Who has the time?

Camping alone was a bit lonely until Brendan came in. It was nice to have someone to talk with because everyone around me was with their families and did not want to associate with a dirty biker. I found out that he was heading to San Francisco in two days so I decided to travel, well somewhat travel, with him.

The ride started with a small detour to a lighthouse located on the most western part of the continent to Hawaii. The day had a few climbs but nothing too major.

It was great riding alone, no offense to George and Heidi. I was able to stop anywhere I wanted, have lunch anywhere, do anything I wanted basically. For instance I stopped in the town of Gualala and made a detour to get to the beach from Gualala State Park. I sat there and enjoyed the view and just took a small afternoon nap. I got up and went on my way.

Riding down around a turn I'd be smiling when looking at the ocean. This re-emergance of bicycle touring in me was great and for that moment I was so glad I was still on the road.

I ran into two other tourers that were heading to SF. John and Laura were very nice and for the next few days I'd run into them randomly on the road.

The last big climb for my trip showed me the wonder of Highway 1. The winding narrow road were etched into the mountain and right off to the side was the drop to the beach. It was terrifying going downhill into a turn because there wasn't the assurance of hitting a tree if I wasn't able to make the turn. It would just be a great dive into the ocean rocks.

At a construction zone, Brendan caught up with me and we travelled towards our last campsite. The campsite was wonderful because of all the characters we met. It was a very interesting group of people because of them were scholars. I was not able to keep up with the conversation because I wasn't too environmentally knowledgeable like they were.

All of them, well most of them were heading to SF the next day. A whole group, like six were about to take over the road to the Golden Gate Bridge.

Cold cold

Boy it was cold when we got up. We got our things together quick and got the hell out of there.

Nothing much to say about this day. Nothing happened, except those darn cars getting really close. We were riding down Highway 101 and the entrances and exits were crazy. There really is no other way to get down the state.

We got to the campsite and were buying snacks when our old friend Josh came in with a buddy, Gus. We had thought we missed Josh by a few days but he had taken a break too. Gus was an awesome guy too, he lived in the Sunset district just like George and Heidi back in SF. He was heading back home, so maybe we'll be riding with him in the near future.

Oh and the campsite was the worse. It was basically a backyard with a table. Oh and it was right next to the highway.

Oh the Disappointment!

With our gear cleaned and bodies showered, we left the campground in high spirits. We only had 30 miles to go because we wanted to camp one last night at Cape Disappointment. Yeah, we didn't really know why we wanted to go there either.

On the road we passed by Conner and chatted with him a bit. A bit further up we met this other guy named George, he was from Vancouver. He is a funny guy and he was doing the same trip as we were. Actually he was heading down all the way to San Jose. I'll probably be travelling with him for the last leg of the tour.

Well we ate our lunch and Conner came rolling by laughing at us.

It was only 30 miles away but we were beat when we got to the Cape. The headwind was so strong that we were sprinting just to get to a normal MPH. Well practically collapsed at the park and it took us a few moments before we were able to set everything up. The beach was nice but extremely windy. Then George said he wanted to do a hike to the lighthouse and he said we'd regret it if we didn't do it. We went and he complained the whole way about the torture of hiking.