Sorry about the long delay in updating my blog. Last Tuesday on July 13th I had an unfortunate accident. I’m going to go ahead and give everyone some detail online about the ordeal since I figure you’ll be curious.
First, my trip was ended by the accident. Second, I’m ok now. Third, I’m in the comfort of my home at this point. Now that that’s done with, here’s some information for you all. There’s a large portion of Highway 1 up in Northern California that has real inadequate (often flat out nonexistent) shoulders to ride on. That means that us cyclists have to ride right on the road with the cars. To add to the difficulty, oftentimes you have a straight drop off to the ocean or a big hill to fall off of to your right hand side when going southbound. Now most drivers understand that the road is shared with cyclists and move over to the other lane when there’s no oncoming traffic or at least move a few inches to their left even when there is some oncoming traffic. Sadly, some drivers think they own the road and refuse to move (or even hug the right side of the road), thus crowding you off of the road. This isn’t so bad if you’re passing farmland or at least some sort of property on your right, you just lose a little bit of balance and sometimes end up braking into some bushes or grass; no big deal.
On the day of the accident, I had a truck refuse to give up any road, I had a drop off down a hill on my right hand side, and I had a pot hole-ish drop right in front of me filled with some rock. I didn’t get to my brakes in time, I couldn’t go left or right, so I took the hit into the hole. It’s hard to remember exactly what happened (I didn’t knock out or anything, it just happened so fast), but basically I went over the handlebars and slid several feet in front of my bicycle. The right handlebar went down hard enough to bend it pretty severely and I think that my left handlebar must have gone into my lower abdomen. I didn’t/don’t have any major wounds on the outside of my body, so after some yelling on the ground and some clean up courtesy of a gentleman that saw me and stopped to offer me access to his medical kit, I got up and checked out my bike. The gears seemed to work alright, so I thought I would be able to ride the 9 miles into the town of Elk. Turns out I was wrong. I made it about a mile, but the pain in my left side was getting worse and I couldn’t keep the bike straight.
I got off and hitched a ride to Elk. I’ll skip the happenings in Elk since it was an odd ordeal, and eventually ended up 30 miles back north at a hospital near Fort Bragg. I was admitted there and given some wonderful pain medicine after a little while. After a scan, it turned out that I had a minor spleen injury and a severe kidney injury. They didn’t have surgeons there that could handle that type of surgery, so they needed to transfer me to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. (again skipping some info) Bottom line is that I got a ride in a helicopter to that hospital and spent a few days there. I was lucky enough to avoid surgery and just had to endure some pain for a while. I’m feeling better now and will just have to wait a few months to heal up properly.
Final Note: I don’t know when I’ll be able to finish the trip, but I will finish it and update this site whenever that time comes.
-Chris
The book we’re using lied to us, it was a 42 mile ride instead of a 39 mile ride. First thing in the morning we reached Highway 1 and finished off Leggett Hill. Taka beat me to the top and when I got to the peak I found him in a smoking circle with some guys on Harleys. Two of them were from Canada and another guy was from San Diego. The guy from San Diego had a military issue bag on his bike and looked like he could crush both me and Taka without exerting much energy; real nice guy though.
We had a fantastic descent down the 2000 ft hill before we started the climb up Rockport Hill. Although Rockport was only a 690 ft climb, I think it was the harder of the two. The grade on that hill was 7% and just beat me down. By the time we made it past Rockport (about 25 miles into the day) I was pretty tired. From then on it was small peak after small peak. After about 15 of those small peaks your energy starts draining pretty quick. The scenery was actually really nice after the Rockport hill though, lots of jagged sea stacks and a real rough looking coast. Highway 1 seems to be lacking in the shoulder area, we had basically no shoulder all day today. The last 10 miles of the day actually got pretty hairy, had some trucks and cars come way to close to me and I just ran my bike into some bushes to get the heck out of the way. Problem is that some of the corners turn so sharply and some of the hill tops roll so steeply that cars can’t tell if there is oncoming traffic coming in the other lane, so they just stick to their lane and push the boundary of my cycling space. Also, the road next to us tended to drop off pretty steeply today, so I was extra careful around those edges.
