Sometimes I even know where I'm going.....but not often

All good things

shalaith — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 16:39:00 GMT

Leaving LA was about as much fun as entering it. 5^th of July and the city was distinctly hung over. People wandered around in the late morning haze peering at the world with bleary eyes. The beach as I rode along it on the quiet bike path, was covered in trash. Apparently there was a beach party. Oh darn I missed it.

Big trucks rumbled their way across the sand, sucking up crap and excreting freshly cleaned sand back onto the beach. I cycled swiftly by them trying not to get caught in the resulting sandstorm.

The path left the beach went into the city. Wound around a harbour. Spat me out near a channel and then went back to the ocean for awhile.

Ended up near yet another fisherman's wharf. Like many fisherman's wharf's there was a distinct lack of fishermen. Apparently once a place is gentrified the people that made it interesting aren't allowed to stay there any more.

I ate lunch by the wharf and earned some odd looks because I was leaning against a pot plant peeling a boiled egg.

Something about peeling a boiled egg in public, offends or embarrasses some people. I'm not sure why.

Maybe they think I'll do something with a boiled egg that only unfortunate women in Thailand do with ping pong balls....

…..or maybe they just think I'm going to spread egg shell everywhere. And I only do that in really expensive neighbourhoods.

It gives the gardeners something to do.

Two middle aged men/cyclists stopped to give me advice.

“We've gone to the border.” They told me.

“Uh-huh.” I said feeling completely unimpressed.

“We can tell you the best way to go.”

They plunged into lengthy 'go left' go right lecture. I ate my egg and stared at the ocean and wished they'd go away.

I had a map.

Did they think anyone could retain six thousand directions?

I'd sort hit my limit on taking advice from condescending cycling folk.

Just north of LA, an older spandex boy had drifted by on a two thousand dollar road bike, peered down his nose at my bike and it's load.

I could see him thinking, 'she won't get far with that set up.'

“Where have you come from?” He asked.

“Canada.” I shrugged nonchalantly. The guy looked less smug as he cycled on ahead of me.

Fuckwit.

The two guys eventually left me in peace. I finished lunch and pedalled on.

Two seconds later I'd missed my turn off and caught up with the two cyclists I'd just been studiously ignoring. Who were more than happy to point out where I needed to go.

“I didn't think you were listening.” One said good naturedly.

“I wasn't.” I assured him.

We parted ways laughing.

The afternoon sucked.

I rejoined the highway south. Cars everywhere. Road was a potholed piece of crap. There was no bike lane just a lane that mostly full of parked cars. Suddenly it was maybe thirty five degrees in the shade and raging hot on the tarmac. Traffic lights kept stopping me so I couldn't keep any momentum going.

Everything looked dodgy as hell. Rough. Dirty. Trash everywhere.

It was the type of road that made me question the benefits of civilisation and evolution.

I got so hot and frazzled I had to pull over and cool down. Ended up in a little park sitting near a couple who talked in that slurred and nonsensical rhythm of the truly drug abused. If I had to guess I'd say they'd taken every drug known to man and a few that even Satan hadn't heard of.

I refilled my water bottles and pushed on.

The neighbourhood got more expensive. Prettier. The litter disappeared and I didn't see any more ruined people. Probably because this is where all the people that sold the drugs live. After all you'd have to have a plantation of something to own a house there.

Soon I was cycling along little beach towns like Long Beach and Seal Beach. They moved so seamlessly from one to another that it was impossible to know where I was. Of course there wasn't any signs. Only business signs indicated that I was moving through different locals.

Huntington Beach appeared before me at about half five. I'd cycled fifty uncomfortable miles and was about ready to stop.

I went over to the hostel indicated on my map. Found a deserted building. Looked in the dusty windows and checked the address six times. I was at the right spot.

Curiously I wandered over to the information centre and was told that the hostel had been shut for three years and that there was no other hostel in town. The best I could hope for was a hotel. The cheapest of which would be sixty dollars. If I had thought about it, I would have checked the hostel out online the night before. Alas that type of forward planning has never come easily to me.

It was twenty five miles to the next camp ground.

'Bugger it.” I said to the information woman. “I'll keep going.”

The sun was high in the sky and it would get dark around half eight.

To give myself a fighting chance I went to Subway and inhaled a foot long sandwich. Drank Fanta and took off down the road.

In the way of things, that part of the ride was the best of the day.

The weather cooled off. I hit Orange County as the sun was turning the sky a deep....well orange actually. I shot up and down the moderate hills glimpsing the ritzy little towns with their Mediterranean style from the corner of my eye. Mostly I just cycled. Fast for once.

Cause I had to get off the road before dark.

Somehow I managed to find energy to sing the theme song to The OC. The television show that was based in the area.

“CAAAAAAAAlllllllafoooooooooooooorrrrrrniiiiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Heeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreeeee

weeeeeeeeeeeee

coooooooooooooooooooooommmmmmmmmmmmmmeeeeee!” I sang hurtling down a hill and shooting up the other side.

A spandex cyclist flagged me down as I was slogging up yet another middle sized incline.

He hadn't seen any bike tourists in his home area in over a year and wanted to know my story. He'd cycled form San Francisco to San Diego four times and was sick of the traffic. I told him that he needed to cycle in Oregon and north California. South of San Fran the road is much less fun.

He told me I show tour in France.

“France is eleven out of ten.” Said he. “Cycling in the US is not even a one.”

….Interesting.

I carried on.

The sun set.

Praying that my reflective jacket was keeping me mostly visible I rushed through Dona Point and it was just getting to true dark when I pulled up in the campground.

“You look done in.” The ranger commented.

“I feel done in.”

Putting up my tent was hard.

It was the staying awake thing that was the true problem.

Then a bloke appeared nearby and wanted to talk.

I like people. I do. But not after I've just cycled 72.4 miles. [116.5kilometers]

Pretty soon all I could hear was a low droning noise, much like the roar of the highway.

I made inarticulate grunts by way of answers.

It was some time later when I'd just made a sort of general agreement sound when I noticed that the dude was gone.

Gratefully I crawled into my tent. I was asleep before my head hit my sleeping bag stuffed with clothes.

Hot.

Nine months in Canada had made me a stranger to the sensation.

It was the way I woke up the next day.

At dawn.

A part of the day I only know exists because I've heard other people talking about it.

And noticed that my panniers were entirely covered in ants.

Good morning world.

If I could have gotten my mouth to work I would have got out of bed swearing.

As it was I got up making the types of noises a grumpy monkey makes.

The good news was that the ants didn't bite.

They crawled all over everything and got in my hair but at least they didn't bring me out in big red lumps like the Australian ants do.

I knew there was a reason I liked America.

Sometime later I'd gotten the whole ant situation under control. As wiped ants off all my food and shaken out my panniers and repacked everything. Packed up my tent and eaten something. The sun came up and glared down straight into my campsite.

It was far too early to be awake, let alone cycling. But there wasn't anything else to do. I mean I could have gone swimming at the beach. The thought of doing so included pitfalls like unpacking towels and having showers and finding quarters to feed the shower.

And swimming is just such an 'awake' activity.

I did three laps of the campground before I found a way out. Then I spent some time moving very slowly along the bike path.

A middle aged woman on roller blades passed me.

She scooted by me easily and suddenly I was awake.

Groaning and swearing I pushed myself and managed to overtake the rollerblader. Maintaining that lead was embarrassingly painful.

It took hours to wake up.

The day was bright and happy and hot.

Just the type of weather I had been craving so long.

It was good. It was hot. But it was good.

I went by a nuclear power plant. Hoped that long overdue earthquake wouldn't strike while I was cycling by it. It didn't.

Then I entered a park and cycled on an amazing bicycle path for about ten blissful miles. Waving to the road bike cyclists as they shot past me. Then I entered the Marine base.

The Marine base was less exciting than I'd hoped. Ok, so I was passed by a small convoy of army vehicles and watched a bunch of tanks churning along the road next to me. But I didn't have to cycle across a mine field or dodge missiles. Which was slightly disappointing.

I rode by dry scrubby territory, past a small town, by fenced off housing and a school. There was some ankle-biters playing in the yard and they waved furiously as I went by. I waved back.

Other cyclists told me that the base had been closed for four years after September 11. I wondered if the families and kids living on the base had been much affected by the tightened security. Or what it was like growing up in a place like that.

Some miles later I cleared the base. Cities. Towns. Long roads covered in

Then I decided to get food, have lunch in a park and have a sleep for a few hours.

I only had ten miles left to go so that is exactly what I did.

Grass, tree, shade and food. I dropped like a stone and dozed for three hours.

The Elijo state beach was a dusty little bit of land above the ocean. I went swimming.

It. Was. Freaking. Amazing!

White sand. Hot weather. Cold salt water.

The way a beach should be.

I swam around and watched the sunset from the water.

Sheer bliss.

Some people from the east coast have been trying to tell me that sea water is better when it's warm. Like it is in Florida and Cable beach.

I've swum in warm sea water and it is a complete waste of time.

If the air is hot and so is the water so how are you ever going to get cool?

The cyclist sharing the campsite with me bought me a fish burrito. It tasted like chicken.

It was the last day of his trip so we had a celebratory....burrito?

Free food, who's complaining.

I should have really stayed at that campground for another day. I mean I was tired for that huge seventy mile day. It was in my muscles and in my brain. My body wanted to sleep.

The next day, with forty miles to the Mexican border. I pushed on.

Through the pretty outer suburbs of San Diego. Climbed La Jolla hill. It wasn't even that big of a hill. The map said it wasn't even five hundred feet. I'm pretty sure the map was wrong.

That hill was distinctly unfriendly. The sun came down. Hit the road bounced back up at me. The sun hit the limestone cliff on my right, radiated straight at me. I got cooked.

Then I plunged on through busy back roads. Climbed more small hills than I felt was entirely necessary. By one o-clock I'd reached Mission beach and crashed out in a park surrounded by boats.

After an hour I kept going. Only got five more miles when my body told me that any more cycling would be met with extreme opposition.

I found myself draped over a park bench talking soothingly to myself.

“Ok body.” I said gently. “I get it. We won't go to the border today, alright?”

“Too bloody right we won't.” My body informed me.

“We'll just go to the KOA campground ok?” I asked.

“You're pushing it.” My body warned.

“Well where else are we going to stay?” I wanted to know.

“Humph.”

I pulled myself together and pedalled through San Diego.

Distantly I noticed that it was a pretty little city. But I wasn't paying much attention.

Somehow I got to the KOA. Put my tent up and passed out.

Ten miles short of my goal. It rankled but I didn't have the energy to push on in me.

I slept in the next day. Until eleven.

When I had very slowly gotten my gear together, I made my very slow way down to the border.

It was a pretty dull ten miles. Road, traffic. Shops. The border was a concrete, fenced off metal jungle.

Feeling oddly anti-climatic I rode up to the pedestrian crossing and touched the fence.

I didn't cross. Because I didn't want to take the Delinquent Caribou over to Mexican. My bicycle would probably corrupt the place.

[Exert from my journal] 8^th of July 2011

'Well I done it! 3,198.2kms or 1987.3miles

THE MEXICAN BORDER

10.04 shitty miles from the KOA and that was it. I went up right up to the big fence and....like touched it.

And now,

I feel

mostly hungry.

So I am eating an apple.

And that is the story of how I went from Canada to Mexico on a bicycle taking just over two months and spending an awful lot of time reading.

Now I have to think of something to do next:

Shit!

San Fran to LA

shalaith — Fri, 8 Jul 2011 15:37:00 GMT

City cycling.

It's only fun if you're not actually trying to get anywhere.

It doesn't help that everything is in Spanish.

I shouldn't be surprised, California was part of Mexico once.

Until [as my friend Nick says] 'The US came and stole it!' Nick mimed shooting invisible California's with pistols, with associated 'bang bang' noises.

Now whenever I see street signs that start with 'San' 'Los' or 'Las' I get an involuntary image of a cowboy Nick swaggering around in riding leathers, shooting cactuses.

[Though my imagination is PG rated, because I doubt the US shot cacti when they took over].

“And what's with all the Del Mar's?” I asked Sydney after Nick had put away his air six guns. “Every town since San Francisco has had a Del Mar road, boulevard or street. I think there is even a town or a suburb I passed somewhere called Del Mar.”

“I think it means 'near the ocean' or 'of the sea'.” Sydney explained.

“Oh.” I thought about home and how everything ends in 'up'; Gelorup, Dardenup, Dalylup. Doesn't it mean 'near water'?

People like to name things after water.

San Francisco disappeared from my wing mirror on the 20^th of June. It's the second of July....meaning that I spent twelve days getting to Los Angles. My cycle computer tells me I've done 470 miles, which is....urgh..um...about 720 kilometres right?

No. The internet says 756.39 kilometres....so I wasn't that far off. [Don't push me ok, I'm still suffering from my last maths lesson. I ran out of the room crying hysterically].

The road south of San Francisco has been more intense. Not physically. The terrain slacked off considerably with few awful hills and a humongously strong tail wind. Nope, the road has been great. The issue for me has simply been: Cars.

You always know you're in trouble when you come across a road that is named after the Prince of Darkness.

I mean, people don't name the lane way that heads through a rose garden 'Satan's Way' do they?

'Seven Devils' road' back in Oregon was a long steep road that dipped and rose like the chest of a hyperventilating hypochondriac during an outbreak of swine flu.

Anyway as I left San Francisco I had to cycle a road called 'Devil's Slide'.

