A little bit of everything...

There is no one word, phrase, or even feeling I can use to describe this week. It has been a roller coaster of extremes in mood, luck and conditions, but one thing is for certain, I love bicycle touring!

Dinner from our hosts in San Francisco! 

My fully loaded bike, ready for touring

Stairs up from the BART

Our adventure began perfectly. I met Quinn, my friend from the Ecuador semester, in Berkeley on Sunday, and we stayed with relatives of one of my teachers in San Francisco. They treated us to an amazing meal, tour of the town, ice cream, showers, and cozy beds, not to mention overflowing kindness and hospitality. Their home is across the street from the Golden Gate State Park, the exact location of the beginning of our route. It couldn't have been a better way to begin our travels, and though I did leave my phone at the post office the morning that we left, there were no great disasters our first day.

In fact, we made it thirty five or so miles South, just past Half Moon Bay, with no trouble at all. We found a secluded area off of Highway 1 to set up camp in, and made a delicious dinner and even had an hour or so to hang out before squishing ourselves into the tiny tent I brought. Sleeping two people in a one-person tent doesn't work particularly well. Only one person can lie flat on their back, and every time some one moves, the other gets woken up. But we managed to get some sleep.

Stealth camping...sshhh

By 7:00 the next morning, we were back on the road. We biked a few miles before pulling off to cook breakfast, oatmeal of course. But even the most boring pot of oatmeal tastes exotic if you are watching the first rays of sunshine glide slowly inland across the foam capped waves, golden beaches and impressive cliffs of the California coast. By the bottom of the oatmeal pot, the light hit us, and we got back on our bikes. It rained some that day, and we got our first taste of what headwinds feel like, but given our early start, we were able to take a relaxed pace to Santa Cruz. We even stopped for lunch and I cooked up some chipotle-butter-noodles - delicious.

Tuesday night, we stayed with a friend of my mother's just outside of Santa Cruz. We were welcomed into their home and gratefully spent the night in warm beds. It was raining when we left the next morning, but it was a great day nonetheless. I am admittedly a bit too fond of bad weather in most people's opinions, but hear me out. If you start your day knowing that by the end of it, you are going to be hella wet and tired, possibly sore, hungry and frustrated, and maybe even miserable, then there's only one thing to do: enjoy it, laugh at it, have fun! Don't be miserable, because ultimately, the only thing making you miserable is yourself. Yeah, the rain might be driving into your eyes, and pelting, hard as hail, into your tired legs as you struggle to turn the pedals against the wind, but who's to say that if you're cold, wet and tired, you have to miserable? And besides, the rain is absolutely necessary in this area.

We had a wet, rainy day from Santa Cruz to Carmel, but we were blessed to be able to stay with a young man and his mother from Warm Showers who were superb guests. I called the guy at noon as we sat in the shelter of a supermarket, stuffing down Skippy peanut butter, bread and Monterey Jack cheese and watching the rain. He immediately offered us a place to stay. When we arrived at 6:00 that evening, his mother gave us hot chicken soup and rice and we both took hot showers and washed and dried all our dirty, wet clothes. After a wonderful evening talking with the guy's mother, we slept long and deep and woke to a beautiful day.

Big Sur coast 

We were hoping to see the Monterey Bay Aquarium, but the weather was just too good to spend any amount of time indoors, so we set off from Carmel towards Big Sur. The area is stunning, waves crashing wildly into the jagged coastline and stirring up a white froth that seethes against the rocks. The sea turns from a deep blue to turquoise in the turmoil; not the Turquoise #153 you paint the baby room with, but a vibrant, living color no painter's pallet can emulate.

Quinn, my travelling companion.

All day, we biked through the sun and beauty. We stopped several times to watch the ocean, snack, and enjoy the ride, so it took us over four hours to bike 26.2 miles from Carmel to Big Sur, the same amount of time it took me to run a marathon last spring. But our slow pace is wonderful. As I get stronger, my days will probably lengthen and thirty to fifty miles a day won't seem like much, but for now, it is a good pace. It gives us time to enjoy the ride and allows our bodies to recover each evening.

Well, at least most evenings. Thursday was definitely not one of those evenings though. We actually set up camp early that day, ate dinner and everything, but at around nine o'clock, we decided to pack up and find a different place to stay. We were a little sketched out by the campground we were staying in, so we took down the tent, packed up our bags and biked a mile or so down the road and set up again.

