Carla King, motoSFO Editor, Point Richmond
Carla lives in a tiny cottage in the hidden city of Point Richmond on the San Francisco Bay. Her favorite ride is across the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge into Marin and to the town of Fairfax where she takes a left onto Fairfax-Bolinas road to wind and twist over the mountains to the coast for lunch at another hidden city, Bolinas. There, she enjoys a fabulous meal at the Bolinas Cafe (run by famous restauranteurs who long ago escaped San Francisco), strolls the beach if it isn't foggy and freezing, stops by the used book and purveyor of many funky things store, and then loops around to Stinson, Mill Valley, and back home again.
Carla King has traveled the world on a fleet of various and often unreliable indigenous motorcycles. She chronicles her adventures in her Motorcycle Misadventures series of realtime online dispatches and books. Her popular Motorcycle Misadventures blog is subtitled "a motorcycle travel writers writings, readings, journeys, gear, and recommendations," but includes experiences on hiking, bicycling, scuba diving, boating, and road trips, with musings from abroad and the San Francisco Bay Area, which she calls home.
Carla has written for Women Riders Now, Adventure Motorcycle Dual Sport News, Rider, Riders of Kawasaki Magazine, Escape, Santa Cruz Travel Guide, many newspaper travel sections, and she is widely anthologized on the web. Her writing has appeared in anthologies including Rough Guide's Women Travel, In Search of Adventure, Travelers' Tales (including Food, France, and Best Travel Writing of 2011), Rough Guides Women Travel, and Wild Writing Women: Stories of World Travel. She is the author of American Borders: Breakdowns in Small Towns All Around the USA, and the upcoming China Road Motorcycle Diaries, as well as thousands of pages of realtime travel reports to the web from journeys in the USA, Europe, Africa, China, and India. No matter where she is, you can always find her at CarlaKing.com
I often travel to adventure conferences, expos, and talk at motorcycle rallies. Here I am at the Overland Expo in Arizona with adventurers (upper row) Lorraine Chittock, Lois Pryce, me, Chris Scott, (lower row) Austin Vince, Ted Simon, and Ben Slavin
Why I ride
I ride because I think it's the best way to experience places, and after traveling in some of the most popular, and some of the most unpopular, places in the world, I realized that the greater San Francisco Bay Area is perhaps the best place to ride in the world. Okay, I like the Alps, and Morocco, too, which are contenders, but really, you don't have a world class city like San Francisco so closeby.
I have had so many requests from online friends about touring here, I set up this site to share it with you, to help you find resources you need to plan your trip, from rentals to roads, destinations, hotels, restaurants, sights, local events, and inspiration from others who live and travel in the greater San Francisco Bay Area.
My favorite bikes to tour on here in the SF Bay Area and California in general have been the Concours 14 which I borrowed from Kawasaki for a review and, woah, it is so dang fast, but when I hit the twisties in the Los Angeles and Santa Cruz Mountain ranges I found it nimble and stable and ... well, when I gave it back I asked the press people never to loan me that bike again because I go too fast for safety. The Royal Enfield Bullet is a fab little town bike, and great for throwing around the curves between Fairfax and Bolinas. The Ural sidecar rig I had in San Francisco was so much fun when I went grocery shopping, and when I traveled I could carry ALL my stuff! And I like the Suzuki M90 cruiser as well as my Moto Guzzi Stone, both well over 1000 cc's, for cruising longer distances. If only I had a big garage!