This day was clearly my last and there was no way to avoid it. I was thirty-ish miles from home in territory I knew well by car.

I was not thrilled by the scenery. Usually I am when I am coming for the weekend from home but after what I’d been through, Marin paled greatly by comparison. Still I did take this shot between Spirit Rock Meditation Center and Fairfax

Sir Frances Drake is maybe the worst ever road to ride and people have created well marked bike routes along parallel roads but each time I do this, I get lost. I wish mapquest had a bike option. Even when you choose the pedestrian option, they’ve got you walking in the highways.

Rather than look at maps or go to any of the dozen (no kidding) bike shops catering to rich guys in tight colorful clothes, I asked people for directions.
I asked this one lady riding on the road with a dog in her basket, if I was going the right way to Sausalito and she said I was going the right way but I was on the wrong road.
As I am at the intersection to turn to what I figure might be the right road I get a yell “Hey! hello” from a guy at the camp last night. He’s continuing straight on the road I am turning from. What was I doing listening to a lady with a dog in a basket anyhow?
Even though at this point I can tell its the wrong road I continue because its going to the Larkspur Ferry.

This is what is on the side of the road here. House after house on the water, most with boats parked in front.

It was a wonderful mistake. The ferry was elegant $9.00 and I missed the big hill up and down into Sausalito and the huge climb out of Sausalito to the bridge and I missed the bridge and the ride from there to Embarcadero. This is all lovely mind you but I have done it before and did not feel the need to do it again whereas I’d never done the Larkspur ferry before!

There was another woman with a bike. I got up next to her and we started chatting. Her name was Sally! It always makes me happy to meet a Sally as that was my sister’s name. This Sally had lead bike tours in Europe and we had a lot in common and enjoyed our half hour ride together on the ferry. She was very cool and felt like a soul sister and I will try to see her again. Even though she was late to work, she watched my bike for me when I went to the restroom which took a long time as there was a huge line.

From there I went to BART and had to keep riding up Market Street until 5th before I could find an elevator that worked. The trains were not crowded and the commute was easy. Even the big hill up to my house with all my gear was easy.

As soon as I was home, my teenage kids and I were out and about. The whole world I live in here seemed shocking. It felt like all of it was just EXTRA, meaning it is stuff you really didn’t need or need to be concerned with. Extra feels like it covers up and distracts from what’s essential and everyone is running around in it being very hurried in a way too over stimulating environment.

I’ll try to keep the trees in sight. They will remind me. Until I get swallowed up by all this again. Until I can leave again.

I was thinking when I started out that today would be my last day but the first thing I did was get a flat. I fixed that with one of my gypsy friends but then my gears started to slip and be funky so I knew I couldn’t push the seventy five miles to home in just one day.

I was glad for a few reasons. The first one was that I didn’t want the trip to end and the second was that I didn’t want to be on BART with my fully loaded bike at rush hour. I knew there was a bike repair guy at Pr. Reyes Station so I wasn’t worried.

I passed by one of the Clover Farms. This is why I always choose Clover over Horizon. Go local. Yea.

This last part of the ride from Bodega to Pt Reyes is as magical as the rest of it. Still there is not much action on the coast; just a town now and then with ten miles between. Often the grocery store is the restaurant and the baked goods at the counter are always made by the mother of the cashier or the lady down the street or the cashier herself and they are good good in that homemade way.

In these towns I’d get to talking with other folk as well. Motorcyclists on the whole are friendly to bicyclists being an offshoot of a similar breed.

Near Tomales I saw my first church with a Mary, Mother of God, image. That’s her in the tiny window. I asked her to take good care of my friend and teacher who has just passed.

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Many bikers have ally animals on their bikes. Remember the Brazilians with their “alien”? River had them on both his front and back fenders and Alaskan Greg had a penguin named Henry. The fellow riding with the Canadian had Alvin with him.

I was open to having an animal but one never presented itself.
On my way again

It was starting to feel more like home. Pt Reyes Station seemed way to big city like. Not in it’s size but in its mentality and it’s chic expensiveness.

The scenery started to have other things in it.

When I got to the hiker biker park, the Scottish couple i was happy to see again and everyone else was new to me. There was a lively young German guy who was doing 110 miles a day and had cycled the Tour-de-France route and such.

I went to my tent under the Redwoods for the last time this trip. I got to sleep with the Redwoods five nights I think.

