Had a great time at the Airheads Rendezvous in Death Valley at the weekend. It was one of those unorganised dos - camping space booked, but just turn up and do your own thing. Unlike British rallies the beer was free, although I went prepared having stashed a couple of bottles of Chilean Carmenere about my person.The ride was spectacular, but hard on the frozen shoulder as it was nearly 600 miles because I did the pretty route. Getting the tent up was a bit of a trial in the dark and largely one-handed, but the erection survived mainly due to the lack of wind and rain and my foresight in tying it to a tree instead of guying it properly.

This shoulder (like the other one used to be) is a bloody nuisance. I've done a bit of research on this frozen thing, and there's an excellent and rather too accurate description at http://www.patient.co.uk/showdoc/23069093/ which hasn't cheered me up in the least. On the bright side the broken one is holding up well now, having got used to its new configuration.

There were 130 bikes at Furnace Creek, at least half of which actually were airheads, including around half a dozen 80G/Ss like The Old Dear. Lots of mods were apparent, engendering large quantites of esoteric explanations and discussions. One of the owners was Dutch, who invited me to stay a couple of nights at his apartment in Hollywood; so I did. He used to be an actor, which explains his domicile, and now does all sorts of other things; like photography using a Sigma camera (which utilises a unique form of digital capture - see http://www.sigma-photo.com/cameras/) with old Russian lenses to obtain remarkable results.

I'm back in Mountain View/Palo Alto for a couple of days now after riding up from LA on the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH, Highway 1). It was cold enough to wear a sweatshirt and fleece with the heated grips on. It gets colder from here on northwards. I'll have to take it fairly slowly because of a) the shoulder and b) the weather, which has had much of the US under several feet of snow. Well, the bits without the tornadoes, anyway.