Farmer Boy's: Hemet, CA

[alanmcorcoran]

Latest in a series of Socal tours.

The first Farmer Boys restaurant opened in Perris, California in 1981. By 1997, they had grown to eight restaurants, all in Southern California and the founders franchised their Fresh Burger concept. Today there are over 60, all still in Southern California. Today, we pay a visit to the one in Hemet.

[pbss:1yqcckjt]http://s221.photobucket.com/albums/dd7/alanmcorcoran/farmerboy/?action=view&current=e0a6264b.pbw[/pbss:1yqcckjt]

This was my longest trip to date. 110 miles round trip. In addition to the distance, I passed a couple of other personal milestones: took the GZ on the freeway for the first time, and broke 70mph briefly on a slight downhill out on the backroads.

The ride out began with the freeway. Moedad did an excellent job previously of explaining why the GZ is no good for the freeway. To summarize, the grooved pavement gives you a "fine" wheel wiggle, the road scallops give you a moderate wheel waggle and the wind pretty much blows you all around. Add the difficulty of maintaining anything close to CA freeway speeds, and you've got yourself a buffeted wiggle-waggle that is constantly being near side-swiped by the traffic. Fortunately, I only had to do 3.4 miles of it (each way) on my route.

There's a bit of city driving through Corona, but soon you head into the back country and there is a 30 mile stretch of Cajalco/Ramona "expressway." This is a really excellent motorcycle riding road. Most of it is well paved, there's some twisty, but it's not crazy, and there is a lot of lightly travelled, smooth back road where you have a nice view of Lakes Matthews and Perris (and can get a little aggressive with the throttle.)

I think I had a slight tailwind on the way out, I was able to sustain 65 plus for long stretches. I found that the difference between 55 and 65 is all body position. If I tucked in my knees and elbows and put my chin right on the speedo, I immediately sped up ten miles an hour. Hit over 70 down the backside of one of the hills.

I have a Farmer Boys near my office in Anaheim, and I'd never seen a second one until today. The Hemet one is bigger, better staffed and a lot newer than the one on La Palma. Had a dog, fries and a Dew before I headed back. Left at about 11:45 and was back by 3pm.

I was a lot more comfortable at 50 plus on this trip (well, everywhere but the freeway.) On the backroads I was very focused on keeping my eyes ahead on the horizon and doing the outside/inside/outside on the curves. No major eff-up this trip. I did leave my blinker on a bit too long a few times, and had a few shifting incidents, but overall it was pretty routine. Ass got a little numb, stood up at a few of the intersections to get some relief, but it's nowhere near as uncomfortable as riding a bicycle (which I have done along this same route.)