It is 38 miles to Jenner and I Am told there is nothing in between. I find it hard to believe that I will have to spend five hours awake before I have coffee and I am right.

I’ve gone about ten miles and am passing this resort which goes on for miles called “Sea Ranch”. These are individual houses which one can rent. After a while I say to myself out loud “Where are all these sea ranch people getting their expresso? Are they all bringing their own machines?”
Then I see the lodge which is the first Sea Ranch sign that says “open to the public”; all the rest are very clearly and largely “Private Property No Trespassing”.
Outside the lodge is a couple in their early sixties with a large overly groomed poodle. We start talking and they are from Berkeley. The woman is in a writing class with River’s father but this is the first time she’s heard about this “River business”. Then I think about some of the people I’ve met in the camps and realize he’s not the only one who changed his name, including me. Id expect a writer might be more open to that sort of thing. Then again, I think they flew a plane in from Berkeley (a three hour drive) so who knows what they think. Mostly I thought it interesting to yet again have another connection to River.

As soon as I enter the place it’s very heavy money. I ask the small Mexican waitress if I can get a coffee to go. She gives me one for a dollar and I give her a dollar tip. It is killer strong coffee. Like four times as strong as anything local. I can feel the bay area getting closer.

Next this country store in itself was like an antique. Built in 1868. It was beautiful and also had good coffee.

After that it was more beautiful miles in magical mystical landscapes.

All over the California roads there is construction for one reason or another. There are men and women at either end who have STOP and SLOW signs and walkie-takies. They communicate with each other saying “ok I got four cars going through, the last one being a silver Acura. Over” and such.
I come across this Rastafarian guy that I saw in Garberville a couple of days ago with the sign and the walkie-talkie. We chat for a while. He used to live in Oakland but divorce sent him on his way. We got to waxing very philosophical and as he was lamenting his lack of success with women a hummingbird came out of nowhere and hovered over his head and then went back to nowhere. It was bizarre. What even was a hummingbird doing in terrain like that? I told him I didn’t think he had anything to worry about and we parted ways after charting for quite a while.
Then i see this

As I stop to photo and examine this situation in the middle of the road that the Rasta and the Mexican (at the other end) are controlling, this guy starts quickly walking towards me and he doesn’t look happy.
I want to counteract his aggression and my first thought is to say something like “Hey, we both have on the same colors!” ( hi-visibility day glow yellow and orange) but I say instead “Hi ! Are you the guy at the other end if the walkie talkie?” knowing full well he isn’t as he’s this self satisfied white guy who looks in his early thirties and overly educated. He explains proudly that he is the biologist on the job and tries to convince me that the fiber optic wire being laid the this giant grout line on the road (only useable by Verizon) is ecologically beneficial. I get political on him and talk about the good old days when there was just one phone company connected with the government and greed had yet to run so rampant in the field of communication.
He understands me and yet he is proud of what he does and I understand that and can see that it is sort of cool.

Although that tile saw and grout line were big, they were nothing compared to this next thing I saw by the side of the road. I have no idea what it was once used for.

On I go with no shoulder. The road construction is never about a shoulder.

Parts of the road are so misty that you can not see over the cliff. You can hear the ocean but you can’t see it. All you can see is spaceless nothing like a chasm of void.

Today I climbed an easy hill. By easy, I mean that the grade was gradual but it did go up and up and eventually I was in the clouds!

This of course was followed inevitably by a downhill. One of the many terrific things about Hwy One is being able to see the road far ahead of me.

That does not mean however that you will know what you might encounter on this road. There are always surprises.

On the circular sandbar are sea lions basking and playing. It is very refreshing to watch animals play.

Here is marvelous evidence of humans at play. 1962 British Jag XKE

When I asked this guy if I could photo his car he said, “Definitely! That’s why I have it: so people can see and enjoy it!” I liked that.

More beauty until I arrived at Bodega Bay.

Those colors really were that vibrant in real life. And these.

There is hardly any new building on Hwy One except this one very exceptional house.

Seemed like the entire roof was solar panels. Now there’s a way to spend your money!
I make it to Bodega Bay and find there a spattering of folk I have met from other camps. Here are some.