As the name would suggest it wasn't a happy little bit of tarmac lined with daffodils and pansies.

Devil's slide is Highway One at it's most sinister. It goes into a steep five hundred foot climb, not a problem in itself, but it does it without any place for a cyclist to ride. As in, no verge. At all! Again not too much of an issue, until you add a single north bound lane and single south bound lane. Then laughing in cruel amusement the Devil clogs the road with swift, impatient, rush hour traffic.

It was that day that I decided anyone driving black overgrown utilities needed to be taken out and run over by a thousand bicycles.

Slowly I slogged up the rise with cars zooming by next to me. It wasn't a cool day and I was hot and tired.

I was sitting just in off the edge of the road when a black overgrown truck blasted his horn as if to tell me to get off the road [though I had nowhere to go] as a second car was coming North in the far lane, Mr 'black overgrown utility' over took me with barely a centimetre between us.

For those that don't know what it feels like to have someone almost hit them because they couldn't be bothered to slow down: the feeling isn't awesome.

Unfortunate for the rest of the rush hour traffic instead of getting scared like any sane person.

I got Angry.

Really Angry.

Watching my mirror I waited for enough of a lag in the traffic. Made sure they could see me in plenty of time.

Then I rode out into the middle of the lane and cycled there instead.

Because that is what one does when they are on a busy one two lane road and they are truly irritated.

It had the desired effect. The traffic in my lane slowed down, jammed up behind me. When the road was safe they pulled out, into the far lane and overtook me with lots of polite space between me and them.

“YOU. Will. WAIT!” I yelled to the world in general. “I have a bloody right to be here and you will wait you.....” I went on to explain just exactly what types of sons of whores they were.

When a verge reappeared I graciously went to the side and allowed all the polite and slightly baffled cars to pass.

Which, in hindsight probably wasn't the most clever thing to do really.

I was watching them in my mirror I made sure they had enough time to see me and slow down.

But still.

It wasn't the last time I would vent my rage on this particular leg of the journey either. Whilst riding through strawberry farmland I heard a clack of nails on the road behind me. Turning my head I caught sight of a dog roughly the size of Shetland pony, tearing towards me. It's hackles were up, and I noted distantly, that it's teeth were huge.

You had to feel sorry for the poor animal really.

“GETONBACK!” I roared at it.

The dog's sprint slowed to a confused wary trot and it actually glanced over it's shoulder to see if it's mates were coming too. I could hear the other dogs barking from the driveway but they didn't follow.

It growled at me and barked again, but there was a lack of true feeling in it.

I waved a threatening hand. “GO On Home.” I yelled.

Clearly confused the animal retreated a little.

I remounted, ready to cycle off. But the dog made as if to run after me. So I turned my bike around and rode deliberately towards it.

“Follow me and there'll be trouble.” I promised it firmly.

The dog decided that I was chastened enough and retreated meekly to its' yard.

I think something about the constant close contact with lots of heavy traffic has made me unnecessarily aggressive.

Or maybe I'm just used to the calm quiet of Northern California and Oregon. In the South of California time caught up with me. Gone was the quiet little towns existing in their time bubbles of long ago. Gone was the long empty roads winding through silent hills by the sea.

In its place raging freeways, over populated suburbs and gimmicky tourists traps posing as towns.

Ooooh that was harsh.

Ok it's not that bad. It was pretty. People were still friendly, if an alarming number of them seemed to be a few volleyball nets short of a beach.

To be frank the reason I'm being so critical towards southern California because everyone is always telling me how it's the 'best place in the world'.

Which is....actually pretty funny.

These unfortunate bastards think a beach is a place you share with five thousand other people. They think a holiday involves spending every cent you have on paper weights and t-shirts with the name of the town you visited scrawled across it by some ten year old in China. And they are convinced that if you put an amusement park right by the ocean that it will somehow improve the ambience.

Why am I being so mean?

I can't help it.

I'm sorry south California but you just aren't as good as you seem to think you are.

So I left San Francisco; the place where people wander around doing their shopping in the nude.

“Is it legal?” I asked a stranger as the naked couple strolled by us in the centre of the city.

“It's disgusting!” The man exclaimed unhelpfully.

“Don't they get a ticket or something?” A girl in the hostel wanted to know when I recounted the event later that night.

“....where would they stick it?” I pointed out. Then we spent the next ten minutes pretending we hadn't all had the same distasteful mental image.

I left San Francisco went over Devil's slide, got caught up with all the traffic and ended up in a little campground called Half Moon Bay. Spent the evening chatting to a couple of boys from Utah. Two boys my age and their dad who had cycled from....Portland I think [inland Oregon]. We were sitting around a campfire talking when a figure erupted from the darkness yelled:

“BAH!” and vanished into the night.

All five of us jumped a foot. The old bloke who had got the fire going for us shook his head and informed us that you really shouldn't do that type of thing to a Vietnam veteran.

The next day, after being inspired by my new Utah friends. I declared I was going to do 60miles to New Brighton Beach.

60Miles is 96.56 kilometres [thankyou google].

I had bought a new cycle computer [lost the other one under Golden Gate Bridge]. The guy I got it off said that if I wanted him to put it on for me, it would cost $15. Filled with trepidation I decided to program the darn thing myself.

Surprisingly I followed the instructions and the device [notorious for being impossibly complicated] worked perfectly for me. I know, I'm awesome you don't have to tell me.

Filled with confidence I charged off in the morning. And finally reached New Brighton at 7pm.

And I was absolutely starving!

63.26miles, my new cycle computer told me. I programmed it to be in imperial because it made life easier.

It was a warm day. I stopped about four times to reapply sunscreen and still got a little singed. I have the silliest tan lines every now. Tanned fingers. White hands. Brown arms with sleeve lines and glove lines on my wrists.

I went through farmland by strawberry fields full of Mexicans bent in half and the smell of jam. Saw the first of many porta potties.

Porta Potties. [Portable toilets]. It is as though the people of southern California have some sort of port potty surplus. They are in fields, by beaches, in golf courses, near sports fields or often just sitting around in the middle of nowhere.

Don't get me wrong, for a cyclists there can never be too many toilets in the world. But often where I would expect someone to build a permanent bathroom there is it's place a porta potty. Or there is a shell of bathroom with a porta potty inside.

“Should we put the plumbing in?”

“Nah we'll just whack a porta potty in there.”

If you own a porta potty business this is the place to be....for some reason?

Toilets aside, I reached Santa Cruz and promptly got lost amidst all the sideshow junk they've stuck on the beach. Why is there a roller coaster on the shoreline? And a casino? And I don't know, a pier covered in tourist traps? Isn't being at the beach enough?

It was colourful. Old hippies strummed guitars. Latino and African American boys stood in lazy huddles looking arrogantly self assured. I noted with some fascination how everyone was on a bike that perfectly matched their personalities. Hobos on rusted over mountain bikes. Young boys trying to look tough on black beach combers with Harley style raised handle bars. Young women on pastel coloured graceful beach cruisers [single speed bicycles with the wide handlebars-popular in the seventies and eighties] College students on artfully dated looking road bikes with steel fenders. Everywhere I looked people were distilled to a more pure aspect of themselves and had a bicycle to match.

So interesting were the people that I ended up with twelve miles to go and no idea of where I was.

I met a girl.

She told me where I was, where I needed to do in order to be where I was going.

Then she told me that she had cycled from BC to San Francisco last summer in the company of two German boys. She said it was one of the best things she's ever done [she didn't specify if it was the cycling or the two Germans or both]. Now she's finished College and is trying to get her comic books published. And she was going home to watch Dr Who.

I think I would have married her. A cyclist how writes comic books and watches Dr Who! There can be more perfect a human than this? I think there could not.

Reluctantly I left her to return her library books and carried on.

Even with several people's instructions and vigorous study of the map it took ages to reach the campground.

Highway One gets too big near a city and I have to fend for myself on the side roads. As my navigation abilities are about as good as a Canadian Goose's are when the goose is in France, I tend to find myself doing many stressful and unnecessary miles.

Anyway doing 60miles in one day was a stupid idea. I was so tired that after the next days ride I was an exhausted mess. After getting to Monterey [about 30miles] I took a day off to recover.

The ride to Monterey was awful. Head wind, flat farmland with nothing to look at and only the snarl of endless traffic to occupy my thoughts. It was the ugliest, boringist stupidest day of the trip. That was the day I met that poor dog.

In Monterey I met some more ex-soliders. Two guys from San Diego doing a bike tour from San Francisco. Both of them were living on disability pensions from the military. One of them had been next to a car that had been hit by a mortar bomb. [still unsure if it is a mine or a bomb. Think it's a bomb]. His leg and hip had deep twisted scars next to a tattoo of the bomb that had given him the injury.

“Why do you have a tattoo of the thing that hurt you?” I asked.

“Helps tell the story.” He explained. They were both Marines. Or had been. Now one of them taught music and the other lived a life of relative leisure. If these guys were anything to go on Marines are big teddy bears. Though they said other people they had worked with were huge scary idiots.

I was surprised when Markus told me that he rode a scooter for a while.

“A scooter?” I asked laughing. Markus was an impractical size for a scooter.

“Hey don't laugh they're really fuel efficient.” He began.

“Yeah but you're a Marine.” I cried unable to contain my prejudice. “Marines don't ride scooters.”

Then he tried to tell me that my 250 Honda isn't much bigger than a scooter.

“It is. And it looks like a motorcycle.” I defended my bike.

People. I am discovering. Are simply people. Where ever they live and whatever they do as a job.

The scariest thing about anyone I think, is how similar they are to me.

I got up at noon the next day. My phone woke me at 7.20am but I whacked it with my fist a few times and it decided to be quiet. When I did decided to go find some food, around four in the afternoon I found Monterey to be a cute little beach side spot. Touristy as usual, but quaint. Without quite decided too I found myself in yet another bookshop.

Food and books.

As long as I have food and books I'm alright. If I don't have one or the other or both I will destroy anything in my way to get them.

Maybe I should have gone to aquarium. Monterey has a fancy famous aquarium.

I didn't.

Couldn't eat it.

Couldn't read it.

What's the point?

Ah I'm a terrible traveller. Sometimes I think the reason I decided to go travelling was simply to find good places to read my book in peace.

The next day I cycled on, carrying a novel and two hard cover graphic novels [comic books published as books-they weigh lots].

I ended up 30 miles south in Pfieffer Redwoods Big Sur state park. I'd been vaguely concerned about Big Sur.

“Oh the hills!” People told me.

“So steep!” They said.

“And the ROAD!” Acquaintances exclaimed.

“So narrow!” They cried.

Until I was thinking I was going to fall off the edge of a goat track, after climbing Everest sized mountains.

Despite popular belief Big Sur was fantastic riding. The road was wide. The traffic was polite. I even got applause when I reached the top of one not horribly big hill.

“Good job!” A fellow smiled as I slogged up to the hill's crest. The cliff lined coast swept off below and before us in orange, green and emerald. It was breath taking. Which was a bit of a problem since I was still trying to get my breath back after the climb.

Later a woman leaned out of her car's window, I braced myself for an insult. The woman cheered.

Big Sue is seventy miles of road that runs right along the spectacular coast. I liked it.

It was a good place to be a bicycle tourist.

With all the cheering and clapping I felt like a celebrity.

I spent three days cycling it. Met a number of bikers who had started in San Francisco. They thought Big Sur had big hills. I kept my mouth shut and felt superior. If it doesn't take an hour to climb then it isn't a hill.

Of course more experienced cyclists than me probably say that if it doesn't take a day to climb then it isn't a hill. But there is always someone who's done something more extreme.

The land flatterned out after Big Sur. Treeless rolling brown hills. Oh look, South Australia. Except as far as I know SA doesn't have elephant seals. Elephant seals aren't very pretty. They lie on the beach like blubbery, sandy, black and grey tubes of rubber. When they move the blubber ripples in unlovely grotesqueness. They are huge! Much bigger than they look on a tv screen. Bigger than a cow. And they make a noise that sounds a bit like a boat wallowing near a jetty. A sound of air and water mixing around in a big pipe. A sort of Gullllunk Guuuulunk noise.

In the campgrounds the average size of RV's diminished dramatically. Most people had tents and the trailers were modest. Up north everyone was in a giant bus. Must be weather related.

Weather is glorious.

Down to Los Angeles I stayed on the coast. Sleeping by the beach and watching sea lions and pelicans eyeing off small children playing in the surf.

I met the first solo woman cyclist I've encountered on the trip. She was built like a race horse. Tall, muscular, pretty. She'd come down from Vancouver in 21 days.

Had one day off.

“I'm just really enjoying cycling.” She exclaimed.

She teaches full time and has a part time job at REI. Just talking to her was exhausting. I went to bed early. When I woke up she was gone.

As I went south the land got dryer, the air got hotter. there were more homeless people.

Trivia question for you people.

Q: When is the best time to cycle into a major American city?

A: Not on the Saturday of the 4^th of July long weekend.

The next question is:

Q: When did Kym cycle into Los Angeles?

Well the answer is pretty obvious and fairly stupid. Yes I did know that it was the 4^th of July. But I couldn't be bothered sitting above LA waiting for the long weekend to be over. So I cycled into the hideous mess that is LA. Cycling into Malibu I passed a sign: Los Angeles city limits

pop 3 795 589

I gaped at the sign and carried on.

The thing about cycling in a place that is home to three million people is that you constantly have to make decisions. And the decisions are never very fun.

Do I take out the nice Asian couple and avoid being hit by that SUV or do I breath in really hard?

