Riding the Ortega
Riding the Ortega
LEANINGS
Peter Egan
A FEW WEEKS AGO, BARB AND I FLEW TO California for a short vacation from Wisconsin’s idea of springtime, which was largely unblemished this year by the traditional signs of radiant warmth. But it was sunny in California and we spent a week visiting my sister Barbara, who lives conveniently close to Cycle World's offices in Newport Beach.
We packed helmets and jackets, of course, in the event that CW might have a bike we could borrow. And, happily, they did: a new BMW R1200RT. Perfect for a two-up re-exploration of some of our favorite roads from the decade we lived in Southern California.
Climbing aboard the new RT on a Monday morning, we automatically did what we have always done, which is head south from Newport Beach on the 405 Freeway, exit at San Juan Capistrano and take California Highway 74, better known as the Ortega Highway, over the Santa Ana Mountains to Lake Elsinore.
Yes, this is the once-sleepy little retirement town featured in On Any Sunday, home of the historic Lake Elsinore Grand Prix, with Messrs. McQueen and Smith sliding through the streets.
The Ortega Highway is named after Jose Francisco de Ortega, an early Spanish explorer, but ace California historian Allan Girdler assures me that Ortega himself never traversed this difficult route. “The road was built as a WPA project during the Depression,” Allan told me. “The canyon was too rugged for horses and wagons. You can tell how modem a highway is,” he added, “by what it can disregard.”
And the Ortega Highway disregards a lot of daunting steepness. It’s a 25-mile stretch of mountain road that climbs sinuously up San Juan Creek to emerge on a mountainside pullout (home of the Lookout Roadhouse Café), offering a spectacular view of the San Jacinto Mountains and the lake below. It’s a great motorcycle road. It’s also the first place I ever rode in California.
In January of 1980, having just arrived for my new job at CW from Wisconsin in a totally msted-out Volkswagen Beetle (picture Jed Clampett, but with less fUmiture) I asked then-Managing Editor Steve Kimball for advice on a good weekend ride.
“Take the Ortega Highway over to Lake Elsinore,” he said, “then go south to Temecula and take De Luz Road through the mountains to Fallbrook. Then you can ride down to Oceanside and come home along the coast.”
I was instantly amazed at how little traffic there was on this beautiful road, so close to the pulsing organism that is Greater Los Angeles. There were a few café-racers and random tourists in rented convertibles, but the road was otherwise empty. And there didn’t seem to be any cops. Anywhere.
This road quickly became my Standard Weekend Ride, the quickest way out of suburbia and a direct escape valve into the mountains and the open, dusty world of the Old West. I made many early-Sunday trips over this route on my old bevel-drive Ducati 900SS, often riding with my buddy John Jaeger and his BMW R90S.
We’d ride over the mountains, stop at The Lookout to warm our hands on coffee, then descend the serpentine road into Lake Elsinore for breakfast at a Main St. café. We’d tank up on coffee to the point of nerve damage, jitter out of the place and streak back home.
On one return ride, John and I had a little speed contest on a long downhill straight, and we both hit a dead-even 135 mph (indicated) on the Ducati and BMW. As we crouched behind our windscreens, all glassy-eyed with speed euphoria, two cars emerged out of the distance, coming toward us. At closer focus, they turned out to be police cars. Lights and sirens came on.
John and I sat upright and pulled over.
The cops kept going and didn’t turn around. They must have had larger fish to fry. John and I looked at each other and shrugged, then quickly rode down to the freeway and split for home, before they had time to set up a roadblock. It was one of those rare lucky moments in life, like being hanged and having the rope break. Over a fast-moving river.
Barb and I also made a lot of Sundaymorning breakfast rides over the Ortega, usually on our Kawasaki KZ1000 Mk. II, riding at slightly reduced speed. Which, eventually, we had to.
As the decade of the Eighties wore on, more and more people moved to Lake Elsinore. It became a bedroom community for people who commuted to jobs on the coast. The cops and increasing numbers of civilians began to take a dim view of the Racer Road concept. You were no longer riding through the middle of nowhere, but between two versions of somewhere. The wild times were over.
And on this recent trip, Barb and I rode the Ortega again. There was too much traffic to make passing worth the effort, so we merely cruised. Stopping for our obligatory coffee at The Lookout, we gazed down upon many square miles of new subdivisions in the valley.
Riding into town, we found Lake Elsinore’s once slightly seedy old Main St. freshly redecorated with red brickwork, flower beds and vintage streetlights. Our favorite old restaurant was gone, but a new, slightly classier one had opened two doors down.
Over breakfast, Barb said, “There sure is a lot of traffic on the Ortega now, and so many new homes.”
I nodded. “Things change in 25 years. But the road is still here, and so are we. And it’s a nice day. It’s probably snowing right now back home.”
We grinned and clinked our coffee cups in an unspoken toast.
On our way back to the coast, the traffic was so heavy I didn’t bother watching for cops. No speed was possible, so we just relaxed and motored along, taking in the scenery.
It was a nice ride, but no longer the merciful escape from regimentation we once enjoyed. To find the Old West now, you have to go farther east.