Sorry that’s so misty. See if you can see the banjo in the front pannier of David’s bike. We meet up first in the pizza campground. I like him even before i knew about the banjo when he brought his camping stove over to the table. Someone said something about cooking and he said, “oh, to call what i do cooking would be a gross exaggeration”. He was super laid back and didn’t have a cell phone and it’s always a plus to have a banjo player at the hiker biker site. We are really like a gypsy camp. Most bikers are solo artists and we all come together around the dinner table comparing our trips and telling stories. People are all ages and from all parts of the world. The folks on the tandem are from Scotland and in their sixties. I met up with them three consecutive nights. I also met an older couple and a younger couple from the Netherlands. Banjo man said she talked about me on her blog but I can’t remember the name of her blog.
Here’s a cool Canadian guy who rode from Vermont to the west coast, up through Canada and was now going to end in San Francisco.

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I met up with Derek again at Bodega. He got his bike fixed but was going to end in SF instead of LA as he'd had enough.
Here's a better shot I hope of Daniels banjo.

After dinner and showers I go into my tent and read. It’s a wonderful end to a wonderful day.

It’s been five days since I’ve had electricity with Internet so I’ll remember what I can.
It

Basically, it’s beauty everywhere. Often I will stop to take a photo on one side of the road and realize that the view on the other side of the road is just as beautiful. I am no longer shooting as I ride. It is not possible as the roads are often bad and there is no shoulder

What made being able to shoot that last photo miraculous was that what’s represented in the image completed a full circle for me. Blue was the only color missing from the supportive cast of wildflowers growing freely by the side of the road. I had seen every shade of pink, red, yellow, orange, purple and now finally blue.
I didn’t photo them much as they were everywhere and to document it seemed overwhelming. It was not their image that was important (albeit it is always perfect and amazing as flowers are when examined) but their presence that had its effect on me.
They were there where they had no reason to be. They were like the artist and the art that doesn’t need to be seen and the art.

The other roadside gift are the abundance of blackberry bushes. If you had to, you could survive on them.

Also there are squeally pigs on the side of the road. Sorry this is so misty.

Getting to Guala was just riding through beauty without much happening.

When you start out at twelve, it’s just riding riding riding to make the sixty or sixty five in time for camp with light long enough.

Twenty fives out of Ft Bragg was the hardest climb I’ve ever had. It is the steepest slope in all of California. It was six quick switchbacks and I started walking by the third and near the top my cleats were slipping on the pavement as I tried to pull the weight of my bike with packs.
In the middle of hills that are hard I’ve started to take breaks. I sit down and eat something or I just look around me while watching my breath. They can be very special moments. Already what I am doing is stepping outside and this is stepping outside of stepping outside.
Also electricity is getting very sparse so I have my phone turned off and only turn it on for photos. It takes one and a half breaths for the thing to be ready to take a photo. Seems like an eternity.

About twenty miles out from camp there was Manchester with its one store
That had everything including these

Four different ones but I’ll spare you. This time over the hardware aisle. I met two young bikers at this store. They were going San francisco to Portland.

Thats going the direction Against the wind. I’ll just say in an oversimplified way, that the wind can mean everything. If its with you, uphill is easy. If its not with you, even downhill can be hard. Sometimes you can not tell on a slight grade whether it is uphill or downhill. I know that sounds weird but it’s true. You’d think you’d be able to tell visually but you can’t. Your eyes can see it either way. If you are next to a river, you can tell by that but usually there’s no river in view.

Finally I make it to Guala but it’s after seven and because this is a Sonoma County park, it sucks (a lot of them have closed even, like no funding in Sonoma for parks go figure) and the camp host is unavailable. The map tells me nothing and I bike around and can’t find the hike and bike Site but I do find a woman with a tiny tent and a bike so I join her. After I’m set up she comes out of her tent and tells that where we are is not the bike site and isn’t very friendly but not overtly unfriendly either and then she goes back in her tent. I just go to sleep with my book and she is gone in the morning by the time I get up and see lots of raccoon tracks all over my towel.

I left my hotel room at eleven which is as late as i legally could. It was because of the electrical outlet and the WiFi.
I met an older man as I was leaving there who told me to take “The Avenue of the Giants” as an alternate route to 101. River who has been texting me tips and suggestions from further down the road told me the same thing.

Before leaving town, I went to the bike store and got my chained cleaned and lubed (no charge, nice guy) and I got stronger sunscreen at Walgreens and a double shot latte at the Starbucks.