Do I pull out into the lane and risk the cars or do I challenge the woman with the pram for the foot path?

Do I speed up to get passed that surfboard or do I hit the brakes and hope the group of cyclists behind me have good brakes too?

Do I snap that guy's door off or do I wait until he shuts it and stops blocking the bike lane!

There was a bike lane in LA. The issue was that there was cars parked in it! Parked cars are scary. Doors open. People step out from behind them. They pull out.

Cars.

They really do vex me at times.

It was a great relief to get on to the LA bike path that runs along the beach. Only that was frighting as well.

People on rental bikes seriously need to learn about cycling in logical straight lines. Wobbling from one side of the bike path to the other is only acceptable when 2000000 people aren't on the path with you. And kids on trainer wheels really need a big plastic bubble around them. Teenagers walking four abreast across the path need shooting. And racers, cycling at sixty kilometres an hour while 2000000 people are wobbling, walking, trainer-wheeling on a piece of concrete two meters wide....well they should probably slow down.

LA bike path was certainly, interesting.

I ended up in Santa Monica's HI hostel. The same one I stayed in last year when I flew into the country. I had intended to go to Universal Studios or Disney land. I didn't.

Couldn't eat it. Couldn't read it.

And it was the fourth of July and everyone I met had already been or didn't want to go. I'm not a needy person but the idea of wandering around an amusement park by myself, surrounded by the holiday crowd didn't appeal.

On the 4^th of July I tried to find the parade. It wasn't where I left it. So I missed it.

I bought a six dollar Captain America t-shirt and wandered around Santa Monica attracting amused comments.

I gave up on having a 4^th of July and went to a book shop and read graphic novels in a corner until my eyes got sore.

Then I went and drank beer.

It was one of those days that I missed my family. Tammy and Xander would be fabulous to go to Disney land with! Mel and Jim would have found a party or started one of their own. Jacob and Charise would be at the beach playing volleyball and swimming. Mum and Dad wouldn't be in the city. They'd be out climbing a mountain or something.

That night me and some strangers ended up having a few rather unexciting beers in a pub just down from the hostel.

Independence day. Not a day to actually be independent.

And that is the abridged version of my trip to LA.

All I gotta do now is get to the boarder.

The Sun that shone

shalaith — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 11:43:00 GMT

My legs hurt.

But it's ok because I found myself a couch. And couches are basically a wonder drug. After all they can cure any thing from every day weariness, the cold, upset tummies, snoring.....well at least for the person who kicked the snorer out of bed.

Across from me is a man on another couch who's girlfriend broke up with him after 11 years. I hope he finds solace on his couch.

Couches: how grossly underestimated are your powers.

This particular couch is inside a hostel, inside Fort Mason which is in San Francisco. Which is a big city with 779 000 people in it. I saw some of those people yesterday, no one seemed to be wearing flowers in their hair.

I rode across the Golden Gate Bridge last night and I have to say, they did a great job rebuilding it so quickly after Magneto destroyed it a few years back. It looked great.

[Ok for those that don't watch comic book films: in X-Men Last Stand, Magneto tore the bridge from it's moorings dumped it on Alcatraz Island. So they could have a big mutant/human/mutant battle.]

But where was I? San Francisco.....

yes but that is the end of the story Kym. You need to start from the beginning of the week.

But I don't want to.

Well it's not going to make any sense if you go backwards is it?!

It might.

Now you're just being awkward.

I don't remember asking you for an opinion.

That's the advantage of being part of you, you can never truly shut me up!

Argh! You're so annoying. Fine!

Here follows an account of my bike trip for the last week in order of events.

Happy?

Yes.

Now Bugger off.

After you.

I was at the Immortal Tree in the middle of the Red Woods last time I typed.

The weather has improved dramatically since then. I saw the sun!

In fact I saw the sun too much. I got a little cooked. Truly I was corrupted in Canada, there is no need for sun cream in Whistler.

And there were hills. Dear God there were hills!

Hence the sore legs. Though gratefully no sore knees as yet.

All the other cyclists I talk to have sore knees. Or all the other, 'first time bicycle tourists' have sore knees. This is my second bike tour technically speaking. I did the Great Victoria Bike Ride back in 2009 and I had riolly rioolly sore knees then. I could barely walk after that ride. But I learned two very important things from that trip:

Don't push a high gear, ever when doing long distances.

Always spin spin spin. High gears are fine if you are riding into town once a week. But not if you are riding for hours everyday. Knees wear out and fall off very quickly if you push high gears.

The other thing that saves your knees is 'If you're tired....slow the hell down!' But no one is keen on that because they all have flights to get to, or jobs to return to. The foolish folk they are. Cycling on a schedule....ergh!

Unemployment: Saving Kym's knees' since May 2011!

Because if your knees do fail, well then you have the inconvenience of having to steal other peoples knees while they're asleep in the camp-ground at night. Then you have mismatched knees and their owners setting the knee theft police after you.

Random knee checks are well....knee knocking experiences.

Or you have to abandon the trip altogether.

Met a young guy the other day who had cycled maybe 300 miles in six days and had to catch a bus home because his knees gave out.

Ok enough about Knees! Hopefully I haven't just jinxed myself. Touchwood Touch wood touch wood.

So Red Woods, leafy cathedrals, towering columns of dark wood looming on either side of the road.

But I've told you about that. The sun came out and I took my rain proof pants off. Eventually I took off my knee warmers as well and was instantly blinded by the stark whiteness of my legs. They hadn't seen the sun since September last year.

I came to a little town up in the hills that instantly reminded me of Barrossa Valley in South Australia. Garberville;It was cute and hot and full of smiling happy people. It had a barber shop that also sold guns. I suppose if you didn't like the haircut you could shoot the barber.

After filling up my saddlebags with more good things to eat at the super market I got back on the Delinquent Caribou and headed as always: South.

The 101 was getting antsy again. Keeps turning into a Freeway on me. The Adventure cycle map I got in Eureka directed me to plunge off the 101 and onto a back road.

I might have mentioned this, but back roads are great because there is less cars. And it is peaceful under the trees with the birds and deer. But because they are back roads there are no big obvious signs saying things like: 'Kym you're going the wrong way'. So I end up stopping because there is a barricade in front of me with no way around it. Then I have to turn around and backtrack for two miles up hill. That sucks.

On the Garbarville day I got passed by every motorbike in California. Or so it felt. The sound of great big bikes rumbling by sent vibrations up through my tires and made my mouth water in envy. Groups of roaring bikes and leather clad folk roared by me two abreast and ten deep all day long. I'm not sure which club it was. They were a social club not a prostitution, extortion, drug dealing and money laundering club.

I pulled over outside a petrol station [sorry gas station] to figure out where I was going to stay for the night. One of the old geezers came over to admire my bike....which was funny considering that I was surrounded by gleaming Harleys. Anyway he asked if I needed any advice for the road ahead. He'd cycled down the road a few years ago. I'm always up for info on what to expect and he seemed harmless enough.

Alas I hadn't really considered that I was down to my spandex layer. I'm usually wearing far more layers so it didn't occur to me to be more wary of old men until he seated himself down, pressed right next to me on the bench. Then he was off spouting all whole lot of 'advice'. Things like; when the wind is coming at you it's harder to ride'.

Well duh!

And: 'There is a hill here.' Gee thanks mister you're real helpful.

I smiled an nodded. I should have hit over his fuzzy grey head with my D-lock. He knew nothing and just wanted to sit too close to a young girl and maybe get lucky.

He kept mentioning that I was a 'pretty young thing, travelling alone'. Which got my warning bells jangling.

I set my teeth and told I must get on. He took my hand, swept his hand from his head and kissed my cycle gloved hand.

I took some satisfaction in knowing that he had just kissed a glove I'd been wiping my nose on all morning.

Ah the dirty old men of the world. They better be careful, the next old man who wants to offer me advice better be genuine. Or they'll find my D-Lock lodged somewhere they'd forgotten existed.

That night I ended up in Standish Hickey. I have no idea where that name comes from but it is a terribly awesome name. There under the trees in the Hiker/biker camp-ground I met Gandolf the Grey.

He had long grey hair, weather weary lines on his face and bright blues eyes. An old hippy from the Woodstock area. He said his name was John. John [aka Gandolf] had spent several years in India and we got chatting. We talked until late into the night. About the world, the coast, the road, India, America, Australia, his ten year vacation, my month cycling. He was hitchicking north. We talked so long that it got dark and the mosquitoes came out and then went to sleep. Eventually I went and had a shower but the lights in the bathrooms were off. I had a shower in pitch blackness and wished I had a sonar.

The next morning John cooked me some amazing breakfast. He went on and on about his type of weird hippy foods and the virtues of each. Offered me some more weed.

I don't think this part of the world has changed very much in the past fifty years. Life is slow, buildings moulder in various stages of dilapidation on the sides of the road. People on ride on mowers wave to me as I drift by, kids use the streets as playgrounds, neighbours lean on fences and talk for hours. Strangers are welcomed with a helpful smile and time floats by softly, rather than being broken up and lobbed aggressively into the trash like it is in the city.

And everyone smokes weed!

The sixties and seventies never left this place. Not three days goes by that I'm don't sm.....get offered weed.

John calls this area 'the Emerald Triangle'. We spent all morning talking again. He was good company and I hadn't camped with someone for a few days. Eventually I got on the road at the early time of 12:30pm.

Considering the terrain that was most likely a mistake. I went up the Leggot Hill. That no one talks about despite the fact that it is twice as big as the Crescent City hill. 2000 feet of slogging, almost two mortal hours in my lowest gear. I made the summit and celebrated with half a bag of trail mix and a piece of bread and cream cheese.

Such are celebrations on the bicycle tour.

The unfortunate thing about cycling up that hill was the amount of blind bends and no verge. Several times I heard logging trucks coming and had to throw myself off the road and up against the hill. They rattled by with inches to spare.

The descent was mildly scary. Two hours up, five minutes down. I avoided looking at two things on the way down: my cycle computer because it was telling me how fast I was going, once I hit 50ks an hour I didn't want to know. And my mirror. I didn't want to know what was behind me, whoever it was would just have to bloody well wait. The road ain't big enough for the pair of us!

All my sweat soaked clothes froze on the way down.

I thought I'd done well. The road flattened out. I smiled and felt good. Then the road went up hill again. The first hill was fine. The second hill nearly undid me. It was pure and simply: mean. Unkind and uncalled for. An unnecessary evil.

When finally I dragged my sad and sorry carcass over that lesser hill and out of the forest, into the chill air of the sea and beheld before me the Pacific Ocean I could have wept.

And there in the turn out, over looking the sea, was a little figure who yelled out: 'You Made It!' As if I were a friend she was waiting for.

Her name was June. She had passed me coming up the hill in her car. I cycled up to her and she made me feel like a champion with her praise. Bless June for people like her I'd cycle more mountains.

The closest camp-ground was where I made my bed that night. I'd cycled a scant 19miles. But I felt everyone of those miles in my soul.

I rode 15 the next day. After Leggot hill the terrain changed. Suddenly I was on Highway 1. Not 101. The 1 is a wiggly, giggly little road that winds and weaves up and down the coastal farmland of northern California. Through clumps of gumtrees that clogged my hayfevered nose with the smell of home. Little weatherboard villages overgrown with grass and flowers. All rolling hills that drop suddenly into the mist shrouded sea.

With all the weaving and winding there is still a disturbing lack of anywhere for me to ride. The verge was inconveniently full of thigh high grass. I sat out on the road elbows out and the promise of violence in my posture. If there was no room to pass me, then the cars waited. Do you know how exhausting it is to cycle up a steep hill with a truck still on your tail with no where for either of you to go?

Bah! Cars, highway 1 would be so much improved if they all drove off into the sea.

The road kept dropping down into these tiny bays then shoot sharply out of them.

My map's altitude measurement looked like the heartbeat of squirrel on caffeine tablets. As much as I could I used the momentum of the descent to shoot me up the next hill. Alas a fully loaded touring bike is sort of like hauling an obese eight year old around on the back of your bike. So as soon as you are going up, you better be pedalling like crazy or gravity will grab you and drag you down.

Damn that obese eight year old.

I cycled slowly for a few days, up and down these short little hills all day.

Through Fort Bragg where an attractive bicycle mechanic put new brake pads on my front wheel. I know I know, brakes: they only slow you down.

Got the third book in the Godspeaker trilogy. I've demolished the series on this tour for all that they are all nine hundred pages a piece.

“Why do you have bike tubes on the front here?” the bike mechanic asked.

“They hold my panniers on tightly.” I explained.

“But they add a fair bit of weight.”

“I'm carrying a laptop and three novels.” I said, “If I was worried about weight....”

“Are they hard back books?” He asked laughing.

“No, but that's a good idea.”

Me and overburdened bicycle trundled off into the sunlight.

That night at Van Dam State Park I met Nimrod and Quiedo. Nimrod is a middled/youngish man who looks like a member of the Russian mafia. Quiedo is a tall thin Italian cycle tour guide from Canada. They were an unlikely duo. Somehow I ended up being invited to a dinner at an Inn that stood above the Camp site.

There followed a fun evening with my two new friends. Nimrod was on his first bicycle tour and Quiedo was pushing him pretty hard. I told Quiedo that if he had pushed me the way he had pushed Nimrod that he'd probably be at the bottom of cliff somewhere. But that was ok because Nimrod was paying for the meal, not Quiedo.

