Twisting About

After two plus hours of constant turns, I felt like screaming.  My PCA Los Angeles buddies and I were  50 some miles into a 56 mile twistfest.  The road we were on, Yerba Buena, had super tight radius turns and the surface was pretty eroded and really rough.  I was not having fun, and through chattering teeth I was muttering to myself that its name should be Yerba No Bueno.

I was in my 89 911 Targa.  The good news was that the weather was perfect, and my Targa top was off, enabling me to really enjoy the morning.  The bad news was that I had been muscling my manually steered, manually braked, manually shifted air-cooled 911 in and out of turns for the past two plus hours, and I was feeling fatigued.  My hands were tired.  My arms were tired.  Heck, my core was tired.  I was beginning to rue my choice of car for the day.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love that 911, but I could have been driving my Cayman GTS with traction control, power steering, power brakes, and dual electronic clutch transmission, not to mention its all important Porsche Torque Vectoring.  Niceties that just about all the cars I was following had, and niceties I was sorely missing.

I found myself wishing the numbers on the mile markers would drop faster, as I knew when they reached zero, I would be at Pacific Coast Highway.  The road would be flat,  and the turns would end.  It’s not like I shouldn’t have known better.  I love driving in the Santa Monica Mountains in and around Malibu, which is where we were.  Usually, I thoroughly enjoy the twists and turns there.  The route, a magnificently diabolical one, zigzagged east and west, up and over and back up and over and back down the coastal range before ending at Neptune’s Net, a casual seafood restaurant and biker bar that is near the Ventura County line and that has been featured in numerous movies and tv shows, including the original Point Break and The Fast and The Furious.

As the miles wound down and I neared the bottom, I found it somewhat comforting and more than a little ironic that the opening notes and lyrics of Levelland, one of my favorite Robert Earl Keen songs, began playing on my iPod just as the road began to level out.

This was supposed to be a Sunday drive.  A walk in the park.  Just a jaunt through the hills.  My mistake was that I had not read the whole route before I embarked on the drive in my 911.  I had read the first part a couple of days earlier, though I sort of skipped over where we were starting from.  I mean, I read the word Gelson’s in Calabasas, and I said to myself, “No problem.  I know where that is.”  The next lines referenced  Old Topanga Canyon Road, Topanga Canyon Boulevard and  Fernwood Pacific Drive.  That was when I stopped reading.

Unless you are visiting a friend who lives on it, there is only one reason to get onto Fernwood Pacific Drive, and that reason is because it turns into Tuna Canyon Road.  Tuna Canyon, not to be confused in any way shape or turn with La Tuna Canyon, which is in the Verdugo Mountains west of La Canada, is one of the twistiest downhill runs in the Santa Monica Mountains.  Tuna Canyon is a one way road.  It is narrow.  It is old.  It is eroding.  It has really tight turns.  It is carved into a canyon with really steep walls.  Just getting to Tuna Canyon is an adventure, as Fernwood Pacific Drive is narrow with a capital N.  There are many places where the road is not wide enough for two cars to pass each other even though some sadistic soul has painted signs indicating two way traffic on it.  And that is before you come up on the signs telling you that the Road Narrows.

My most vivid memory of Tuna Canyon is its one way stop signs – two of them.  The stop signs are not there to control traffic, as there is no oncoming or cross traffic on the road.  They are positioned just before two portions of the canyon with the steepest walls.  Wall so steep that rocks are more likely than not to be rolling down them.  The stop signs are there to give you a chance avoid any object that might be falling in your path.    The last time I drove Tuna Canyon I vowed it would be my last.

I stopped reading the route and fired off an email to David, my PCA Los Angeles friend who had crafted it.  In a not so oblique way, I alluded to the issues with Tuna Canyon.  David echoed my concerns, and said he planned it to be a nice and slow Sunday drive.  Too bad no one in my run group knew that.

Somewhat mollified, I decided to go on the drive.  I thought the 911 could use some exercise.  I really didn’t plan on it getting that much.  So on Sunday off I went.  As I was driving, I encountered two obstacles, harbingers that made me question my commitment to the drive.  First, I realized I had no idea at which Gelson’s we planned to meet.  The one off Valley Circle in Calabasas or the one off Topanga Canyon in Calabasas.  I reasoned that it must be the one off Topanga Canyon, given the portion of the route I had read.  But just to be sure I called Pam, and I asked her to look it up.  Right after solving that issue, I noted that CalTrans had closed the 405 North to the 101 North interchange.  The interchange I had to take to get to Calabasas.  I was already running a little late, and I was already dreading Tuna Canyon.  I have to admit that I came close to just turning around and bailing on the drive.  After a few choice words in the car, I followed the directions and took the detour, which added about 10 minutes or so to my drive to Gelson’s.

We had well over 30 Porsches on the drive.  David had split us into two run groups.  I was in the first, and randomly found my self positioned behind a GT3 and a Turbo Cabriolet.  From the outset I realized that this was not a Sunday drive.  Though it could still be described as spirited, that description was a little frayed, as were my nerves.  My poor gutty little 911 with the 3.2 liter engine was straining to stay with its more powerful musclebound brethren.  The good news was that we made it onto and down Fernwood with out any issues, and soon I found myself on Tuna Canyon.  David had picked Tuna Canyon for the view on the way down, as there are several places where it feels like you are about to drive right into the ocean.  While it was a great day for the view, it is not a great road on which to admire it.  I have to admit that I actually enjoyed the trip down to the coast.  The 911 is nimble, and it just sort of floats through the tight turns.  As we hit PCH I thought the most twisty portion of the drive was over.  I was wrong.

We had a brief respite from the turns as we meandered up PCH for a bit before tuning onto Los Flores Canyon Road and then onto Rambla Pacifico Street.  The turns came fast and furious, but they were reasonably well spaced and the radii were not super tight.  Soon we hit Piuma Road for an instant before getting onto Las Virgenes Road, better known as Malibu Canyon.

At that point I just assumed we would get back onto Mulholland Highway, one of my favorite roads, and take it until it ended at PCH.  I was wrong about that, too.   We stayed on Mulholland Highway for a good bit.  Long enough to go past the Rock Store, run The Snake, cross Kanan Dune and Decker Canyon before turning off it and onto Little Sycamore Canyon Road and then onto the aforementioned Yerba No Bueno Road.

Upon arriving at Neptune’s Net, I just sat in my car for a few moments, decompressing and letting the lyrics of Levelland wash over me, feeling very glad that I was back on level land.  In retrospect, Tuna Canyon was a cakewalk.  I am pretty sure I will drive it again.  Maybe because it was early in the drive or maybe because I liked it better in the 911 than I did in my Cayman, something that is a rarity for me, or maybe because I actually liked the one way stop signs.  I can’t say for sure.  What I can say for sure is that I do not expect to be on Yerba No Bueno any time soon.