A scooter trip along North Bay back roads

We awoke to views of morning sunlight on the Golden Gate Bridge, and ended the day watching a sliver of cloud glow pink over Tomales Bay.

In between, we crossed the bridge on two wheels, riding north on a royal blue motor scooter that took us along the twisting back roads of west Marin County. Highlights included white breakers washing onto a mile-long strip of sand at Stinson Beach, as achingly idyllic a shore scene as any on the North Coast.

Here in Wine Country, riding a motor scooter often means taking the road less traveled.

Sonoma County offers plenty of rural byways, as both scooter riders and bicyclists can attest. In the past nine years, my wife Carol and I have taken overnight scooter trips to Bodega Bay, Healdsburg and Glen Ellen. Each time we followed picturesque routes on which we had never ventured by car.

But this year we decided to travel beyond our home turf. We would ride from Santa Rosa for a night in San Francisco, followed by a day in west Marin and a night near Point Reyes. The trip was a way to see areas of Marin that we had never visited by car. Also, zipping along country roads on two wheels can be a lot of fun.

Our first task was finding a way to avoid Highway 101, the multilane connector for Sonoma and Marin. We learned that a few alternate routes exist and are regularly used by scooter riders from the North Bay and The City.

Among those who travel sections of these routes are Roy and Johnna Gattinella, owners of Revolution Moto, the Vespa scooter shop in Santa Rosa.

On their last trip overseas, the Gattinellas rented scooters in 18 countries, including Italy, Thailand and Sri Lanka, a great way to escape the touristy areas, said Roy. But when home, the Gattinellas enjoy rides to such locales as Point Reyes and Stinson Beach.

“It's some of the prettiest scenery I've ever seen,” said Roy. “And it's right outside our door.”

But why see it on a scooter? Johnna's answer hearkened back to childhood.

“Do you remember when you were little and you'd go out in the neighborhood on your bicycle?” she asked, an experience that awakened a sense of freedom and independence. “I guess it's some of the same things now when we're out on scooters.”

Scooters certainly have become more common in Wine Country since the Gattinellas opened their business a dozen years ago. Even so, the numbers of local riders doesn't begin to compare with the packs zipping through London or Rome.

The Italian models on local streets range from the small-wheeled Vespas - with a heritage going back to the era of Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn's ride in “Roman Holiday” - to the 500cc three-wheeled Piaggio MP3. Plenty of riders also get around on scooters from Asia.

Carol and I set out from Santa Rosa on our Italian Aprilia 250cc SportCity. We took Petaluma Hill Road south around Rohnert Park to Penngrove, then slipped over the freeway in Petaluma for our first stop, Wishbone restaurant on Petaluma Boulevard North.

Food breaks comprise a regular and appreciated treat for scooter riders, and the staff at Wishbone served up a tasty breakfast of bacon, eggs, pancakes and griddled mash potatoes.

Afterward, we attached our gear - stashed in one duffel bag and one backpack - and set out south on the boulevard, passing downtown shops and stately D Street residences before reaching the open road toward Point Reyes. After 20 minutes, we turned left onto Nicasio Valley Road.

It may sound strange to spend 35 years in the North Bay without cruising this gem of a route, with expansive pasture lands set off by hilltops thick with evergreens. But riding through Nicasio Valley demonstrated just how different are the road systems of Sonoma and Marin.

Sonoma offers north-south routes between Petaluma and Healdsburg that stick relatively close to Highway 101, including Petaluma Hill Road, Stony Point Road and Old Redwood Highway.

But Marin's only north-south alternatives involve two west county options, Nicasio Valley or Highway 1 along the coast. In places, the two roads lie less than 5 miles apart. In Sonoma County, it would be like driving all the way to Occidental for an alternative route between Petaluma and Windsor.

As we continued south, the gray skies began to shed mist and the mist turned heavy. Windshield wipers swished on approaching cars. The asphalt beneath us was getting damp, not a great thing for those on two wheels. But we pressed on.