I liked both of them but found myself having to drag my 'well mannered self ' kicking and screaming out of my mind's back closet. They were both terribly polite. Fun, but restrained and mature. And also politically correct and worried about offending....anyone. Nimrod was curiously vulnerable for someone as big and loud as he was.

Somehow I must have managed to suppress my less gentile self and made some sort of favourable impression on my well bred companions. Nimrod said I needed to become the Prime Minister; I forgave him because I'm sure he meant it to be a compliment.

They were heading to Los Angeles.

They passed me the next day in a car. Nimrod's face had swollen up so much he peered at me through slitted eyes. Some sort of reaction to a pollen in the air had called their trip short. The doctor said if the allergic reaction happened again he could asphyxiate. I commiserated with him and wished him well.

Later that evening I met Joe. I was sitting on the side of the road looking at a map. Joe pulled up next to me on his bike and asked about camping.

Gualala wasn't terribly forthcoming with it's camp-grounds. So we looked at the map. Exchanged information and cycled on chatting for a while.

“Bambi!” I exclaimed.

“Where?!” Joe asked.

“Dead.” I sighed pointed and the speckled fawn lying prone by the road.

“Oh.” Said Joe.

Joe was much like a fawn. All thin and gangly, wild energy, pretty to look at, and silly.

He is 18.

We found the camp-ground and entered the hiker/biker site together. Late afternoon sun dripped through the green canopy and onto the leafy carpet beneath us.

“Wow!” Said Joe. “We're either in Narnia or Vietnam.”

“Don't Move!” I hissed.

“W..why?” Joe asked.

“You're standing on a mine.”

We had a great time setting up camp and telling foolish jokes. After being so serious with Nimrod and Quiedo it was fun to be silly again.

Then Emily and Matt turned up. Emily and Matt had been at the same camp-ground I'd been at last night.

They are political science major's from Washington on holiday for the summer.

“How do you know if split pea soup is ready?” Matt wondered prodding his soup with a spoon. Joe looked critically at the broth and shrugged.

“When the peas become whole again?” He hazarded.

There was not a lot of room to set up tents in that place so we were camped about a foot apart. I am grateful for that.

Because that was the night of the Raccoons!

They attacked just as we were all getting ready to sleep. Suddenly the undergrowth was alive with white and black furry bandits.

Raccoons look cute. But they are pure evil. I've been hearing about the damage a raccoon can do since Whistler. For one thing they are completely fearless. They are known to enter houses through cat flaps, walk up stairs and into kitchens and help themselves to anything and everything. They frequently take large dogs to pieces. German Shepherds or pit bulls even have lost limbs or lives to them.

Raccoons are fierce. Generally they don't attack humans, but neither are they terribly frightened of us.

So we had put all our food in the wooden box in the camp-ground designed for that purpose. But there was not enough room for four people's food. Anything left out was fair game. Panniers or anything in canvas was at risk. Raccoons simply gnaw through the fabric. We threw things at them, they blinked at us. We hung things from trees. They attacked the wooden locker with a demon like ferocity. And managed to grab some stuff through a hole in the bottom. Lying in my tent I could hear them screaming at one another, running around my tent jumping on the table and searching through any unfortunate panniers.

It was the first time I'd ever seen raccoons. When I got up to go to the bathroom I eyed the darkness nervously.

“If you're not back in half an hour.” Matt said. “We'll come rescue you.”

“Just tell my mother I love her.” I declared and wandered off into the dark, feeling small beady eyes tickling on my back.

That night I dreamed of Raccoons dragging me from my tent and boiling me over a fire.

The next day I started the day with Emily and Matt. Joe disappeared at 6am. We got on the road at 11.

After half an hour I decided that travelling in a road train isn't for me. We were going too fast.

I let Emily and Matt vanish ahead of me. Then I relaxed and got on with my day. Cycling with other people is too hard. I just don't have any desire to go fast. Or rather, going fast isn't really worth the energy.

The road went up two hills that day, right on the edge of the ocean. I went up about 700feet. And it was pretty, with an amazing views of the ocean and the cliff lined coast. There was no verge. No trees and nothing but thin air between me and that 700foot drop to the ocean. There was also trucks. Going up was ok. Going down was terrifying. I clung to my handle bars and sang a rousing tune to maintain my courage. It didn't work. I kept seeing myself flying off into space and taking my first and final dip in the Pacific Ocean.

On the evening I caught up with Matt an Emily. We passed a further pleasant night cooking dinner and discussing the day's ride. There were no raccoons.

I kept pace with Emily and Matt for another night. We met up just north of San Francisco in Samuel L Jackson State Park.

It wasn't actually Samuel L Jackson. It was Samuel Taylor. That was Matt being silly.

I rode into San Francisco late yesterday afternoon. Tired. Dear god I was tired. I'd ridden 160 miles in three days. Which isn't huge for other people, but I am not other people.

The bike map I had guided me through the quiet, quaint, sun drenched suburbs of North San Francisco. Through tree lined streets and pretty little homes made of every material under the sun. I felt like I was home again.

Hot sun above me, gum trees, bright blue skies overhead and the roar of cicadas in my ears.

I thought San Francisco would be horribly hilly. It wasn't. Not yet anyway.

I rolled along those 30 miles with incredible slowness. Even for me. There was so much to stare at. Little shops and towns of the outer suburbs. The little houses. The flowers. The people.

Bicycles everywhere. Teenage girls, all long blond hair and bare legs flitting by in loud happy gaggles. Down to a woman, teenage girls in San Francisco ride those beach cruiser bikes. The single geared, fat tyred, wide handle-bared bikes that look pretty and are easy to ride. Everyone else was on road bikes and going too fast to say hello or even smile.

Ah to be in a city again. People avoid eye contact in a city. Just encase doing so marks them for death.

I meandered through Sausilito. Stared at the shops. Tried not to be killed by tourists on rental bikes. Tourists on rental bikes are scary. So few of them know about cycling in straight lines. I found a group of them underneath the Golden Gate Bridge and they were pushing their bikes up the hill. Looked at them disdainfully. I noticed especially the two very thin and pretty girls who were pushing their bikes up a hill.

I went up the hill easily, still lugging my obese eight year old. Thin and pretty eh, I thought smugly. Thin and pretty and incapable of cycling up a bit of an incline. There has to be some perks to cycling a thousand miles.

There was Golden Gate Bridge. Yay. I took a photo and somehow lost my cycle computer. I went back down a really long hill to look for it but it was gone. Then I went back up the hill. To the top of the Golden Gate Bridge. But the West footpath was closed.

“Go to the East side.” Said the sign. It pointed to some stairs that dropped straight down into Hell. They weren't nice wide, gentle stairs. They were rough steep stairs.

“How the hell am I supposed to get you and all my gear down that?!” I asked The Delinquent Caribou. The Delinquent Caribou wasn't pleased about the prospect either. But there was no choice. I wedged the tyres into the edge of the stairs and held on to the brakes. The seat drove into my kidneys. My bike wanted to lung downwards and drag me with it. I got stuck between the hand rail and my bike and had to inch down the stairs whimpering in pain. No one helped me.

I went under the bridge found an identical set of stairs going up on the other side. Swearing and heaving I dragged my bike and all my gear, weighing more than an obese eight year old at this point because I was tired and hungry and no one was helping me and I'd lost my cycle computer and I didn't know where I was staying and why wasn't the stupid west footpath open anyway!

At the top of the stairs I lay on the concrete and got my breathing under control.

People ignored me.

People can go jump off a bridge for all I care.

I cycled across the bridge and almost got blown off. It was windy and freezing.

Dodged all the tourists and other cyclists. Regarded the city's outline fretfully. It looked big. Bigger than I'd thought.

How the hell was I supposed to find a hostel in amongst all those wretched buildings?

I rolled off the other side with the beginnings of worry inside me.

Where was I going to stay?

I had no map. It was getting late. Not hugely late. Just not early.

Guess where is not a good place to ask strangers for directions? Near Golden Gate Bridge. Because lets face it, it's full of Tourists. And Tourists don't know anything. I should know I am one and I knew nothing.

Eventually I asked the gift shop dude. He sent me down the hill and towards a big warehouse off in the distance. I rolled down the hill found a bike shop.

I was on a bike. It was a bike shop. Equals: they might be sympathetic.

They were. Not only did they google a hostel for me, they also let me use their phone to make a reservation. Then they showed me how to get there on google maps. Bless the nice San Francisco bike shop people.

I rode on and found the Fort Mason HI.

And that is the story of how I got the San Francisco on my bicycle.

I am not sure if I am going to Los Angeles.

There are other places to see. But I'm am at this time Undecided.

California the art of never knowing where I am

shalaith — Wed, 8 Jun 2011 15:18:00 GMT

California. Well it certainly isn't all sunshine and attractive girls.

I mean, obviously there's me, so the attractive girl part is taken care of. But the sunshine thing? And the beautiful beaches?

If I was at school I would be writing lines on the chalk board: 'I must lower my expectations. I must lower my expectations, I must lower my expectations'. After all how can any inferior American State compare to home? It can't. So I will solider on.

Screw you California! You and your false promises of warmer weather. The type of weather that normal people [not just Canadians] can go swimming in.

And a beach that actually looked....I don't know, less like a big ugly black sand pit......

It's all lies! Lies and false promises and and and and....I don't even like your tractors!

So far I've seen a fair number of cows. Which depending on your species or/and sexual preference could be classified as attractive girls.

And gee whiz, since I left Oregon I've only ever had a vague idea of where I am.

I crossed the boarder and true to form the landscape changed pretty much on the dotted State line. Rolling hills turned into flat farm land. There was a sign with a bicycle pointing down a side road. Dubiously I followed the sign. Two hours of apparent aimless meandering along dairy farming back roads, bouncing along pitted, manured coated single lane alleys behind tractors and beside giant red barns [any one of which Clark Kent could have been raised in] and I was getting afraid that the California bicycle route people had only had enough money to put up one sign. The State is stone broke after all.

Then I saw a second sign. More bouncing ensued. The road was probably made back in the 1800's by an Amish man on a donkey. Then I was back on the....Freeway? Since when was the 101 Pacific Coast Highway, a Freeway?! While I'd been dodging cows and inhaling more manure flavoured air than I'd ever wanted to, my sweet little two lane highway, so tranquil and calm, had grown into a big angry dual carriage way.

Traffic roared North!

Traffic zoomed South.

Cars, trucks, buses, rv's, humves, SUV's, something that looked like it wanted to be a tank when it grew up....they were all there on My Road! It was too noisy. When a bicycle sign popped up pointed away I followed it eagerly. Wondered where I'd end up this time.

I was sort of aiming for Crescent city. Though I wasn't aiming too hard. Motivation was lacking that day and I just wanted to pitch my tent and read my book. To hell with the rest of the world.

But I didn't have a map. So I didn't know where I was. And even less idea where I could pitch my tent. From several conversations I'd had, I knew that south of Crescent City was A Hill. Which is a cyclist speak for an incline of demoralising proportions. I also knew that the camp site I had in mind was also south of Crescent city. Probably on the other side of this Hill.

You can see my dilemma. Climbing a Hill at the end of a long day, when I really just wanted to read my book simply wasn't going to happen.

Book defeats Hill!

But I didn't want to spend lots of money on a camp site either.

Yes I know, cheap And unmotivated, can I get any more difficult.

The answer to my prayers was Dawn. Dawn was sailing past me on her way home when I yelled at her and waved my arms like a distressed swimmer.

Dawn, instead of cycling faster to get away from me, did a u-turn and came back.

Turns out she worked at the prison, and far from offering me a cell for the night she pointed me in the direction of a county park.

I have no idea what it was called or even how to get back there.

Think, Pirates of the Caribbean. This park can only be found by those who already know where it is. It was off the side, of side road, hidden amongst towering red woods, in the middle of a rural suburb without any sign posts at all. This camp ground did not want to be found.

Even with Dawn's precise instructions I rode past it twice before I notice a small gap in the trees leading into the heart of the park.

It was dark amidst the trees. Nervously I pitched my tent and was later discovered by the camp host. I knew he was the camp host because it said so on his t-shirt. 'CAMP HOST' it declared across his bulging camo patterned chest. He was a big fat, scary looking dude living alone in a forest and obviously deterring anyone from actually camping. I gave him money and mentioned briefly that I was a martial arts expert with several tours of....New Guinea with the SAS.

Had bear mace.

And an emergency beacon.

A big brother called JAKE who 'worked for the government'.

Satisfied that I 'camphost' would leave me the hell alone I went off and read my book. It was a very good book.

Somehow despite being impossible to find, other campers turned up to stay the night. Much to my relief.

The next day I went to Crescent city and met a guy called Tom who was a bike mechanic. He told me that this Hill had an exaggerated reputation and it was infact merely a hill.

I left Crescent city and tackled this hill. Fourteen hundred feet. Two miles. Yes it was a bit of a hill. But it certainly wasn't A HILL.

Plus I stopped to chat two times on the way up. Firstly I met an Aussie couple from New South Wales in a pull out. They offered to give me a lift up the Hill. But everyone had made such a big deal out of it that I had to make it to the top under my own steam. Further up I met more French Canadians, cyclists. Two guys who'd come up from San Deiago. Eventually I reached the top. Found the turn off to my camp site.

WARNING!

If you are currently cycling the Pacific Coast. Do NOT, stay at Mill's Creek Camp ground.

It's a lovely campground.

It has nice showers, a great biker hiker area. Cheap rates.

And it's at the bottom of the darn hill. On a one way access road. That means that you go down...forever.

