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Day 281-285, 18-22 April09: Trucks, dust, wind, heat: Baja California Norte, Part2

biketravellers — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 02:40:00 GMT

Day 281-285, 18-22 April09: Trucks, dust, wind, heat: Baja California Norte, Part2

April 30, 2009 by Harry,
Filed under Baja California, Mexico, North America, Trip reports

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18-21 April 2009, past San Quintin –Rosarito, via El Rosario, Sonora & the desert..

The roads were dry and empty but the fresh sea wind kept us cool. That is, until we headed inland and up a very steep hill. After some pushing we ended up at another military checkpoint on top of a mesa, before the road dropped quickly into the dusty town of El Rosario.

We bought some yoghurt and even though we had only cycled 50km, we decided to stay the afternoon and work in the Internet cafe. The previous owner was the current pharmacist and he send us to a place on the far side of town to pitch our tent: Baja’s Best.

It is a nice restaurant and B&B, run by ‘Eduardo’, American Edward Lusk, recognizable by the large ‘Starbucks’ sign on the side of the yellow building. Not sure if the coffee is from SB, but according to Ivana (who, unlike me, likes the beanjuice) the freshly made stuff was great.

When we go in for the evening, 3 drunk Mexicans are singing loudly. The youngest one starts messing with the friendly rottweiler Bruno, to the point that Bruno is about to attack. His two friends try to persuade him to stop, even lock him in his car, but somehow he manages to escape and stumble back in again. They are living proof that it is not wise to drive or ride after sunset on the Highway 1…

We camped on a nice patch of grass, a luxury in Baja and when we packed the next morning, Ed’s friend and neighbour Duffy came by. He was intrigued by our trip and bought us a breakfast in the restaurant.

We had been warned about the next section of the road, dangerous for all vehicles and cyclists in particular. Not only was it about 500m up, but the road was narrow, curvy and for some weird reason some curves were grading outwards creating danger for trucks.

As we would spend the next day pushing up most hills we decided to take a ride and got one a minute later, with Angel, a nice guy from La Paz. He mentioned that there had been some car-jacking on this section and that not everybody might stop for hitchhikers.

We quickly passed steep hills and very narrow corners and felt the centrifugal forces resulting from the road-designers’ engineering mistakes from the back of the pick-up.

After about 60km we got out and started cycling and immediately regretted not having stayed on another minute as the road climbed up steeply out of a small valley. But even worse, once we got to the top, we almost got blown off the road.

A gale-force wind was coming from the East and as we were headed SouthEast, it was almost impossible to cycle. The dry dusty storm pushed us all over the place and every truck passing created dangerous vacuums. It took us over an hour on relatively flat ground to cover 10km and we were happy to get some shade and a soda in a small ‘llantera’ one of the many car workshops (‘Body & Pain_’ as I saw once in San Diego ;-)) along the road.

We headed up as well now and the speed dropped even lower and we quickly ran out of water as we were basically fighting a life-size blowdryer at full force. In a small restaurant we bought a gallon of water. We had to buy our first plastic container on the trip as there was simply no water to filter around, we were in the middle of the desert.

Another hour later we stopped at a place that was called ‘Sonora’ on the map, which turned out to be exactly one house on the side of the road. We decided to call it a day as we had only done 30km in over 3 hours and were completely exhausted. Santiago, the owner of the ranch and his son Alonso, let us camp outside and we watched the milky way, while the wind stopped exactly at sunset…

The next morning we left early to avoid the wind, but it had gotten up early with us. Still it was not as bad and we made it to Catavina relatively quickly. Catavina, the touristy little town in the middle of the desert of the same name was a depressing place.

At 10 o’ clock in the morning we entered the local abarrotes, the name for the small minimarkets that were to be found in every dusty place in Mexico, selling basic un-necessities and some useful items like water.

I saw a large electric waterfilter (‘Reverse OSmosis + UV!’) as asked the woman if we could refill our bottles.

She said the filter was working and the water was safe, but when I checked the back of the machine the electrical cord and plug were tied in a not, covered with years of dust and spiderwebs, so unfortunately we had to purchase another plastic container…

The other clients all bought either beer, or coke and liquor, while the sun was still rising. We bought some refried beans burritos and some quesadillas and watched a half-drunk family get back in their battered old van, 6 people on 3 seats, the rest was on a mattress in the back, sipping litre-bottles of beer.

It was getting hot, so we headed back up the hills. Sometimes the wind was pushing in the back, then either it or we turned a bit and got mummified from the front. Ivana’s thermometer said it was 45 degrees Celsius (113F) and even though I drank more than one litre per hour, I could not pee a drop in a course of 2 days, the water just evaporated from our bodies.

Still it was a great place, giant cacti between graffiti-covered boulders lined the quiet road and we felt in a different world. The odd cirius trees were growing everywhere as well, simply a single almost-straight trunk, sometimes ending up divided near the top, but generally without any branches.

We had already climbed a lot during the day and as some places on the map were were out of business or simply did not exists, we had not rested during the hottest period. After another steep uphill where I had to again help overheated Ivana push her bike up, we were passed by a pick-up who offered us to take us to the next place. It was only 16km and most of it would be down-hill as we were on the highest point, but Ivana wanted to get out of the sun. The cold beer the guys gave us eased a bit of the pain of 10 minutes of driving down a nice steep slope.

We entered the small ‘Loncheria’ (where you can buy, yes you guessed it, ‘Lonch’) and had a short conversation with the sturdy woman behind the counter.

‘Buenos tardes (Good afternoon)!’ we greeted.

‘?Que queria?’ (What did you want?), was the reply.

We tried again with a greeting but got the same reply. We bought some water and asked if we could pitch our tent somewhere around the place.

‘There is a hotel somewhere.’, she pointed out towards the desert.

‘Where and how far?’ we asked out of politeness, adding that we were on bicycles.

‘There!’ she pointed again into the dust.

After this depressing person and similar place added enough tension between us to cause a short fight about taking rides, we decided to make some extra miles to make up for it and to enjoy the cooler afternoon air.

We had seen a small place called ‘El Crucero’ on the map, 29 km away. Even though it was late, we had some great down hills and the wind was suddenly pushing, so we made it just before dark. The only downside was that there was no place to be found anywhere.

As we had to get off the road before dark, we followed a sideroad until we were out of sight and pushed our bikes into the desert. We were warned about the many spikes and cacti that had punctured so many a biketraveller’s tire and camping gear, so we carefully tried to remove the spikes from our path.

Stupid gringo as I am I tried to kick away a small fallen part of a cactus, but it punched right into my hard sole and managed to warp around, into my foot at the same time. I had to ask Ivana to pull it out, which took a lot more effort than getting it in…

We did not need to put the tent-fly, so if we hadn’t been so tired from this hot and hilly day (103km, excluding the 16km ride!) we could have watched the gazillion stars from our matresses…

We woke up to another hot day. We were sweating at 7 in the morning trying to get our bikes out the minefield of spiky things. Somehow I like the desert, but when all animals, plants and animate objects are apparently only put there to make life harder or even end it prematurely (in the case of some plants and many insects, snakes and spiders), it was good to be on the hot dark road again…

We learned from our mistake and stopped before 11 o’ clock, lounging and lunching on some car seats on the patio of a small Loncheria until it was a bit bearable again. We had gotten a book from our host Gary, back in Oregon, and due to lack of power and Internet (though my solar panel was charging the batteries) I finally had time to start this great travelogue: Chasing Che: A Motorcycle Journey in Search of the Guevara Legend

We spent 4.5 hours in Punta Prieta, waiting for the sun to ease its angle on the Mexican part of the earth’s surface, while fat girls cared for babies with American toys. I managed to make the world a slightly better place by killing about 10 flies in the meantime. Guess that Buddhism, the last religion that had any hopes for me, also has given up by now…

It was still 40km to go to our next destination, Nuevo Rosarito and we rushed through the hills, over smaller and then bigger rollercoasters.

I waited for Ivana besides the road on one of the rare flat parts where you could see half a mile. Ivana was almost next to me, when an oversized SUV with Californian license plates, loaded with beach-stuff and two fat guys approached her with about 70 mile per hour (112km/h), swerving wildly to the left just before hitting her, then wildly back just in front.

All this on a clear road with no other traffic, perfect sight and a maximum speed of 30mph (60km/h). While passing they gestured maniacally with their hands indicating that we were crazy, to which I kindly attended them to the longest of my fingers.

Almost all large Mexican trucks always give plenty of space and wait when it is even a little bit unsafe to pass and then waive or honk friendly when they do, but somehow it is always the typical obese beach-yankee in their useless oversized SUV’s that think that they own the country, that are the biggest danger on the road…

I was still pissed off when we zoomed down towards Nuevo Rosarito and stopped at the first restaurant we saw.

To celebrate the survival of our first real dessert we ordered some fried fish and camped our tent in the nice backyard, where we even discovered a hot shower!

But the night turned out less pleasant than expected. Not only were big trucks stopping all night long, their stinking diesel engines running stationary for hours before pulling out of the restaurant, but we both woke up feeling sick. I went into the bathroom and threw up my dinner, while Ivana passed it through the natural way, but at an unnatural speed and viscosity.

22 April 2009: with empty stomachs from Rosarito towards the 28th Parallel, 76km

We felt weak but luckily the road flattened out after some minor climbs and even the road surface that for 10km had resembled something out of a horror movie rather than asphalt returned to Mexican normal.

It was still hot and though close to the sea, the vegetation was mostly limited to thorny things and surprising amounts of a close cousin of the Joshua Tree, but I also discovered some tiny brave berries on the desert floor.

Halfway was a place called Villa Jesus Maria, not much more than a truckstop, where a nice family cut up a delicious fresh fruit mix on the spot. Ivana’s stomach was till upset and she due to her cramps she stuck with safer foods.

The next 40 km were almost straight and as the wind changed from coming from the side to slightly from behind, we raced along the empty desert, passing many ‘vado’ signs.

It is hard to believe that these dips in the road have ever seen water, as we had not seen a drop of fresh water since leaving San Diego…

From miles away I could see a shape in the sky, that turned out to be a giant flag, rivalling the one in Ensenada for size, beating it in location: in the middle of nowhere.

The position was not as random as it might have appeared as we were approaching the 28th parallel. Not only a nice circle around the planet, but also the border between two Mexican states: Baja California Norte & Baja California Sur, the latter even being in a different time zone.

It was time to get my Internet fix and as Ivana was still feeling sick we checked in the first motel we saw with ‘Internet’ on the side.

We got half price and awarded ourselves with an easy rest day before turning our clocks one hour ahead to Southern Baja Time. We survived the Northern part of Baja California. Not unscathed though and it is interesting to see what the even larger Southern part will bring…

Tags: Annoyances, Baja California, desert, heat, Hills, Mexico, Traffic, Wind

Day 274-280, 11-17April09: Trucks, dust, wind, heat: Baja California Norte, Part1

biketravellers — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 02:38:00 GMT

Day 274-280, 11-17April09: Trucks, dust, wind, heat: Baja California Norte, Part1

April 28, 2009 by Harry,
Filed under Baja California, Mexico, North America, Trip reports

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We stayed a few days in Ensenada. Gerardo, who lives in the US, came down for a day, to resupply the local bikeshop (‘TNT’) with new bikes and parts and took us out for breakfast in the centre of Ensenada, where we visited a nice coffeeshop with Wifi. The town was virtually deserted, no tourist in sight.

Ivana’s knee was still hurting a bit, but we enjoyed the little house that Gerardo has opened up for cyclists passing South. We visited his friends Delia & Jose Antonio often and enjoyed just walking around the neighbourhood.

15th April, Ensenada – Santo Thomas, 35 km

It was time to hit the road again and we made our way across busy streets. We noticed a lot of ‘Yonke’ signs and realized that it one more Mexicanisation of an English word, ‘junk’!

After I took a photo of the Romero Yonke, for my friend Romke Jonker :), I turned to take a photo of Ivana approaching and almost shot her being run over by a truck that passed way too close for comfort.

It was going slow, but we were warned…

On top of a hill we saw our first of several military checkpoints. They check for weapons going South from the USA to Mexico and beyond and drugs going the opposite way, but never once did we have to stop, nor were our passports or bags checked.

We did more climbing than expected and as Ivana started feeling some pain, we decided to call it a day in a small town of Santa Thomas. The local campsite wanted more cash than the hiker-biker sites in the USA, so we continued down the road to ask for a suitable place to pitch a tent.

We found a small local hospital where a nice doctor was teaching the local and rural population about birth control, AIDS, nutrition and more.

She did not only share a nice ‘sopa de mariscos’ (seafood soup), but offered us the office to put our mattresses, so we did not even have to pitch a tent.

16th April, Santo Thomas – Colonet, 76km

We got our first taste of Baja climbing today, slowly climbing over a 450m high slope. The road was not too busy, but once we hit the steepest part, the road curved and we realized that although we could hear them coming from a kilometre away, the big trucks could not see us, so mostly we waited on the side of the road to let them pass.

We had seen many signs depicting ‘campsite’ along the way, but they never had any direction, explanation, name or distance attached to them, so we never actually saw one.

The town of Colonet seemed to be nothing more than just a few dusty convenience stores along the highway, but when we went in one of the side roads we found a nice central Plaza, where we could ask the Police for a place to camp.

We entered to see about 5 guys lounging lazily in comfortable chairs, watching some soap opera on TV. One managed to get up and showed us a place in the backyard, where we could sleep. When we headed to a nearby mini-market to buy our totopos (nacho chips!) and salsa and to refill our water bottles (cheaper and more ecological than buying bottles), we got a lot of positive comments from kids and elders.

One family that apparently already had seen us on the road got so excited that they invited us to their house for dinner. As they could not explain much more than ‘up and behind that steep hill’, we decided to put our bikes in their van and -after letting the police know that we wouldn’t be staying- off we went.

Gerardo and his family lived outside of town in a small place, erected by a church group. Around it a few dogs were keeping the cows away from the food for the pigs and the chickens. They also had a campervan, which was normally reserved for his 3 girls to study, but now they insisted that we use the bed inside after we shared our totopos and some quesedillas, sharing mutual stories, 7 people around the light of 2 candles…

17th April 2009: Colonet – past san Quintin

Gerardo, his wife and 2 daughters left at 6 in the morning to catch the bus that would take them to work on the fields, paying about $10 per person per day. We spent some time with the 3rd daughter, Areli and then headed out on the bumpy road, back to Highway 1.

Mexico Highway 1 is just a two lane-road, exactly 2 trucks wide, divided in half by a mostly uninterrupted non-passing line. As with all traffic signals (stop signs, speed limits and even distances to the next town), this is merely a polite suggestion, and rarely appreciated.,There is no room for a bicycle if two vehicles are passing each other, so we had to be watchful all the time and our little rear-view mirrors were lifesavers.

Fortunately a large part of todays trip, a small part beside the road was paved, creating a narrow shoulder as wide as 1-2 feet, just enough to make cycling a bit more relaxed.

We passed some busy parts, the area called San Quintin was full of large and small trucks, but right after, traffic was much rarer and the wind was finally in our back for a while. We noticed some regular patterns around the road: trash every meter, ripped car tires every 10 meters and a memorial sign looking like a grave amidst car debris every kilometre or so…

This area was home to many tomato & strawberry growers and we ended up camping at a rest area between big farms, while big trucks were roaming around non-stop.

Tomorrow: Part 2 of Baja California Norte!

Tags: Annoyances, Baja California, desert, Hills, Mexico, Traffic, Wind

Day 268-274, 5-10 April 09. Into Mexico, a different world

biketravellers — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 02:36:00 GMT

Day 268-274, 5-10 April 09. Into Mexico, a different world

April 19, 2009 by Harry,
Filed under Baja California, Mexico, North America, Trip reports

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5th April: Point Loma, San Diego – Tijuana, Mexico

It took only a few hours to get through San Diego, over some bike paths and then into San Isidrio, the border town. We had been warned that we should not try to use the pedestrian crossing at the border, having read horror stories about crunched bikes and bags.

So we were happy to see a sign that basically said: Bikepath to Mexico, not for pedestrians. That sounded like a plan, but alas, the short path ended up in front of the pedestrian turnstiles. Se we headed back up the ‘one-way’ short path and decided to take the final 100m of the busy Highway 5 instead. We cycled over some empty lanes and waited until we were stopped by either a human or physical barrier.

100 meter later, we saw only Spanish signs and saw people walking everywhere. Apparently we had entered Mexico, through a one way border: no luggage check, no passport check, no questions, no sign ‘You are Leaving the US, please call again’ nor ‘Welcome to Mexico’!

This was not only very weird, but also posed two practical problems:

We had to leave the white slip of our temporary visa at US customs, to prove we had left within the allowed time.
We needed to get a Mexican tourist cad, kind of like a visa, which would allow us to stay for 180 days and go further South than Ensenada (100km South, the furthest most US citizens go and where this card is not needed).