After that it was forty miles of beautiful scenery and small towns but no where for food so it was another day of trail mix and protein bars until six o’clock.

Avenue of the giants was pure magic. There is nothing like a 50,000 year old tree to keep your ego in line and your life in perspective.

Very weird thing was, most of the photos I took in the Redwoods had a big blot of light in them, so most of the redwood photos look like this

Maybe it’s dust, maybe it’s something else.

Also on the avenue, are wonderful little towns. Pepperwood with a population of fifty had two nice produce stands with vegetables from family yard gardens and a lady who made great bags out of animal food (horses and cattle and chickens) containers. Also it had a lovely bench. You see quite a few of these kind of benches in these parts.

Also on this road are roadside attractions like little rooms and even tiny houses built inside ONE HUGE TREE long ago. It’s really quite magical mystical like in a kind of corny but real way.

After a long day of riding I finally get to Garberville. I had heard about this town since the early 1980s when I had girlfriends who had girlfriends who grew Dope up there. It was sort of mythic in my mind and I was surprised to find it a two block town. It was however a very cool two blocks with Rastafarians and old hippies and cool youth. I had the best milk shake there I have ever had.

And my all time favorite

I traveled on with a salmon burger (so good) to go from Garberville and continued on the road to my state park. It got a bit scary because it was getting late (after seven) and foggy and I was hoping the Internet stuff I read was current as I passed a sign that said “save Richardson Grove Park”.
I made it there just before nightfall (that’s what I get for starting so late) and I finished the day at a hiker biker site in an old growth redwood grove. I was the only biker there!

I noticed when I paid my five bucks at the ranger entrance that the guy had colored pencils on the counter and asked him about that. His name was Thomas and he then proceeded toi show me every drawing in his sketch book and even left his station for a bit to go to his truck and show me his largest drawing which was on the back of park forms all scotch taped together. He had never taken an art course and simply drew what was in front of him. His stuff had a lot of atmosphere and he was nice to be around. He had a bit of what I’ll call tree presence. There was no hurry about him and his drawings took a lot of time.

I thought it was interesting how artists always seem to need their work to be seen by someone else and what would it be like if the act of just creating it was enough. ?

He (in his 20s) and I talked for so long that it was dark before I had my tent up and I never could find the showers.

The next morning when I tried to photo my site I had the same dust problem.

The campground host told me I could continue on the biker path to get to hwy one so I did. I thought it was going to be a small bike path but in fact it turned out to be a hiker trail through the words which was difficult for my bicycle. It got smaller and smaller and then my phone died and it was a little scary because I wasn’t sure exactly if I was going the right way and the path was getting smaller and smaller.
When I made it out of the path onto the road there was a sign that warned me about bears and mountain lions and wild elk. The sign said not to hike alone. Then the sign told you what to do step-by-step if you were attacked by a wild animal which basically was to stand up and fight for yourself as in try to scare it away.
Now on the road with the park signs I go to the rest area in the bathroom. I don’t stay in there long but when I get out there is a small herd of wild elk between me and the road.
That takes a while but eventually I slip by them and am on my way.

I forgot to say that when I woke up it was raining so I packed up my tent but in a very messy way. It was all covered with Pine needles and other stuff.
I have some random photographs from today but not a lot because it was rainy and cold and cold and rainy and misty and moisty. Therefore not so great for photographs.

I am in Humbolt county now and the county fair is going on so hotels are packed full and RV sites are hard to know about until you see them so I booked a hotel while I was in Eureka huddled by a fake fire in Starbucks. There are no campgrounds near here in Fortuna. I paid good money for a huge hotel room and I was very happy to be dry and warm. There was a fantastic health food store in Eureka where I stocked up and had a great meal in my room heated up by the microwave and all. I also showered my tent clean and set it up by the heater and dried it all out. I did laundry and got this blog up to date.

By the end of the day it got sunny but I was still grateful for this very nice hotel room. Yesterday was a seventy mile day. Today will be around sixty. I hope to go through Garberville and end up at Richardson Grove State Park biker site. It is supposed to have even more amazing redwoods.
Ah…

River leaves early as he’s on the home stretch and going 101 and now doing hundred mile days. We are going to get together in Berkeley and he wants to talk to Sa about colleges and help her be less stressful because he knows how horrible the process is!
When I leave Harris Beach for some reason Ido not manage to get breakfast in Brookings. I want a restaurant with WiFi and I can’t find one. Before I know it the town is over.