Eventually the precipitation lessened, and we passed through a string of laid-back towns that lie mostly hidden by hills from the freeway: Fairfax, San Anselmo, Ross, Kentfield, Larkspur, Corte Madera, Mill Valley.

Just outside Sausalito, we came to the first of two southbound segments on Highway 101. It probably doesn't count as riding on the freeway because we simply stayed in the on-ramp, off-ramp lane, traveling for less than a half mile between the Highway 1 intersection and the Sausalito exit.

From there we passed through downtown Sausalito, climbed the winding road above Fort Baker and sped onto the highway and the Golden Gate Bridge at the last Marin on-ramp.

Pete Surber, general manager of Scuderia Vespa in San Francisco, takes groups of 15 to 20 scooter riders on this route a few times each year, with visits to Petaluma, Point Reyes and, later this year, Santa Rosa.

“It really does turn people's heads,” he said of motorists watching the PostMods Scooter Squad pass by.

Most of the group's riders go out on 150cc scooters, the minimum amount of power allowed for freeway operation in California. And each outing typically includes a handful of participants who are taking their first scooter ride outside the city.

Even so, Surber said, after crossing the bridge and descending the back way into Sausalito, newcomers' main response is: “That wasn't bad at all.”

Similarly, despite Friday's gray skies, our passage over the bridge was pleasantly scenic and uneventful.

Over the next 22 hours, we cruised through San Francisco past the Legion of Honor, Sutro Baths, Golden Gate Park, Chinatown, the Embarcadero, North Beach, the Marina and Crissy Field.

Beforehand, I sought the scoop on riding through this metropolis from former Press Democrat reporter Rayne Wolfe. She owned a little Honda scooter there in the early 1990s and had a strategic reason to learn the location of “every drive-thru for french fries in San Francisco.”

On especially cold nights, she would buy a bag of fries and stick them beneath her jacket for warmth on the ride home. “It was like having a hot water bottle,” she said.

Since Carol and I were celebrating our anniversary, we treated ourselves to a night at the Westin St. Francis in Union Square. On Saturday morning our guest room offered a grand view of the sunny Golden Gate Bridge and the gleaming skyline east to Coit Tower. Plus, the accommodations offered an added benefit - a location across the street from the Union Square Garage, where monitored, overnight parking for the scooter cost a flat rate of $8.

Saturday's food stops included cannoli and biscotti at Victoria Pastry in North Beach and thick, french bread sandwiches from Golden Gate Market at the bottom of the hill in Sausalito.

While Carol bought the sandwiches, I watched scads of bicyclists pass by on their descent from the bridge, the hardcore riders in black Spandex and the tourists with identical bags hanging off the handlebars of their rented cruisers.

Like the bridge itself, Sausalito remains a central part of the route for scooter riders cruising south from Sonoma.

Among the Gattinellas' customers traveling this way are two friends who visited all the California missions on scooters, plus a mother and daughter who rode their scooters along the coast to San Diego.

From Sausalito, we rode north onto Highway 1, then north again at Panoramic Highway, stopping at Mt. Tamalpais State Park and, for our first visit, at Muir Woods National Monument.

We continued to Stinson Beach, and from there took Highway 1 past the still blue expanse of Bolinas Lagoon, spending the night in Olema at the Inn at Roundstone Farm.

We weren't the inn's only guests that night without a car. A Marin County couple were there taking a multiday hike from their home, sticking to regular trails on their loop and staying each night at an inn along their route.

On Sunday morning, after a stop for cheese at Cowgirl Creamery in Point Reyes Station, we returned to Petaluma via Point Reyes-Petaluma Road, took Stony Point Road north to Rohnert Park and made our way up Santa Rosa Avenue.

The trip provided new experiences and great memories.

As Pete Surber explained, getting out on a scooter feels “precisely like being a little kid again ... I see things. I smell things. I feel the breeze.”

You can reach Staff Writer Robert Digitale at 521-5285 or robert.digitale@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @rdigit