Slow Coast

Well, I'm back. Back from my ten day hiatus in a silent Vipassana meditation retreat. There are so many words that spent exactly 10 days bubbling and percolating up inside of me that I couldn't say for so long...and I'm going to wait just a little bit longer to say them. The experience was equal parts insanely difficult, peaceful, lonely, exhausting, energizing, and wonderful. I want to take my experience and work it into an essay, so stay tuned if you're curious about it.

After the retreat ended, I reunited with Ben in San Francisco. He had been having a grand ol time, biking all the way up to Sacramento to visit his friend Laura, as well as just enjoying the beautiful city of San Francisco where we are now both convinced we want to live. It's so dang wonderful. Made more wonderful, of course, by our incredible host, Sarah Newsham. She made us feel so at home in her Richmond apartment that we literally started referring to it as "home."

Leaving San Francisco was sad, but after we filled our bellies with as much hip food, coffee and treats as we had room for, it was time to get back on the road. After 10 days of sitting on my bum and meditating for eleven hours a day and performing no bicycle-related exercises whatsoever, I was nervous about the current state of my muscles. Part of the Vipassana meditation course is gaining an experiential awareness of "Anitcha," or "Everything Changes." Unfortunately, that also applies to butt callouses. Let the butt-hardening begin.

Yesterday we biked from Sarah's apartment in San Francisco to the San Gregorio State Beach--about 40 miles. I was a bit nervous about getting back on Hwy 1, especially after how gnarly it had been north of S.F. But we were both pleasantly surprised by how gloriously flat the 40 miles were. The shoulder was nice and wide, and traffic was minimal. Since leaving San Francisco a thick, encompassing ceiling of fog hunkered in and stayed with us for the rest of the day. It made everything feel eery, yet cozier somehow.

It was starting to get dark when we reached the San Gregorio S.B., and with no other towns around we decided to camp there. It didn't have much to offer, besides a stunning yet abrupt cliff lookout, and beach access next to a dirty, polluted lagoon. But Ben and I spotted a tree with low sprawling branches that formed the perfect nook, just big enough for us and our little tent. We slept underneath  dense blanket of fog and the bit of faint moonglow that just managed to make it through.

Today we had another easygoing day, another 40 miles to Santa Cruz. Our friend Dan Kirkwood is here, staying with another friend John, so we are spending the night in the backyard of his cozy home. About 10 miles north of Santa Cruz we stopped by an adorable fruit stand/coffee shop/artisan general store to have lunch. We talked with a woman working there a while, and she explained to us the concept of "Slow Coast:" A 50 mile stretch of land south of S.F. and north of Santa Cruz, where much of the coastal land has been saved from over-development, and many of the towns feel preserved from an older, simpler time. Of course, anything with the word "slow" in it attracts Ben and myself immediately, being the slow travelers that we are. We bought two Slow Coast stickers. Check out the scene here: www.slowcoast.org.

After being back on the bike for two days, I can honestly say the meditation retreat did me good. I feel like it gave me several valuable tools that are directly applicable to everyday life, but especially bike touring. Take care of yourself, and always do the best you can. Maintain an equanimous mind. Enjoy the present moment for what it is, because it will change. Don't worry too much about the hard, painful stuff, because they will fade away eventually (ahem, hills!). Don't get too attached to the really good stuff, but it will pass too. Just enjoy each moment for what it is. Don't mourn the loss of your hard-earned butt callouses and thick thigh muscles, they'll be back eventually. And go slow :). Cheers!

How the West was One. (With Pictures!)

We've been on Highway 1 since Tuesday, when we split off the 101 in Leggett, CA. The 101 had shifted from a pleasant rural highway to a 4 lane divided freeway with on and off ramps, so we were thankful to leave it. The first part of the 1 we had been warned about—steep uphill climbs through dense forest, the highway curving around the hillsides blocking the view around nearly every turn. It was a pretty steep ascent, but we were rewarded by the video game-like downhill ride—swooping around corners, leaning the bike to a 45 degree angle to where you feel like you could touch the ground with one arm, yeah. Pretty exciting stuff. Then...the ocean! Ocean, I've missed you. Somehow you got even bluer and more massive since I last saw you, in Eureka.


Highway 1 is incredible. Determinedly following the rugged coastline of California, it's breathtakingly beautiful. It is also terrifying, and seemingly defies about 500 laws of physics and engineering. My trusty map of the state did absolutely nothing to prepare me for the wonders of the 1, showing the highway as a gentle, friendly pink line on the edge of a perfectly flat state. Road maps don't help the bicycle tourist much, but even a topographic map would not have given me a true understanding of just how narrow and windy the road would be, or just how many times I'd relax into the sheer pleasure of gliding downhill into a valley only to realize that I was just going to immediately regain that lost elevation.

Somewhere between here and Oregon, the landscape changed. The moist, lush forests of the North turned to dry beige cliffs and rolling hills. The roadside plants have all morphed into luscious succulents and overgrown wild fennel, and the few groves of sweet-smelling pine that we encounter all seem a bit confused as to how they got there. Hwy 1 often literally hugs the coast for much of its path, and often doesn't have a guardrail, leaving you on the edge of a thousand-foot precipice, hoping your bicycle tires know how to maintain contact with the thin ribbon of road as it bends and ripples and arches its back through the cliffs.

Thankfully, a thrilling and dangerous road has its benefits. The road seems to scare off the majority of semi-trucks, Rvs, and general traffic. We sometimes get a whole 15 minutes without cars zooming by, during which I always revert to my fantasy of roads being built for only bicycles :). When cars do pass by, sometimes I wonder what they must be thinking of us. I know I make a terrible bicycle-touring poster child when I'm huffing up a steep hill, drenched in sweat and donning a “sweet-Jesus-make-it-stop” expression on my face. I keep telling myself that the best part of bicycle touring is how many calories you burn, and how jealous people must be when they see Ben and me guzzling down 5 pastries at a time and not even blinking an eye or gaining a pound. Or when we're streaming downhill at a cool 30 mph, about the only time that I feel as cool as the motorcycle tourists look.

There have been a few moments over the last few blazingly hot, ridiculously challenging days where I've sacrilegiously longed for a car to pick me up, to ditch my bicycle and panniers over the cliff's edge and straight up roadtrip it. But then there's always the nighttime. After the biking is done, when the hills only seem like faint memories and my mac and cheese dinner is the best food I've ever tasted...when we're sitting on a dark beach somewhere so far away from city lights that the milky way looks like a streak of white paint across the sky...that's when I remember why we're on bicycles.

Postscript: I'm writing this from San Francisco! Ben and I arrived on Saturday evening, and we've been taken care of by my good friend Sarah Newsham. We'll be here for a couple days, but on Wednesday I'll be heading up Kelseyville, CA for a 10 day silent meditation retreat! That means I'll be taking a break from both biking and writing for a while, but stay tuned...we'll resume our trip as planned on October 20^th, after the retreat. Happy revolutions everybody!

 Charlie on his 30th Birthday! Our awesome host in Cleone, CA drove us to Safeway to buy a carrot cake, Charlie's favorite.

 The Amazing Glass Beach in Fort Bragg, CA. Used to be a dump, now there's beach glass instead of sand.

 Ben, demonstrating his enthusiasm for being on top

 Sunrise from our tent the night we slept on a beach outside of Anchor Bay, CA

 This road is crazy!! Can you see Ben?

Ben and I, on one of our many bakery breaks--Tomales, CA