With no pain-in-the-butt track credentials to get and a lot of freetime on my hands, I opted to spend the evening down on Monterey’s historic Cannery Row made famous by John Steinbeck in his novel of the same name. Steinbeck ain’t as famous as Hemingway, but was a better story teller and didn’t eat the end of a shotgun

 Since bikes didn’t start to arrive until after race practice ended and the deal was in the evening, I stopped by MBARI open house at Moss Landing where the Hewlett-Packard funded marine research was holding its annual open house for a little oceanographic education. After that, it was a short hop down CA 1  to Monterey for the evening’s events.

    On Saturday night of race weekend the tourists on foot are replaced by race fans on motorcycles on this street on the banks of Monterey Bay. For a few hours this former smelly home of sardine canneries becomes inundated by the smell of hot engines and smoking tires.Under the watchful eyes of numerous varieties of law enforcement, the party takes place as it has yearly. Crowds include the tourists from Carmel by the Cash Register, locals, and, of course, the bike riders.

  Didn’t see much hanging in the bars as CHP don’t smile kindly on drunk and stupid motorcycle riding, so most just wandered the streets looking at the competition or just siting on their ride people watching. One of only vendors on the Row appropriately near the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s shark tanks was a lawyer referral service trying to sign up prospective clients.  

  The one brand of bike that was most popular by the numbers on the Row wasn’t Harley, but Ducati! Oh, by the way, a 20-year-old MotoGP rookie, Spain’s Marc Marquez, won Laguna making it his third MotoGP win of the year and maintained his lead in the standings for the world championship title in his first year in this class. Amazing.