Then in the morning....you cycle up.....for eternity!

So in effect you cycle up that 'HILL' that everyone freaks out about....Twice.

It took me an hour to get up that darn hill in the morning.

The view was pretty awesome from the top. Pacific ocean slate flat and grey blue merging perfectly with the sky. So similar in colour and texture that it was difficult to tell where one left off and the other began.

Then I started through Red Wood Country.

Holy Tree what a big Crap!

Ahem.

I mean to say; Holy crap what a big tree!

Northern California's Red Wood Forests....they are so big there's is no room in my head to put the words together!

Big Trees! Old Big Trees! I saw one today that was 1500 years old and holds the somewhat dubious title of being the '14^th biggest tree in the State'. Considering that there is only 5% of old growth Coastal Red Wood forest left, that isn't exactly the biggest boast it could have. Still I'm impressed it was 'a very big tree'.

The more I 'grow up' the more I do wonder about humanities claim to being the most intelligent species on the planet.

The ranger said that people didn't realise that if they logged all the Red Woods that the Red woods would..like....disappear.....

I mean common' people! Are we really that dumb?

I guess we are, because we've done the exact same thing back home. Wandering around amongst these enormous trees I had some Tasmania flashbacks. These trees are a little larger than the ones back home, but not by much. And just like these folk, it took lots of effort to stop logging companies from taking all the forests down and turning it into toilet paper.

Does anyone remember those advertisements from a few years ago. The ones that tried to tell us that you could log an old growth forest and replant it and it would grow back in exactly the same?

Humanity! If we aren't all dead by the end of the century it will not be from lack of trying.

Did you know that there is a bug in Canada? [There is probably a few more than that, but I'm talking about a species I've forgotten the name of]. A red beetle that lays lava in the trees. Historically most of the lava freezes over winter. But the winters haven't been cold enough in recent years. Global warming maybe? So the all lava is surviving. And it is eating the root system of the trees. The trees are dying in their hundreds. Leaving large tracks of dead dried out wood that fuel huge forest fires. When I was travelling around Canada last year there was at least seven large forest fires raging out of control in British Columbia.

Fishing villages I have cycled through are mere remnants of their former selves because people thought that if they fished all the fish that there were to be fished, then more fish would simply arrive from the depths of the sea for all eternity.....

The dolphin's of West Australia's Monkey Mia, were overfed by tourists. As a result the dolphins hung out in the bay and never taught their babies to hunt...and thus several generations of dolphins were lost until people figured out not to feed the dolphins.

A park ranger told me a story of a woman who smeared honey on her child so she could get a photograph of a Grizzly bear licking their face.

Ladies and gentlemen I present you with the evolutionary abnormality that is Humanity!

[The child was killed, encase you wondered...though I'm sure the photograph was.....deplorable].

Ah but I'm being depressing again...sorry for that.

It is just I meet people. So many Many People. From the world over. For little neighbourhoods. From cities. From universities, from underneath tractors and up trees. Just people. And again and again I hear them telling me, 'there isn't enough water,' it isn't as cold as it should be, the plants are dying, the animals are dead, the river is polluted. The ocean is empty. There is too much rubbish!

Everyone is whispering it: 'Our planet is dying.'

This 'green movement' is merely an easing of our guilty conscious. The world is not going to be saved if you don't use plastic bags. It isn't going to be ok if you buy 'less packaging'. It isn't helping if we take to the hills and hope that urbanisation will not catch up with us.

…...I was talking about something happier before I got sidetracked by morbidity.

Trees! Have been looking forward to this part of the world for some time. Cycled down through them all afternoon. It was very pretty but I was doing that annoying thing that I do by accident.

I was thinking: 'Valley of the giants....this is lots like Tasmania. Or Pemberton.....on steroids....' Why is it that the more I see, the more it takes to impress me? I'm getting immune to marvels. It sucks.

The tree trunks were all getting up to several meters in circumference. And really tall. 300 feet some of them.

All mossy and immense.

Then I met a statue that was having a conversation with a man who had a parrot on his shoulder.

I don't know what was odder. The man travelling around with a parrot sitting on his head. Or the fact that the statue was talking to it?

The statue was of a large happy looking lumberjack....and his cow.....or rather his Bull, the artist hadn't left out any details.

Anyway the lumberjack was about six, seven, eight meters tall. And he wanted to know if the parrot was friendly. The man said that the parrot didn't really like his girlfriend.

This made the lumberjack laugh. His voice booming out over the car park.

It was at Klamath Trees of Mystery. A tourist trap of sorts, that has a gondola up into the canopy of the Red Woods. I've been in enough gondolas this year so didn't feel like going up in another. But the talking statue intrigued me.

When I cycled away the giant man was talking to some little girls who's names I believe were Sarah and Courtney and he was admiring their dog that was sitting on his foot.

If I take the magic out of the thing I'd say there was a guy sitting in a booth somewhere with cameras, microphone and speakers rigged up. That would be a fun job....for the first two hours...

Onwards. And down for a change. I must have spent the morning climbing and afternoon coasting. On the whole not a bad way to travel. It is preferable to coasting in the morning and then climbing in the afternoon. Or simply going up and down and up and down and up and down all freaking day!

I do that a lot.

Parie Creek Campground. To be honest I should have spent a day or two there. Wandered around the Red Woods, played with some Elk. There are sooooo many elk!

But I couldn't. Because I'd finished my book.

Not having something to read drove me nuts! I cycled. I grumbled. I scowled. I used up all the power on my laptop reading downloaded novels. Then was annoyed because there was no power point to recharge my electronic book.

'There's nothing for it.' I told myself. 'I have to cycle until I find a book store!'

It took me two days.

The last night outside Mckinleyville was the worst. I was camped in a sandpit. Or so it seemed. By a muddy, black sandy beach. Nothing to read. Nothing to do. I wandered along the beach in a vain attempt to distract myself form the reading withdrawals. The beach was....well I'm sure it's mother loves it.

And the other California's appeared to find it nice. But they haven't seen Australian beaches so I guess all I can do is pity them.

In frustration I went to bed. At eight. And stared at the ceiling.

Then a convoy of hippies turned up. And had a party. Of course if I'd been feeling sociable I would have climbed out of my tent and joined them.

I wasn't. Instead I eavesdropped on them for hours.

They were all about my age, doing similar stuff to what I'm doing. I couldn't help but think that people my own age, doing stuff that I'm doing, all sound like idiots.

…..this concerned me somewhat.

Then they started playing the Pirate game.

[sung to the tune of the 'ants go marching'.]

“I put me hand upon her toe

yo ho, yo ho

I put me hand upon her toe

Yo Ho yo ho

I put me hand upon her toe

She said 'now pirate you're way too low.

Get it in, get it out, quick muckin' about

yo ho, yo ho, yo ho

DRINK!”

It was a drinking game that I found fairly amusing. The verses got steadily more seedy as the game progressed. I'd recite them for you but my Mum reads this....

Of course they all got to talking about music festivals and concerts and bands I'd never heard of. I lay in my tent and listened, but felt no real desire to join in. Eventually I fell asleep to Pink Floyd informing me that he didn't need an education.

Everyone was hung over the next day.

I set off to find a book.

Three towns, thirty miles, four book shops and lost glove later, I finally exited Borders with two novels.

For those that care: Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere. And Karen Miller's Riven Kingdom.

Happy Kym.

Then I high tailed it down the freeway to Ferndale. Spent the night in the show grounds there. That camphost was far better than the one at the unnamed County park of Fort Dick.

He opened the door of his caravan and I engulfed by the smell of weed. I probably could have camped there for free if I told him I wasn't actually real. But I paid my dues and drifted off to my site feeling very chilled out indeed.

There I met another Tom. This Tom was interesting. Ex army boy. Had been blown up in Iraq and retired because bascialy he didn't have a spine any more. I mean that literally. His humvee had driven over a land mine. Luckily it had been buried too deep so the explosion didn't really do as much damage as it could have. It did hurl the humvee straight up into the air....again not the problem. The problem was the landing. Tom's spin compressed on impact.

So now he has a steel rode where half his vertebrae used to be.

He also has shrapnel from a mortar..mine/bomb/grenade? Blew up a container next to him. He was getting his lunch at the time.

All in all I don't think being a solider looks like fun. That said he is the most travelled American I know. Europe, Australia, South America, cycled across America twice. Now he is building a new touring bike so he can ride the southern tier. It has a lot of head stem because he can no longer bend.

I asked him if he thought they'd achieved anything over there.

“We did, I think. People living in the town that we were near were scared to go out. Do their groceries. The area was called 'the Triangle of Death'.”

“So not melodramatic at all?” I said.

“Al Qaeda was there all the time. But then part of my unit got ambushed and killed and they never found their bodies. Well the local people. They grew some balls because I guess, they didn't want us to leave. So we drove into the town one day and there was bodies laid out everywhere. Kids, women, men, old people, young people. The people in the town had gone out, found the people guys who'd killed our soldiers and killed them. And not just them, but their entire families as well.”

He grinned, half laughing.

“And that was a good thing?” I asked feeling slightly......something.

“Well it isn't called the Triangle of Death any more. Al Qaeda doesn't want anything more to do with that town.”

War eh.

I have no idea what to think of any of that.

His bicycle looks pretty.

Today I rode on.

Kept cycling through more farms and trees and hills.

Not entirely sure where I am right now. But that's fairly normal.

Tomorrow is looking like a good day to do nothing.

Reedsport to Brookings but mostly musing

shalaith — Thu, 2 Jun 2011 11:42:00 GMT

Is it just me or have I spent far too much time sitting in public bathrooms playing on my laptop recently?

It does tend to startle people who wander in and find me huddled on the floor with my electronic device sucking power out of the wall.

Where else am I supposed to charge my laptop?

Besides, Oregon State Parks have such comfortable amenities. I've had hot showers ever night since I've been here. The bathrooms are unfailingly clean and well designed. Hanging out in them isn't as unsavoury as it sounds. And it does beat spending an afternoon in a little tent trying to keep warm as yet another storm batters the vinyl.

Oregon really does a good job on it's state parks [like our National Parks, except well, State]. Asides from having great facilities most of them also have a section set aside for hikers and bikers. Known as 'Hiker/Biker sites'. Generally it is the crappiest part of the park, being on average, nine miles from the bathroom with nothing but lumpy ground to camp on. They are often also right next to the 'dump station' where Rvs dump their toilet contents.....hurray!

Despite this they are fantastic for two reasons. One is that as hikers and bikers we are quarantined from the rest of the Rvs and campers. Probably because we smell awful [it's a fact: exercise makes you stink! I recently made the mistake of taking my shoes off while my tent was closed, only the instinctive reaction of jerking the zip up saved me from passing out.]

No one wants to camp next to a smelly person who looks fitter than them. Meaning that when the entire camp ground is packed and everyone else is squished cheek to jowl in the regular sites, we've got acres of space.

The other advantage is price. Hiker Biker sites are about $5 a night, if you get charged. Often I've escaped paying entirely. My approach to paying in camp grounds is to do so only if asked directly, or if I find an envelope with the details filled in, tucked helpfully under my bike rack. Then not paying is churlish. But if I'm left alone, then its free game.

All in all I have to say that Oregon Coastal bike Route is probably the best place in the world to do a first bike tour.

For one thing this bicycle tour route was initialised in the 1970's. To me that translates as forty years of 'traffic training'. For forty years the local traffic has been taught that bicycles have a place on the road. In the month I've been on the 101 only two people have honked aggressively at me. And I'm going to give Oregon the benefit of the doubt and say that they were from out of State [heck they probably came from Bunbury].

I've crossed bridges, gone through tunnels or down sharp declines and the cars have been patient and given me room whenever the verge drove me onto the road.

Touch Wood.

Many of the people I have met are so used to seeing cyclists that they call it the 'annual migration route'. After hearing that, I had a brief vivid image of spandex clad humans clustered together on a rocky shoreline in southern California, clutching bicycles and making nests, like migratory geese. Though more likely they'd be clumped in up-scale cafe's drinking frothy lattes.

[I read in the Whistler's Pique that the average bicycle tourist earns over $60 000 a year. Making towns and cities eager to accommodate cycle tourism. I am obviously not an 'average bicycle tourist' as I think I made about $8000 last year....it was a pretty good year.]

Oregon also publishes a map designed especially for bike tourists. The map shows State camp grounds stating all their facilities, it also shows the gradient of the road so that no hill can surprise you. And it has alternate detours that are prettier or less congested than highway 101.

And is it pretty?

It is glorious!

The road rolls up and around the cliff lined coast. Dark sandy bays littered with enormous piles of drift wood, stained silver white by the elements. The raging, grey blue, Pacific hurls itself against giant offshore 'stacks', towering islands of brown and green, reminiscent of South Australia's Twelve Apostles. In the late afternoon the shy sunlight peers through the hazy sea mist, gusted inland by the wind.

When me and my little silver and black steed are hidden from the sea, the road winds through rainforest. It is forest like I have never seen before in any part of Australia. Giant straight cedars, conifers so wet they are coated in a soft green moss that in places weeps down from the branches. If I manage to stay on my bike until late afternoon and if the sun comes out, then the road becomes a dappled golden path. The yellow/gold and green canopy drips honey sunlight. Up or down, in head winds or tail winds, sunlight or rain the Oregon coast is beautiful.

The farmland is lush and green filled with fat black cows, who are always very happy to stop and stare balefully at me as I pass. The birds sing in hedges. The buzzards wheel high above the highways. The squirrels dart along the ground.

