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Our goal was to ride 65 miles to Bodega Dunes State Park, so we got a fairly early start and were out of the campground around 8am. As soon as we hit the road we realized that we were dealing with some pretty strong northern winds that dropped the temperature consistently into the 40s most of the day. When I got some cell reception I checked my phone and we had 12-17mph winds going against us. Essentially this meant that flat roads felt like we were going uphill and the uphills were miserable. I took plenty of breaks and we stopped early for lunch in the town of Galala about 20 miles into the day. Even with a decent lunch, I was running out of steam around the 30 mile mark. We pushed through the wind for another 6 miles before I had to take a long break and decided that we would stay at a closer campground. As a side note, Isaac is doing great and moves along a heck of a lot better than I do (who would’ve known that it pays off to be younger and in good shape). We kept moving along the highway and the winds seemed to die down a bit, but unfortunately my body was already spent from fighting it all day, so we still stopped early.  Our plan was to go to Stillwater Cove State Park, but we stopped at a restaurant in Ocean Cove so we wouldn’t have to cook anything tonight and they had free Wi-Fi. Once we connected, we looked up Stillwater Cove State Park and their site said that they had found E. Coli in their well water, so it was no longer potable.  So instead, we stopped at the 42 mile mark at a private campground in Ocean Cove with some hot showers (outdoor) and an amazing ocean view (about 1.4 miles from the Stillwater park).

We haven’t set our route for tomorrow, but if we go to the originally planned campground then it would be a 25 mile day, so we’re going to see if there’s another viable campground a little further on.

All-in-all the wind made today absolutely miserable and brought me to exhaustion, but I guess that’s what makes these trips worth doing. Some days just bring you to your max and you learn when to push on or readjust. Looking forward to some early rest tonight and a fresh day tomorrow.

-Chris

Not many pictures from the day because the wind was so frustrating.

Quick story before I start the main update. Isaac woke up this morning and told me that in the middle of the night he woke up with something poking him from under this sleeping pad. He was asleep, so after checking it out he figured that maybe it was part of a dream. A bit later, he wakes up again with something poking him from under his sleeping pad, so he starts punching down into the ground and all around the tent. This morning, he packs up his tent and sees that a groundhog had a hole there and was trying to get out in the middle of the night. I laughed about this all day.

On to the day’s events. We woke up around 6am, packed up, and headed to a Denny’s we had seen on the way in yesterday to plan our day.  After a good meal we headed out to do today’s 42 mile trip. I was a little nervous because of the accident from years ago and from Neil telling me that in his opinion it was the hardest day of the trip (see 3 posts ago if you need a reference point, but we made it! When I passed the town of Elk where I was first driven to after the accident I took some pictures and we got some rest there. After that we started what my Bicyling the Pacific Coast book referred to as the steepest hill on the trip. Unfortunately since I haven’t been cycling hills for the past 13 years I ended up having to walk my bike after a bit (wasn’t going to make it anyways, but started cramping too). Isaac looked like he was going to make it, but on the steepest part of the incline his bicycle chain broke apart. Luckily he brought some equipment that he was able to fix it with, but he’ll probably need to buy a new chain the next chance he gets. After the fix, he walked the rest with me to avoid breaking it again. The rest of the day was still hilly, but doable; even though I had to stop 2 more times because of cramps.  I tried to ride through them, but they wouldn’t go away until I stopped and stretched out my legs.

Luckily we were only about 12 miles from the campsite when the cramps started, so we still made it in decent time to a nearby KOA campground.  The state park around here didn’t have any showers and this one had endless hot showers… so it was an easy choice. At this point we have some food in us and our tents are setup for the night. I’m going to go to bed early to get some rest and hopefully the cramping doesn’t mess me up tomorrow. We have a 65 mile day through a lot of the same terrain. I’m sure my body will get used to it, but it’ll just take a few days.

-Chris

Today we drove to Fort Bragg using a rental car with a trunk-mounted bicycle carrier that I found on OfferUp for $30. I was dead tired in the morning because I only slept about 2 hours (stayed up to setup this blog… so you’re welcome), so Isaac had to take over driving for a couple of hours. We left Long Beach a little after 5am and all-in-all it took us about 9 and a half hours to get to the Enterprise to drop off the car. Actually, to be exact we drove it a nearby Starbucks, unloaded our bikes/equipment, dumped the bike rack next to a dumpster, and then dropped off the car. Afterwards, we rode 4.8 miles to MacKerricher State Park and set up camp in a fairly cramped hiker/biker site. The coast up here is beautiful, but we drove past what’s going to be the first 15-20 miles of our trip tomorrow and it was a stark reminder of how rough the road is.  There is hardly any shoulder for a large part of the ride and the winding roads make it so that cars don’t always see you as they round the corners. Regardless, I’m looking forward to getting through the 42 miles and officially seeing some new parts of the pacific coast.

I packed some food in order to see if I can fuel myself better this time, but turns out that just makes my pack heavier and bulkier.  So I guess it worked, because I’ll be eating nothing but things in my pack until I lighten it up and free up some space.

Reception is pretty bad here so I won’t be able to upload this tonight, but I look forward to updating everyone tomorrow.

-Chris

I wrote this out about a week after I got into an accident on this trip back in 2010:

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July 19, 2010

Sorry about the long delay in updating my blog. Last Tuesday on July 13^th 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 (any I think he hit my bike), 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. 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 or two, 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 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

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So now we’re up to speed. I’m starting the trip tomorrow May 12, 2023 with my brother-in-law Isaac (I’m married now). We’re driving up to camp at MacKerricher State park (where I camped the night before my accident) and will start cycling down the coast again the morning of May 13, 2023.

Like I said, I’m married now with three kids – Amelia, Vince, and Jacob – so taking this trip is a big sacrifice in time and emotion for my family. I hesitated to complete this trip because of how it ended last time, but it is definitely something I feel the need to finish. I’m looking forward to reaching the Mexican border and sharing my experiences with my family and friends.

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

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