You would think that there would be more people crossing the border with a visa, but apparently not. After asking several people, we were told to cross the Mexican side of the Highway on a footbridge, follow the stream of Mexicans trying to get into the US.

And lo and behold, just before the border entering the US again there was one young guy looking cool in a US uniform on the other side of a big gate. I handed him our passports, he ripped out the 2 small pieces of paper and added them to a larger pile already in his other hand. That was it. No exit stamp, no receipt, just a guy collection visa papers and who knows where they end up. Guess we will find out whenever we want to enter the US again.

Next problem to solve was to find the place to buy our tourist card. We crossed the highway again, noting the hundreds of waiting cars, seemingly not having moved an inch since we crossed the bridge before. Guess that entering the US is a whole lot harder than leaving it.

The funny (as in funny, interesting, not funny, haha) thing was that last night we watched ‘The Day after Tomorrow’, the apocalytic movie about the freezing effect of Global warming. In it, the US basically freezes overnight and the Mexicans have to close he border as everybody tries to flee South. Only after relieving Mexico from all debt, the US citizens are let in (meanwhile, many already cross illegally..).

We were told to go back on the highway, to we cycled back, against traffic to the ‘border’ and only about 50m before we were about to cycle back in the US (without being checked?). The last of a series of small offices contained a bored man who, after repeatedly asking, was going to sell us our ‘card’, which was basically a receipt. They had put the standard ‘90’ days, but some penstrokes of the official quickly turned this into 180 days.

It had taken us 1.5 hours to arrange these things that in any other border would have taken 2 minutes and 5 meters of travelling, and we made it just in time to the local McDonalds. Not that we were planning to eat there. We had stayed clear of all fastfood (besides Subways) during our 6 months in the US, and after seeing ‘SuperSize Me’ a few days ago at Martin’s place we were very happy we did!

No, we had arranged to meet our new hosts here. CouchSurfing knows no borders and we were picked up by two young guys in a car, who guided us through some busy and some not so busy but very steep streets to their house on top of a hill. 5 more flights of stairs and we were in the room, looking out over the odd bordertown.

From the room you could see the border. Not physically, but the line and difference between the houses on both sides is clearly visible (tip: check Google Earth, you will be amazed).

A few days in Tijuana, an over-feared and underrated city

We stayed a few days with Paul (pronounced Pah-ool here) and ‘Chino’. It gave us the time to see a bit of the city that is feared so much in all US media, (even South Park calls it ‘hell’ ;-)).

It is all exaggerated, which is doing the Mexican economy a lot of harm. There is a drug war going on with quite some murders, but unless you are a heavy user, dealer or police officer, you will not be involved. Yes, we saw some police lights and heard some sirens in the night, but not more than in any US city of this size (1.5 million people). We never felt unsafe, even in darker areas, at night, in the suburbs, on the beach. Nowhere.

You notice that you are in a poor country, but what we did see were a lot of happy people, cheering us on on our bikes, asking questions.

We were so surprised to hear that many US citizens, even those living in San Diego never had visited Mexico.

They are living so close that taking one wrong turn basically would get them across the fictitious line!

I would invite everybody to enjoy the proximity of such a great and different place instead of getting scared by the remnants of the fear–economy…

It is actually quite nice place, relaxed with many things to see and do.

And I do not mean the popular red light district that seems to attract the most Americans, but the Museum of Modern Art complex we visited (with a nice cinematic photo exhibition), many great taquerias (taco shops) and a nice central market with delicious food, snacks and other stuff.

Our new friends had just opened a tacoshop themselves, close to the market. They hade some special flavours including a great ‘Chile relleno’ (slightly spicy pepper stuffed with cheese).

Paul had two passports and works as a teacher on the US side. As he has a small motorcycle, he can avoid the waiting lines at the border and can go to work in the US in only 15 minutes…

In the evening they took us to have a tea and see the beaches and the border. It was sad to hear that until recently there were ‘border-dinners, where Mexicans that had been allowed into the US, would come to the North side of the border, to see, touch and eat with their relatives and loved ones South of the border. The new fence, planned all the way to Texas makes it impossible.

We could see the fireworks of the San Diego aquarium from our side of the fence. A small boy walked up to it, while on the other side a patrol car was waiting silently.

Just a few miles away, but worlds apart. Again we felt thankful for the liberties we both enjoy, something that the many people that can but never do travel abroad never seem to realize.

9th April 2009: Tijuana – Primo Tapia, hill, fall, flat, toll. 42km.

After they guided us to the start of the Highway, we said goodbye to the guys and started climbing up the 250m (800ft) high hill. It was steep and hot and there was much traffic, but they kept a safe distance. What cycles up must freewheel down, so we enjoyed a nice downhill into Puerto de Rosarito, the tourist place at the beach, lined with new condos and junk food places.

We only stopped to eat our peanut butter sandwiches and then headed onto the toll road. There are 2 roads from Rosarito, the toll road (‘Cuota’) and the free road (‘Libre’). The toll road already starts near Tijuana, but they will not allow cyclists there and taking it would mean many extra miles anyway.

Just past Rosarito we could enter the toll-road without problems. I was slowing down near an exit for Ivana to catch up with me when two cars passed really close without signalling their exit. There was a very small but vertical ramp along the road which kept me from being able to move out of the way.

I managed to keep my balance for a second, but then tumbled over the ramp, down the slope behind it. Kowalski followed a second later, also doing a nice tumble, coming to a halt next to me. My arms were bleeding a bit and I had itchy, pointy things sticking in me all over my body.

After Ivana caught up (“did you fall?” Duh..) and helped me get the bike back on the road we continued up a small hill, but soon I noticed that the going was tough and saw my that my front tire was almost empty.

So on the shoulder of the Toll-Road, I fixed my 2nd flat tire in over 8000km. Yet another staple. Of the 5 flat tires we have had between us, 3 were caused by staples, one by a nail and one by a sharp piece of rock.

We approached the toll booths and were going to pass one lane with a giant red ‘X’ on top, but the attendant/guard came running towards us, rifle loosely over his shoulder. He pointed us towards the sidewalk and asked if we could walk there and then ride again once passed. They do not mind that cyclists use the road, but do not want to get in trouble as all lanes are monitored by video.

It was a pleasant ride, sunny but not too hot, and the traffic was not too bad. we passed many areas in development, the Fox studios (where Titanic and Pirates of the Caribbean were filmed, the pirate ship was still there) and a giant Jesus statue looking out over the houses of the new rich.

We could use the shoulder all the time, passing those strange signs with a cyclist crossed out..

We turned off at a small place called Primo Tapia, where a WarmShowers host named El Lobo lives. he greeted us and we had a nice evening with him, discussing life in Mexico and the US and enjoying one of Ivana’s curries…

10th April: Primo Tapia – Ensenada, 60km

We said goodbye to El Lobo and headed back onto the toll road. It was Semana Santa and many Mexicans were on holiday, enjoying eating sweets on the beaches.

There was one long climb and when I waited for Ivana to come up, she looked worried.

‘My knee is hurting a lot’. her left knee was very painful and she could hardly cycle, even though yesterday, on a similar hill, she had no problems, so maybe she twisted it somehow.

We continued slowly until we reached Ensenada, passing cliffs and hidden beaches. Sometimes we could see the ‘Libre’ road below and were happy that we were not riding on that shoulder-less road.

At the end of the toll-road was another big toll-booth and another armed guard came up to me and started talking in Spanish.

‘Did you get permission to ride the Toll Road?’ he asked.

‘Yes, in Rosarito’, I replied truthfully, and then showed him the scars and dried blood on my arm. ‘Besides, yesterday a car cut me off the free road, so the police told us the toll road was safer and better’, I added less truthfully.

He was intrigued and made no problems and told us to be safe. Ivana was going very slow, even though a strong wind was almost pushing us forward. even though we just started cycling Baja California, it might be time to take another break…

Tags: Baja California, borders, Coast, Couchsurfing, fall, flat, Food, Mexico, Quota

Day 242-267 10Mar- 4 April 09: at home in San Diego & Ocean Beach

biketravellers — Mon, 6 Apr 2009 02:34:00 GMT

Day 242-267 10Mar- 4 April 09: at home in San Diego & Ocean Beach

April 6, 2009 by Harry,
Filed under California, North America, Trip reports, USA

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San Diego is the end point for most cyclist who travel down the West Coast, usually starting in Vancouver. Just 40km North of Mexico, it has the luxury and practical advantages of the USA while combined with the weather and relaxedness of the Mexicans.

Our friend Romke (from The Netherlands) had already told us that he loved it there and that he would love to move there and had sent us some addresses of friends he had met there.

We were planning to let our bodies and mind rest for a while here.

After staying with Daniel, we headed over to the nice Balboa Park for a relaxed day in the park, enjoying the sun. We stayed a few nights with Ryan & Meredith from the WarmShowers list. It is always nice to see how other cyclists share whatever they have with others.

After moving to nearby Kathryn and J’s place we started with the long job of updating our blogs and editing the many images we had taken the past months.

In theory it is easy to update the blogs in the evening after a day of cycling but in practice we were almost every night with friendly people, enjoying their company until bedtime. Of all the wonderful things we have seen in the US, the people top it all.

Rich or poor, young or old, everybody opened up there homes for us and treated us like kings. In my ‘1000 Americans Category’ I have placed a few dozen portraits of some of them, but it can do no justice to the way they have taken care of us during our trips down the Pacific Coast.

St Patrick’s Day 2009

Close to Ryan’s and Kathryn’s homes was the annual St Patrick’s Day parade, supposedly one of the largest one-day event. It was not so crowded, we could easily enjoy the long stream of Old-timers (both cars as well as people).

When the ‘Irishman of the year’ passed, many people around us started speculating what it took to get that title, but all agreed that it likely had to do something with loads of Guinness.. Note the sensible people below that advised everybody to ‘ride a bike’!

Out to the Ocean: Ocean Beach

We had agreed with one more WarmShowers host to stay with him. What we did not know at the time was that Saul would leave the next morning for his work in Seattle, leaving the place to us for more than a week. We did manage to get some fish tacos on the pier with him and his cycling friend, after another restaurant had refused us for not having an ID (Ivana is 33 and I am 38…).

It was great to have a home, where we could feel ourselves again, relax and do more work. Ocean Beach is the Western part of San Diego, and so far has resisted the push of the strip malls, McDonald’s and other negative American icons.

Instead, they have the best farmer’s market we had seen in all of the USA, a local co-op with organic food, local small shops, surfers on the beach and generally a very relaxed atmosphere.

Over to Point Loma

Saul’s mom surprised us as she was supposed to arrive later. She insisted we’d stay with her, but as Romke’s friend Martin had returned from his vacation, we moved to his place instead. It was only a few km away and though not next to the Ocean, Point Loma is a similar relaxed neighbourhood.

We ended up staying 12 days, cooking great meals together and enjoying the company of Martin and his two cats, aptly named ‘Number 1’ and ‘Number 2’

My knee was still the same and after more research, I realized that maybe my position on the bike could have caused the stress on my knee and decided to buy some new pedals and sandals with click-in SPD cleats to go with it.

This would force my legs to be straight, while also allowing for ‘pulling’ my legs up instead of just pushing them down.

When Romke had been in SD, he had bought a BOB Bike-trailer for Martin as a thank you. He had found it on Craigslist, where a seasoned cyclist named Chuck had offered it.

Romke had introduced me to Chuck and as he lived close to the REI store where I found the sandals I wanted I visited him. It was nice to connect with Chuck and as he was also curious to meet Ivana, he picked us up the next day for a Japanese dinner near his house.

It was inspiring to see somebody who is older than Ivana and me together being so active and addicted to cycling, very inspirational and motivating.

Leaving the USA

We really enjoyed visiting the US, meeting the great people and seeing some of the best nature in the world.

We had witnessed with our own eyes how the election of Barack Obama had revived a national pride that had been covered in shame the past 8 years. Even though the global economic crisis was easily seen in the many friends we met that had lost their job, people had hope again.

We saw many initiatives to switch back from the global strip mall, war & TV culture to a more simple and peaceful, meaningful life with respect for each other and nature. We saw the possibilities that the US can offer her varied mix of citizens and felt privileged to meet all those kind hearts that make our trip so special.

As April came, we were getting restless. We had stretched our visas and hospitality of our guests as far as it could before breaking It was time to move on.

Strange enough many US citizens we had met had never been to Mexico, even though it is so close, you get there by just taking a wrong turn on the highway…

Since the media started reporting on the drug wars tourism was down and Tijuana and other border towns were avoided. Stubborn as I am, I would like to see the situation with my own eyes, before making a judgement.

Next report should be coming from Mexico!

Tags: Beach, California, cyclists, Food, Obama, San Diego, USA, Vegetarian

Day 234-241, 2-9March 09. Back on the bike, LA to San Diego. Jai Ho!

biketravellers — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 02:32:00 GMT

Day 234-241, 2-9March 09. Back on the bike, LA to San Diego. Jai Ho!

March 11, 2009 by Harry,
Filed under Trip reports

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2nd March 2009: LA – Lomita via Santa Monica, 50km

We spent one more day and night with Claudia and Diego, watched our new favourite movie, Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire (Jai Ho! became our new motto :)) and then we headed out again. We wanted to start again, where we had been picked up by Diego, so we actually first went North-west, back to Santa Monica.

It took us about 20km right through Los Angeles, which simply confirmed itself to be a rather ugly place.

Not that we ever felt any danger (besides from ridiculously oversized trucks and SUV’s of course), most of the people on the streets were very friendly. But the roads are a mess (especially for such a car-centred society), trees and parks missing, and houses and streets dirty.

It reminded us more of something we had seen in developing countries than one of the most important cities of the USA.

Only when approaching the coast, the houses got cleaner again and the areas greener. We enjoyed the Sushi buffet one more time and headed down the coastline.

The weather was great again and we walked down the Venice Beach boulevard, receiving some small gifts and encouragements from the street vendors, the homeless and the neo-hippies. The route stayed nice, following the nearly deserted beaches all the time.

5 March: Lomita – Newport Beach, 60km

We had stayed two nights in Lomita, with a special host. Nepalese-born Shamu is the father of Japhy (Jeff), who is also cycling down from the US to Argentina. Just this same week, he had stayed with Ivana’s father and with her mother, both living close to each other in the San Juan province of Argentina, on the other side of the planet.

So while Jeff’s father was taking care of us, Ivana’s family was taking care of his son even though none of us had ever met before. That is the great thing about the hospitality of the CouchSurfing and WarmShowers hosts. Shamu also introduced us to one of his friends, who not only took us for a nice walk on the Redondo beach, but also taught us a lot about hydro culture and natural foods. Oh, and we watched Slumdog Millionaire again

The section through Lomita and Long Beach was one of the most horrible so far, traffic wise, with no shoulders and thousands of trucks, but soon enough we were along the beach again, where the wind blew us swiftly past kite-surfers towards Newport Beach.

We had contacted Harry Barton through CouchSurfing but when we told him that we would stay for one night only, he stressed that he did not live near the beach, but on the beach

We ended up staying a few nights with ‘Captain Bueno’ (his LA radio alter ego from the 70’s) and his kids and enjoyed talking about politics, technology, travel and life in general, while catching up with work and blogs.

8th March, Newport Beach – Carlsbad, 80km

We kept cycling close to the beach on another hot winter day. Just before entering the Military Zone (where cyclist can pass through as long as they have ID and a helmet and arrive before about 1500 hrs), we passed a strange sight: dozens of drinking bottles and a bike frame and –jersey were hung on the side of the road, a tragic memorial to a killed cyclist.

A bit further down the road we met a German biketraveller. Kris had just gone up from South America.

He had his camera robbed in Colombia, when some girl pretended she was interested in him. It caused such an outrage and shame when the local TV and radio found out that he got donated a new camera and he got new lenses almost free as well…

Somehow we managed to miss the right entrance of the military zone and suddenly found ourselves on the broad shoulder of the busy Interstate 5. Cycling was actually allowed here as besides the army zone, there is no other road.

At least it got us into Oceanside quickly, where we found ourselves arriving in Redneck Heaven; what had happened to all the nice little beach towns? It was a mess on the street and every car seemed to have extra exhaust pipes for extra noise, oversized tires, loud paintings, darkened windows and even louder music. I wanted to ask the drivers if they were born stupid or raised that way, but probably none of them never even saw me (or anything else with those windows), so I had to let them off the hook.

Maybe it was just the influence of the military bases nearby, as fortunately the atmosphere improved considerably when approaching Carlsbad and that evening we found ourselves in a nice house behind a huge plate of delicious lasagne and salad, prepared by bike advocate Steve and his wife.