The further I ride the more I want to ride. Every conquered hill, nervous decent or arduous headwind flat, fuels my desire to cycle more.

At night I lie in my tent snug in my sleeping bag [and emergency blanket] and listen to the surf booming on the shore, the rain dripping on the tent, or the wind rushing through the trees overhead.

Last night I camped by a waterfall. [Though this did mean I woke up with an even greater urgency to find the bathroom than usual].

Emotions flow through me every minute of the day. From rapture to despair and back again.

I sing on the descents, rant on the climbs, swear majestically at my underwear. [One day I made the mistake of yelling; MY BUM IS SORE! In a small fishing village, then caught sight of an elderly woman looking at me with strong disapproval.] Yelling relieves pent up tension even if I am now slightly more cautious about when I vent. Occasionally I wonder what the people in the cars think when they pass me apparently deep in conversation with myself.

On another day I got out of my tent in an incurably bad mood. Nothing I thought could shake it. So I decided to go with it. Before I knew it I was insulting the verge, 'Good for nothing narrow, bumpy glass filled shoddy thing'. I cursed the weather, roared at the hills, was deeply offensive to the bridge and scornful of state of Oregon in general. After several minutes of this I found the whole situation amusing and my bad mood floated away with my laughter.

The only thing I would have done differently on this trip.....well other than a long list of technical details, is to find that bloke who operates the weather switch and beat him around the head with a sopping wet sock. See how he likes it!

I really did think that May would be good weather. I expected rain in Washington. But I was told that I'd get more sun and a tail wind as I went down the coast.

In the past four days I have had meters of rain and a head wind that made cycling much like trying to roller-skate underwater through wet concrete.

It is almost summer. Where the hell is the sun? In Australian terms, it is the equivalent of November 30^th. November 30^th is hot! But here I am every night still wearing all my thermal underwear and sleeping wrapped up like a potato in my emergency blanket.

It's an Outrage!....I'm outraged.

To add to my vexation that 'prevailing tail wind' I'm supposed to be enjoying buggered off! For the past week I've had one day of a tail wind. As for the other days, well that guy with the weather switch has blessed me with a head wind that almost blew back up the coast to Port Angeles. Coming out of Port....Oxford, on Monday I headed around a sweeping bend and was promptly gusted off the verge and onto the highway. Only a very alert guardian angle and a lull in the traffic stopped me from becoming a touring pizza. I fought my way back to the side of the road and then spent an unpleasant hour forcing my reluctant pedals to turn. Fourteen miles later I decided that a two o-clock was not too early to call it quits for the day.

I'm glad I did. The next day was one of the best of the trip. Forty-five miles of sunlit forest and the type of scenery that inspires people like me to write terrible poetry.

The sun shone, albeit intermittently. The forest sighed with a soft head wind. The road was only a little busy.

I've stopped a few tourist traps recently. I made a brief visit of Oregon's Safari Park. I'd heard it was a big zoo where people could interact with large cats like lions and tigers and bears....Oh My! From what I'd been lead to believe the cats had large fields within which to roam. Sadly the reality fell short of the advertising.

I paid my entrance fee and found a petting zoo with all sorts of deer and goats chasing small children around in search of food. The big cats were in bird aviary sized cages staring listlessly through the wire.

The black panther or as I knew him; Bagheera, sat on a log with nothing to do but lick his paw and blink and the passing prey. Two black bears wandered up and down the fence in a rabbit run. As did the cougars. Back and forwards in unnatural agitation. The tiger paced around and around an enclosure that looked like some sort of children's swimming pool area, letting out plaintive growls.

I am not an animal activist. But seeing those magnificent creatures ensnared in such small dull cages. It enraged me.

Two Bengal tiger cubs were being displayed in another pen, people were allowed to play with them and take photos under the careful supervision of their handlers.

The handler was speaking about humans destroying the tiger's natural habitat and the necessity of breeding programs to preserve them 'for future generations to enjoy'.

I felt a certain misery at his speech. Preservation of these agitated, tamed cats seemed to fall short somehow. An animal isn't a painting to be kept safely in a museum. If we cannot preserve their wild natures then we'll do something worse than making them extinct.

I rode away feeling disappointed.

The other tourist trap was more fun. I zoomed down a hill and almost hit a dinosaur.

T-Rex was making a bee-line for the highway so I doubled back and went to look at the herbivores.

The Brontosaurus was chewing on a red wood. The dodo was wandering around freaking out a group of German tourists. The stegosaurus wasn't the easiest to photograph because he kept threatening me with his spiked tail but I got the picture in the end. I was taking a photo of a triceratops but had to move pretty swiftly to stop it from taking a bite out of my helmet. I suppose it looked like a a juicy bit of fruit.

Feeling like a ten year old I ran around the rainforest photographing the crap out all its prehistoric occupants. The owner was a beautiful woman who's grandparents had started the garden in the fifties. Back then they had only four full sized dinosaurs [imported from a few million years ago]. Various breeding programs and working with other dinosaur parks has bought their total up to about sixteen or so.

All in all I found it wonderful to see these ancient beings wandering around freely in their natural environment. Though I did wonder how many small children they lose every year.

Sadly I'm about to end my Oregon leg of the trip and head into the unknown wilds of California.

Catch you on the other side.

Hoquiam to Reedsport and the stuff between

shalaith — Sat, 28 May 2011 15:38:00 GMT

Something happened to my week. I lost track of it for a moment and suddenly it was gone.

But I'm taking that as an indication that I'm having fun. Because time only flies if you are doing so.

I stayed in Hoquiam for an extra day and lay around in my tent and was extremely lazy, something I was very happy to do.

The next day it rained again but I had decided to ride on so that is what I did. I cycled in the cold wet morning through the grey industrial area of Aberdeen then up a riolly riolly big hill on my way to Raymond.

Raymond, someone had told me was half an hours drive in a car......which isn't a helpful piece of information to someone on a bike. On the map it said 25miles.

I'm actually starting to think in Miles instead of Kilometres. The reason being that I am having trouble convincing American's to change all their maps and road signs just to suit me. They are being quite stubborn about the whole thing to be honest with you.

So until they wise up and change to Metric like the rest of the planet I'm stuck in Miles.

25 miles is not so bad, I thought.

Except that it was 25 miles of up and down and wriggling around. It had lots of those hills that keeps going on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and every time I got around a bend thinking 'it has to be the top' it was still going on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on.....

and on.

If you got sick of reading 'and on' imagine how sick I got of seeing more upward inclination.

Plus it was raining.

I got cold again. Three hours later I reached Raymond entirely fed up with rain and hills. Raymond was doing what any other self respecting rural town does on a Sunday and had shut down for the day.

All except the Carriage Museum. The Carriage and Coach Museum had a very helpful awning under which one bedraggled cyclist sat and gnawed on a sandwich.

Then because I was shivering too hard to deal with cycling straight away I went in to the museum and paid $3 just to warm up.

The women there, Kay, was sympathetic and she gave me a tour of the place. There followed an entertaining hour where Kay and I looked at; granny coaches, nanny coaches, the family station wagon, chick magnet coaches [olden day Ferraris] a morbid looking hearse, a black Cabbie [The type Sherlock Holmes always got about in] and I found out that I was averaging the same speed as a Stage Coach. [ten miles an hour].

It was interesting to see all the old types of coaches and how similar some of the interiors were to modern cars.

Then Kay showed me the olden day clothes that visiting children are allowed to dress up in. Which was probably a mistake on her behalf.

Soon I had tried on every bonnet and cap and raccoon skin hat offering and insisted that Kay try stuff on as well.

Then we sat in the back of a wagon and imagined we were crossing the American wilds.

Or at least I did. I don't know what Kay was imagining.

When I finally exited the the little museum I felt that I had in fact, learned something. Plus I was warm. A thing never to be underestimated.

The scenery changed from forest and timber towns to swampy coastal fishing towns. South Bend greeted me with a gust of salty rain and the smell of sea food. The rain blew around a sign that read; 'forget spring, bring on Summer.' I couldn't have agreed more.

Some twelve or so miles down the flat swamp girt highway I found Bruce Port.

Bruce Port is a tiny little state park. It was up a hill over looking a big bay. Looming cedars shadowed the empty camp sites and as always everything was green and damp.

But there was a covered picnic area. The kind of place where a saturated touring cyclist might attempt to dry out, cook dinner and otherwise take advantage of a non wet spot to place a rump.

Not surprisingly it was occupied.

A couple of bicycle tourists were spread out over one of the tables, gear everywhere and various bits and pieces hanging off the railings in the breeze.

They waved me over.

It turns out I had camped across from them in Kalalock, only it had been so wet and cold no one had ventured out of their tents to meet one another.

I have discovered over the last few weeks that just because I'm a bicycle tourist does not mean that I will automatically have lots in common with other bicycle tourists. Sure, most folk are good for a chat and a 'where you going? I'm going...' conversation, but often that is all there is. And often couples don't feel the need to include a stranger, having all the company they can handle.

Jen and Jy were different. They are living on their bikes, and so rather than being in any great hurry to get somewhere they were happy merely to dwell. Having meet lots of people on a mission to get from one place to the next with all emphasis on speed and distance travelled, I found this attitude appealing.

We spent the evening chatting about all sorts of random topics. They turned out to be fans of both Monty Python and Dr Who. And much of my time spent with them included putting on accents and reciting favourite lines from both shows. Jy and Jen seemed to think that cycling could be frivolous and silly. I'd been beginning to think that I was the only one who rides along arguing comfortably with myself using three different personalities. Jen assured me that she does it herself. Jy was perfecting an Irish/Jamaican accent to greet strangers with, just to see their reaction.

They had spent the winter on a mountain snowboarding after touring on bikes last summer. It sounded slightly familiar. I forget the exact type of bike they rode. A Peace 9 or something. A big mountain bike with disc brakes, huge fat tyres and a tiny lowest gear, necessary when towing a trailer full of every and any type of food known to man. The things that came out of the panniers was a constant surprise: A whole package of flour, a kilo of cheese, a spice box and of course a coffee grinder.

At first I did wonder, but as I got to know their way of travel it began to make sense. They were on the road for the long haul, not the mad frantic dash the rest of us poor fools undergo, but the slow happy ride of people who don't need to get anywhere abruptly. Weight is not an issue for Jen and Jy, life is.

I rode to Cape Disappointment then next day, with the loose agreement that they would be along the next day. It was a sultry day with a slight head wind, thankfully no rain fell [that was the first day of the entire trip that I had been dry all day]. And I made it the 40 or so miles down through the marshy swampy inlets to the bottom of Washington.

That night as I was cooking dinner at yet another state park I heard a woman's heart felt yell; 'Jason NO!'

A black tailed deer bounced through my camp site looking slightly perturbed. I watched it pass me curiously. The woman continued to cry out from behind the trees and then a dog came shooting around the shrubs fully intent on a veal dinner.

I laughed when I saw it, fully expecting a wolf sized hound to emerge, I almost missed the miniature dachshund as it raced towards the forest. It was the type of dog that would need a stepladder to take on my ankle.

But the woman seemed terrified that he would vanish into the trees, rejoin his wild brethren and be forever more known as, 'Death Snarl'. So I yelled at him and told him to 'git back'.

He did, the woman reclaimed her precious 'Jason' and the camp ground descended once more in to tranquillity.

The only thing I did the day after that was wander up to the information centre and learn about Lewis and Clark. I went in thinking that it was a tv show about Superman. [I'd watched it was a kid, 'Louis and Clark'] But when I came out I knew stuff.

Lewis and Clark went from East to West across the top of America in 1803 to 1806. The idea was to open up more land to the US. They were greeted warmly by pretty much all the five hundred or so Indian tribes they encountered.

In return for that hospitality they mapped the crap out the terrain which over the next 40years meant that the US came in and displaced the Indian people.

That was Lewis and Clark. Seeing sights that 'no civilised man had seen'.

It was interesting. But it did seem a shame. The Indians should have killed them, then it might have taken them longer to get wiped out.

In the evening Jy and Jen turned up and we had fun sitting around not getting rained on. But as I have discovered, the world can never be entirely devoid of mild trials. The absence of rain created a 'camping discomfort power vacuum'. Mosquitoes with a distinct lack of competition rose up and filled the void. They attacked in droves.

Fortunately Australian's never seem to be that appetising to North American mosquitoes. As long as I've other humans of differing nationalities nearby, I tend to be left alone. While Jy and Jen were madly slapping themselves and cussin' I wandered about largely unmolested. Apparently I'm a 'last resort' meal, only to be sucked on when all other better tasting homo sapians have been sapped.

We all went for a ride without panniers the next day. By rights I should have been lots faster than them, I have the hybrid with the skinny tyres. They have the mountain bikes with the big fat tyres of doom. But no, they are just too strong. Soon I was trailing along behind trying to breath. It is a good thing I think, that I don't cycle with others. I have a definite inclination towards the meander.

We went out through the forest then jumped on the coastal bike path and wove and wound and wiggled along the coast up to Long Beach. There we had a burger at an all American Dinner [complete with American flag and tinny country music] then we went to the pub and had a beer. The bar was full of old fat sailors who talked by yelling at one another and waitresses with huge eighties hairstyles. Our waitress carded me, [that's American for 'asking for ID']. She spent at least five minuets staring intently at my Canadian driver's license. So much scrutiny did she subject me too that I began to wonder if I was in fact old enough to have a beer.

