter who in 1973 designed the Triumph Hurricane. I read about Craig and the bike on Wikipedia.

I presented Jeanne with her prize. This is George and Jeanne after dinner....

And here I am getting ready to leave the restaurant....

A day that was potentially spoilt by not being able to see 17 Mile Drive was made up for by the terrific company for dinner. Thank you George for arranging it. It was very nice to meet Jeanne and yourself again.