This place sold driftwood letters. In the next picture the wood spells out DRIFTWOOD.

Same thing food wise happened to me in Crescent City. My phone had died so I needed an outlet, preferably with WiFi. Therefore, I was in Starbucks researching when Allison from the biker campground pulls up. She is in her late twenties and going to SF solo like me. She tells me about Prairie Creek campground and we agree to meet there.
I went to the bike store to borrow a pedal wrench to change back into my cleats. The toe clips were not letting my feet be far enough forward on the pedals and I was getting bad knee pain in both knees and the climbs were harder so I changed back to cleats and am much happier.
Then I went to the hardware store to get a mat to sleep on as mine was now deflated all the way and I couldn’t find a restaurant that was right but I did stock up at the grocery stores as best I could.

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The roads in California are awful especially compared to Oregon. There is often just a tiny shoulder and sometimes none. What makes it worse is that the white line is bumpy to alert drivers if they go over it so as a biker you can't even ride the line but have to be in the lane if there's no shoulder.
On top of that there was major road construction going on and it was on the downside of the Klamath climb so it was really scary going down. I met up with Allison again there. The construction guys wanted us to wait till all the cars had gone before we got to go. After ten minutes of cars we just went. Later we met biker guys who were told to go ahead of all the. Cars!
After the big Klamath climb and construction, I took Drury Scenic route. It was out of this world insanely beautiful. The redwood trees surrounded me and I felt like I was in a different time zone.
Some of those trees are hundreds of thousands of years old!!! Check it out in Wikipedia if you don't believe me.

In front of a tree twelve feet in diameter it’s just impossible to understand on any level. I just kept thinking “Oh my God” and that was about it.

It was freezing cold by the end of the day going through the redwoods. It had been cold and cloudy all day but by night fall it was the shivering kind. Coming through the tress at dusk was magical beyond belief.

When I got to the biker campground, there were four other guys from Harris beach already there. I joined up at their picnic table. Two of the guys were Canadian. One of them started on the East coast. Everyone’s destination was San Francisco.
We were all sorry to be out of Oregon with the road shoulders, espresso stands and free camp showers. My food was crappy next to theirs as they all had camping stoves but I was OK with a sorry dinner because what I was really looking forward to was a warm shower. However when I took my shower there was no warm water and I felt like I was in Guatemala. I got over it quickly and was happy to snuggle up in my sleeping bag in my tent with my book even though my new mat was not very comfortable. What can you expect from $12 at hardware store?

Well, as I was taking this photograph…

Just outside the restaurant where I was writing, this guy slides up

Enter River. How cool is he? He’s just (as in June) graduated from Cornell and has biked from Cornell (complete with tassel from graduation cap swinging from pannier) to the west coast and now down the west coast to Berkeley. Where did he go to high school? The infamous Berkeley High like my kids! Long story short, it was exit Derek enter River (his given name was Anthony). He tells me about this cool camp site and we agree to meet there that night and share costs before he goes into the restaurant for breakfast and I, tummy full, ride on.

After a mornings ride, just as I was taking this photo again River slides up. And I get the ding-dong doorbell sound of a text arriving.

We are just outside of the seaside town Gold Beach and River asks if I’d like to lunch together and I say yes. He consults Yelp and decides that the port harbor cafe has about the amount we want to eat at the price we want to pay so we go there. It’s a great family place on the water. In there I remember the text and it’s Derek in the same town at Subway. I tell him where we are but I know he wants to do fast food as he is going for a hundred mile day to make it to Crescent City because he wants to get to California today. I feel no such urgency so we don’t connect.
After lunch, River and I again agree to meet at Harris Beach, Oregon state park just outside Brookings, OR. He goes on ahead and I bike along stopping now and then to photo.

And here’s a photo of my best friend Silver

These next two photos were taken from the highest bridge in Oregon.

I made it to Harris Beach where I went to the

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River in his extraordinary cool Yelpishness ordered a pizza to be delivered to our campsite!!! We shared it with this biker named Greg from Alaska.

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The whole biker camp was cool. There were thirty bikers there. Lots of us going alone but hooking up with each other. There was a lot of comparing gear, maps and touring strategies. It was fun. Lots of folks were going alone to SF.
Here’s a shot of packing up camp in the morning.