Twenty one, twenty two, twenty three....surely I'm the legal age in every state by now....? I thought, while wearing a slightly strained smile and trying not to blink. Eventually the enormous eighties style hairdo and it's associated head decided that my 'fake id' was too good for their collective intelligence and got me a beer.

The next day we carried on to Astoria. I carried on sooner than Jy and Jen simply because I didn't need to grind any coffee beans before I got going. I am glad coffee is one addiction I have thus far managed to avoid.

North American's are INSANE about their coffee. Every day, without fail, no matter if I'm in the middle of nowhere or the middle of a city, I will pass several espresso booths[tiny buildings, generally stuck out in a car park by themselves that sell coffee].

To get to Astoria, the top of the state of Oregon, I first had to pass through a tunnel and then spend four miles on a bridge. It is sort of like weeding out the weaker cyclists. The tunnel was not particularly fun. Merely because it was dark, there was not much room to ride and the noise of the traffic was amplified a gazillion times so that it felt like I had nine million cars sitting on my back tyre all angry and hungry from my blood. I burst out the other side of the tunnel in a cold sweat feeling shaky.

Free of the tunnel I next faced THE ASTORIA BRIDGE. According to some random people I met on the road, it is the longest bridge of its kind in the world. Though what kind that is exactly I'm not sure. All I know is that I was happy it had road works going on when I crossed. The road works meant that the cars and trucks and buses were going slower and they were held back often. Essentially leaving my lane traffic free for about half the time I was on the bridge. Thankyou Cycle God:> There was a minuscule verge that was made even smaller by the amount of gravel and glass in it.

I made it across and was immediately confronted with Astoria.

I had been assured that Astoria is a marvellous spot full of marvellous people. What I hadn't been told was that after the quiet sleepiness of rural Washington, Astoria would be altogether too swift and noisy.

There were cars on my road!

There were lots and lots and lots of cars on my road!

And people everywhere. Talking and walking and basically getting in the way of my bike.

Feeling put out I peddled on to the bike shop and retreated from the swarms of humanity.

At a place called Beyond Bikes I met Pat. Pat was that all American boy that I'd seen in comic books and on the side of milk cartons. Tall, broad, wholesomely good looking with blue eyes and open friendly grin. It was hard not to like Pat.

I told him that I was sick of getting flat tyres. In six days I'd had four. Asides from the two I've already told you about I'd had a further two.

On the day I'd gotten into Cape Disappointment my back tyre had gone down just outside the grocery store. Tired and angry because I only had five miles to the camp ground and the stupid tyre refused to stay up until then. In a fit of frustration I ate an entire block of chocolate while pulling off the back wheel. Chewing aggressively on a now grease covered piece of chocolate, I got my tyre levers working and was soon inadvertently eavesdropping on the family behind the fence some meters away. They weren't difficult to overhear.

The child, probably around four or five was singing along to Bryan Adams, or someone who sounded a whole lot like him. I admired the way the kid knew ever single word and the tune. The mother came out and started screaming at him. For the next half an hour, while I worked on my bike I listened to the woman roaring at her offspring to 'stay in the yard, don't go near the pond, be a good boy.' Occasionally there would be moments of respite where she would be calm only to explode into greater apoplexy. I felt a certain amount of amused sorrow at their predicament.

The next day my front tyre had gone down overnight.

So, fed up with sitting on the side of the road wresting tyres off wheels, I asked Pat to give me the thickest, toughest, roughest, meanest, ugliest, steel plated, kevlar reinforced, bullet proof, glass resistant, bump durable tyre he had. And I asked him if he could please stick the darn thing on my back wheel!

And then I asked him to put a rack on the front. I got panniers as well. My reasoning being that if I shifted some of the weight from my back wheel to my front wheel I'd get less punctures.

All of which he did.

Cheerfully.....he really was like a young Captain America....before he got frozen in an iceberg. [I know you lot don't read comic books, don't worry the film will be out in July and this comment will make more sense].

Whilst he worked on Caribou I wandered around Astoria. It was a nice enough spot, but I was put off by the yuppy populace with their designer dogs and fashionably old fashioned clothing. There was, in my travel stained, reflective jacket wearing opinion far too many 'manicured hippies' and philosophy spouting college students. A town of abundant education with little life experience too match. I had a cup of 'Mexican hot chocolate' at a place where you pay extra to be treated with the same respect as a Jew in Auschwitz. The waitresses and coffee makers were rude, sarcastic and I felt like pouring hot coffee down their immaculate aprons.

It would appear that four flat tyres and five days of constant rain washed away all my tolerance.

Pat got everything working on my bike and I was happy. I left town as two tall sail ships were firing blanks at one another on the Columbia River. I don't not entirely sure why they felt that having a staged battle amongst the cargo ships was a good idea, but it looked like fun.

The eight miles to Fort Stephen was horrible. Straight into a headwind, surrounded by aggressive traffic I reached the camp ground feeling stressed out. The noise of traffic and the roar of the wind I've found can be more wearing than the moving of pedals.

Luckily Jy and Jen were waiting for me at the State park and we had another mosquito filled evening of discussing the days ride.

Jy [being a bike mechanic] showed me how to tune my gears, because I'd discovered that every time I'd taken my back wheel off, my gears start clunking off their chain rings. There are few things more irritating than climbing a steep hill and nearly knocking yourself out when your bike skips a gear and drops you, chin first onto your handlebars.

Jy pointed out the knobs to twiddle to get the bike back in tune. He tightened my brakes up. They hadn't really been working so well, and considering that I am daily hurtling downhill at 35kph on a narrow verge in the company of logging trucks with several kilos of gear speeding my decent....well lets just say having brakes that work is a good thing.

He also told me to stop oiling my chain.

“But chains are supposed to be oily.” I protested.

“Yes but there's so much on it that it's picking up all sorts of dirt.”

“But oiling is good.” I said stubbornly.

“But too much oil isn't. Look at your chain, then look at mine.”

I did, his chain was a clean fresh looking thing that gleamed in the evening light.

I returned to The Delinquent Caribou. My chain was dark black and gritty.

I stopped oiling my chain.

He also trued my back wheel. To those that don't know, truing a wheel has something to do with tightening and loosening spokes to make a wheel that is warped, straight again. Jy did that thing that people who like machines do when they are working. He sort drifted off peering, hmming, fiddling and twiddling and forgot that Jen and I were there.

“Every bike.” He said when he emerged from his bike fixing trance, “has a soul of its own.”

I nodded agreement for he spoketh truth.

I left Jy and Jen the next day. I had a long way to go and unlike my American cycling friends, only so much time to do it.

Riding away from Jen and Jy hurt. I meet a lot of people on the road and mostly I part ways easily, I've travelled enough to know that I'll meet more good people down the track. With Jen and Jy it didn't matter, they are good people and I didn't want to leave.

So it was a heavy heart that I rode on to Nehalem some 47miles south.

The morning was easy as it often is. The sun shone, I had a tail wind the scenry was pretty. If there was too many cars on the 101 again I ignored them. Found myself in a place called 'Sea Side'.

Sea Side was fascinating for the first five minutes and terrible for the next twenty.

If McDonald's ever built a town it would probably look a lot like Sea Side. A cardboard cut out place full of gimmicky shops, plastic entertainment arcades, and at the end of the street a weird round about where people sat around and stared at the sea. The beach was lined with tall apartment buildings. And it was occupied by the brand of American's that give the rest of them a bad name. Fat and loud!

I ate an egg sandwich and watched them in horrified curiosity.

I hid my reflective vest so I wouldn't attract attention to myself. I didn't want to get stampeded by a herd of obese tourists thinking my bright orange jacket was something good to eat.

I left my bike outside when I went to the bathroom. I wasn't concerned about theft, as I doubted any of the inhabitants of Sea Side would know what to do with a bicycle.

Down the road I nervously entered Cannon Beach terrified that it would be another Sea Side. To my joy I found a small quaint village. Relieved I had lunch in the playground, listening to the well trained fathers obey their children's every whim.

Nehalem..... I discovered later was on the other side of two enormous hills. A situation I was blissfully unaware of as I left Cannon Beach. Fifteen miles, I thought, no worries.

Then I started going up. I continued going up for just over half an hour.

“That was a load of crap!” I gasped when the road finally began to descend.

I clung to the handlebars on the swift plunge down the other side and was happy to find that having front panniers stuck me firmly to the road. Balance eh!

Then the road went straight back up again.

For another half an hour.

Climbing for that long at the end of the day does something to a woman's soul. Three quarters of the way up and I pulled over lent against a sign and had tried not to cry. I've come to call it 'wrecking' or 'hitting a wall'. And it isn't so much that my body gives up, it's more a mental thing. My mind simply doesn't want to keep going. It says 'Kym this is bullshit! You know its bullshit, I know it's bullshit and there's nothing either of us can do but keep going.'

I got to the top of the darn hill.

“Oh look.” I said to my bike. “What a great F*#*ing view!” Oregon was spread out below us, a big white rind of hazy coast stretching away into the dark green hills. The 1000 foot cliffs plunging down into the booming Pacific Ocean. I was angry at that 1000 foot cliff, it had hurt me, I didn't want to be impressed. But it was impossible not to be.

“Stupid view.” I growled while photographing the snot out of it. Then I coasted down the other side, feeling that I really would feel better if there was more than foot tall wall between me and that cliff edge.

I spent the night at Nehalem amongst the company of no less than four other bicycle tourists. None of whom were as awesome as Jen or Jy.

To be fair there has been an awful lot of stuff between then and now. If I type about it all you'll probably get bored. If you aren't already.

So I'll sum up.

I've ridden from Astoria to Reedsport which is about 201 miles but a little extra because of various detours. In the last week I've camped by the ocean,

cycled more ridiculous hills,

maintained a strict diet of trail mix and cream cheese,

bought bread which is baked by an ex-drug addicted con,

helped two teenagers find a bathroom,

got kept awake all night by an classic rock radio station that was being played at full volume by an old hobo from Tennessee,

finished my fantasy novel; full of sex, pagan gods, war and blood sacrifices,

was given a new book about fruit which is surprisingly full of the same themes,

did my laundry at a bike shop,

found another bike shop that also sold guitars [because while riding one should also be strumming.....?]

caught an elevator down to a sea cave and met sea lions,

climbed a sand dune that inspired Frank Herbert to write the Dune series,

was given a cup of tea in a public restroom,

had three people in one day call me a Kiwi and considered homicide, [Do I SOUND like a New Zealander?!]

hit a head wind and got tired,

talked to Kevin who had just cycled across the country and figured he had nothing better to do than simply cycle back,

talked to Gavin who averaged 105 miles a day,

met Mike who owns a bamboo bicycle,

listened to Herb who rode around the Grand Canyon got tired, brought his fist down on his seat and broke it, pushed his bike to the bus stop intent on selling it and getting a bus ticket home, after five days he got back on his bike [with it's broken seat] and cycled home,

wondered why James was heading across the country on a down hill mountain bike,

declined to join Todd and Charlie on a acid trip,

spent a nervous night in torrential rain in Honeyman State forest hoping my tent wouldn't float away,

saw a man touring on a fixed gear bike and thought he was silly,

rode through glorious farmland, many small fishing villages and rugged forested coastline,

Got here, decided to treat myself to a real bed at Reedsport Economy Inn

Will now sleep.

The Olympic Peninsular

shalaith — Sat, 14 May 2011 15:39:00 GMT

Dry?

Sun?

Warm?

All these things have been a vague and far off memory for the last four days. I've woken up shivering three days out of four and put wet socks into squelching shoes and saturated shoe protectors. I've slipped on cold soggy gloves, donned my sodden raincoat and rolled up my dripping tent and strapped my sleeping bag to an increasingly drenched set of panniers and sloshed damply off down the road. North American Camping at it's finest! And the funny thing is, they seem to think this is normal.

I met a man called Dave at Kalolach [pronounced 'Clay-Lock'] beach. Dave was from Seattle and was thrilled to be camped by the grim rain drenched coast line. He raved about the view. I huddled by his fire watching yet another rain squall rushing in to engulf us, I wondered if I was missing something.

Sure it was pretty. If only it wasn't eight degrees...sorry 53degrees Fahrenheit....roughly. But perhaps this country has affected my thinking as well because I was wearing thongs. I was at the beach and when you're at the beach you wear thongs.....even if your toes start turning an unhealthy shade of deep blue.

Ah but I seem to caste a pall over my great and marvellous adventurous adventure.

Because it actually has been marvellous. I have learned things....such as there really ought to be more emphasis placed on the word 'rain' in the compound word 'rain forest'. Someone said they get three meters of rain a year in the Olympic Peninsular. I think if I'd wrung my shocks out I would have found at least half of that one of my shoes.

I also found that when embarking on a bike trip it probably isn't a bad idea to know how a bike works. So that when it stops working you can make it work again.....but I'm getting ahead of myself.

When last you heard I had crashed out in a Hostel in Vancouver. Since then I got on a train and a bus and then a ferry and found myself in Victoria.

I know I know, I cheated. I didn't cycle to the Twassen ferry terminal, I didn't cycle from Swaltz bay Ferry terminal on Vancouver Island to Victoria. I was having a break. I got the really cheap public transport, threw my bike on the front of a bus and inside a train.

Leave me alone. You try it if you think you're so damn clever!....I don't even like your face!

So there!

I got to Tom and Jade's place in the adorable Victoria. The sun shone, the grass was green. There was no snow! There was flowers in the gardens and puppies and bicycles in the street. The trees were pretty and sun dappled. The people were friendly. I wanted to stay.

