We were up at 6, on the road by 7 and in a full body sweat climbing in the early morning sun by 8.

The manager at the Bennow campsite outside Garberville told us there were no hills between here and Leggitt but when we met the hills, we realized he probably never leaves Benbowland.

We reach “Confusion Hill” when it opens by 9. It is like “Mystery Spot” near Santa Cruz where gravity and magnetism operate differently. I love these kinds of places. I think there are 9 or 11 in the USA.

We have a lot of fun there and then move on.

The blue wildflowers are by far my favorite ones of the many on the side of the road. Something seems so special about them. They have an otherworldly quality to them even though they are quite natural.

The road itself also can be beautiful.

We are trying to make it to Leggitt well before the southbound bus gets there at 12:20. It stops at a very cool place called “The Peg House” which is a store/restaurant/music event center. It has an old cop car covered with counter culture stickers out front.

Peg House is owned by Gary and his wife. I met Gary when I biked alone Seattle to Oakland last summer and I knew he was a supercool guy. I called from the campsite last night and asked him if we could leave our bikes with him while we took the bus to Oakland and come back later for the bikes. He said “sure” in his easy friendly way.

We get our lunch and are chatting with Gary as we eat on his picnic tables out back. He (man of a million hats) also happens to be a UHaul dealer. He offers us a brand new (4,000 miles with clean car smell) truck to drive back. A new UHaul! I’ve rented plenty a UHaul in my day but never anything remotely new.

It would be more expensive than the bus but not by much and then we could still be on OUR road trip, with much more flexibility and make it in much less time than the 7 hours the bus was going to take. Plus we needn’t return for the bikes. We took him up on his offer.

Just as we were loading in the bikes, we met these guys who approached us and asked, “Hey, are you guys from San Francisco!?”

They recognized the jersey I got Noah from Box Dog Bikes, a super cool bike collective at 15th and Guerrero in SF. They were from another cool bike store at 14th and Church in SF. 3 blocks away! Both shirts are sponsered by “Four Barrel Coffee” on Valencia between 14th and 15th which is the best coffee shop in SF and thats saying a lot.

We chatted and shared stories. They told us about this crazy bike messenger race from coast to coast. They were super nice and invited us to join their rides when we got back. They were doing the big steep hills in SF! We explained we were not in that league but thanks for thinking we were.

Noah and I did 609 miles in 12 days (counting Utah) and we felt very happy about that as we got into our squeaky clean UHaul.

Leggitt is where Hwy 101 and Hwy 1 meet. Instead of going 101 south immediately we drove over the hill to coastal 101 as was our bike plan. I wanted to show Noah the ride. I did it last summer and Noah never wants to do it. It is (this is a fact, not my opinion) the steepest public road climb and the twistiest road in all of California. It is gruesomely hard and merciless.

When we drove it, we passed 14 cyclists crawling diligently up. When you are on the bike, you only see cyclists now and then but in the car, you see many.

We are extremely grateful to have been two of them for a short while. When you read this I know it all sounds like just plain hard work but what it really is, is wonderful as in full of wonder.

Amazement at what you can accomplish if you try. Deep appreciation for the kindness and connection with strangers. Marvel as marvelous at the overwhelming abundance of beauty in nature.

There is a simplicity and satisfaction of doing a bare bones basic trip like this that can’t be put into words.

We got back to Oakland before nightfall. Everything seems like unnecessary extra and a bit too precious here but I know it won’t by day after tomorrow. Noah is already out with his friends and I am looking forward to being back in the studio and making art.

Whatever that is.

Thanks for reading this blog.

Tomorrow is July 22. The day we were supposed to fly back from Denver in our original trip plan. Noah only wanted to do two weeks.

It is lunchtime and we are at Myers flat which is nearing the end of the Giant’s avenue.

Noah would like to go home tomorrow. If we do 70 miles today we can get to Leggett tonight and maybe catch a bus out of Ft Bragg (another 45 miles) tomorrow.

We start out early.

Avenue of the Giants is as wonderful as I remember from biking it last summer. As soon as we are in those trees we both feel a timelessness that is palatable and relieving.