9 March 2009: Carlsbad – San Diego, 60km

My knee was doing the same as before: quite ok during cycling, but afterwards it was hard to walk and only ice and NSAIDS (anti inflammatories) relieved. Before reaching San Diego, we had a few hills to climb, but they did not pose too many problems. The many small towns on the way looked nice, we were really getting into the surf-and-relax area.

Our guidebook managed to show us the way through the busier suburbs like La Jolla. On one very busy uphill road, a car was parked on the bike lane, with the driver still sitting inside. I honked my horn several times, but he just waved in the direction of the busy road where cars were passing non-stop at 50miles per hour. As I was barely going 10% of that, overtaking would mean suicide…

So I had no choice but to climb up the sidewalk. Normally I let things like these go, but I felt angry and tapped his window, which he lowered after a while.

“Excuse me, but what part of ‘No Parking, Bike Lane’ you don’t understand?” I asked him, pointing at the signs.

“Eh, I, I am not from around here..” he stumbled, which made me angrier.

“So you also do not stop for STOP or other signs here?”. He did not know what to say and just looked straight ahead.

“I am sorry, I am not from around here…” is all that he could utter, at which point I thought it would be wiser for both of us to just go and continue the climb…

Finally, San Diego

After more than 8000km/5000miles of cycling (of which 3000km in the Lower 48), we entered San Diego.

We arrived from the North West, first alongside nice beaches of Mission Bay, then along a busy road and finally a long shared walking/biking path alongside Harbour Drive. SD is situated nicely along some pretty bays and peninsulas, the weird thing is that the airport is exactly in the middle of several popular (and populous) neighbourhoods and every 2-3 minutes a jet would fly over the hills of Balboa Park, drop down quickly and land between a few highways. An accident waiting to happen and definitely not good for anybody’s health.

We worked our way up the steep hills of Broadway until we found the house of Daniel Wolf. We only stayed with him for a night, but he was the first of a few interesting hosts that would help make San Diego feel like home, a last stop before heading into the great unknown called Mexico…

Tags: Annoyances, Beach, California, Couchsurfing, Jai Ho, USA, WarmShowers

Day 232/3, 28Feb/1Mar 09: US parking Part 3: Grand Canyons & Joshua Trees

biketravellers — Mon, 2 Mar 2009 02:23:00 GMT

Day 232/3, 28Feb/1Mar 09: US parking Part 3: Grand Canyons & Joshua Trees

March 2, 2009 by Harry,
Filed under Arizona, California, Trip reports, USA

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We had a nice breakfast with Fanny & Didier and then finally said goodbye for real (this was the 3rd time), as they would fly back to Switzerland that day.

We went to the edge and viewed down the Grand Canyon. It is one of the world’s most famous and visited tourist attractions, with more than 5 million visitors each year (most of them from the US). It is something that many people put on their ‘bucket list’, but after looking down into the void, we both thought the same. ‘Is that it?’

Don’t get me wrong, it is an amazing place. The gorge (with the Colorado River flowing through) is 1800m/6000ft deep and the other Rim (closed for winter) several miles away.

There are many beautiful rock formations everywhere, and different light creates different colours all the time.

But maybe because of the size we both felt like we were on a mountain looking down and towards another mountain. We both have climbed many –higher- mountains and 1800m drop was maybe therefore not so impressive.

Maybe it was just the Grand name of the place, but we both agreed that Bryce canyon and the Horseshoe Bend were far more impressive places.

We headed to the visitor centre and then decided to simply see all the famous spots along the Canyon Rim. The Grand Canyon is most developed on this Southern side and a nice windy road curves along its edge, passing forests where elk roam free.

We spent some time in the old Watch tower, headed into the main lodges (where there was free Wi-Fi!) to Skype my mom for her b-day and then went to see the sunset that never really came in the western end of the route, the Hermit’s Rest.

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We decided not to stay another night in the park and took the main road out. It was still off-season, but there was a long row of cars, I can not imagine how busy these roads must be in summer…

After a few hours in the dark I had enough of driving and just off the ‘hysterical Route 66’ we asked the manager in a local Subway shop (we are still in the $5 footlong season :)) where we could pitch our tent. She said that we could drive down a dirt road and pitch our tent ‘anywhere after the 2nd cattle guard’.

We headed into the dark middle of Nowhere, parked our car and pitched our tent next to the road in a grassy patch. In the middle of the night some cars passed which made us quite comfortable. It was weekend, the cars –all trucks- were doing at least 80 miles per hour and we were in the middle of Redneck country were, according to many people we had talked to, guns were more present than common sense…

1st march 2009: Wonderful desert in Joshua Tree

We made it through the night without any bullet holes, packed our tent and headed further west. Route 95 South was like a miniature rollercoaster, and only 2 lanes wide. We passed a cyclist heading our way, but due to heavy traffic, there was no place we could safely stop –let alone turn- to share some food and water, so we continued through the dry desert.

We arrived in a small town with the interesting name ‘Twentynine Palms’ (we spotted more) where we took the detour through Joshua Tree National park.

It basically is a high desert zone, named after the most common plant to be found here, the Yucca Brevifolia, better known as the Joshua Tree. Made famous by Anton Corbijn for the U2 album with the same name, it is an impressive plant. Not 2 are the same and it takes decades, centuries or even millennia to grow full size.

There are concerns about the future of the plant as climate change might make it too hot for the plant to grow, at least in most of the park.

I really enjoyed this place. Ivana liked it as well, but did not find it so special, but I could not get enough of walking around the desert sands, checking the different plants, scrambling up rocks, and watching rock climbers climbing the bigger ones. Not sure what, but something about the park is very peaceful and much more fulfilling than the Gran Canyon had been…

here is a photographic impression of the small park. As always (if you read this on the website and not in the newsletter): click for an automagically enlarged version on your screen. If you get bored by plants or trees (or photos in general), I suggest you scroll down a bit

One more night of luxury: Palm Springs

As mentioned in a previous post: I had traded some writing and photography for hotel nights, and we still had one ‘left’. We had contacted the Springs hotel and we were all set for a nice night in the hotel in Palm Springs.

once we dropped down across the San Andres fracture -that is actually visible here- into Palm Springs, we were happy to see the desert filled with hundreds if not thousands of wind turbines harvesting the energy of the desert wind.

The place itself was a bit deserted, and many restaurants were closed, but the room was great and the pizza from around the corner tasty and spicy, a perfect ending to a great road trip.

On a bicycle alone we would never have seen all of these natural wonders, though it would make a great bike trip on its own. Hope you enjoyed the images and get to visit these places yourself one day.

Next report coming up soon:

Back in LA, time to pack the bikes and head down South again: From Los Angeles to San Diego, getting close to the border with Mexico…

Tags: Arizona, California, Canyon, Grand Canyon, Joshua Tree, parks, plants, roadtrip

Day 230/1, 26/27 Feb09: US parking part2: Bryce Canyon, Wire Pass Canyon, Horseshoe Bend

biketravellers — Sun, 1 Mar 2009 02:21:00 GMT

Day 230/1, 26/27 Feb09: US parking part2: Bryce Canyon, Wire Pass Canyon, Horseshoe Bend

March 1, 2009 by Harry
Filed under Arizona, North America, Trip reports, USA, Utah

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On our way we passed through Red Rocks, a quite nice place in itself.

We entered the Bryce Canyon road in the afternoon, and it was already getting chilly. There was a lot of snow near the road and on most of the hiking trails, but still the views were spectacular. Rows of hoodoos and other interesting geological phenomena were basking in the winter light, while crows were begging for food from the few visitors…

27th February: playing the Slots again: the Wire Pass Canyon and Buckskin Gulch

All the campsites in Bryce were closed and full of snow, so had headed out again. We had made it to back to the junction with Zion park when it got too dark and we had gotten too hungry. A salad bar called our name and the waitress (shouting loudly “You ok with the Dr Pepper over there” to some other customers :)) told us that we could not camp behind their restaurant, but that the old RV park across the street was abandoned.

It was freezing at night and quite chilly, the next morning we had to scratch the ice from the car before we could drive. We had planned to see the famous Antelope Canyon, a ‘Slot Canyon’ where some of the most wonderful images of the US have been taken.

As this and some other canyons are on Navajo land, our park pass did not apply and they charge additional fees for mandatory guided tours. Once we found out that this would cost $32 per person, for each of the two sections ($128 total!), we refused and decided to find some other canyons instead. It is the Navajos right to charge the fees, but in our view these are ridiculously high and there are several other places nearby.

One of these is the famous ‘Wave’, a curvy feature made famous in photos and books about the South West. To protect it only 20 permits are issued per day and nothing was available.

Nearby is the Buckskin Gulch, one of the longest and largest ‘Slot Canyons’. The first part is usually wet and not so interesting, but when entering sideways through the impressive Wire pass Canyon, you see the best of both parts.

We spent a few hours wandering around, scrambling over some rocks, stepping in soft mud and admiring the shapes and colours and even some petroglyphs.

As we had come in through one end, the walls wee steep and high and both other ends were impassable as well due to soft mud and deep water, I did wonder where that cougar was, whose tracks I had just seen…

Save the best for last: The Horse Shoe Bend

We had talked with an elderly couple who actively hiked and photographed the South West. They told us about another place we should not miss, called the Horseshoe Bend, close to the city of Page.

As it was on our way, we made a note in our mind and on our map as well and headed out onto the desert roads again.

We were on the shores of the Glen Canyon Recreation area, a huge artificial lake created by the Glen Canyon Dam, which is as impressive as the Hoover Dam.

One of the few benefits of the dam is that the Colorado River water is filtered, so when we reached the Horseshoe Bend an hour later, we saw almost clear blue-green water instead of the muddy slush running through the other canyons.

There was a small parking space and half a dozen cars were parked. A sandy track led about 800m over a small hill and then down to the edge of the canyon. You could see part of the U-shaped Horseshoe bend from above, but only when stepping right onto the edge we could literally feel the magnitude of the void in front of us.

It was the most impressive place we had seen so far on this road trip and we already had seen so much in such a short time.

The combination of the colours, the height, the grand scale and the peacefulness made us admire it in awe and we spent a lot of time walking on the edge, taking many shots, but it was impossible to catch the total scene.

The image below is a composite of 5 images (a poster can be bought here on ImageKind), as even my 16mm wide angle could not fully grab it…

Next and final part 3 coming up soon: Grand canyon & Joshua Tree National Park

We entered the Grand Canyon park after dark and the entrance was officially closed. As we had our yearly pass, we simply entered through the exit road and searched our way to the campsite. Lo and behold, we again stumbled upon Fanny & Didier

next report: images from a Grand Canyon and a desert forest of Joshua Trees….

Tags: Arizona, Bryce, Canyon, Colorado River, panorama, parks, USA, Utah

Day 227-230, 23-26Feb09: US parking part1: Death Valley, Las Vegas & Zion

biketravellers — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 02:19:00 GMT

February 28, 2009 by Harry,

We did not want to leave without seeing the marvellous natural wonders of the South-western US. It would take more than 6 weeks to visit all the places on a bicycle, which would probably ruin my knees and we would be in trouble as our visa was running out.

So we opted to rent a car instead. It was a tough trade-off: polluting the nature because we wanted to see the beauty of it… Let’s hope that my images can inspire some people to realize that these and other grand places still exist and that they need to be respected, preserved and protected for future generations.

23 February 2009: Death Valley

Often overlooked, yet so close to LA. I had been here before while working on the Dutch TV show the PlanetRace and I like it. It takes a while to get used to the place, but then the barren beauty will grip you. It is best to visit in winter as in summer it can get over 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees F) easily…

28 February – 1March 2009: Las Vegas

We had stayed with Steven, a CouchSurfing host that works as a biologist in the park. After breakfast we went to see 2 more viewing points, Zabriskie Point (see pix above) and Dante’s View (left).

It is only a short ride through the desert from Death Valley to Las Vegas. Suddenly this huge city pops up, in the middle of dry mountains.

After meeting our new host, CouchSurfing Michael, we decided to drive to the famous Hoover Dam first. It was not so impressive, the new bridge they were building high in the sky (to take the loads of the dam road) was actually much more interesting.

We stopped for a moment to eat our lunch at Lake Mead, the artificial lake that was the result of the Hoover Dam, now a popular boating place. It was clear that the water level had been slowly falling, not sure if it will fill up again…

We headed back into Vegas and did a small tour of the casinos as Ivana had never seen anything like it. All places are kept dark (no windows) and the exit is the hardest thing to find. Everything is designed to keep you glued to your seat so you gamble and lose more.

We never gamble, but Ivana had saved up some quarters in change so we thought we’d give it a try. But though 5 years ago, you could hear the familiar (and stimulating!) sound of quarters in all slot machines, they had now all been changed. All machines only accepted paper money, credit card or paper vouchers. The latter was also the only thing you could win!

We checked several casinos, but no machine would accept our handful of quarters! Finally, in the MGM Grand we discovered that the small ‘Horseracing’ table would accept it and we spent an hour chasing plastic horses to the finish.

Every time we won, even for just 3 or 4 quarters, we paid out, so we could hear the ‘dink-cling-ting’ of the quarters. You could see from the faces of all the visitors that everybody thought this was much more fun than feeding credit cards underneath computer screens, but apparently Vegas is not about having fun.

It turned out that the MGM Grand had a real live lion inside, though it looked so sad and drugged that ‘live’ maybe was an exaggeration, it was a pain to watch.

In the evening we went to visit Michael, as he works in a bar Downtown. He told us about the lightshow in the pedestrian zone, and it was great to see and hear.

A huge projection screen covering the entire street showed images of Queen and musical symbols, while ‘We are the Champions’ played from speakers everywhere.

We ended with viewing the famous light and fountain show at the Bellagio and headed back into the suburbs where Michael lives.

Here is a little overview of ‘Sin City’:

25-26 February 2009: Las Vegas – Zion national Park

The next morning we visited the Venetian Hotel, which was beautiful in some ways, but –especially if you have been in the real Venice, and I do not mean LA- it was just grotesque and terrible..

We managed to find our way out and entered the dry dusty desert again. It was already late and we were too late to buy our park permit for Zion National Park, so we decided to camp out and headed for the campsite. It was quite pricey, so we drove around to see if we could find some small tent, which we could share a place with. Just when I pointed out a small blue tent, Ivana said: Hey that are Fanny & Didier!

She was right, it was the cycling couple we had met a few weeks ago in Ano Nuevo.though they were supposed to be in Phoenix Arizona by now, they had been on such bad roads (the traffic was bad and there were no shoulders or other places to cycle), that they turned back and decided to rent a car instead…

However sad the reason, it was fun to see each other again and we made some nice pasta together before heading into our tent.

The next morning we bought our Annual National Park Permit pass. It costs about $80 but allows entrance into all parks and though it easy to dodge the entrance fees by arriving after dark, the money is well spent so we were happy to contribute a bit back.

Zion is a small park, but with a very nice quiet dead-end road, offering many routes for hiking or just to sit and watch the mountains. Due to my knee we could not do a longer hike, so we went out through a long tunnel and enjoyed a few stops on the East side of the park, admiring the orange and red rock formations.

Next: Part 2: Bryce Canyon, Horseshoe Bend and Wire Pass Slot Canyon!

The next park was only a few hours away, Bryce Canyon was waiting for us, see the pix in the next report, coming up very soon…

Day 216-226, 12-22Feb2008: Luxury, amigos & awards in SB & LA

biketravellers — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 02:17:00 GMT

February 23, 2009 by Harry

We are busy in the Inn at the Spanish Garden Hotel. We fill the tub, relax on the huge bed, ask room service for a movie and some popcorn, skip the swimming pool today and enjoy the good life. BikeTravelling is not so bad after all…

Oh, I am sorry, I did not notice you reading this! Of course I meant to say: we battled against the wind, pitched our tent on a muddy slope and cooked up some salty pasta! But that would have been a lie:

.

So what happened with our budget? Well actually we did not pay a dime for these rooms. Last year I was approached my Matt from the Broughton Hospitality Magazine, a glossy magazine used in a small hotel company.

He had seen my photos on ExposedPlanet.com and wanted to use one in the magazine for the ‘1000 Words’ section, highlighting photojournalism (you can see the issue here, check page 10-11). My images can be used freely for educational and non-commercial purposes (Creative Commons license) but as this is a commercial magazine, a license/payment is required.

So I proposed to trade it for 2 nights in one of their hotels

And as matt was impressed with my other images, we agreed that after the USA part of the trip, I would write another article with images in exchange for a few more nights. I had kept it a bit secret for Ivana, and thought it would be a nice valentine surprise!

