Forget about Florida's famous Bike Week in Daytona Beach, with its overcrowded chain restaurants, chopper-choked Main Street, crappy, curve-free back roads and washed-up racing events at the imposing International Speedway. Let the H.O.G. bikers have it-for our money, the premier motor-cycle event of the year is absolutely the annual U.S. Grand Prix held every summer at Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey, California.
The Monterey Peninsula is made for sportbikes thanks to the rugged coastal mountains that butt right up against the sea. No matter where you're starting from-down from the Bay Area, up from SoCal or westward from the Inland Empire-your route will undoubtedly take you along some of the tastiest twisties in the country. Once you arrive at your destination of downtown Monterey-anchored by a funky tourist trap called Cannery Row-you'll find a host of cool clubs and hip restaurants to chill at off the bike, and during the MotoGP weekend, when the police close the streets to everything but motorcycles, it becomes the country's best bike night. Then there's the racing-unlike the Daytona 200, which features watered-down, rules-bending mini-superbikes, the USGP's main event offers the most exotic motorcycles on the planet circulating at incredible speeds on one of the world's most beautiful racetracks. What's not to love about that?
Best of all, it's a great opportunity to get together with thousands of other like-minded sportbike fans-145,111 of them, to be precise, according to the track's 2006 attendance records for the three-day race program-with nary a bearded, fringe-wearing chopperhead in sight. Super Streetbike made a three-day weekend of it this year and, as has become our tradition, we celebrated the first day by blowing off our work-related duties of kissing advertisers' asses in the Primedia hospitality area at the track and instead went riding. Four strong, we jumped off on the hottest bikes we could find from the Primedia press pool-a pair of Kawasaki ZX-10Rs, a Yamaha R1 and a baby-bro R6-and knocked out a stunning 150-mile loop. We started by crossing the mountains on the arm-pump-inducing Carmel Valley Road, followed by a few miles of ultra-high-speed sweepers on some undisclosed G roads to the Hunter Liggett military base. From there it was an insanely fun, engines-off coasting race down the 14-mile descent of Nacimiento-Ferguson road back to the coast, followed by two hours spent attempting to avoid the CHP patrol planes as we blitzed back up to Monterey via the PCH. Pure dream-ride stuff.
Saturday we finally headed to the track for a few hours of obligatory ass-kissing, also catching a few of the AMA support-class races (watching Jamie Hacking dominate both the Superstock and Supersport events), and, of course, MotoGP qualifying. Few things match the visceral thrill of watching the best motorcycle riders in the world hustle 240-hp, 210-mph MotoGP racebikes around Laguna's snaking asphalt. And, if you tire of racing, Laguna offers plenty of off-track entertainment, too, including this year's stunt exhibitions by World Champ Christian Pfeiffer, FMX demos, a huge vendor zone, celebrity gawking (this is California, after all, and famous attendees at this year's race included none other than Pamela Anderson, Verne "Mini-Me" Troyer, Matt LeBlanc and more), and even a concert by The All American Rejects.
Once the sun sets on Saturday night it's time to party on Cannery Row, eyeballing the wild bikes that show up (including John Noonan's land speed record-holding, 246-mph turbo Hayabusa, and Kane Friesen's "Stunt Junkies" ZX-10R stoppie bike, both of which were spotted on the street that night) and hitting the parties at the clubs. This year's best bash by far was the off-the-hook party hosted by Mike Russell and the rest of the sportbike freaks at LBZ Clothing, featuring special guest stunter Patrick Stephens and a bunch of "LBZ Playmates" who had a very hard time keeping their tops on...
Sunday, of course, it was back to the racetrack for the main MotoGP event-and what a race it was, won for the second year in a row by American hero Nicky Hayden with fellow Americans Kenny Roberts Jr. (fourth place), John Hopkins (sixth place) and Colin Edwards (ninth place) cracking the top 10. Are we looking forward to returning next year? Already, and we hope you are, too-it's only October, after all, and you've still got plenty of time to reroute your travel plans from Florida to the West Coast.