Either way, the coastline really was beautiful today and the ride is done now. The highest hill of the trip is done and we’re only 3 days of riding from San Francisco. When we got to camp, the older guy from last night was the only other person here (still is). Turns out his name is Neil, he lives in Redlands, and has endless numbers of stories ranging from his work to his travels. He must be in his 60s but the guy is an impressive cyclist. It looked like he drank a 6 pack last night before he went to sleep, but he was out of the camp by 7am and probably arrived at this campsite by 1pm. I’ve been talking to the guy for several hours now and he’s probably the most interesting person I’ve met the whole trip (and he’s pretty hilarious).
Tomorrow is supposed to be a 43 mile continuation of the peaks and lows we experienced at the end of today. According to Neil (who’s ridden it before), it may be the hardest day of the trip other than the ride into Half Moon Bay and Big Sur. However, we’ll be taking a rest day after tomorrow, so I’m looking forward to it.
-Chris
Rode a hard 48 miles today. We started off the morning with a 11 mile ride into Miranda for a great breakfast. We had only planned on doing 4 miles before breakfast into a town called Myers Flat, but they had nothing. We had planned to meet Moses in Garberville to watch the World Cup Final, so we rolled into the city at about 12:15pm as the day was really heating up. By the time we got to the bar/café Taka looked like he was about to go down with heat stroke and I wasn’t fairing too well myself. We watched the game (Go Spain!!!!) and hung around until about 3:30 in the afternoon waiting for the heat to settle down a bit. We had about 24 miles to go from Garberville, and it was the hardest 24 miles of our trip. I don’t know how much of the difficulty arose from the terrain and how much came from the heat. Doesn’t really matter, it was tough nonetheless. Taka led the way from Garberville until we got to Standish-Hickey State Recreation Area where we’re camping tonight. This park is pretty cool; has lakes for swimming and plenty of trails for hiking, but the mosquitoes here are awful. As a matter of fact, the mosquitoes last night at the Burlington Campground were pretty awful too. My head got bit up so bad that I look like I have a horrible rash on my forehead.
We’re camping at about 1000 ft elevation tonight and will complete Leggitt Hill tomorrow morning (2000 ft elevation). Once that is done, we’ll have climbed the tallest hill of the trip. The day tomorrow is short (39 miles), but it definitely doesn’t look easy. We’ve got the massive hill in the morning and then another pretty large one right after before we finish out the day jumping from small hill to small hill.
There’s three of us at the hiker/biker site tonight; Taka/me, Moses, and another older guy that we haven’t met yet. Hopefully we’ll have some signal for our internet tomorrow so that I can update the website.
-Chris
Miles Today: 53. We’re deep into the Redwoods today/tonight. It’s pretty nice being completely surrounded by redwoods for miles in every direction. Good news today… we caught up to Old Man New Zealand! He was checking into the campground as we rode in (Burlington Campground in Humboldt County). We had planned on staying at the Marine Garden Grove hiker/biker site, but it was closed down when we got there. It had a sign posted telling us to come to this campsite 1.6 miles south. Luckily, we got here pretty quickly today, so it wasn’t a big deal.
There are two new cyclists here tonight (by new I mean that we haven’t met them before). One of the guys is by himself with a cool hammock setup, but didn’t seem like he wanted to chat. The other is here camping in the same area as us, his name is Moses. He has the exact same trailer, camelbak backpack, and sleeping bag as me; go figure. Apparently he had heard of us from some of the other cyclists. He said that they told him about two guys that are cycling down the coast fueling themselves with McDonalds and sandwiches. I would have them know that we ate some Mexican tacos today, the variety is great.
It’s nice running into different cyclists. Moses was telling me that there are two real young guys from Guadalajara, Mexico that are cycling down the coast as well. They started in Alaska and are doing about 90 miles per day. They sound pretty hardcore. Apparently he witnessed them riding downhill at about 40 mph with their hands up in the air off their bikes and also saw one of them juggling their helmet and some apples while riding as well. I can’t even imagine that. The bicycle feels unstable enough for me going 30 mph down a hill with my trailer.
That’s pretty much it for today. Nice ride all around without too many steep hills.
-Chris
We caught up on mileage today, did 62 miles instead of 46. Took some Advil for my knee and it worked like a charm, didn’t bug me at all today. We started off the morning with a 900 foot hill (went up it like pros). Only had about 4 other hills of any notable size the rest of the day. We stopped for lunch at the 44 mile mark at the Catch Café (aka Hippie Café). The food was absolutely delicious. I had a philly cheese steak and Taka had a turkey sub with homemade gravy. I’m at the point where it doesn’t really matter what I eat, as long as I eat something. Heavy foods don’t really slow me down anymore, just as long as I don’t eat too much. We’ve started eating really big breakfasts because we tend to have great cycling days when we do.