I made the brilliant decision of trying to set up the tent with only the rain fly so that we could have more space. It worked wonderfully, that is, until the rain started. By midnight, rain was splattering our exposed feet and the wind was howling, nearly tearing down the tent. Luckily, the spot we'd found on the side of the road was much more protected than where our tent was set up a few hours earlier, but even with the extra tree cover, the night was brutal and most of our stuff was wet by morning.

A fresh snack from the market!

The next day, the weather only worsened. We biked eight miles to a tiny town consisting of a general store and an inn. Quinn's spirits weren't exactly high after the previous night's ordeal, so we sat around in the store for a while. The highway patrol officer and just about everyone else who came through was quick to tell us to hunker down for the day and wait out the storm, so when the girl who worked there offered to put us up for the night, we agreed to meet her at 2:00 in the park a few miles down the road after she was off work. Like proper biking bums, we chilled in the bathrooms for a couple hours while we waited, kinda gross, but at least it was dry.

At around 1:00, we received word that we weren't going to be able to spend the night with the girl from the general store. The weather had started to clear anyway, but Quinn's back was still hurting, so he asked for a ride from a young couple from the Czech Republic who were driving down the coast. They agreed to take us. Yes that's right, they offered to take two wet, dirty bikers and all their gear into their little camper van and drive us fifty miles south to Cambria. And what did I do? I decided I was going to bike fifty miles starting at 1:15 in the afternoon through the heart of the worst storm the area had seen in a long time. Yeah, I guess I am one of those crazies.

I've always been the annoying person who wants to run an extra suicide in basketball practice, but this was different. I left as the rain hit again, and as I battled the fierce headwinds, I howled with delight. I could feel the storm's power as it surged across the ocean and crashed against my pitiful little bike, and despite the fact that I was going against the storm, we were one; the rain that fell in sheets, obscuring the road in brief instances, the wind that nearly knocked me off my bike, and the ocean writhing joyfully below. The roads were no better, hilly and covered in rocks from the small avalanches that tumbled down the cliffs to my left every so often. But the thumbs ups and incredulous smiles from the folks that passed me kept me going.

It was an eight mile ride to Gorda, and I was sure I would need to set up camp there and bike on to meet Quinn the next morning. But the weather slowly made it's way north, passing me on it's way down the coast, and every time I thought I had to stop for sure, the sunshine in the distance baited me onward.

By five o'clock, I had caught up with the sunset, and biked along the beach listening to the sound of barking elephant seals and watching the baby seals galumph along the sand. There was even a rainbow, and though I still had twelve miles to go to get to Cambria, I was beginning to believe I might be able to make it. My knees were in agony and I was bone tired, but the riding was flat and there was a good shoulder.

The Sea...

When I finally got back into cell service, I called Quinn, and he assured me that I was close. He had rented us a cheap hotel room for the night, and when I stumbled in at six thirty, the hot shower was heavenly. Needless to say, I slept well that night, but when I rose the next morning, things weren't looking too great. My knees were still in shambles, and when I headed out to go to the library, I cringed with pain at every turn off the pedal. The thirteen miles from the hotel to the library in Cayucos should have been the easiest day of the week, but my aching knees wouldn't let me do anything more than a crawl in the lowest gears. Our amazing Warm Showers host kindly picked me up in Cayucos though, so that I could give my knees a break.

I haven't biked since. I'm taking a break, stretching, resting, and doing my best to heal, because I know I will never bike all the way home if I don't take care of myself. I also happen to have a nasty case of poison oak which is extremely hard to treat while camping and biking, so I look forward to healing from that as well. The battle in the storm was well worth the sadness of taking a train to LA with Quinn so I can rest up for a few days. It's a hard choice, but one I know I won't regret.

So as I sit here on the train, watching the miles pass by that I was supposed to be biking, all I can say is that I want to keep going. This rest is necessary, as little as I like to admit it, but all in all, I do feel prepared to continue with this lifestyle for the next three months. It is a beautiful one, rife with challenge and adventure, and it is just what I need at this point in my life. As I have already discovered, I won't fulfill all of my goals, but I will learn, grow and strengthen as the journey continues. And with your help, so too will the scholarship fund for Kroka Expeditions! I have enjoyed telling people about the program, and I hope this trip can help spread the word and generate support so that more young people can experience the beauty of expedition.