Jamie Robinson of MotoGeo, a former racer, and a cameraman put together this good 13-minute video about Route 66 in Southern California on a Honda CB500X motorcycle.
The filming must have happened very recently, because the historic Cucamonga Service Station in Rancho Cucamonga, California, is sporting its new paint job.
The video also doesn’t get into the fact Route 66 still is closed from Essex to Amboy because of last fall’s flash flooding. Of course, by the time most people travel to that stretch, it will have been repaired.
And the video also shows how rough Route 66’s pavement is in the Mojave Desert — and illustrates why the Adventure Cycling Association bypassed chunks of it in its Bicycle Route 66 project.
Pretty impressive not only for its quality, but for its inclusion. As an Los Angeles County 66’er, I can tell you that this was even largely edited east to west and was a relatively complete through route from Pasadena to Hollywood. (He did not choose the Transitional Alignment through Highland Park that I would have encouraged, but nonetheless he did follow a through route!) Hopefully a lot of people look at this and start to see just how interesting Route 66 in Los Angeles is to look at!
Someday I’m going to make a decent video about the whole stretch of Route 66 from Chicago to LA. Just to document what’s left and what’s still there. There needs to be a good document that shows our past for the future.