You meet a lot of people when you travel by bike. Many are people interested in what you’re doing. People who would never do such a thing themselves, but who are intrigued. And of course you also meet a lot of other touring cyclists. People who choose to do this kind of thing tend to be pretty sympathetic types – not hard to like. Travelling by bike requires patience, stamina and a sense of humour to get you through the worst of times – like driving rain, headwinds, and steep hills.
And because cyclsts doing the Pacific Coast are all on the same route and travelling at roughly the same speed, you tend to bump into the same people time and again – usually at the campgrounds. Sophie and I have recently been travelling in synch with Martin from Iowa. I don’t know much about Martin, but we’ve bumped into him at grocery stores, campgrounds and once rode together with him for 40 miles.
Some of the other people we’ve met so far on our journey include:
Lucy. Originally from Chicago, Lucy spent ten years working in Alaska, This trip down the coast by bike is part of her transition back to the “Lower 48” and follows a previous adventure last spring – hiking the Pacific Coast Trail with her brother. Lucy travels slowly because she carries a lot of gear, including an inflatable boat. Bringing a boat on a bike trip makes no sense to me, but I admire the audacity of it.
Henry & Linda. A retired married couple from Vernon, with six grown kids.Turns out Sophie knows one of them from university in Victoria. Henry is ex-RCMP and does a lot of bike touring. LInda is a road cyclist and seems up for the challenge, but Henry’s pretty hard core. He did a ride last year to Southern California but on a route through the mountains. He says he finally tired of that self abuse in Bakersfield and headed to the coast to complete his trip.
Allan. We met Allan at a campground in Northern Oregon. He lives on Lopez Island in Washington on a 22 foot cutter sailboat and rides a collapsible bike (Brompton) because it has to fit onto his boat. At one time Allan lived large. He worked for a bank, owned seven luxury vacation properties – which he rented out, had a fleet of cars and, so he says, had money to burn. But when he hit 40 he looked over his life and didn’t like what he saw. He sold everything and says he gave most of his money to charity. He now lives as a minimalist, which is self-evident from how he travels. He carries a tent on the back of his bike, a bag with a change of clothes on the front, and lives on beef jerky, avocado and other simple stuff. He has no cooking utensils. Allan is a man of extremes. He’s also very likeable. On one of my trips to town for groceries I brought him back a bottle of beer. He was ecstatic. In return he gave me his one-inch high bottle of Tabasco Sauce. What else from a minimalist?
Another short day of riding. However, not a particularly easy one. There are six long, winding climbs and descents between Gold Beach and Brookings. And for half the way we had a stiff headwind. At least it wasn’t raining. We stayed in a motel again – this could be habit forming. Took the opportunity to do laundry. Apart from the constant wind, this is an appealing area of the Oregon coast, although there’s precious little of interest in the towns.
Then started the toughest climb we’ve had yet – 2.2 torturous miles of continuous 6% grade. That’s comparable to the steepness of the Cypress Mountain road. My bike with gear weighs at least 80 pounds, so it’s slow going.
Every day we get passed by hundreds of vehicles. As a cyclist you have no choice but to trust the good judgment of every one of those drivers. That’s a scary thought if you linger on it. And especially when you factor in the number of older drivers operating bus-sized RVs on this highway.
A long ride today. No camping available anywhere nearby as our legs started to give out, so we’re in a motel. Arcata has a reputation as a “hippy” town. There’s lots of young people with back packs wandering about and the air is skunky with the smell of weed. Our motel is located in the midst of all this. It’s the kind of scene I would have found very appealing in my 20s. I’m pretty sure Sophie feels that way now. But she’s dead tired and with her dad.
We eventually left the freeway for a quieter road, the Avenue of the Giants, so named for the massively grand redwood forest it winds through. Riding the newly paved roadway through this forest in the warm afternoon with sunlight filtering down through the high canopy was like finding religion. Awesome!
I’ve been impressed by the fellowship that exists between touring cyclists. It’s rooted in a few shared truths. First, they’ve all chosen to travel only at the speed that a bicycle and their own leg power will take them. And second, you only carry as much as you need because it’s you doing all the work. There is no quick and easy way up a hill, headwinds are nasty, as are roads with no shoulders and obnoxious drivers in oversized and over-powered vehicles. It strikes me that if everyone spent more time on a bike the world would be a nicer place.
Spent most of the day riding through the redwood forest. Passed through a few very small towns – Myer’s Flat, Miranda, Phillipsville, and the larger Garberville. All seem a bit faded and dowdy, unimproved from the seventies when I suspect they were in their prime. Hippy heaven. Today we saw lots of young people – 21st century “hippies,” although the word is now meaningless. They seem to emerge from the forest and from behind the rundown buildings of these rustic towns. I assume they’re living rough. Some have backpacks and presumably the funds to pursue alternative arrangements if they wish. Others clearly don’t.
This was a tough day of riding, although not particularly long. We climbed two long fairly steep hills in succession. At the summit we were at the highest point on the California coast, although the actual coast still wasn’t in sight until we finished the descent. It was stunning to emerge from shaded forest to full sunshine and the bright blue sea pounding the rocky sea stacks and beaches below.
The ride continued up and down as the road follows the contours of the coastline. We arrived at the campground exhausted. In the darkness, just before going to bed two guys arrived on foot – we camp in designated “hiker/biker” sites, although we rarely encounter hikers. In this case, hitchhikers. One from LA (45-ish) who didn’t say much but liked to smoke weed. The other from Oklahoma where he recently lost his job as a horse walker. I didn’t know such a thing existed. I asked where he was headed. He said “here”. And when he heard we were from Canada, he mentioned that someone had told him there might be work up that way. “But you need a passport to go there, right?” Yup – it’s a foreign country for Americans, just like Mexico. Something about this whole situation brought to mind Steinbeck and the Grapes of Wrath – the depression era and the mass migration of Okies and other dust bowl farmers to the promised land of California. I was surprised when he brought up politics. He called Trump an idiot and said he was voting for Hillary.
I love this part of the country. The coastal scenery is jaw-drop beautiful, and the weather is perfect. Sunny with a light breeze – blowing in the right direction. The road, however, features narrow to no shoulders. In some places the crumbling edge of the pavement is just five feet from a cliff-edge drop 150 feet to the crashing sea below. It can stir a mild panic attack if you look down. We try not to. I suspect drivers don’t even notice.
Riding as we do, on the shoulders where they exist, but more often on the actual roadway, we are constantly in the way of drivers who must slow down before passing as the constant twists and dips of the road mean you can’t see too far ahead. It really is amazing that there aren’t more accidents. Actually, I have no idea about the stats in that dept. But just from our experience, the incidence of dangerously close encounters – mostly between vehicles trying to pass and on-comers – is pretty frequent.
A hard day of riding, made a bit easier by the beauty of coastal Sonoma and Marin counties. We pulled into Olema utterly exhausted, but having achieved our goal – to be an easy day’s ride from San Francisco for tomorrow.
If road builders rode bicycles, things would be so much better (easier, safer) for us milegrinders.