Highway 1, Revisited. A Future Writer Story

George Herbert
by George Herbert

Remember TTAC’s Future Writers Week? You chose the writers. The writers wrote. The stories are in (well, most of them …). Here is the first one. Do you like it? Tell us. The stories will be published in the sequence in which they arrived in TTAC’s mailbox.

It’s November on the California coast, between the rains. Pismo Beach is far behind us; Monterey still far ahead. The road is HERE, the Pacific Ocean is THERE, right across the southbound lanes, over that little 6-inch-tall rock ”barrier” that would give you a good launch before you fell the 400 feet to your crunchy doom. Left-foot-braking, you trail brake into the corner, wide then tightening and then wide onto the gas. And the DSC kicks in, up front, and the line out of the corner isn’t quite what you wanted it to be.

Welcome to Highway 1.

Hwy. 1 is the coast road up the California Coast, Mexico to Oregon. Many sections are pretty pedestrian, as country highways go. Two sections are roads on the greats list: the central coast, roughly 120 miles from Moro Bay to Monterey, and the north coast, roughly Marin to Mendocino. If you aspire to be a performance driver, you should aspire to drive roads like Highway 1. I last drove the central coast section in November 2012, on my way back to the San Francisco Bay area from LA at the end of a conference. Because I was going that way anyways. Because I was driving my RX-8. Because I could.

The central coast segment is long enough that you need to prepare and plan a bit. It’s not a road to drive fast in the dark or bad weather. Plan for 3-4 hours of driving for the segment, including delays. If you’re doing it for the first time, drive it northbound (start at Morro Bay); you will be on the inside, with the southbound lanes as additional recovery space between you and Pacific oblivion if you blow a corner badly. Bring a car you know. Handling is more important than power here, if you have to trade them off.

Going north out of Morro Bay, you’re on a smooth country highway along a mostly flat coastal shelf for about 40 miles. This is a fast and beautiful country drive, lulling you into a sense of complacency.

Then the mountains meet the ocean, north of San Simeon, and that’s all over. The road goes hundreds of feet up the side of the cliff and stays there, hanging on by its teeth, and it’s on. You’re in the twisties, and you stay there for another 40 glorious miles up to Big Sur.

On clear days, views are magnificent; there’s nothing between you and Hawaii. Drive slow enough to enjoy them a bit. But the views are gravy; it’s the miles of twisties that make the road.

At 8/10 this will be a thrilling drive with world-class views. At 9/10 you are significantly at risk. Drive harder than that only with a recent will and life insurance, and preferably with a friend behind you with a GoPro or equivalent, so the rest of us can enjoy the crash afterwards on YouTube.

There are probably a thousand corners; tens of them are far trickier than they look going in. There are a couple that are more than a tenth trickier than they look. If stability control blips more than a couple of times you’re pushing it.

And you will blow corners, if you drive it fast. There are deceptively off-camber corners, decreasing radius corners that looked smooth, corners with water on the road at the apex, gravel. You are less likely to hit a deer here than elsewhere, but there are turnoffs, slow tourists in cars and RVs, bicyclists and pedestrians in the road unexpectedly. If you try to drive it without margins: oops, cliff, Pacific Ocean, splat. So know yourself, know your car, and think 8/10.

Slow down and practice finding the lines, connecting the corners. Trail brake. Drive smooth. When you are caught behind oblivious slow drivers, back off and wait; take them smooth and fast and without mercy in the reasonably frequent passing opportunities, and keep going. Take the road in and keep going. It will take everything you throw at it, and challenge you for more. It will scare you. Containing your exuberance will be the hardest challenge of all.

Drive. Even if you only do it once, drive.

George William Herbert is a driver based in Hayward, California, in the San Francisco Bay area. By day, he works for a well-known IT consulting company. He also owns a small aerospace and defense engineering consulting company. For fun, George writes, welds, attempts to design cars, works on technical issues related to nuclear proliferation, and enjoys the California roads. His favorite suspension system is double wishbone. George’s current daily driver is a 2004 Mazda RX-8.

This poll has been removed.

