85 miles
Ok…. Let’s keep this short. It’s almost midnight and I’m tired. We didn’t really ride that far by our standard, but we did ride ALL DAY LONG.
We left our buddy Rob’s house and headed back into Arcata. Had some breakfast, bought a back up tire, and stocked up on our usual supply of bananas, chips and energy bars for the ride. Pretty normal. It was a short ride into the next town over, Eureka. I don’t really want to offend anyone, but let’s just say Eureka was the roughest town we’d seen on our trip. It was a wild scene… We pedaled through the town and there were zombie tweakers pushing shopping carts all over the place. We found a cool wall to take photos and groups of methed out looking people kept forming up and lurking around us. Truthfully it was depressing and I felt bad for whatever has happened to that town. I lived in Bethlehem for a while and that was a town that had been devastated when all the steel mills closed and of course i grew up near detroit. Really sad when a towns whole economy tanks and people are in trouble…
We rode on.
The bike route took us on to the 101 which at this point is a full on 4 lane highway. Not pleasant to ride on for sure. After all those days in the cleanest air ever riding along a highway full of traffic pumping exhaust fumes into our lungs sucked. The upside was that there was nothing to do but power on and crank away. The miles blew by and before long we were at the Avenue of Giants.
The Avenue of Giants is a road that roughly parrallels the 101 but leads you through several amazing redwood forests. zzzzzz zzzzzzz…….
So above is where I passed out mid-typing last night. We rolled in at dark in growing cold. After a whole of day of pedaling I was exhausted. We lucked out that there was Scilio’s Steak-seafood-Italian-Mexican-vegetarian restaurant willing to stay open and even more-lucked out there was room in a hotel. By the time we were checked into the room it was well after 11 and I could barely keep my eyes open.
Back to the Avenue of Giants and where we left off before sleep so rudely interrupted us… It’s a road through big ass trees! We rode so slowly down that road. It couldn’t be helped. We were in such awe of our surroundings we kept stopping, taking photos and admiring the view. As the day progressed and the sun started setting the sun light started shining from the horizon, little pockets of light would some how make it through the hundreds of trees to send little golden spotlights through out the forest. That slowed us down even more.
Sandy’s been lugging his large format camera around so expect some great print film photos from the trip.
As dusk set in the trees we realized we still had 17 miles to the newest town. We finished out the Avenue and hopped back on to the busy 101 highway. We finished it as fast as we could and rolled into Gaberville just a bit after dark.
Ice on the knee, ankle and Achilles. Sandy is wishing he had brought his clip shoes and pedals.
Today we have no choice but to ride the 101 highway for a while longer. After about 20 miles we can split off and head to the quiet coast road 1. This will add about 80 miles to the ride putting us about 3 days away from San Francisco (250 miles or so). Looking good so far.
Beam me up redwoods!
