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