The only other thing from today of note is that the 101 officially turned into a freeway today. Meaning that the speed limit for cars went up along with the traffic. Good thing is that the shoulder is consistently adequate now (at least it was today). Bad news is the number of freeway exits/entrances that we have to pass. Crossing freeway onramps/off ramps going 10mph on a bicycle with cars and trucks coming at you going 70mph will put the fear of God in you; it’s pretty nasty business.
Side Note: Remembered some stuff looking at the pictures I’m uploading right now. We rode the first 30 miles or so (before the freeway) through some pretty awesome redwoods forest. Nice scenery to look at when there’s a lull in traffic or when we stop for a quick rest. Also, we’ve been riding through some fog the past few days. Luckily it hasn’t been too heavy on us, but there’s just enough of it to look really cool over the ocean and in the hills.
-Chris
California… knows how to party. California…. knows how to paaarrtttyyy. Got to California today! I know that California is crazy big, but it still feels great to have done two states. Of course, California couldn’t just give us a regular greeting; it gave us a gangsta greet. It pulled us in for a hug with 20 miles of the most level roads we’ve had our entire trip. Then when it had us close and comfortable… ka-kat! Stab in the side with the biggest hills we’ve done yet, 1100 ft elevation (Crescent City Hills).
We took it pretty easy today, only 42 miles. We were supposed to do 62, but we were too relaxed from the rest day. That and the fact that my right knee really started bothering me prompted us to stop right after the Trees of Mystery (where they had a giant Paul Bunyan and Babe).
On another note, we ran into 4 of the cyclists we’ve been seeing pretty often at the camp sites. We ran into Naomi and Andrew right at the California border and then Megan/Moira passed us about 5 miles into California.
-Chris
Feels good to be in the home state!
We did absolutely nothing last night and today. It was great.
List of movies that I watched in the last 30 hours:
Count of Monte Cristo
Lord of the Rings: Two Towers
Harry Potter: The Sorcerer’s Stone
Cliffhanger
U.S. Marshalls
Went to eat at a restaurant for lunch; watched the Germany vs. Spain World Cup semifinal game. Life is good.
-Chris
Last night we got some much needed sleep in, but we woke up as tired as ever. As I wrote about last night, we’ve been upping our mileage this whole week (today we rode about 54 miles). I swear the only thing that got us moving in the morning was knowing that we are taking a rest day tomorrow. The morning started off rough again coming out of Humbug Mountain. We never really got a stretch of level road today, but it did get better for a while. We stopped for lunch at Gold Beach, but had Cape Sebastian right afterwards and the hills didn’t stop for the rest of the day. I told Taka I would make sure to mention the headwinds we got today as well. We really did have some nasty wind against us for the better part of the day. The wind pushed us back and sideways, and was extremely cold on top of that. It makes riding pretty uncomfortable not only because of the extra work involved, but because you can never settle into a comfortable temperature. When you’re going uphill in the sunlight you’re burning hot, and when you’re flying downhill in the shade you’re freezing.
In spite of the terrain and temperatures, we did have some great scenery today. It’s hard to get tired of the sea stacks and rugged profile of the cliffs along the Oregon coast. I don’t stop and take pictures all the time because when we’re moving well we just don’t want to break our momentum. Also, the pictures just don’t do the view any justice.
We’re in Brookings now, staying at Hannah’s grandparent’s place. They were nice enough to offer their home to us and we’re incredibly grateful for it. I can’t tell you all how nice it is to stay inside a warm house for the night. We are going to take a rest day here tomorrow as well in order to let our bodies heal up a bit. We are less than 10 miles from the California border and want to start the state on a good note when we do get moving again.