George Herbert
George Herbert

40-something multidisciplinary engineer in California, who learned performance driving from my ex-amateur-racer father. I learned to drive on a rally racing modified Volvo 145 Q-car on the twisty roads of western Marin County, and have owned as daily drivers a hand-me-down VW Dasher Diesel, an 86 Mustang, a 98 Mustang, and a RX-8.

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  • Mrb00st Mrb00st on Feb 18, 2013

    LOVE IT. You should get out east and drive Tail of the Dragon and surrounding roads.

    • George Herbert George Herbert on Feb 18, 2013

      I've heard of 129. Again assuming I'm not voted off the island... I very much would like recommendations from those not on the West Coast, about great roads in your areas.

  • DarkSpork DarkSpork on Feb 19, 2013

    I just drove this stretch of highway today. I voted "not so good". Why? The piece strikes me as mostly fictional. I will say that it is an absolutely beautiful drive, but you'll hate it if you try drive it quickly. The entire highway is packed with tourists, bicyclists and RVers (as you stated). Contrary to what you wrote, there are few oppurtunities to safely pass, and even if you pass 5 cars, there will be two more you can't get around before the blind 30mph turn. What are you going on about with the DSC? Mine didn't come on even in the few instances where there were no cars ahead of me. The drive is still immensely enjoyable; rowing the gears, listening to the engine growl as you climb the hills. It's great, but if I'm going to drive spiretedly I prefer a more empty road (like Mt Hamilton).

    • George Herbert George Herbert on Feb 19, 2013

      Hmm. Demonstrating conclusively that there are in fact different flavors of fast road drivers. The drive wasn't fictional, though going to check the conference info it turns out to have been Oct 7-10 so it must have been driving back October 11th, not mid-November. I took 101 north out of Hollywood (conference was at the Loews Hotel there for some indecipherable reason), up past Thousand Oaks (stopped for gas at the 7/11 at Rancho Canejo, which I knew from prior work in the area) Ventura, Santa Barbara, inland at Gaviota, then for giggles took 1 off there, where it goes through Lompoc and Vandenberg because it had been a while. 101 up to SLO (more gas, rotary thirsty) then off to Morro Bay and 1 up the rest to north of Monterey. I found plenty of passing situations and the traffic to be tolerable, but your mileage may vary. That will certainly vary from day to day and with conditions. The DSC triggering was not planned or intentional. That was the "road's complex enough to surprise you" factor. Triggered once on that sweeping right I led the story with, which I think was off-camber midcorner but not sure, once on a little stream on the road around a corner, once on a sweeping right up at the inland end of one of the little canyons you dive in to, which I frankly overcooked (again, not planning generally to reach the point DSC or adhesion limit applied, but I started zooming a bit on the way up to that curve, and I shouldn't have.) So one my own damn fault, two underestimated the road (which is again my own damn fault, and slowed me down). Out of 40 miles of the twisty part. In terms of how fast I was going, I let a 911GT2 and a Ferrari past, who were borderline hooning, and ended up near the north end following at road speed a local lady in a Ford van, who obviously didn't have the adhesion I did but knew how to drive, knew the road, and managed her energy and lines excellently. Conversely to your observations, I find Highway 130 (Mt Hamilton Road) excessively twisty to be fun. It goes straight to unsafe without much margin, in my experience. Sufficiently so that I take 580 to 5 south if I have business out at the canyons on the other side of Mt Hamilton. Been up there enough visiting astronomers up at the telescopes that I know Mt Hamilton, and enough not to like it. Besides, it reputedly has snow on it right now, behind the clouds. Lest there be any doubt, I will video the Highway 1 North from SF to the Lost Coast, once the rains stop. Today has been rains.

  • Dukeisduke Womp womp.
  • FreedMike China's whining about unfair trade practices? Okay.
  • Kwik_Shift Hyunkia'sis doing what they do best...subverting expectations of quality.
  • MaintenanceCosts People who don't use the parking brake when they walk away from the car deserve to have the car roll into a river.
  • 3-On-The-Tree I’m sure they are good vehicles but you can’t base that on who is buying them. Land Rovers, Bentley’ are bought by Robin Leaches’s “The Rich and Famous” but they have terrible reliability.
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