We also enjoy eating blackberries at the side of the road which are plentiful. As soon as you say “ok I’ve had enough” you spy a cluster that looks like it will taste even better. It’s hard to stop.

There is an enormous and varied amount of wood carvings on living and dead trees.

There are all kinds of redwood attractions. There’s the immortal tree and the eternal tree and the 1200 year old tree and the tree you can drive through ( very old and still producing greenery) and the tree with the small house in it etc.

Of course there is also the dead tree.

There is one good thing about a giant heavy logging truck passing you on a road with very little shoulder which is you get a big burst of wind pushing you along for a moment.

Mostly, thank goodness, there are wild trees.

After we got out of the avenue, we started climbing in a big way. We were prepared for it in that we knew about it and were clearly no stranger to the long 7% grade hill into Garberville. It didn’t sound like it would be as bad as the Klamath climbs.

What we didn’t expect was how hot it was going to be.

We took this photo on the mileage counter machine on Noah’s bike at 4:45 pm. We had forgotten about it earlier and kept trying to get the temperature on our iPhones but they kept having the “alarm too hot!” sign and we couldn’t get them to operate.

When we pulled into Garberville we were completely beat and then I got stung by a yellow jacket. I am allergic to them and so I got all swelled up. It was 98 degrees in the shade at 6 pm so we decided to get to the nearest campground which was 3 miles away with wifi showers a pool and a hot tub.

I was thrilled to finally wear my new bathing suit in the cool pool even with my balloon like right shoulder.

Garberville is a town made from marijuana money of the early Humbolt farms. It is a strange place. I loved the impulse item at the register of the large chain grocery store. Very fine pruning shears.

Whoops I forgot to mention that when Noah and I were melting on the climb and the phones were burning up, we had a moment of clarity and ditched our bikes

And scrambled down the mountain side to the South fork of the Eel river below. By the time we scrambled up again we were almost dry!

All around this town and some others are these.

We couldn’t get into the rodeo because they wouldn’t accept credit cards and we ran out of cash many days ago.

The crowd outside the rodeo was very interesting however and we hung around for a while at the carnival watching the crowd have fun.

I also thought this traveling ministries church in a truck was interesting.

The “church” was next to the “free fallin’ ride.

Eventually we left and went to a Mexican restaurant for dinner which felt like home.

Today we met Zeke Gerwein. He stopped where we stopped. He is going the other way. I noticed his water bottle was from “Missing Link” in Berkeley! He is going to King middle school.

He looks like Harry Potter. Small, brown hair. Brown eyes with crooked glasses. He is riding the entire west coast of the USA, from the Mexican birder to Canada, raising money for Sierra club!
Different adults are riding with him during different parts of the trip. He even road the lost coast!!! North of Ft Bragg which is impossible! 20% grades on dirt roads!! Wow!

His blog is on the site “crazyguyona bike.com” his individual blog is “headwinds’R’us”. We met him with his dad who had been with him since Gualala. They were carrying more than twice the gear we were and riding mountain bikes.

They gave us a few tips of scenic roads as alternatives to hwy 101. We followed their suggestion. Once I got off and walked because on county roads the grade can be 20% whereas the state roads are 6.5 to 7 % max. We only did 50 miles today. It was tiring though because the winds were against us. I figured because they were with Zeke and so be it. Also we had lots of hills and cold wet weather all day. I was beat when we got to Trinidad, a town of 311 people.

We saw some elk but the were hiding in the talk grass between us and the ocean.

We saw goats and cows too.

At one point there was a random giantic chain fence by the road. It was beautiful in its way even though it prevented nothing from getting in or out as it was only thirty feet long out if nowhere.

Trinidad was full due to a kayak fishing competition . Folks had come from all over to see who could catch the most fish while kayaking from A to B. I wanted to stay at this Emerald place.

It looked very nice and was next door to this other place which I though looked interesting but Noah didn’t.

When I got to the office the sign said it was full. Noah said there’s no hope. I said I can’t go any further; they have land and I have a tent and money it will work out.

Cody, the cool young fellow at the desk said he always saves one tent site for the saddest story and we were it!
Yahoo! We got the site, set up and fell asleep quickly.