-Chris
We rode 60 miles today from Sunset Beach State Park to Humbug Mountain State Park. The first 13 miles were pretty rough, but after that the terrain turned into hills we can manage pretty well now. We got a late start this morning (about 11am). Most likely because we were up pretty late again chatting around the campfire (this time with Megan and Moira). Again it was really great having some other cyclists around to talk to and swap stories with. The hiker/biker camp was in a bog last night and I got eaten up by mosquitoes, but the fire was nice and the conversation was good. Tonight we got a regular campsite since we needed to recharge our electronics. Either way, I don’t think there is anyone in the hiker/biker camp over here. Everyone that we’ve come across is now behind us, I’m assuming they’ll catch up to us in the next few days. I’m pretty proud of what Taka and I have done these last few days. We have ridden over 50 miles for the last two days and then broke the 60 mile mark today. Again we’re tired, but we know that we can keep going.
Before I left for this trip, I was excited about being out in nature for so long, about getting back into shape, about all the scenery I was going to get to take in, and about all the people I would come across. I knew that cycling so many miles day in and day out would be tiring physically and mentally, but you can never prepare yourself without actually doing it. For the past couple of weeks the nature surrounding me and the people I’ve been meeting have been great, but there has always been a persistent thought in the back of my mind that we were in a rush to get to our next camping spot. We’re probably the slowest cyclists out of anyone that we’ve met, so we’ve been working double-time to cover the terrain every day. It wasn’t about competing with the others; most of them have clearly been cycling for years and are just in better shape. It’s about moving at the pace that I want to move at. If I take a low mileage day, I want it to be because I decided to take that quick day and enjoy the scenery, not because I couldn’t manage to finish the day out.
I’m mentioning this because as I wrote earlier, we started late today, but we finished with plenty of sunlight left and covered the most distance we’ve done the entire trip thus far. The terrain may not have been the worst today, but it certainly wasn’t level either. After about 40 miles into today’s ride, we returned to a sea stack lined coast and I was really able to enjoy it the way I envisioned enjoying it before I left for this ride. I’m sitting outside in Mount Humbug State Park, it’s cold and windy, but I really am enjoying it instead of wondering how much sleep I need to recover properly for tomorrow. In other words, I feel like I’m finally getting into the groove of the trip I wanted and I’m soaking it in right now.
On another note, today was Taka’s birthday. We didn’t pass any major cities today, so we were unable to get a proper meal or anything to celebrate. Hopefully we will find something tomorrow night in Brookings.
-Chris
It’s the Fourth of July weekend and campgrounds have been full since Friday night. Luckily, they never turn away hiker/bikers over here and we haven’t had any problems getting a place to camp. Last night at Jessie M. Honeyman Memorial State Park it was like a reunion of all the cyclists I’ve come across on the road (minus the folks from Lake Sylvia State Park). The group of three guys from Potlatch State Park, Old Man New Zealand (name that we’ve given this guy), and the couple we’ve camped with a few times (Andrew and Naomi) were all there. Also, we met a new set of cyclists, Megan and Moira. I spent the entire evening just talking to everyone, sharing stories and getting background information about each other. Most everyone that was there last night (if not all of them) are ending their trip in San Francisco. I don’t know why they decided to make that their end point and not the border, I’ll have to ask them another night that I come across them. Taka was up for a good while as well, but he ended up going to sleep before we all sat around the campfire.
The group of three guys ended up being from Ireland. They were pretty chill guys that have spent a good amount of time cycling and other random trips. Two of them climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro a few years back apparently, which I found pretty cool. All of the younger people that are doing this are just finishing some sort of school. Megan and Moira just received their bachelor’s degree and Moira is applying for medical school and John (one of the Irish guys) just finished up his phd (I didn’t ask in what field).
It was really great to finally sit around and chat with all of these people that I have come across while cycling down the coast and find out their stories. Most everyone from the packed hiker/biker site last night ended up taking a rest day today at the campground. It would have been a great day to hang out; the sand dunes, dune buggies, beach, and fireworks would have been great, but we had just taken a rest day the day before so we decided to keep moving. The only people here at camp with us tonight are Megan and Moira (who are taking a rest day here tomorrow). This campsite isn’t going to have any fireworks and I don’t have phone/internet reception, but I’m only 2 days of riding away from the California border!
As for today we’re at Sunset Beach State Park. The scenery today while riding was pretty dull compared to the other days we’ve been riding, so no pictures. The terrain was pretty hilly when we started the day (so we started pretty slow), but as the terrain leveled out (comparatively speaking) we went at about 15/16 mph for over an hour which was a relief.
Side Note: We finally used our stove this morning and so I’m going to drink hot chocolate tonight (I’m happier than you would think about that).