12 Feb 2009: Buellton – Santa Barbara, 73km

Santa Barbara is a great place to spend a few days and the arrangements with the hotel worked out perfectly. Our first night would be in the most luxurious hotel, The Inn at the Spanish Garden, which turned out to be a beautiful small boutique hotel with very friendly staff and a great included breakfast

To maximize the time in the hotel, we had left early and made it into Santa Barbara just after 13.00, 73km, not bad! We were helped by one hill with a giant descent, good wind in the back, busy roads and the thought of our big bed…

13 Feb 2009: Santa Barbara: from the Inn at the Spanish Garden – The Inn at East Beach, 3km

It was a tough day, riding 2 miles from one hotel to the other. Actually we got stuck in a giant downpour and arrived soaking wet! The next hotel was a lot more basic, but the friendly general Manager Frank made up for it (upon arrival he already brought us the remaining muffins from the breakfast) and the room was nice.

In the afternoon it cleared up and we went to explore the town on our bikes. SB is very touristy, but has a really nice old historic centre and the beach is lined with nice palm. It definitely is a nice place to visit for a few days.

14/15 Feb 2009: Santa Barbara – Santa Monica via a field past Oxnard.. 73+68km

We enjoyed another nice breakfast and then headed out through the nice outskirts of Santa Barbara. The route 101 was very busy, and there were huge traffic jams, but of course, on a bike you just cruise along. We passed Ventura, where we talked with a nice cyclist and continued along the coast. The wind was still friendly, which helped my knees a lot and they did not hurt much.

There are many military zones here and it would be difficult to find a place to pitch our tent. We found a place in a field close to the highway and so after 2 nights in a hotel, we were back on our comfortable mats!

The next morning the wind had turned on us and we had to pound the pedals hard; it only took us about 5 hours to get to the next hotel, in Santa Monica!

On our way we passed some of the rich areas like Malibu. It is actually quite ugly and the oversized houses are all built on places where they will slide of sooner or later, we could not quite see the point. It seemed more like a place to show off than actually enjoy, which was enforced by the 5 Ferraris that were parked near the beach.

Some guy saw me taking these photos and asked if I would want to trade Kowalski for one of these race monsters. I said no.

15-18 Feb 2009: Chillin’ in Santa Monica

We stayed 3 nights in the restored Georgian Hotel. We rode our bikes up to our room as it was the easies way to carry 6 panniers/bags per person, but then just left them there as we could see the place on foot.

We had a view of the beach and could see the sunset from our room on the 7th floor. It was a perfect place to check out the famous pier, the Boulevard and the pedestrian zone with musicians and street artists and doing some work on Lenny in the room.

We found an all you can eat Sushi buffet which -unlike the online reviews would make you believe- was actually pretty good

18-22 February: Into the heart of Los Angeles.

We had been invited by another Argentinean to stay with his family for a few days. Diego picked us up in the front of the hotel and took us over a concrete maze to his ‘hood. We were definitely in a poorer part of LA, but as Ivana remarked, it looked better and richer than many ‘good’ parts in Argentina.

We spent several days in LA and I even went to see Dr Man Tran, a Chinese Chiropractor/Acupuncturist; but like every other doctor so far, the treament he gave me felt good, but the inflammation in my knee never goes away.

Diego and his wife Claudia took great care of us. They refused to let us sleep on the ground and made us sleep in their bedroom. We had some great meals together and enjoyed the work he was doing for the local soccer teams. Small kids like these were putting their hearts and soul into becoming great at their sports, something what might give them enough self-esteem to keep them out of the gang-scene..

22 Feb 2009: Oscar night in Hollywood!

We did not care much for the expensive theme parks, but as an avid movie lover I was excited to find out we would be in town for the Academy Awards, better knows as Oscars. We went to take a look with the Sarraseca family and though we could not see any ‘star’ up close, we enjoyed the atmosphere and just the feeling of ‘being there’ as well as the giant pizza that Diego treated us to…

Next steps: back in a car to do some ‘parking’

We decided that it would be a shame to miss out on the South Western USA treasures and as time was limited, we decided to rent a car for a week to see the national parks… More photo’s and stories about horse racing and Horseshoe- and other canyons, snow and old friends, stay tuned, as we slowly catch up with reality

ps: let us know if you enjoy these reports by leaving some comments below. if you are reading this on the website, do not forget to click the images above as it will automagically show you a 1000px wide larger version!

Day 212-215, 8-11 Feb 2009: From a mission to a pick-up, elephants & cyclists

biketravellers — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 02:14:00 GMT

February 15, 2009 by Harry,

8 February 2009: Pacific Grove (Monterey) – Gorda. 45 + 60km…

After saying goodbye to Diego, we headed back down the ‘17 Mile Drive’ and ended up in Carmel by the Sea, a nice small town, with much better looking houses than the ‘Drive’. We spent some time exploring the old Mission, one of many that were placed here along the coast.

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We had some lunch in the windy Point Lobos reserve. We had been told that this was one of most beautiful points along the coast, but for us it was ‘average’. I guess we have been spoilt rotten the past months

Further South it was more interesting as we entered the Big Sur area. Unfortunately with the rougher coastline, came also more hills.. At least the coves and canyons were bridged here (as opposed to Northern California, where you just go all the way down and then back up again, my knee says thanks..).

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Just after crossing a large bridge the road steepened up and did not stop for as far as we could see, so we started to push at least 100m up. Just when I reached the top of the hill, I approached a parked car, where a young man had been enjoying the views from the top.

‘Hi there. I am Eric. Do you need a ride?’

Hmm. We just pushed up this hill, so there should be a nice downhill ahead. Still, Ivana was on her way up, it would be dark in 20 minutes and Big Sur village was still 9km away, so we would probably be cycling in the dark. Also my knee had enough of the climbing.

As the road had barely any shoulder, but plenty of steep drop-offs, we accepted Eric’s proposal and put ourselves and our bikes in the back of his truck.

We told him to stop in Big Sur, but while we were expecting a larger village where we could ask for a place to camp, we passed some motels and before we realized it, we had passed Big Sur. Eric said he would continue South and asked if we wanted to join further. I checked the altitude profiles of the next section and saw 4 hills of 300m (1000ft) each with more in between. Ouch.

I was afraid that my knee would not survive. So far we had taken only one ride and that had been for going back on a stretch we had already cycled. We had skipped the major ferries, but now it felt unavoidable. I could be stubborn and cycle but maybe that would mean the end of the trip, just 50km ahead…

We stayed on the truck…

We ended up in a small village –just a roadhouse- called Gorda (‘fat’ in Spanish!) Eric was taking a room in the motel and after asking around we found a place to camp opposite the road on a nice grassy patch in a small forest. Eric, who is a musician on his way from the East coast to LA, came over for dinner and played and sang some songs for us while we were making pasta in the dark. It was great & ‘gezellig’, but suddenly the rain washed our party away and we went back into our tent while the skies opened up all valves.

9 February 2009: South of Gorda – San Luis Obispo, 100km

Still we managed to stay dry and the next morning we joined Eric for another small ride over the last hill and then said goodbye. Fortunately the rain decided to stop, while we were organising our bikes.

-

We stopped at a roadhouse for our peanut butter sandwiches and talked with Victor Antonio, who was walking around the US to promote peace through marijuana.

Not only the sun came out, but it brought its good friend the wind as well which pushed nicely in our back on our way South.

We passed more and more beaches filled with hundreds of elephant seals, some relaxing on the grass and sand, far from the ocean.

We also passed Hearst Castle, made famous in the movie ‘Citizen Kane’.

Though some of the rocks where interestingly white, we actually saw some fresh snow in the hills as well, a rarity in this area.

Thanks to the wind, we were making good speed and we decided to go all the way to San Luis Obispo. We arrived just before sunset after 100km of cycling and were welcomed by WarmShowers Hosts and fellow biketravellers Matt & Rita, who cooked up a great vegetarian Chilli.

10/11 February 2009: SL Obispo – Buellton via Santa Maria, 67km + 69km

After Ivana has tested the recumbent tandem bike, we headed off. Matt & Rita joined us all the way to took us through some nice back roads to Pismo Beach, where we had lunch together before they headed back.

We continued through nice country roads before we entered the large busy city of Santa Maria. It took us a long time to pas the dozens of traffic lights, while dodging thousands of huge trucks…

It was dark before we made it to Bill Korn’s house, another welcoming host that was a rider himself. he cooked up an Argentinean asado and Ivana felt right at home.

The next morning Bill joined us and showed us some more back roads. It is so nice to stay with local cyclists as they always know the best routes to take and this was no exception. Following some steep hills we ended up the ‘Foxen Canyon Road’.

-

Halfway up Bill said goodbye and turned back using another nice route, while continued our ascent. It was actually longer and higher than the route in our guidebook, but we still felt guilty about our ride with Eric the other day, so it was no problem doing the 30 extra km.

Besides, the slope was much more gentle, we hardly noticed that we went up to 400m altitude until the last steep climb. Then after a nice downhill and another steep climb, it was all the way down to the quaint town of Solvang, passing friendly Los Olivos on our way.

Solvang was the base of a Danish community and their Danish and Dutch ancestry is clearly visible in the buildings and local shops. We even found good cheese, dropjes & pepermunt!

-

The latter we took as a gift to our hosts for the night: Joe and Carol had invited their best friends and cycling partners and together with their housemate we had a really nice dinner. Carol, who is a painter, had cooked for al 7 people and we had a great time.

It is such a pleasure to meet all the nice US citizens on this trip. Most people are very different in background, but they are all very friendly and hospitable.

The next morning we had a great incentive to leave early and arrive in Santa Barbara. Our hotel was waiting. ‘Hotel? How about that budget?’ I hear you say… the next report will clear all mysteries

Kowalski! Status report!

The knee works quite well. On the bike it feels good, off the bike it is painful. Guess I just have to keep on cycling!

Our bikes are indestructible as ever. Still we are stuck at a few flat tires for Ivana (I think 3) and only one for me, after a total of 7656km so far!

Day 204-211, 31Jan-7feb 09. Sea life around the Monterey Bay

biketravellers — Mon, 9 Feb 2009 02:12:00 GMT

February 9, 2009 by Harry

The sign on the left brought some reality into vision.

Could we continue with the current state of my knees or was this really the end?

There was only one way to find out.

31st Jan 2008: SF – Half Moon Bay, about 50km

I kept the Rohloff in low gear all the time and promised Ivana that I would get off the bike and push when it was getting steep. Ivana also had taken more weight than before, so my load would be lighter.

There were only two real hills but they were steep. First we slowly climbed 200 meters (650ft) from the sunny shores into the windy and cold rolling fog on the top of Daly City. Pushing the bike actually hurt my knee more, so I tried to cycle with just one leg doing all the work and that worked out quite well.

The next hill was steep but also so narrow that pushing would be too dangerous. We had arrived at the infamous ‘Devil’s Slide’, notorious for cyclists for the shoulder-less road with its blind corners leading from a dark forest to a scorching hot pass, 150m (500ft) higher.

The good thing was of course the downhill. As there was still not much shoulder, there was no choice but to full speed in the middle of the road…

We reached the state park campsite just before dark and could see the sunset from Half Moon Bay. The regular campsite was full at $25 per spot, but fortunately, almost every Californian State Park has a small ‘Hiker-Biker’ area, which has no hook-ups, but generally costs only $3-5 per person. This was completely empty and for $6 we had more space and were more secluded than all the RV’s. It was nice to be in our tent and in the open air again after a month of CouchSurfing in the city.

1-2 Feb 2008: Half Moon Bay – Santa Cruz via Ano Nuevo

The knee was not too bad, so we decided to do two more days of about 40-50km each. The first was a nice sunny day and we cycled relaxed. I had seen the recommendation to visit the Ano Nuevo State reserve in our guidebook (”Bicycling The Pacific Coast: A Complete Route Guide, Canada To Mexico“.

We had been using this book from Vancouver and though we varied a our route many times, the times we were on the ‘official route’, it was worth every cent. We used up one page at a time (in our see-through map cover of the Ortlieb handlebar-bag), so the book got lighter every day Next time we need a Kindle version to save paper:

Bicycling The Pacific Coast: A Complete Route Guide, Canada To Mexico: Vicky Spring, Tom Kirkendall: The Kindle Store

There was no official place to stay, so we went to ask the farmers; for the first time in our trip, we were sent away from not 1 but 2 farms, each with loads of space. The caretakers were not the owners and everybody seems to be terrified of getting sued for anything…

It is a shame, as all we needed was a few square meters of grass; we could even have shared some great stories with them… Anyway, we ended up camping secretly on some grass near the farms behind some old buildings and made sure we were ready to go in the early morning.

Only a mile down the road was the Ano Nuevo park, home of the biggest colony of Elephant Seals. As it was breeding season, we could not go to the seals without a guide, and as all tours were reserved, we had some time for a relaxed breakfast in the sun, next to some deer.

The friendly people in the Visitor Centre not only found us a spot in a group, but they also waived the fee for us, after hearing about our trip and low daily budget! We ended up watching the Seals and their young with a very nice group of elderly people from San Jose (see their ‘leader’ Don here). They were on their weekly hiking trip (!) and enjoyed the seals and the entertaining stories of the docent/guide.

After the tour we had lunch with them (thanks for the salmon sandwich!) and when saying goodbye several members of the group surprised us by giving us some cash donations! We were not quite sure what to say, but it was appreciated, as we had to replace our mattresses and their generosity covered that exactly.

We also met two other biketravellers, originally from Switzerland, living in Vancouver. Fanny & Didier were on their way from Vancouver to Phoenix, from where they would return home. They nearly had an accident on the Devil’s Slide when Fanny hit a stick with her pannier. We gave them some Ortlieb repair kit and continued our way, while they went to see the seals, but they caught up with us a few hours later.

We had not had much internet the past days, so we only found out in Santa Cruz that we had offers from several ‘WarmShowers’. Ivana went out to find the cyclists again, so they could ‘use’ one of the address that had reacted later.

We stayed with Deb & Tom, a very friendly couple with a nice house and enthusiastic young dog! We had joked before that after 2 nights of camping, we were ready for a soft bed again and our wish was granted

3-4 Feb 2008: Santa Cruz – Monterey, via Sunset Beach, 35 + 60km

The next morning we first went to visit the gallery of one of my nature and landscape favourite photographers who lives near Santa Cruz: Frans Lanting, scroll the books below for some of his classics:

Unfortunately Frans was not there himself, but it was great to see the full-size prints of his classic shots, that are for sale in his gallery.. <a target="_blank" href="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090203img-2086ivana-and-cactustree-in-monterey-bay.jpg"><img width="240" height="171" border="0" align="left" alt="Ivana and cactustree in Monterey Bay" src="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090203img-2086ivana-and-cactustree-in-monterey-bay-thumb.jpg" title="Ivana and cactustree in Monterey Bay" style="border-width: 0px; margin: 5px 10px; display: inline;" /></a>We continued our way through the maze of Santa Cruz, guided by the book until we suddenly left the city for a more rural surrounding. Fields and fields of strawberries were being planted by dozens of Mexican labourers. We had had more small <a title="Posts tagged with Hills" rel="tag" class="st_tag internal_tag" href="http://harry.biketravellers.com/tag/hills/">hills</a> than expected; my knee was hurting and we decided to call it a day at the Hiker-Biker site of Sunset Beach eating around a campfire of pinecones… <a target="_blank" href="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090204img-2089seal-parking.jpg"><img width="240" height="127" border="0" align="right" alt="Seal parking" src="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090204img-2089seal-parking-thumb.jpg" title="Seal parking" style="border: 0pt none ; margin: 5px 10px; display: inline; float: right;" /></a>The next morning we started out ok, meandering through the fields, seeing more strawberry fields and a huge parking garage for seals. But just when the strawberries gave way to the artichokes a super strong wind blew in our face and we had to fight our way into it. <a target="_blank" href="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090204img-2092artichokes-in-monterey-bay-2.jpg"><img width="169" height="240" border="0" align="left" alt="Artichokes in Monterey bay (2)" src="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090204img-2092artichokes-in-monterey-bay-2-thumb.jpg" title="Artichokes in Monterey bay (2)" style="border-width: 0px; margin: 5px 10px; display: inline;" /></a>There are some nice bike lanes closer to Monterey, though our positive feelings were overshadowed by a posted warning sign that mentioned that a jogger was attacked and that we should not cycle or run alone on this trail… <a target="_blank" href="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090204img-2090artichokes-grow-here.jpg"><img width="240" height="177" border="0" align="right" alt="Artichokes grow here" src="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090204img-2090artichokes-grow-here-thumb.jpg" title="Artichokes grow here" style="border: 0pt none ; margin: 5px 0px; display: inline; float: right;" /></a>Monterey is quite a nice town, with beaches, a pier and a touristy centre. We had time to cycle and look around the famous <a type="amzn">Canary Wharf</a> before heading back to the pier for nearly unlimited samples of clam chowder <img class="wp-smiley" alt=":)" src="http://harry.biketravellers.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif" /> We checked the famous aquarium, but the $30 per person entrance fee was outside our budget, so we went to look for the free sea wildlife instead. We spotted an otter far away, but later we saw him again, close to the shore, eating away his seafood dinner, while the seals were sleeping on the rocks and the birds were waiting for leftovers. It is great that the shores of Monterey bay are a protected reserve, else these scenes would only be visible inside the aquarium… <a target="_blank" href="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090204img-2100seaotter-with-seafood.jpg"><img width="240" height="204" border="0" alt="Seaotter with seafood" src="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090204img-2100seaotter-with-seafood-thumb.jpg" title="Seaotter with seafood" style="border-width: 0px; margin: 5px 5px 5px 0px; display: inline;" /></a> <a target="_blank" href="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090204img-2094seagull-in-monterey.jpg"><img width="240" height="219" border="0" alt="Seagull in Monterey" src="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090204img-2094seagull-in-monterey-thumb.jpg" title="Seagull in Monterey" style="border: 0pt none ; margin: 5px; display: inline;" /></a> <a target="_blank" href="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090204img-2112monterey-birds.jpg"><img width="240" height="171" border="0" alt="Monterey birds" src="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090204img-2112monterey-birds-thumb.jpg" title="Monterey birds" style="border-width: 0px; margin: 5px 5px 5px 0px; display: inline;" /></a><a target="_blank" href="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090204img-2109sleeping-seal.jpg"><img width="240" height="181" border="0" alt="Sleeping Seal" src="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090204img-2109sleeping-seal-thumb.jpg" title="Sleeping Seal" style="border: 0pt none ; margin: 5px; display: inline;" /></a> We stayed two nights with <a target="_blank" href="http://www.couchsurfing.com/people/nathanjames/">Nathan</a>, a young outdoor sports lover. We were his first CouchSurfing guests, but I think he enjoyed it! He was very nice, helped us with some errands (we bought new mattresses from our donation money) and let us stay during the day, so we could catch up with some work. Ivana lost herself in a new miniseries we had not seen before: <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0018B7E8G?ie=UTF8&tag=biketravellers-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B0018B7E8G">Weeds</a>, which was quite an interesting way to look at some aspects of US culture.. It was fun to see as well, we had not been watching any TV for several months. In the evening we went to a bar in town and met up with our next hosts: <a target="_blank" href="http://harry.biketravellers.com/?p=1883">biketraveller Diego and his friends</a>. We moved to their house in Pacific Grove the next day through a terrible rain shower and arrived soaked. We stayed a few days with them, and went for a 40km circular ride to the monarch butterfly gardens, the coast and along the famous ‘17 Mile Drive’. The latter was a bit overrated in our view as it is just a collection of too big houses, (of which half were for sale) and the rest of the area are endless golf courses filled with old, unhappy looking guys with funny pants, and some deer… Still some of the views were nice and it was relexed to cycle without luggage: <a target="_blank" href="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090207img-2173goose-on-the-beach-monterey.jpg"><img width="240" height="136" border="0" alt="Goose on the beach, Monterey" src="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090207img-2173goose-on-the-beach-monterey-thumb.jpg" title="Goose on the beach, Monterey" style="border: 0px none ; margin: 5px 5px 5px 0px; display: inline;" /></a> <a target="_blank" href="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090207img-2178view-from-17-mile-drive.jpg"><img width="240" height="171" border="0" alt="View from 17 Mile drive" src="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090207img-2178view-from-17-mile-drive-thumb.jpg" title="View from 17 Mile drive" style="border: 0px none ; margin: 5px 5px 5px 0px; display: inline;" /></a> <a target="_blank" href="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090207img-2183view-from-17-mile-drive-2.jpg"><img width="240" height="144" border="0" alt="View from 17 Mile drive (2)" src="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090207img-2183view-from-17-mile-drive-2-thumb.jpg" title="View from 17 Mile drive (2)" style="border: 0px none ; margin: 5px 5px 5px 0px; display: inline;" /></a> <a target="_blank" href="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090208img-2195deer-on-the-17-mile-drive.jpg"><img width="240" height="153" border="0" alt="Deer on the 17 Mile Drive" src="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090208img-2195deer-on-the-17-mile-drive-thumb.jpg" title="Deer on the 17 Mile Drive" style="border: 0px none ; margin: 5px 5px 5px 0px; display: inline;" /></a> <h3>An afternoon in the aquarium</h3> When he heard that we did not visit is because of the high entrance fee, Diego contacted a friend of his that works at the Aquarium. He arranged that we could come in for a brief visit close to closing time, for free! <h3><a target="_blank" href="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090206img-2117monterey-aquarium-fishies.jpg"><img width="240" height="164" border="0" alt="Monterey Aquarium fishies" src="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090206img-2117monterey-aquarium-fishies-thumb.jpg" title="Monterey Aquarium fishies" style="border-width: 0px; margin: 5px 5px 5px 0px; display: inline;" /></a> <a target="_blank" href="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090206img-2122montery-seahorse.jpg"><img width="240" height="171" border="0" alt="Montery Seahorse" src="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090206img-2122montery-seahorse-thumb.jpg" title="Montery Seahorse" style="border-width: 0px; margin: 5px 5px 5px 0px; display: inline;" /></a>-</h3> Though we do not enjoy captive <a title="Posts tagged with Animals" rel="tag" class="st_tag internal_tag" href="http://harry.biketravellers.com/tag/animals/">animals</a>, the aquarium was quite impressive. The otters (both river- as sea otters) were our favourites again, but we were completely mesmerized by the hypnotic display of bright orange jellyfish in blue water: <a target="_blank" href="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090206img-2133jellyfish.jpg"><img width="240" height="171" border="0" alt="Jellyfish" src="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090206img-2133jellyfish-thumb.jpg" title="Jellyfish" style="border-width: 0px; margin: 5px 5px 5px 0px; display: inline;" /></a> <a target="_blank" href="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090206img-2141jellyfish-3.jpg"><img width="240" height="171" border="0" alt="Jellyfish (3)" src="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090206img-2141jellyfish-3-thumb.jpg" title="Jellyfish (3)" style="border-width: 0px; margin: 5px 5px 5px 0px; display: inline;" /></a> <a target="_blank" href="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090206img-2145jellyfish-5.jpg"><img width="240" height="171" border="0" alt="Jellyfish (5)" src="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090206img-2145jellyfish-5-thumb.jpg" title="Jellyfish (5)" style="border-width: 0px; margin: 5px 5px 5px 0px; display: inline;" /></a> <a target="_blank" href="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090206img-2146jellyfish-6.jpg"><img width="240" height="165" border="0" alt="Jellyfish (6)" src="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090206img-2146jellyfish-6-thumb.jpg" title="Jellyfish (6)" style="border-width: 0px; margin: 5px 5px 5px 0px; display: inline;" /></a> <h3>Kowalski! Status Report!</h3> <a target="_blank" href="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090206img-2148seaotter-in-aquarium.jpg"><img width="240" height="165" border="0" align="right" alt="Seaotter in aquarium" src="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090206img-2148seaotter-in-aquarium-thumb.jpg" title="Seaotter in aquarium" style="border: 0pt none ; margin: 5px 0px; display: inline; float: right;" /></a> My knee was not getting better, but also not much worse. It was very painful after resting and sitting, but not too bad during actual cycling… It was time to say goodbye to Diego, Rose and Ximena and continue our way South to the famous names like Big Sur, Santa Barbara, Santa Monica and of course: Los Angeles! <a target="_blank" href="http://harry.biketravellers.com/files/2009/04/20090206img-2148seaotter-in-aquarium.jpg"> </a> <hr size="1" /><a title="One click to post this WorldOnaBike.com post to Twitter. 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Help spread the word!" href="http://stumbleupon.com/submit?url=http://harry.biketravellers.com/trip-reports/north-america/usa/sea-life-around-the-monterey-bay/&title=Day+204-211%2C+31Jan-7feb+09.+Sea+life+around+the+Monterey+Bay" class="tt"><img border="0" alt="[Post to StumbleUpon]" src="http://harry.biketravellers.com/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-su-micro3.png" class="nothumb" /></a> Tags: <a rel="tag" title="Animals" href="http://harry.biketravellers.com/tag/animals/">Animals</a>, <a rel="tag" title="art" href="http://harry.biketravellers.com/tag/art/">art</a>, <a rel="tag" title="California" href="http://harry.biketravellers.com/tag/california/">California</a>, <a rel="tag" title="Hills" href="http://harry.biketravellers.com/tag/hills/">Hills</a>, <a rel="tag" title="Seals" href="http://harry.biketravellers.com/tag/seals/">Seals</a>, <a rel="tag" title="USA" href="http://harry.biketravellers.com/tag/usa/">USA</a> <h4>Related posts</h4> <ul class="st-related-posts"><li><a title="Day 227-230, 23-26Feb09: US parking part1: Death Valley, Las Vegas & Zion (February 28, 2009)" href="http://harry.biketravellers.com/trip-reports/north-america/usa/us-parking-1-death-valley-las-vegas-zion/">Day 227-230, 23-26Feb09: US parking part1: Death Valley, Las Vegas & Zion</a> (1)</li><li><a title="Day 152-160, 10-18 Dec 2008: Breaking a knee in steep California: from Red Woods to a Golden Gate… (December 20, 2008)" href="http://harry.biketravellers.com/trip-reports/north-america/usa/day-152-160-10-18-dec-2008-breaking-a-knee-in-steep-california-from-red-woods-to-a-golden-gate/">Day 152-160, 10-18 Dec 2008: Breaking a knee in steep California: from Red Woods to a Golden Gate…</a> (1)</li><li><a title="Map (November 13, 2007)" href="http://harry.biketravellers.com/map/">Map</a> (4)</li></ul>

Day 160-204, 18Dec08 – 31Jan09: San Francisco. Part 3: Outside SF, Yosemite, Berkeley & Wine!

biketravellers — Mon, 2 Feb 2009 02:00:00 GMT

February 4, 2009 by Harry

We did not only spend time in the city, but managed to get out. As my knee needed more rest, we were lucky that Alison had borrowed us her car, so we could head out of town for New Years. She had warned us that the tires were old and bald, so it would be better to avoid rain.

Right after we pulled the car out of the garage in Filbert St, we continued the road East, leading up and down a huge and steep hill. I think we found the steepest road in SF, and we both felt we were in a rollercoaster when we crossed the top..

Snow and champagne in Truckee, saying goodbye to 2008…

After my new camera had arrived (yes!) we packed our camping gear in the car and drove to Truckee, a few hours east. We arrived in the dark and noticed that most of the town was covered in knee deep snow and the car slid back and forth over the slippery roads.

It was so great to see Colie again. I had been climbing in Uganda 4 years ago together with Romke, Ali & Andy and now we had seen the entire team again, spread out over Amsterdam, Seattle, SF, Truckee and a bike! Colie took us on a tour of Lake Tahoe, which looked wonderful in the winter snow.

Finally after avoiding the snow since Northern Alaska, it was great to be surrounded by the cold white stuff! We went for a nice winter hike with some of her friends and got ready for a new years Eve party with more friends and lots of great food and drinks.

Goodbye 2008, we will miss you..

We have no idea what 2009 will bring, but 2008 was again amazing. I had been on 6 continents (alas no Antarctica this year), hiked with friends in Australia, almost got scammed in Kuala Lumpur, proposed to Ivana on the summit of Kilimanjaro, witnessed by all 26 clients. We saw Machu Picchu with Ivana’s mum, watched a lion grab a gazelle in the Serengeti and cycled 7000km through wonderful North America. It was not always easy, but it felt that we had been more alive in one year than most in their lives…

Off to Yosemite: big walls and black bear?!

We had a great time in Truckee, but as bad weather was coming, and we wanted to see Yosemite park before it became impossible to get there, we headed out on New Years day.

The road to get to the valley was high and steep and there were several spots with snow and ice, but the views of famous walls like Half Dome & El Capitan made up for the nerves.

The final part into the village and campground was even completely covered in it, but I managed to reach the famous Camp 4, home of all Big Wall climbers. The camp was covered in deep snow, so we had to prepare a campspot by packing some snow.

Just when I was busy preparing the tent, I saw a big shape passing just behind it. It was almost dark, so I turned on my light and called Ivana. ‘Look at that, a bear!’

Just as we though we had definitely left ‘The Wild’, we had the closest encounter with a black bear so far, less than 10m away. The big animal did not pay attention to us and slowly walked into the foggy forest…

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We made sure to leave no food in our tent or car (Yosemite bears are known for ‘opening’ cars) and put everything safely in the special bear-proof containers. We managed to cook a nice pasta meal and finally sacrificed our last Adventure Food meal, before heading over to the restaurant for a cup of hot chocolate.

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The night was cold and uncomfortable, but we got no more bear visits and the next morning we took the free shuttle around the village and walked back past great views of the Yosemite Falls and Half Dome.

Oakland and Berkeley

It was time to get out as more snow was expected. With much effort I managed to get the car back on the road and down to drier elevation before the rain hit hard. We contacted Mikelanjelo & Jessica, who had invited us already a long time ago and stayed a few days in their place in Oakland.

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Together with their friend Kristan and her kids (including “I-love-you-Leif”) and boyfriend they made us feel at home.

They showed us around in Berkeley as well, a nice college town with a friendly atmosphere, unlike Oakland which had an air of aggression, which was confirmed after the shooting of an unarmed boy on the subway a few days later…

We visited a multicultural fleamarket and were chased by fat squirrels in the park on yet another sunny winterday..

Ivana had left a comment on an Argentinean newssite, where bicycle touring was criticized, and soon after we were contacted by Ramiro, an Argentinean living in the US. he asked us to come over to his girlfriend Barbara’s house for some great homemade empanadas! And he even invited us back the following week, so I guess we are not such bad guests after all

The good life in wine country

Mitch had introduced us to his good friends Adriana & Gerard. It as fun to speak some Dutch again with expat Gerard and after inviting us in their home for a great meal, they asked if we already had seen the vineyards. We explained that we had been on the coastal road all the time, and they immediately made plans for a tour in the weekend.

We had a great day, cruising in Gerard’s convertible in the warm winter sun. We visited many wineries, tasted some good wines and olive oils and thoroughly enjoyed the company and places we visited.

The good thing about a bicycle trip is that you sometimes get taken to places where you would never had gone yourself, but that are great anyway…

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My knee was feeling a bit better and though I could not step down stairs properly, we decided that we would try and start cycling again. But first it was time to say goodbye to SF!

Next and final SF report coming very soon : Critical mass, bellydancing B-day and many friends…

Day 160-204, 18Dec08 – 31Jan09: San Francisco. Part2: doctors, civil rights and microcredits

biketravellers — Sun, 1 Feb 2009 15:47:00 GMT

February 2, 2009 by Harry,

Pain, ethics & Doctors: getting treated in SF

Once we arrived in San Francisco, my knee got some rest, but it did not get better. After we moved to Bradley & Saskia’s place, I could not even walk and we spent X-mas inside the house.

I asked around and a friend of Ali referred us to a private clinic in town. I contacted them and could get a quick appointment with a doctor. She was an osteopath and very friendly and though she could not do much for my knee, she diagnosed my back and started treating immediately.

Apparently some of my vertebrae were a little ‘off’, causing the constant inflammation to the connected ribs and the pain that comes with it. As she is both a medic (she could prescribe me new medication, which helped to ease the pain) as well as a chiropractor, she could start fixing me right away.

Doctors are expensive and private clinics are even worse, but as I was a tourist, they waived the ‘membership fee’ and the doctor told me that she would see what could be done about the size of the bill. Even though we are covered by our WorldNomads insurance, it is always unclear when and how much I could get back, so I appreciated that.

She was a sportswoman herself and wanted to support our trip and offered me a free 2nd consultation a few days later. I gratefully accepted and after the 2nd treatment my back felt much better, though my knee was still incredibly painful and useless.

She told me that I could come back for another free treatment after our little road trip, but the night before our appointment I received an email. Apparently she had been reprimanded for offering free services.

(…) I have just finished a conversation with my employer who suggested that my offering to treat you here in this office “pro-bono” (for free) is ethically unsound. He has asked that I request that you not come by the office tomorrow, January 6th. The other visit that has already taken place is in the past, is “OK”, but no further visits should be allowed.(…)

I always thought that helping patients was the thing that was ethically sound for doctors (something about oath and Hippocrates?), but I guess I was wrong. I wrote her back that I would have gladly paid for the service anyway, but after this message I would go elsewhere.

I know it was not her choice to refuse me, but for me it is ethically unsound to pay very expensive treatments just because you might get it back from the insurance.. I even paid for a $20 membership of the Walgreen pharmacy, so my medication would be (much) cheaper, even though I will get it back from WorldNomads.

