I’ve had a few people ask about the tour and I’ve finally come up with a reasonable summary. I *was* going to just put the detail for all the days (which I’m still doing) but that’s probably a lot like making people watch all 10,000 of your vacation photos as you reveal the daily details that most people just aren’t interested in. So instead of putting everyone through that, here’s a summary of the tour.
I was fortunate enough in Seattle to catch up with a friend named Dan from when I lived there, and was able to see one of his sons and girlfriend (who I hadn’t met yet). We had a wonderful time catching up over dinner and a couple games of pool. It was a great start to the entire adventure. Unfortunately it was just for a few hours, I’d have loved to have spent a couple days.
Me and a buddy, also named Dan, started our ride in Blaine, WA, just a few miles South of the Canadian border. The plan was to ride through Vancouver, BC North for a couple of days until we go to Powell River. There we’d catch a ferry (we’d have ridden two ferries already) over to Comox, on Vancouver Island, and then head South for a couple of days, ending in Sidney, just outside Victoria, and then catch a ferry over to Anacortes, WA.
From Anacortes we’d cycle South, splitting up near Kingston. Dan finished his tour by riding to the Mukilteo ferry, crossing and then riding to where he left his car. I to a ferry over to Port Townsend.
The tour plan was to be camping each night with the idea that if necessary we could always find a hotel and for the most part that held up well.
I continued my tour by riding not around the Washington peninsula but down through Olympia and Shelton. My next target was riding Mt. St. Helens, a mountain that I have held in awe since it blew its top in 1980, and which I used to visit regularly when I lived in Seattle. I climbed Mt. St. Helens with my fully loaded bike and as you’d expect, it took pretty much all day. Heidi, a friend from high school, picked me up and hauled me back to her place, where I was able to meet her family and spend the night without pitching a tent.
The next day we headed out to see a couple of the local sites as we spun our way to Cape Disappointment. I simply love the lighthouses there and have always wanted to camp nearby. We woke to rain and a scattering of our food. Despite the odor proof bags I should still have hung the food but I didn’t so the racoons had a feast – pretty much all of my multi-day camp food was gone. Sigh.
We dealt with stop-and-go traffic to cross the Astoria-Megler bridge, getting into Astoria, having some lunch, getting Heidi’s bike into a local shop for a small repair and giving me the chance to ride up the incredibly steep inclines to the Astoria Column, a historical landmark on a hill where you can see in every direction for miles.
After that we cycled and camped along the coast until Heidi met her family to end her tour. I continued on and did two back-to-back centuries (100 mile rides), one each day. I had this “he-man” induced notion that I might be able to ride 13 days of 100 miles each, which would let me make it to the US-Mexico border. My original goal of this 4 week adventure was to end in San Francisco, so this would be a huge addition. So I did a few days with quite a few miles but soon realized that I was not in good enough shape to accomplish this. So I slowed down my pace and continued to enjoy the Oregon and Northern California coastlines, even stopping for a couple of rest days.
I was able to meet several fellow travelers. One of these was Sebastian, a guy doing a solo tour following much the same route as me. We rode together for an afternoon/evening on a day where the sun never came out. We alternated taking the lead to buck the headwinds and rain, and it was dark when we reached town. (In case you haven’t had the chance to go along highway 101 and California 1, there are long distances without any towns or services at all. So after pedaling for hours on end, when you’re about out of energy you tend to find the nearest “next” camp ground or hotel.) In this case it was already dark, raining and Sebastian was wiped and without camping equipment. Well, I’m just setup for single person camping so instead of splitting off (he had no lights) we just found the nearest hotel and called it a day. After getting our rooms I cycled for another 3 miles or so just so I could say I’d done a full 100 miles for that day. As was typical, we left at different times the next day to follow the path at our different paces and I didn’t see Sebastian again.
Within a day or two I’d met up with Jim who is riding for a cause. See http://jimbobooksandbikes.blogspot.com for his story. He came “across the pond” to ride the coast route. We first me while having lunch in one of the small towns along the way. (Another rule of the tour – when you find food, eat it!) We chatted over our meal and then left at different times, only to meet up again at the end of the day as we were both trying to navigate the very bicycle unfriendly and construction-riddled streets of the day’s destination. We decided to stick together this time, using both of our GPSes and maps to find a safe route through. We ended up at the same hotel but again, left at different times. I’d bump into Jim 2 or 3 more times in the next day or two. If you want to get an idea of a really hard tour, follow his other blog for the 11 day nearly-100 miles per day tour. Wow!
As I continued down the coast I found a very clear distinction between the roads in British Columbia, Washington and Oregon compared with those in California. In a phrase, California roads suck. In many places the shoulders are simply non-existent, the road full of potholes and rough patches that force one to slow down or ride further into the road and there is a clear lack of alternate roads for traffic leaving one in a very precarious position. The roads started out well enough in the North and just continually degraded going South. There was a 10ish-mile section where the road was being resurfaced, the terrain was very hilly, and the road crews had used equipment to chew the road surface down several inches. Coupled with a lack of shoulder (or at least a shoulder that would go from nothing to maybe a foot or two and then back to nothing) I found myself having to ride into and out of these carved out sections of road. Because of the several inch drop, I was unable to get to any shoulder, even in sections where there was one, forcing me to ride in the lane where nobody could pass me. This isn’t so much of a problem on a downhill where I can do nearly the same speed as the cars (although normally one uses the shoulder to get out of the way) but on the climbs there was no going around me. This slowed down my travel significantly as I was forced to stop every minute or two to pull over, pull my bike up and over the chewed-down section of road and wait for blocked traffic to pass. I played this game for hours getting into San Francisco.
Well, I didn’t get run over and did finally make it into San Francisco, crossing the Golden Gate bridge which was my formal ending point. Along the way I was able to spend time with current friends I see every week, old friends I haven’t see for many years, and make new friends along the way. I was able to have several days just to myself, where I didn’t talk to another person at all, except to say “thanks” when buying some food. Some people, like Sebastian, who had never spent any time completely alone, might have a hard time with the solitude. I thrived on it.
(Back at home I had hidden 25 different small surprises for my son and was able to call him, on most days, to tell him where they were at. So I was able to talk with him most days and “make up” for my absence with little surprises that he loved. This went on throughout the tour and if you read the detailed daily account you will learn more about his passion for legos, the surprises I left.)
As the tour ended I did a self-assessment and determined that unlike others I’d met and spent time with, there was no “I’m ready to be done”. I could have continued this for another month easily and I suspect for much longer than that. I don’t know that I could make this a permanent lifestyle like some of the cycle tourists I’ve heard about, but I think I’d be good for at least 3 months of solitude on the road. That’s not going to happen anytime soon, unfortunately, since as with pretty much all of us I have to work and have family responsibilities. But it does let me set my sights on some retirement goals, or perhaps an activity to take place between the next change in jobs (not that I have one of those planned!).
In the end I rode for just under 4 weeks, completed 1400 miles and climbing 103,000 feet. I didn’t have any flat tires, didn’t break any spokes and although I had issues with pedals, lights and cameras, they were all small issues that were easily managed.
For anyone that has flirted with the idea of doing a bike tour of their own, I cannot recommend this highly enough. It may not have changed my life but it certainly enhanced it.
Filed under: Bicycling
