Nearing the End

Its hard to believe, but we're a mere 30 or so miles from San Francisco. I promise that by this time next week, I'll have a more complete post with pictures and everything detailing the finer points of our journey. For now, though, I'll leave a brief description of what riding through California has been like.

Humboldt State Park was incredible, and Tim and I got to spend a day off hiking around the redwoods. The night that we got in, we walked around to check out some of the other Hiker/Biker sites and to see if any of our fellow travellers had shown up. We came upon the other site where we met another tourer travelling North. This guy was bizzare and wasted no time in bragging about his bike and his fancy Phill Wood hubs. This was another one of those solo travellers that was so devoid of human contact on his journey (and probably in everyday life too) that he felt the need to talk endlessly without caring whether anyone was actually listening. We nicknamed him "Wizzard Sleeve" because of his wizzard's cloak with fancy embroidering. Guaranteed LARPer. We picked the site far away from that guy and avoided eye contact everytime we went to the bathroom. Later that night a couple of French Canadian girls who were hitch hiking north showed up at our campsite and we hung out with them a bit the next day too. The night before setting out on our journey one of the girls who we saw at Bullard's Bay rolled in at around 10, looking exhausted and exasperated. Apparently she had some mechanical problems on her ride from Arcata and she seemed relieved when she saw a friendly face and a roaring fire. Funny how Karma works like that.

The next day, refreshed from our day off, Tim and I set out on the long journey up the biggest mountain we'd face on this trip. With a half dozen donuts in our bellies we flew up the mountain and way past the campsite we initially wanted to stay at. On our way up we passed a couple of middle aged guys who we ran into the next day. The next campsite we ran across didn't have any water, much less showers, and the KOA wanted 40 for their site. We decided to ride on another 14 miles (ice cream was the jet fuel this time) and made it a 90 mile (I know I told you 75 mom... I lied) day total including about 3000 ft of climbing! We made it an easier day the next day with only 40 or so miles, where the middle aged guys caught up to us. There were no showers at this site so we were a little stinky after the next 70 mile day that put us into Bodega Bay where the movie Birds was filmed. There we met a girl named Amy from NYC who riled up Tim with her ignorance of the South and our presumed provincial ways. Today we'll camp 24 miles outside of San Fran, and will roll across the Golden Gate tomorrow morning. Two nights there, and a day ride to Sacramento (perchance on train) and I'll head up to Eugene for a night in my empty new apartment. Huzzah! Verily we are almost done.