Mitch’s friend Adriana told me that her friend Hal Rosenberg was a famous Chiropractor and I should call him to schedule an appointment.

I ended up in his office a few days later and got treated right away, both for my shoulder as well as my knee. Using the Crafton technique and electronic stimulation he removed a lot of scar tissue from the knee and though the pain remained during the treatments, I could use it again.

Though I felt at times that he was aiming to kill me, the twisting and crunching of the neck and back improved the back a lot as well, though when not taking the anti-inflammatories the pain would come back quickly.

I also had a few sessions with Bobby and Steve, the in-house physical therapists, and they gave me specific exercises to strengthen the core and leg muscles that were influencing the movement of the knees. In total I had 6 appointments and though more probably would have been good, we felt that it was time to try to move on, going South again!

San Francisco: cultural diversity, faded flowerpower and civil rights

The bus and streetcars must be some of SF’s greatest and cheapest attractions. Unlike the ‘clean’ BART underground, the public transport that runs above the surface is the best way to see another face of SF. It is a continuous show of people of all types and colours: tourists, homeless people; some youth dressed-up in party gear, others completely off the planet. Some people were on their way to work, others were doing their business on the bus itself.

It reminded us about Weird Al Yankovic’s Another One Rides The Bus (video & lyrics here), especially the streetcar going down Market Street was great fun

Other well-known aspects of San Francisco are the birth of Flower Power and the civil rights movement, especially the gay rights.

We visited Haight & Ashbury, the famous area where Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and many other musicians and artists once lived, but got depressed by its current state: a lot of so-called cool shops, selling stuff for smoking weed and ‘spiritual’ goodies, one of the few McDonalds visible in the city, and homeless kids on the streets, many of them who look like they are there by choice and that it took a long time or a lot of money to get those clothes look ‘alternative’ and worn.

More interesting is the nearby Castro District, birthplace of Gay Rights and still the gay capital of the USA. It has nice streets, friendly people and good little restaurants.

It is were the movie ‘Milk’ was filmed as the historic events depicted all took place in this part of town. Not only is Sean Penn’s acting phenomenal, it was especially great to be able to see the movie in a fully packed famous Castro Theatre, which even features in the film

They included a slideshow about Harvey Milk, and an original organ player playing music while the crowds came in. The cinema was filled with locals, as every reference to local places and events were met with chuckles and comments.

It is strange that exactly in the liberal and generally intelligent state of California a law passed on election day, which basically made it impossible for gays to get married anymore. This ‘Proposition 8’ turned back a lot of civil rights that Milk had been fighting for and we went out to join a candlelight vigil to show our support.

Imagine that your partner you have been living with for 20 years gets ill and you are not allowed into the Hospital for visits, or if he or she dies, and you will not be entitled to receive any of the shared memorabilia you gathered together.

Somehow millions of people, who would not be harmed by equal civil rights thought that they should impose their ‘morals’ onto others, so let’s hope that this situation will be rectified and California is recognized as a forward-thinking State again…

Kiva: opportunities for entrepreneurs in developing countries

On a more positive note, we got introduced by Nate & Kim to their friend Jeremy. Coincidentally he works at Kiva, an organisation we have been supporting during our trip, so we visited their office in SF.

It was great to see the heart of the small company that has already made such a huge impact (they loaned over 60 million dollars to mostly one men/women businesses in developing countries on 5 continents).

We talked with Matt, the founder and CEO and took a look at the worldwide volunteers map, all very inspiring.

Read more about Kiva and their work here on our blog and lend (not donate) some money yourself!

San Francisco is great in many ways, but there were many things to see outside the city as well… next part, coming up soon: Snow in Truckee, bears & rocks in Yosemite, music in Berkeley and wine in Napa!

Day 160-204, 18Dec08 – 31Jan09: San Francisco. Part1: a tour of SF

biketravellers — Sun, 1 Feb 2009 15:44:00 GMT

January 31, 2009 by Harry

It has been a long time between updates, but this week we will be catching up a bit, so you can see where we have been this year, what happened with my knee and much more!

We spent about 6 weeks in and around San Francisco, a wonderful city in many ways. I will write a few posts about this as I want to share many pictures, so we will be hopping back and forth in time a bit

SF: entering and viewing the city

After crossing the Golden Gate we stuck to the shoreline, not only to avoid the heavy traffic, but also the steep hills! Yes, it is true: due to the fact that some smart city planner placed the standard grid-model on top of a hilly place, some of the roads are incredibly steep, a few more than 30%! Still the place is bicycle friendly, with bike lanes and-routes and off the main roads, the traffic is much more relaxed and there are many cyclists.

Touring SF

We had met our new host Mitch at a CouchSurfing meeting and he not only offered us a place to stay, but also took us on some city tours, so we could get an idea of the place. As he is a great photographer, we also finally got some images of ourselves!

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Views from the Twin Peaks (we summited :), the old but still running Streetcars and the famous Lombard Street, though it is not the curviest street nor the steepest, it is fun to go down it. We spent the evening playing ‘Rockband’ with Mitch, which was fun

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Later, in January, we spent some more time with Mitch. We drank Belgian beers, ate in Chinatown, walked to his friends house Downtown and we had some great ‘mate’ on one of the western beaches before dinner in a Burmese restaurant. SF is great, it is small enough to be able to cycle around, but every neighbourhood is different and there are many nice places to hang out or relax.

Culture & science

We also stayed a few days with Nate & Kim, who lived quite close to Mitch, also in the Latino-flavoured lively Mission District. Besides taking us to one of the best Mexican restaurants, we also took advantage of the free museum day in SF, visiting the small Yerba Buena, the huge MOMA and the tiny Cartoon Museum before heading back on the bus.

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Ivana managed to get into the new Academy of Science Museum on the free Wednesday (otherwise $25), but when I arrived an hour later after seeing the doctor, the line was so long that it was no use. She enjoyed it a lot and will post pictures on her blog soon.

We also spent time (drinking Belgian beers) in Little Italy, Japan town, Chinatown and Bernal Heights; every part has its own culture and diversity of people and places, while being completely free of strip-malls and McDonalds and such, SF is a good as a US city gets.

Tomorrow, in the next part: pain, ethics and doctors, civil rights and microcredits!

happy 2009!

biketravellers — Thu, 1 Jan 2009 15:35:00 GMT

January 1, 2009

Ivana prepared a nice post for new years, looking back and ahead:

2008 was incredible…

We have been travelling all around the world the past year: from Amsterdam to Argentina, Peru, Australia, (Harry was invited by Jim, Thanks Jim), Istanbul, Tanzania and we started our trip by bicycle from Alaska to Ushuaia …

…It wasn’t just travel; the landscapes we had seen, the wonderful people we had met, the new friends… We enjoyed time with our family and friends that are far … Rediscovering the world, enjoying it, and learning how to take care of it …

We wish you all the joy for the new year …

Ilusions

Wonders and surprises

New challenges and dreams

Dreams to catch

The strength to make them possible

…The best luck

…and perseverance

Keep your curiosity

and the innocence of a child …

we wish you can find peace,

inside yourself and all around the world

…we wish you a year full of color s

and sweet flavours …

friends and…

….and partners for your adventures

enjoy the simple things …

…small …

and big, the beauty that surrounds us…

we hope that we can learn, all together to take care of our world…

Thanks for being with us in 2008. Thanks to the ones that supported us from their homes, to the people that helped us on the way, and to all the wonderful people that we keep meeting every day. Thanks, we can’t and we dont want to continue without you. We feel happy and most of all very Thankful ! Happy 2009

Ivana and Harry

…and special thanks to our families and friends that we miss so much, We keep you in our hearts. Thanks for the patience and for suporting our adventures with so much love, as only you can do that..

Day 152-160, 10-18 Dec 2008: Breaking a knee, Red Woods to Golden Gate…

biketravellers — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 20:37:00 GMT

December 18, 2008 by Harry

We had camped in the cold Redwoods & enjoyed the rest of the Avenue of the Giants leisurely. After no more than 35km we ended up in Redway, where we called Johnny, our host for the night for directions to his home and he picked us up and took us far into the curvy hills.

He told us how basically everybody in the entire county was somehow involved in the growing of marijuana, either for ‘medical’ or for business reasons, and that even the local radio had special announcements when ‘the helicopter’ would be on patrol.

This got confirmed by Todd, our host for the next night and was amazing to hear as we thought that with the ‘war on drugs’ and all, easy targets (like very citizen in a 50 mile radius) would be focused on first, but apparently it was just part of life here.

We had been told about Todd by our friend Kristen from Vancouver, who had cycled and met him here a few years ago. But before we could sit down at the fire and listen to his stories we had two encounters.

When going slowly uphill I noticed some fresh looking scat on the side of the road. It didn’t really look like Grizzly material and I thought we had left the wildest bear country by now.

Soon I saw more and with the sun in my face, I viewed a dark shape halfway up the hill. Even though I was only going about 8km/hr (5mph), it was the first thing I encountered on a hill that was slower than me and soon I caught up with a strange sight: A large wooden horse cart, pulled by 3 horses -with a 4th on the side- was slowly making its way up the hill, completely blocking one of the two lanes.

An old man with was standing proud. he was not too friendly and didn’t say much, but I found out that his name was Dakota and he had been travelling like this for 25 years, all west of the Mississippi…

Our next encounter was with a dreaded place: the Leggett Hill. Actually it was much easier than feared beforehand, steep but constant, narrow, but zero traffic. We did not have to walk and Ivana arrived at the pass as well without much problem.

A Short downhill later we arrived at a level part, called Haley’s Grove, where we spent the night inside a trailer. Read about our chance meeting with Todd here on 1000 Americans.

12-14 Dec: Breaking a knee and viewing a lion between Hales Grove – Jenner, via Mendocino. 74km + 78km + 70km. Plus 3km up and down..

A long downhill through the woods brought us back to the coast, but there was one more surprise, the Rockport Hill. When going up, my knee started hurting and we both pushed up several parts as it was too steep in places.

Steep roads on the hills of the california Coast. Photo by Ivana

Back at the California coast, the road kept on oscillating between sea level and a few hundred meters above it for the next days. In 5 days we had climbed more than 5000m, so 1km vertical per day. My knee started hurting more, even on the flatter parts and at the end of the day I could barely walk as my knee would not bend.

Probably the best thing to do would be to rest or see a doctor, but we were on the ‘Lost Coast’, far away from any medical assistance. Besides, we were only a few days from San Francisco, se we decided to continue and seek help there. Also, not only my knee was bad, our multi-charger had broken down and I had no more batteries for my cameras, which made me feel even more handicapped than the fact that I stumbled more than I walked…

We had stayed with Barry in Mendocino, who was about to embark on his own bicycle trip. as happens often with our hosts, he called some friends, Chuck & Maria, to ask them if we could stay with them the next night. Some hours before we arrived, I was waiting on the side of the road for Ivana to catch up so I could point out a large group of deer, when a car pulled over.

‘Your friend’s bike just collapsed! She fell, I am not sure how she is doing, she is just a few hundred yards back!’

I hurried back – uphill of course- as fast as I could and was relieved to find Ivana cycling my way.

Ivana, back on her feet, ehh wheels...

‘What happened?’

‘Oh, my small shoulder bag was not tied to the bike very well. It got stuck in my wheel, it blocked and I flew of my bike!’. Fortunately both Ivana and her bike were without any damage, but Ivana, who seemed to find what happened quite amusing, was now even more afraid of fast speeds and so she took it very easy on the downhill.

Just a few miles ahead I noticed a large shape walking through the grass, with a large tail and pointy ears! As the grass on the hilly East side of the road was long and dried, it immediately reminded of a lion in the Serengeti, where we had been, just 5 months before. The moment I realized it was a mountain lion, it noticed me and dropped into the high grass. I could just make out the tips of his ears that were moving every now and then.

My cameras were both dead, so I hoped that Ivana would arrive soon. When she did I pointed her towards the field, but as she did not know where the lion was, she could never discover it. When she came over to me and handed me her camera bag, the mountain lion decided that these two half-metal monsters were a threat and she jumped up and spurted away at an amazing speed. It took a few seconds to get the camera out the bag, at maximum zoom and ready to shoot, so all we have is a short shaky video of a fast moving dot, but in the still you can see the long tail, which –besides the size- differentiates it from a Bobcat.

The next morning the bad weather that had been announced for more than a week, really caught up with us. The rain soon came down in heavy showers and then turned into a full-blown hailstorm, the ice pounding our hands and faces. It was impossible to cycle, so we went for cover under some trees.

California coast (with Ivana's camera)

A car stopped and a friendly woman asked if we wanted to wait inside, but as we were soaked already and there was little point in wetting her car, we thanked her.

The rain eased down a bit and carefully we made our way over the steep and wet hills to a small town. The same car came up to us and the lady, – Marge- offered to take us in her car. I saw it was too small for both bikes and our gear, and therefore told Ivana that she should go and wait for me in the next town, taking also part of my luggage, as there were some very steep and dangerous sections coming up.

Even though my right knee was now completely useless I knew it had been a good decision to let Ivana ride the car as the hills before Jenner were steep, exposed, windy and wet. There was no level part, it was either very steep up or down.

My cycle computer had stopped working as usual in heavy rain, and did not record the final hills (up 150m, down 80, up 120m, down200m, up 50, all within a few km); likely this had been one of the steepest day so far on the trip…

Ivana would have hated the steep and narrow climbs and downhills with steep drops on the side and barely any shoulder. I arrived totally exhausted in Jenner, where the friendly owners of the Bed & Breakfast let us pitch our tent behind their building.

15-16 Dec: 3 Cyclists to Sausalito via Point Reyes, 70 +50km

The US is full of public restrooms, which is great for biketravellers. We packed our wet tent –though it had cleared up in the morning, it had been raining all night again- and walked towards the visitor centre, when we noticed another loaded bicycle.

It belonged to Graeme, a young cyclist who had been chasing us for several days, going twice our speed. He could use some easy days and therefore he joined us the final miles to San Francisco. It was nice to talk with someone else for a while and we enjoyed his company.

That evening we stayed with a Tori & Laurie, friends of Marge (the woman that had given Ivana a ride). One woman had just lost her job, something we would encounter a lot the coming weeks. On a bike you do not notice much of the world economy, but apparently the financial world was collapsing and many jobs were lost..

They had a great house, were already hosting another cyclist (who was out on a side trip) and even offered us the use of their outdoor Jacuzzi. That could never harm my sore knee, so at the end of the day, Graeme & I discussed life under the stars, floating in hot water, while it was close to freezing temperature…

The next morning we noticed how cold it had been: everything was frozen solid and it took a while before the air warmed up again. We had to be very close to San Francisco, but still the route 1 showed nothing but wonderful scenery, with no city in sight. Only after a last set of very steep hills, we zoomed down the other side of the hills into Sausalito, and suddenly we were in the middle of the city again. I had tried to ride using one knee only, but the other hurt so bad and was so swollen during the final hours, I could not even bend it.

We made our way through Sausalito towards Doug’s house. He had found our website several weeks before and had offered us a place to sleep using our contact form, being Couchsurfer/WarmShowers host without even knowing about it (he has signed up now :)!

He also added Graeme to his invite without problem and took great care of us and the next day took us on a short drive to the viewpoint. There it was, maybe the most famous piece of metal in the world, the Golden Gate Bridge and behind, San Francisco!

Kowalski! Status report!

Bikes: great, no problem at all.
Ivana: single flight from bike. Little shaken but unstirred
Harry: down to one knee. Might be a problem for next 20.000 miles.

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Day 152/3, 10/11 Dec 2008: The Avenue of the Giants

biketravellers — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 20:33:00 GMT

December 13 2008 by Harry (Edit)

One of the greatest places we have seen on this trip, was dark and cold… Views were very limited, but that was exactly the main attraction as we were cycling on the Avenue of the Giants, a 50 km (31mile) long road through the Humboldt Redwood State Park in Northern California.

Only about 4-5% of the original giant trees (Redwoods and Giant Sequoias) are left after the logging activities, and this place is one of the best to enjoy the grandeur of the trees.

After cycling through thousands of kilometres of forests and nature, we had not expected to be so impressed anymore, but just cycling and walking between these Giants, some over 100 meter high and thousands of years old, made us feel humble and small. It also gave hope that maybe nature can be saved if humans try to do their best as well…

Soon more stories about Northern California, for now I just wanted to share some images of the road, the trees, the villages and the odd tourist attractions. It is hard to put the Giants into perspective, the light is always wrong (or absent) and no photo will ever do justice to the feeling of being there.