Tom and Jade let me in the door at 6pm and promptly herded me back out. We were going to the pub to watch the Vancouver Canucks get their bums beaten by Nashville. Hockey playoffs....it is very serious if you live in Canada.

Some hours later after sitting around a camp-fire at the beach with several people I'd met there and then we made it home in a taxi. There followed two exceptionally lazy days of sitting on Tom and Jade's couch doing very little and savouring every minuet of it. God Bless Tom and Jade! I love them. And their Couch.

Then I got on another boat. Was asked serious questions by intimidating boarder security people and found myself in America.

On the way over I meet two young Canadian boys who also had bicycles with panniers and a things strapped to their steeds. I thought to myself: gosh they're so organised, they must know exactly what they're doing. So I wandered over and stuck up conversation. Ryan and Geoff were in fact as clueless as I am....was....are? The difference was they had a book. The book was a complete guide to cycling the Pacific Highway to Mexico from Port Angeles. They hadn't actually read the book....but they had it. As I didn't even have a map at the time, I was in awe.

We found out together that if you have a bike with stuff on it, you must be prepared to get advice from total stranger whether you want it or not. An older man who had obviously been around the block...or thought he had, informed us that we needed several hundred small and vital things that none of us had ever heard of. Such things as, stoves that ran off petrol and chain breakers. We did a lot of smiling and nodding an exchanged mystified glances.

Port Angeles greeted us, dark and grim with a chilling wind. It was 6pm. The two boys disappeared up the road eager to find their first campground some ten ks up the road. Feeling like a cop out, I went to my hostel.

The Hostel 'Thor's Hostel' was adorable. It was a converted old school barn undergoing several decades of renovations. The family downstairs ran the joint and two dorms a bathroom and kitchen made up the top story. I spent the night chatting to two French girls and a US coast guard.

The French girls told me about a woman they had meet down south who had taken to shooting Mexicans attempting to enter the States. The French girl rolled her eyes and said: “You know, jis take up knitting, buy a pet! There are better hobbies to have!”

Then I knew I actually was in America and Not Canada.

The following morning I pedalled off down the road and had a thoroughly pleasant day cycling through countryside. The sun while not terribly strong was at least warm. The hills were green. The trees were covered in moss and every other kilometre streams gurgled happily beneath the road over lichen covered rocks. Business as usual in this part of the world.

Everything was so very very very GREEN. Grass, trees, tree trunks. That is the trade off of being constantly sodden, you get to see soft gentle green everywhere you look.

I cycled to Forks that day. Which in Imperial is 51 miles. The best part was going past Lake Crescent a big blue basin of water with cathedrals of mossy trees lining it's shores. The verge is narrow and the road winding. As a warning to motorists cyclists get to push a big button that sets a light flashing and lets people know to look out for you. As well as being a clever and considerate thing for the Washington government to do, it was also cool because I got to push a big button that made a light flash! It's the little things.

The road left Lake Crescent and decided to go straight up a riolly riolly long hill. It went forever and I spent half a year in my lowest gear swearing at it. Then I shut up because I ran out of air.

Once I'd conquered that there wasn't much excitement until I got to Forks. By which time it was pouring.

For those that don't know, Forks is the setting of that oh so popular series of books by Stephanie Myer. Twilight....I only know because someone told me.....ok fine I might have read one of them....ok two......fine....the whole darn series. It's about vampires, werewolves and a stupid useless girl who falls in love with a vampire. Yes I know I'm still disgusted that I read them too....and liked them. Anyway it is a tiny town the population is 3621 or something. And every single business in the area is cashing in on the series. Ever pizza menu has 'Twilight' options, bars have 'Twilight' drinks the tiny sight seeing airport has a come up with a brand new marketing slogan: 'vampires aren't the only thing flying around here'...I don't think anyone has told them that vampires don't fly....at least not the Forks vampires.

Forks also didn't have a place to stay. The RV park didn't allow tents. It was a campground that did not allow camping. That made absolutely no sense to me. The next State park, I was told, was a further twelve miles down the road. I knew I didn't have another twelve miles in me because I didn't even have the energy to figure out how far twelve miles was in kilometres. I was tying my bike to a fence to go get some food when the woman from the RV park, who had followed me two blocks just to tell me that the woman at the motel allowed campers sometimes.

The boys had gotten to Forks ahead of me and sure enough the sweet old lady running the motel at the end of town let us pitch our tents behind the buildings. For three dollars we got a shower.

All in all it was a pretty good deal.

That was Forks. It rained all night. Then all the next day. I rode to Kalaloch. That was more like a swim than a ride. The rain came down the entire day. I got drowned. The forest was pretty in a wet sort of way. Lots of dark green towering cedars and Douglas fir trees looming either side of the road. At half two I reached Kaloloch and debated continuing simply because it was too wet to do anything other than freeze as soon as I stopped moving. The boys had been leaving as I'd pulled in. But in the end I decided that I'd try to dry some clothes out in the bathroom. There was no showers.

I met Dave and chatted to him about various things between torrential downfalls and lighter patches. He was very happy to be there by the sea. I would have been too if I wasn't soaked to the skin with no way to dry out or thaw out.

And of course being Australian I couldn't help but think that our beaches were about ninety times better looking, not to mention that I could swim at an Australian beach without turning into an iceberg and becoming a shipping hazard.

But we don't have drift wood. Sure we have twigs and the occasional branch. North Washington has trees that washed down the rivers and ended up in the sea then landed on the beach. Big piles of giant logs. Those that do brave the surf...in wet suits, have to watch out for great big logs hitting them in the back of the head.

I almost prefer sharks.

Anyway that night I went to sleep listening to the surf boom on the shore. It was a good sound. At 3am I woke up shaking with cold...again! I rummaged around in my pannier and found the emergency blanket that Melissa gave me three years ago. Wrapped it around me, not too much because I've been warned that if you put it over a sleeping bag then your sweat can't escape and you wake up drenched. Ewwwww! But after that I slept warm.

So thank you big sister! For the emergency blanket:>

Oh boy, this is probably too long again. Darn it! Plus it's getting late. I'm not used to going to bed after 9pm these days. Or getting up later than 8am. How things change.

Yesterday was a good day. The sun shone. There was rain but it was patchy. Then of course just as everything was going splendidly and I was finally beginning to feel slightly fitter, I heard that unhappy hissing noise emanating from my back wheel. Praying I was hearing things I pulled over and found that not only did I have a puncture, I also had a hole in my back tyre.

I had a spare tube. I did not have a spare tyre.

I think it was one of those things that know-it-all guy on the boat said I would need.

So I swapped my back tyre with my front tyre put in a new tube and spent a horrible afternoon freaking out that I was going to go flat in the middle of nowhere. By the way, that whole swapping one tyre with the other took an hour and a half. Because my Dad is a bike mechanic he changed pretty much every flat tyre I've ever had. Making me about the most useless bicycle mechanic's daughter ever. It didn't help that my right hand dried out due to the wet and cold and all my finger tips split and bled all over everything.

I arrived at Quinault Rainforrest just as the place was living up to its name and raining down on the forest.

The campgroud I had intended to stay at was shut until the end of May. Unwilling to wait around until the end of the month I limped sadly into the visitor's information centre and looked pathetically at the woman behind the desk. Because I did such a good job of looking totally defeated, drenched and miserable she said I could stay in the closed campground a mile up the road.

It. Was. The. Best. Campground. Ever!

I had a secluded nook amongst the trees on well drained pebbles looking out over the lake. And it was free! And it stopped raining! All night!

Quinault Lake is forever awesome in my memory.

Oh yeah, I got a new tent, it is a million times better than the Walmart variety. It should be it cost me $200! But practically puts itself up and has enough room to fit me and my stuff in. Mountain Equipment co-op people! It has got freaking everything!

Which brings us to today. Nice ride. Until that hole in my front tyre came back to haunt me. The tyre went down. And stayed down. Twelve miles from Hiquiam I was once again on the side of the road doing the bike equivalent of CPR. I'd just wrestled the tube out of the wheel when a big hairy man on a Harley did a U-turn and came around and pulled up behind me.

'People on two wheels', he said, 'should look out for one another.'

His name was Dion Johnson. He also happened to be a mechanic.

I was doing pretty well but I hadn't checked the tyre to see what was stuck in it. Dion did, and found a shard of glass lodged in the rubber. If I'd put my tyre back on I probably would have gone the grand distance of two meters before the tube went flat again.

God Bless Dion Johnson.

He gave me his cell number and said that should I get unstuck down the road he might be able to get a mate in the area to help me out, or failing that google the nearest help.

Then he went North and I went South.

Now I am here. At this blissful beautiful RV park by the Hoquiam River.

When I was putting clothes into the dryer I felt like diving in after it. Now I have dry gloves, dry socks, dry shoe protectors...sadly damp shoes remain but the out look is still up. The manager here was ridiculously helpful.

God Bless America!

Cycling the Sea to Sky....or the Sky to Sea

shalaith — Mon, 9 May 2011 17:07:00 GMT

Ever had a great idea? The one you get at two am just as you're drifting off to sleep. Usually when you wake up the idea seems too hard or too impossible. In the cold light of dawn the idea seems unreasonable. So you file it away at the back of your head to dream on when you're at a staff meeting or a boring class.

In my case I woke up and told everyone I knew that I was going to cycle to California.....from Whistler BC......on a bicycle.

I told them with conviction and certainty. As if I'd thought it through.

I hadn't.

I started to think about it fairly intently two nights ago. It was cold, wet and lonely at the Shannon Falls camp ground. My sleeping bag wasn't warm enough. My $20 tent from Walmart which I could only fit in if I slept diagonally, began to leak.

First night on the road and I shivered in and out of sleep, getting up to wee every two hours because presumably my body was trying to get back at me.

It rained all night.

Then all the next day.

I woke up at six am on Friday shivering like a dildo. And when you're vibrating at that frequency there is no point in trying to go back to sleep. I got up and after packing up began to slowly pedal down the road.

Google maps assures me that I should be able to average 17.5kph. Google maps is overly optimistic. It was 52ks to Vancouver. It took me four and a half hours.

These are my excuses:

1: I hadn't got any sleep.

2: I'm not very fit.....yet

3: my gear weighs lots

and most importantly the road is called 'The Sea to Sky Highway' and that means it goes up, then goes down and then goes straight back up again...all the freakin' time! I stopped looking at my cycle computer after awhile, seeing it on 6kph all the time got demoralising.

Yep those are my excuses and I'm sticking to them.

My plan had been to have lunch at Horseshoe bay. The problem was Horseshoe bay was at the bottom of the mountain and highway 99 was most of the way up the mountain. I looked down at the town that was no more than a few boats and buildings glimpsed between the trees and clouds. On occasion I can see the future. Just like a seer. And what I saw as I looked down at Horseshoe Bay was a horrible hard slog back up the mountain after lunch. Thus forewarned I ate my bread beside the road and stared at the rain staring out over the cloud filled bay. It was pretty in a grey sort of way.

You may be getting the picture by now. I'm not a that stalwart adventurer who spits in the eye of adversary and laughs in the face of certain exhaustion. When times get tough I don't get going. I'm more likely to have a little cry, start screaming insults at inanimate objects or sit down and stare despondently at a wall for forty-five minutes. But that's one of the reasons I'm attempting this trip....to gain more courage. After all, if it wasn't a challenge then what would the point.

The highway wove it's way into the city moving from mountain and bay views with a wide smooth verge, to rubbish strewn suburbs and narrow unpredictable shoulder. I love cities.

Ah but the romance of cycling. Open to everything. Exposed to the environment. Feeling, hearing and smelling every shift of the world as you drift along in an unassuming bubble. The creak of road signs in the wind, the whiff of marijuana, the lungful of diesel fumes, the rush of trucks whooshing by with inches to spare.

I misplaced North Vancouver. It wasn't where I remember leaving it. I turned off too early and had a discussion with a girl at a bus stop about where I'd left it. Together we figured out that I'd dumped the highway nine exits too soon. With a sigh I turned and retraced my.....wheel treads[footsteps on a bike]. I don't like that type of highway, too busy. I've often thought the road would be much better if there wasn't any cars on it.

There was a certain coffee shop I recalled down at the Lonsdale quay market. I'd been dreaming about it for the past two hours in between wondering why I sold my car.

I made a bee line for it, dumped my bike outside, grabbed the biggest hot chocolate I could buy. A ham and cheese croissant. Inhaled and tried to dry out and thaw out.

Some time later, feeling less like a wet piece of newspaper I drifted over to the sea cat. Got yelled at by the loading team.

“Last door on your left. Last door on your left! LAST DOOR ON YOUR LEFT.”

I'd gone into the third door on my left, because I was intimidated by all the people screaming at me and just wanted to get on the ferry and away from them, and wasn't sure if they were yelling because I was at the wrong door, or had gone right instead of left. This happens to me frequently.

At the other end at Waterfront I disembarked, and frowned at the escalator. The other cyclists picked their bikes up and wandered up the moving staircase easy as pie. The other cyclists were muscular men with lite bikes and no gear. Swearing and looking far less cool, I dragged the Delinquent Caribou [my bike's name....cause it is a Kona Dew City....DC.....Delinquent Caribou] over to the escalator and got aboard. I got off with a inelegant heave.

I walked out of the station up the first street I saw and three blocks later, into the first hostel I encountered. Hostels are fabulous. In that they are dry and warm and have other travelling people in them. Life was good.

Photos: Today is

shalaith — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 11:01:00 GMT

A great day