Day 147-150, 5-8 Dec 2008: Entering California: Brookings- Eureka: fog, trees, waves & people…

biketravellers — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 20:30:00 GMT

December 12, 2008 by Harry

5 December: Brookings, Oregon to Klamath, California, 73km

Entering California is like entering another country: there is a checkpoint signs. This is to prevent ‘strange’ fruits entering the State, but when we arrived in the early morning, nobody was on duty in our lane, so we could enter without delay. It was a pleasant day, even getting hot at some point.

Only at the end of the day, just when were about to climb up a large (360m/1200ft) hill, the infamous sea fog came rolling in. We climbed slowly and soon we were above the clouds where it was still nice and sunny. But what goes up must go down, and so we downhilled towards the thick blanket.

Ivana really hated it and panicked when the vision limited to just a few meters. My point of view was that if we were to go the maximum speed (30MPH or about 48km/h), then no car should touch us, but she was too afraid and went down slowly.

We went back to sea level, but could hardly see the water through the thick fog and so we ended up stopping in Klamath. We asked a friendly passing woman if she knew a place to camp and she invited us to her trailer, where we saw the biggest mess we both had ever seen in any place that’s supposed to be fit for living…

Clothes everywhere (both inside and outside), kids sleeping in the livingroom, a sleeping/grumbling man, kids playing Xbox games and foodremains from Thanksgiving (8 days before) were everywhere. A bunch of semi-wild cats made the perfect picture complete and we were happy we had our tent to stay in and our pasta to cook.

Ivana had never heard of the politically incorrect description TrailerTrash, but here it was. What surprised her most that these apparently poor and likely uneducated people still had so much luxury: a huge trailer to live in with electricity and water, heaps of clothes, a big truck, Xbox and other gadgets. When comparing this to all those people we had witnessed in Africa and Asia and even Argentina, the contrast was sharp.

6th December: Klamath to Trinidad, 76km (+800m up and down)

We quickly made our way out and up another few big hills entering the first of several Redwood parks, famous for their big Redwood and Giant Sequoia trees. We had gotten off busy Highway 101 and were cycling on the Newton B Drury Scenic Parkway, surrounded with green giants.

We stopped to admire the Corkscrew Tree and ‘Big Tree’, a coast redwood tree, 304 feet (91m) tall and 21 feet (6.3m) in diameter. The sheer size of these age-old trees made us feel humble and forget the steep climbing though the cool forest.

7th/8th December: Trinidad to Eureka via McKinleyville (18+30km)

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We had arrived in Trinidad just before dark, where we got hosted by Carol. When we rode through the nice little town the next day, we understood why it was her favorite place to be. Just before we entered the small but busy coffeeshop a cyclist came up to us, asked a few questions about our trip and then stuffed a $20 bill in my hand before cycling away.

We were a bit flabbergasted, but had head from other cyclists that this is not uncommon in California and we celebrated with some hot chocolate and pastries in the wonderfully alternative coffeeshop.

We had already arranged the next place to stay, which was CouchCycler Louise’s house, only 16km away. It was a great sunny day and she came our way to pick us up, reaching us when we were just outside Trinidad. We had a relaxed and pleasant ride towards McKinleyville, where we helped her finish off a huge crab, tasty!

She drove us to the Hmong Celebration of Happy New Year, in nearby Samoa (see some people and read some backgrounders about the Hmong here on 1000 Americans) and cycled with us to Arcata the next day, through flat fields and over quiet country roads.

While Ivana roamed the numerous small shops I opened Lenny on a park bench and used one of the open networks to answer some emails. It is so nice to be able to quickly slide the laptop out of the Ortliebs and work anywhere, anytime…

It was only an hour to get to Eureka, where we were awaited by yet another great Couchsurfing host: Beth and her cat Dub. Eureka contains some classic Victorian mansions including the Ingomar Club, formerly known as the Carson Mansion, named after the first of many logging millionaires, responsible for leaving less than 5% of the original redwoods & Sequoias… Many of these are along the famous ‘Avenue of the Giants’, which was our destination for the next few days…

Day 141-146, 29-Nov – 4 Dec 2008: The Oregon Coast in photos

biketravellers — Fri, 5 Dec 2008 20:27:00 GMT

December 6, 2008 by Harry

It took only a few days of cycling to get down the Oregon Coast from Otis, with an average of 72km (45 Mi) we covered it in 6 days. The area is very impressive, even though it was quite rainy and windy, we enjoyed it a lot. Below is a picture overview of some of the scenery we saw along the way.

We also saw some less pretty things, as explained in my previous ‘trash rant’, but overall it was another highlight.

We camped a few days in the rain but also stayed with some wonderful people: Linda & Gilbert, Terry & Lily, Nicole & ‘Jim-Bob’ Brian on Couchsurfing and Ken Neeley, who celebrated our last night in Oregon with us in the local Pizza Place…

Next stop: California!

(click on the images and a larger version will appear automagically!).

Kowalski! Status report!

After 6300km (almost 4000 miles), our Santos Travelmaster bikes are great as ever. Ivana got another flat tire (her 3rd I think), I am still at one!

My back hurts at times and some of the steeper hills I could feel my knees, but so far, so good…

Next stop: California!

Mile 207, Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area: a Trash Rant…

biketravellers — Tue, 2 Dec 2008 20:23:00 GMT

December 2, 2008 by Harry

I am about to post several wonderful images of Oregon State, USA. A truly beautiful place. But first I have to get something else off my chest:

<rant> Imagine cycling along one of the most beautiful stretches of coastal nature in the US, maybe even in America. Dunes, forests, cliffs and rough waves. So nice they declared it a ‘National Recreation Area’!

I enjoyed the scenery, but got more and more annoyed with the trash that was on the side of the road. It got so bad that I could not focus on the nature or even on the traffic, but just on the next piece of plastic that had been thrown out of a car window, or maybe I should say truck window?

Besides the ugliness of the trash, the chemicals that are slowly released into nature (by decomposing and by getting eaten by animals), it also creates dangerous situations for cyclists, as many times we have to go around heaps of glass or large pieces of trash, forcing me onto the car lane (assuming there is a shoulder to begin with).

At one point, at the bottom of a steep hill, I decided to take some photographs.

About one mile later, I had about 75 pictures of discarded trash, all taken within 45 minutes of uphill cycling (some more were shot after lunch, one hour later). Please take the following facts in account:

I only started shooting after I got really annoyed by all the trash, so there were hundreds pieces more, just before this series.
All first 75 shots were taken within 45 minutes; this includes cycling uphill, getting off the bike, releasing the flap of my handlebar-bag, getting the camera ready, taking a picture and getting moving again. Mostly I could do only a few pedal strokes before stopping again.
Many pieces are missing. Only halfway up I started to shoot ‘doubles’, before, I passed items if I already had shot them. Missed Doubles (or triples) include red Bull, Coca Cola, Camel cigarettes, all Beers Of Idiots (see below) and more
I did not shoot most unrecognizable and/or unbranded pieces of trash, such as random car parts, plastic wrappers of all kinds and sizes, unrecognizable glass items and much, much, much more…
The road was steep on my side, the side of this trash, so likely a multitude of trash was to be found lower down the slope
It was busy and there was no good shoulder, so I could not stop for every piece.
Image #27 is the one in the middle: Scenic Byway… Besides this sign, there had also been a ‘Adopt-A-Highway sign before I started shooting.
I only shot one side of the road.

Here is it: all the glory of Mile 207, Oregon (click image for larger version)

Conclusions:

Not all of the below are scientifically proven or valid, but it after cycling several thousand kilometers along the US highways, it is reasonable safe to assume that:

There are hundreds pieces of trash per mile of US Highway, even though it is in a ‘National Recreation Area’
Coors & Bud (especially light) are the choice of beer for trash-throwing idiots
There is just as much ‘healthy’ trash (waters such as Dasani, Aquafina, ArrowHead (with ‘Eco-Shape bottle’!), V8, VitaminWater etc) as there is stuff that was already trash to begin with (KFC, McDonalds, Taco Bell, BurgerKing etc etc)
Drive-thru coffee creates throw-away empty coffee trash.
Adopt-a-Highway seems nothing more than a scam where local businesses get some advertising and never look at ‘their’ road again. There were some exceptions in the US (especially notably when the Adopter was a Bikeshop or Eco-market etc), but generally those signs only seemed to attract trash as the idiots throwing things out of their car, seem to need something to aim for..

I assume that the crazy fools that throw these things out of their car window (trust me, they are NOT cyclists…) have zero respect for nature also have no respect for others or even themselves, as they are messing up their own planet. Is is just education? lack of proper values taught by their parents? Or just plain stupidity? I really wonder what goes on in their minds if anything at all.

Some places have a sign that says: ‘$1000 fine for littering’. This means that if one person was stationed here, he could have raised at least $80,000 in fines (likely a multitude) on this one mile alone. I think that will cover his salary? How’s that for job creation?

< / rant>

Day 135–140, 23-28 Nov 2008: Metal Cowboys, Portland, giving thanks with an old friend

biketravellers — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 20:19:00 GMT

November 29, 2008 by Harry

Before we headed over to Portland, we had to visit an old friend we had never met! I had known MC & Dave since years by email & via the 7summits.com forum, but we had never met in person. It was great to finally meet them and we stayed longer than planned as they took us on a nice sightseeing trip through the Columbia River Canyon, with its gorgeous waterfalls and hosted us for the night in their great house. It was hard to say goodbye the next day, but we had another interesting date to get to that evening…

After arriving late at night in Portland, we ended up in the house of a well-known cyclist: Joe Kurmaskie, aka ‘The Metal Cowboy’. It was much fun to talk about his and our tours and meet and having dinner with his wonderful family in person, after having read about them in their books. It is great that even a well-known person like Joe gives back by offering ‘Warm Shower’ to biketravellers.

After adjusting our bikes we managed to catch his escaped cat the next morning, and we headed off to see Portland. It is known to be pretty and one of the most bike-friendly cities in the US and our hopes were high. We got quite disappointed; even though there were many people cycling and there were some nice streets with alternative shops and interesting architecture, it was still another noisy big city, mainly because of endless streams of large cars.

I realized that we had gotten spoilt in Amsterdam and the Netherlands: everything is focused around cycling: almost all roads have separate bike lanes, with their own traffic lights and distance markers. Nobody wears helmets because it is safe to cycle and because bicycles have the right of way in many situations. Here in Portland it was already nearly impossible to get into the city from the North as there are no clear signs and the big I5 highway has no easy way for bikes to cross the river.

25th November: Portland – McMinnville 63km: meeting an old friend!

After staying one more night with Couchsurfer Adam (one of the few Portlanders without a car?), we pushed our bikes up the steep hills and continued along the Pacific Highway 99. The rain came down nonstop and we had to adjust our brakes, in order to safely stop for the many traffic lights on the wet hills.

Once out of the city we stopped at a SafeWay to get some lunch and got into a bizarre conversation with some teenage kids. It deserves its own post which I will try to write up soon…

Back on the rainy road, I was passed by a car who pulled over to the shoulder. Thinking it was somebody who wanted to encourage us in some way, I stopped and waited for the driver to step out into the rain. It took about half a second before I recognized the smiling face that appeared on the asphalt: Ben! Our cycling buddy from the Dalton Highway! It had been 4 months since we had said goodbye in Fairbanks after riding down one of the hardest roads in the world together with Ben and his friends. Even though it was pouring rain, he thought he recognized Ivana’s Santos Bike and when he passed me as well, he was sure it was us!

It is a small planet after all, especially as we had no idea that his family lived so close. He was on his way to a place called McMinnville, to spend Thanksgiving there. He jotted down the name and number and promised to email their street address.

We had already arranged to spend the night in the house of Gary Schultz, an active traveller, who showed us pictures from all his great trips, but the next day we went to see Ben’s family: Carol & Mike. They are amazingly warm people and immediately invited us to stay the next days, so we could celebrate thanksgiving with them. It was nice to catch up with Ben as well, so we gladly accepted the invitation. We spend all day preparing the huge meal and had a great time together. Though we had so different backgrounds and beliefs, we were all thankful for life and for the opportunity to meet warm people like them.

28 November: McMinnville – Otis, 82 km, back to the coast

It was a fast ride to the coast, we zoomed across misty fields and empty hazelnut trees and had only one small pass to conquer before we could follow the Salmon River down to the coast. We had some trouble finding the place of our Couchsurfing host Alan, but when we got to his place it was worth the extra meters of uphill.

Alan lives close to the coast and he took us across the estuary for a walk on the beach, just in time before the night fell. While Ivana made some more of her famous pies, we finished the night watching some movies, getting ready for yet another famous part of our journey: The Oregon Coast!

Day 124 –133, 12 –21 Nov 2008: Washington: Couchsurfing, Seattle to …Vancouver?!?

biketravellers — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 20:15:00 GMT

November 22, 2008 by Harry

We suddenly received an email.

Hello Harry,
Read your profile. Would love to meet if possible.
How much longer are you in the Seattle area?
Samir

We called him and found out that Samir, his wife Madalyn & daughter Danielle were living in Bellevue, 25km east of Seattle. We had actually planned to leave Seattle on the west side, but as many times before, we let chance determine our route. So on a dark & rainy afternoon we said goodbye to Andy and off we went, across the Lake Washington Bridge and ended up atop of a very steep hill, where we were welcomed by Samir and his family. He actually had 2 other guests, 2 puppeteers that would be performing in the area the next morning. It was nice to be together, Maddie cooked up a great meal and we enjoyed the fact that the Internet made it possible to meet new friends like these.

For those new to Couchsurfing, Hospitality Club & Warm Showers, they are networks of people opening their house and/or local knowledge up to other travellers, supplying them with free lodging (a ‘couch’, though it can be a spare room, a sofa or just a spot on the floor or in the garden). Currently there are more than a million members inviting strangers into their homes, following the mission of Couchsurfing:

“CouchSurfing seeks to internationally network people and places, create educational exchanges, raise collective consciousness, spread tolerance, and facilitate cultural understanding.”

Read more about CouchSurfing, WarmShowers.org & Hospitality Club in this post here.

Samir invited us to come to his Cabin at Snoqualmie pass with him, which was perfect: fresh air, mountains, a warm cabin and a nice hike to Snow Lake nearby. It was a perfect place to relax before hitting the road again. We stayed one more night in Bellevue, did a slideshow presentation for his friends, got my iPod replaced and off we went

17 November 2008: Seattle – Tacoma, 79km

It is basically all city, all the way to Tacoma, but still there are some nice biketrails you can follow; first the lake Washington trail, then the curvy Green River trail, leading to the Interurban Trail.

I even managed to get a speeding ticket from a cop on a bike, see the image to the left! (Just kidding, officer Kyle Bear was nice and interested in our trip, see his picture here on 1000 Americans)

Ivana & I managed to lose eachother for the first time since starting the trip. I was waiting at the bottom of a long downhill, and she had left the main road somewhere halfway down, thinking it continued straight. After 20 minutes I made my way back up the steep slope and fortunately found her.

At least she had the address of the destination for tonight, so likely she would have ended up at Gerrit’s place somehow, but it is very discomforting to suddenly be apart when you send 24/7 together! Gerrit (see his picture on 100 Americans here) had prepared a wonderful meal for us, likely the tastiest we had eaten on our trip!

18 November 2008: Tacoma – Olympia, 73km

We left Tacoma on another drizzly day, but it cleared up soon and we enjoyed the ride throughSteilacoom and the forests of the Fort Lewis military zone. Unfortunately due to the zone there is no real other way out of there than to ride part of the I5, the largest highway in Washington, but that was actually better than it appeared. It is not only legal to cycle parts of it, but as the shoulders are almost 2m wide (6-7ft), it was quite safe. Still we were happy to be out of the noise and on the downhill towards Olympia.

Olympia looked like a nice town, but we had to rush to make it to Dan & Nancy’s place before dark, so we continued South right away. Dan & Nancy are inspirational in many ways, they cycle across the USA in stages (3 parts down, one to go!), spend their winters in Costa Rica and play in the sessions in the Irish pub! See more about their plans in 1000 Americans here.

We ended up staying another night with them and their cats as we felt right at home, listening to their stories and plans and of course to see them play in the pub. Ivana made more apple pies, she still finds apples everywhere, season is not over yet, and many apple trees have lost their leaves, but not their fruit and most of it is going to waste as nobody is picking them!

20/21 November 2008: Olympia – Vancouver, WA, via Castle Rock, 100 + 84km!

It was a dark and somber day. It never really cleared up and it was either raining or threatening to rain and the wind was not very helpful to get us up the steep (‘rolling’) hills… We missed our exit and again ended up at the I5, which was not so bad at all as in the dark, it is probably safe to ride the 7ft shoulder on the highway than the non-existent shoulder on a narrow and winding country road to Castle Rock.

We were welcomed by Cindy & Larry, an elderly couple who have raised 15 kids! They have 28 grandkids and 3 great grandkids. All but one of their children, in all colours and sizes, are either step or adopted.

They live in a great place with lots of farm animals around and we had the honour to be their first Couchsurfers.

We took a ‘scenic route’, which 99% of the times translates as ‘very steep hills’ and this was no exception… But the weather was nice, it was fresh and sunny and the hills green, so life was good.

Cycling relaxes your mind and you start enjoying the ‘little’ things again like smells, sounds and colours…

We were still moving South with Fall and though this meant the days were getting shorter and shorter, the colours next to the mighty Columbia River were beautiful.

.

Besides the Glaciated spike of Mt Hood, we also noticed the remain sof Mount St Helens, and impressive mountain, that had erupted (exploded) in 1980.

From WikiPedia:

Mount St. Helens is most famous for its catastrophic eruption on May 18, 1980, at 8:32am PDT^[1] which was the deadliest and most economically destructive volcanic event in the history of the United States. Fifty-seven people were killed; 250 homes, 47 bridges, 15 miles (24 km) of railways, and 185 miles (298 km) of highway were destroyed. The eruption caused a massive debris avalanche, reducing the elevation of the mountain’s summit from 9,677 feet (2,950 m) to 8,365 feet (2,550 m) and replacing it with a 1 mile (1.6 km) wide horseshoe-shaped crater.^[2] The debris avalanche was up to 0.7 cubic miles (2.9 km³) in volume. The Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument was created to preserve the volcano and allow for its aftermath to be scientifically studied.

So after leaving Vancouver, Canada a month ago, we arrived in Vancouver, Washington! Or, as Ivana’s mum said, when we told her we were in Vancouver: ‘Again?’.

We got confused by some of the very busy streets but made it to the home of Photography Professional Tom Hubbard & his wife Sandy (see them and their great websites here on 1000 Americans), who took us out for a great meal.

We almost made it out of Washington State, but it felt like we were about to enter yet another country: Oregon!

Kowalski, Status report!

Days go fast on a bike. Before you know it, you are one week ahead, which means that the memory of our cycle computers is overwriting itself. So one day is missing here (from Olympia to Castle Rock), which was about 100km and an estimated 750m up and down..

Our Santos bikes behaved perfectly as always, no problems whatsoever, my back was a little painful at times, but not too bad. Total distance covered so far 5700km, including 51,000 meters (167,000ft) of climbing!

Day 106–123, 25 Oct–12 Nov 2008: Hikes, Halloween & Hope in Seattle

biketravellers — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 20:11:00 GMT

November 13, 2008 by Harry

We had planned to stay maybe a week in Seattle, but it turned out we would stay for 2.5 weeks… Seattle is mostly known for Grunge, Microsoft, Boeing & coffee and it generally considered a nice place to live. I hade been working for a small company in Bothell, close to Seattle, about 8 years ago and had been in the area a few times. The great thing is that the city is huge, but spread out over several peninsulas and islands and that the mountains and nature are never far away…

It was great to see Andy again, after meeting in Uganda and Amsterdam before. He was very busy filming a documentary, connected to the upcoming elections, but still he took us out to see some live music and we went for a great hike up Mt Pilchuk. Not a difficult climb -though it was quite icy & slippery near the top-, but very rewarding, with nice views over the Cascade mountains. It is wonderful to live so close to the nature and especially snow-capped mountains, something I miss in Amsterdam.

On our way out we stopped for a beer in a typical loggers bar. Neither the beer, nor the people and especially the decoration wasn’t very tasteful

Time flies when you’re having pain..

The days went passed quickly. We had a lot of rain, but also some nicer days. We walked around the neighbourhoods and went for some short rides. Only once we went out for a real ride; even though there are some biketrails, you really have to look for them and most are not so scenic, mostly just designated parts of the road.

We had been travelling in fall colours since the Yukon, 3000km north, and Seattle was no different. The shots that make up this image were shot in just one street, close to Andy’s place.

My back was starting to hurt again and as my diclophenac pills were finished and I could not get more without a prescription, I switched to an Ibuprofen-rich diet…

It was a bit depressing to see how quickly the days shortened and as we also lost an hour in daylight savings time, we had effectively lost 2 hours of usable daylight in the weeks we were in Seattle, which would make the next parts much harder as we had not much flexibility, time wise.

Ghosts and pumpkins: Halloween time…

We felt at home and overstayed with Andy, who had many other things on his mind. We had temporarily moved out to stay with Nancy, a nice friend we had just met, but after returning we got stuck in ‘daily life’: work, writing, computer/software issues. We spent a lot of time in nearby coffee shops: relaxed places, where you can get a hot chocolate and work on your laptop all day without anybody bothering you..

We had noticed the pumpkins on Vancouver Island and realized that we would be in Seattle in time for Halloween! Though Andy did only get a handful of kids ‘trick-or-treat’-ing at his door, it was nice to see how the neighbourhoods had been slowly taken over by ghosts, carved pumpkins, grim reapers and other ghouly stuff and creatures.

Yes, we can. Hope for a new USA?

As time flew by so quickly, we realized that we would still be in Seattle for the upcoming elections. Of course daily life had been influenced a lot due to the billion dollars spent on the politician’s campaigns: everywhere were signs, stickers, concerts, parties, telephone calls. As Seattle is more progressive than average, Obama was clearly the favorite.

Ivana once remarked that she wondered if we would meet any McCain supporters, so we could get a balanced overview of the political views of the US citizens. The reply was that people not supporting Obama, are probably less likely to host strangers’/travellers like us, so we would likely not meet many republicans face to face..

The days were getting darker and darker and we felt we had to get ready to head South. Winter was till very close, and we have a lot of ground to cover before we would hit the warm lands of Baja/California. Slowly but surely, we were getting lured in a daily job of work and eating, sticking to one spot. We had to switch the delicate balance back to our journey and start travelling again.

Voting day!

The vibe was special, even more than the weeks leading up to the actual elections. As you can see on this poll, nobody outside the US (apparently except Albania & Venezuala?!) would ever think of voting for McCain. Especially with the real risk of him getting a heart attack which would put hockeymum/huntress Ms Palin in charge, but mostly because everybody in the world feels the mess Bush made of the world, in economics, safety and ecologically.

Still, due to the polarisation politics in the US, the difference would not so big, so it was still very exciting to see who would win.

The neighbourhood’s pastry shop was almost sold out, the Obama cupcakes were flying out the door. We visited a voting hall and talked to some volunteers and some voters, though we were not allowed to make any photos or videos inside, it was very nice to see the actual ballots and especially to see democracy at work.

Whatever you think of the candidates or the USA in general, many countries can learn a lot from the way the power would switch without the need of military or religious coups. Let’s just hope that this time all votes would actually be counted…

The coffee shop next door had a ‘freedom day’, meaning you were free to pay whatever you felt appropriate for whatever you ordered! The atmosphere was great, positive but nervous.

We saw the outcome live on TV and felt the big ‘sigh’, nut just from our house, but from the neighbourhood, town, city, state and the world. Congratulations Mr President Barack Obama, for defeating the odds.

Maybe the US can once again become leader of positive change, let’s hope it works out well and that the 300million US citizens realize that one man alone cannot change the world, he will need a mentality change of all citizens if he wants to succeed: No more buying stuff they do not need with money they do not have, no more fear for strangers inside and outside their country and realisation that we only have one world, we need to conserve and protect it and get along with our fellow earthlings…

Goodbye to Seattle

We had received a nice email from a man in Bellevue, 25km east of Seattle. He had found out on Couchsurfing.com that we were in the area and after looking at our profiles, decided we were interesting and had invited us to stay with him and his family. As usual, we let ourselves and our plans be guided by chance encounters like these and so we accepted. We loaded up our bikes, did a short video interview with Andy and headed off under dark skies and in the rain, off to a new part in our journey South through these continents we call America.

Day 98-105: 17-24 Oct 2008: ferries & friendly people, Vancouver, CA,-Seattle via Victoria

biketravellers — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 19:35:00 GMT

October 25, 2008 by Harry

The weather gods did not want us to leave Vancouver, maybe they thought I should rest more. Wind and rain pounded on us when we made our way to the ferries in the Southwestern point of the mainland of Canada. we had taken the monorail East first as the direct route would have led us through the George Massey Tunnel, off limits for cyclists. The shuttle for cyclist had stopped for the season and we did not think that any bus could take our heavy bikes on their frontloading rack. we could not lift them up there anyways

After about 30km through mainly flat and wet land we ended up at the ferry, just in time for a 14.00 departure. It takes about 90 minutes to cross the Strait of Georgia to Vancouver Island, the largest island on the West side of North America.

The Lochside Trail, turning into the Galloping Goose trail later on, starts right outside the ferry terminal and is a great way to see a bit of the island. It is an old rail track, sometimes unpaved, sometimes crossing roads and even wooden trestles but always very scenic for all its 35km. We saw deer along the car-free trail, many flocks of geese and fields full of pumpkins. we enjoyed it so much that we ended up entering in Victoria in the dark…

We stayed 2 nights with our great Warm Showers list hosts, Mark & Cathy. They took us to a nice little Farmer’s market, one of the last of the season. It is nice to see that more young people are supporting the local farmers and eating healthy produce, even though it costs more than the preprocessed and mass-produced ‘food’ from the larger supermarket chains. I feel that our generation (at least a part of it) realizes that we should value fuel for our own system more than that for our cars…

It was nice to walk and cycle around town and into the parks without all the luggage, one of the great advantages of staying with trustworthy hosts. We relaxed near the harbour and did the first real maintenance on our bikes: as we had cycled 5000 km, we had to replace the oil inside our Rohloff back hub. It was very simple: open the screw, inject cleaning oil, cycle for a few minutes, (mainly in 3rd and 5th gear, so you use all parts inside), pull out the cleaning oil and dirt from the hub and inject clean lubricating oil. As easy as changing a tire and we are now good for the next 5000km!

Ivana’s Argentinean flag, on the back of her bike, again proved to be very effective and helpful as we suddenly heard some voice in Spanish behind us. We looked into the friendly faces of Estela and David, who lived nearby and were about to go for lunch, just like us. They wanted to hear more about our trip and invited us for a nice lunch and for an ‘Asado’ the next evening.

So even though we had planned to leave Victoria this day, there was no point trying to head out now, as Ivana was getting excited at the thought of Argentinean-style meat and some Spanish conversations

We ended up staying 2 nights at their place as the thought of another piece of David’s chocolate cake was enough to vaporize any ferry plans that day…

22 October: From Canada to the USA!

Immigration was surprisingly simple when we headed to the ferry the next morning. Just a few short questions and we received our permission to stay 6 months in the US! The ferry ride was nice, our bikes strapped together on the outer deck, together with the bikes of Russ, a friendly cyclist from Bremerton in the Seattle area, and two from German cyclists, also on their way South. We had a nice dinner together in the local Mexican restaurant; the first burritos, I assume many, many more will follow on our trip.. That evening we slept in the attic of Tristan & Julia. Tristan was a friend of a friend of our friend Andy. He had left for Seattle when we arrived but Julia and her cat took us two strangers in her house and made us feel at home. It s still a very pleasant surprise to see how hospitable people can be towards travellers and strangers.

Some biketravellers choose the Western route, but we went East of the Olympic park as we wanted to visit our friend Andy in Seattle. From Port Angeles, we took another very nice biketrail, the Olympic trail, through Sequim. This also followed part of an old rail bed, but also contained some strange loops and short steep hills. It starts near the sea and Ivana urged me to look for otters, as she never saw one before.

‘You have to look for otters, ok? I want to see them!’

‘Ok, how about those 3?’

Just when we she asked me, 3 otters danced through the waters, disappearing in the direction of faraway Mt Baker…

The track continued over autumn leaves and through sunny fields. Unfortunately it stops quite sudden and you have no choice but to choose between busy roads with narrow shoulders. It had been a sunny day and we had enjoyed the quiet parts with its wildlife (bald eagles) and blackberry bushes. The plan was to get to Port Townsend, but darkness was coming to soon and we settled for a garden in Port Hadlock after 75 km of cycling, it felt strange and good to be on the bike again…

23 October: Port Hadlock to Suquamish: About peanut butter & underwater treasures

The roads were quite nice, though not all had shoulders, but traffic was easy. After passing the picturesque town of Port Ludlow, the first challenge was the Hood Canal Bridge, a long and busy metal construction with no real space for cyclists.

Once crossed, we chose the less busy route which took us through the quaint antique town of Port Gamble. A few miles ahead we noticed a small sign “Fresh Peanut Butter!”. We checked it out and found that the small local company roasted organic peanuts and if you wanted some PB, they would make it on the spot. Especially for all biketravellers, he told me his secret recipe:

Very Secret Old Fashioned Peanut Butter recipe:

Ingredients:

- Peanuts

Tools:

- Peanut cruncher

Instructions:

- Fill top of Peanut cruncher with organic peanuts.

- DONOT add preservatives, salt, sugar, oil, or other natural or unnatural substances.

- Switch on machine.

- Collect fresh, tasty and pure peanut butter in jar at bottom end.

Apparently, he was having a hard time selling the delicious peanut butter. Not only because cheap brands filled with sugar, oil and preservative cost less in the supermarkets, but also because many schools are banning students from bringing PB sandwiches. Why? Because of the out-of-control claim culture combined with growing allergies for natural foods. So many children are now developing allergies, and as the lawyers are ready to sue schools for everything they (do not) have, the schools have to be cautious.

It is still not sure why the last decades this has risen so much in first world countries, but scientists suspect that too clean living environments (children can no longer play in the dirt and stuff things in their mouth and hands need to be washed 10 times a day with antibacterial ‘soaps’) the natural immune system gets messed up. Another thought is that the allergy is a result of all the creams (many containing peanut oil) that we are supposed to rub on our children, something that kids in Africa and Asia do not need…

Andy had given us another address to stay; from his friend John Williams, a fellow filmmaker, specialized in underwater photography. John was a very friendly host and it was nice to see some of the amazing footage he shot. It looked like it was taken on far away reefs, but all of it was shot just in the nearby Puget Sound, a strong reminder that beauty can be very near our homes and that we should protect it…

We had noticed that traffic was increasing, and just a few more miles separated us from one of the largest metropolitan areas in the USA: Seattle was waiting for us….

Day 91- 97, 10-17 Oct 2008: Totems, servers, sushi & parks in Vancouver

biketravellers — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 19:33:00 GMT

October 18, 2008 by Harry

Filed under Canada, North America, Trip reports

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Vancouver is a nice city. Even though we had to get used to being in a large place again, we enjoyed the neighbourhoods, the bicycle lanes, the beaches, Chinatown, Sushi. I will keep this report short and just show you some images.

We were surprised by the large number of homeless people in the streets downtown and the lack of a real ‘tourist’ area. A lot is going on in Vancouver as the Olympic Wintergames will be here in less than 16 months: new buildings, houses and more.

We spend many days resting at Kristen’s place. I had to transfer many websites from one host to another, which is the electronic version of emigrating an entire family, but all went well and now www.BikeTravellers.com, www.ExposedPlanet.com and some others are finally reachable and fast again.

We went into some big outdoor and bicycle shops but did not really need anything. I commented about this on Bikeradar, a well-known website that had reviewed our Santos Travelmaster:

I am currently testing it on our ride from Alaska to Argentina. The bike is great, no problems whatsoever. My girlfriend, riding the same bike, and me were in a big Vancouver bikeshop after finishing the first 5000km, including about 800-1000km unpaved (Dalton Highway, Denali Highway and Cassiar Highway).

‘What do we need for our bikes?’ we asked eachother, looking hungry at all the nice gear and tools.

‘Ehhhh?’

In the end we realized we have to change the oil (recommended after 5000km) and as we already had the spare Rohloff oil with us, we bought nothing.

And once you have tried the Rohloff, you will never want to go back

(tripreports can be found on http://WorldOnABike.com).

After our first long trip on into town –on foot- ended up with blisters we started using our bikes and toured around the city and through Stanley Park. The park is quite big and houses many trails for cyclists (one way!) and hikers. We saw raccoons, geese and met some nice guys who invited us for dinner after we managed to meet them again a few hours later…

Of course we ate a lot, both in Kristen’s place as well as in town, the biggest find being an all you can eat Sushi Buffet! We found out that it was Canadian Thanksgiving (which is about a month before the US version), and Kristen and her housemates all went out to eat with friends and family. Just when we thought we would have to spend the evening alone, we got an email from Carol and Barry, inviting us for thanksgiving in their place in North Vancouver! It was great to see Barry again and meet Carol, who is full of wonderful stories; the food was delicious and we felt privileged to be there with them.

It was time to get to Seattle, but we decided that we did not want to go straight down, through the non-stop Metropolitan area of Northern Washington State. We decided to visit Victoria first…

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Tags: Animals, British Columbia, Canada, Cities, Couchsurfing, Vancouver, WarmShowers