Miles and miles of Strawberries
A round of Bocce in Monterey
Where Land, Sea, Wind, and Fog meet
Fog enshrouds the road behind me
Getting ready to start riding with Paul
My brother Brian and I ponder the quandary of a cracked frame
Leaving the Bay
It is after 2:00 in the afternoon when I finally pull out from San Francisco. Fortunately I don't have far to go, unfortunately, I am trying to get over Devil's Slide before commute traffic picks up. A long time family friend, Bob Pelikan, meets me for the ride, his wife Jerilyn drives up to take some pictures. I stay at their house for the night, joined for breakfast by my mom, I have been greeted and held by my community in the bay.
The ride to Santa Cruz is the fastest day of my tour, 17 mph over 55 miles of riding. Seeing more good friends, a beach party, the joys of Santa Cruz, and a stiff North wind all combine to move me down the road. Leaving Santa Cruz is difficult, another 2:00 departure. I ride through city streets, get harassed by some adolescent males (they are the only real problems I encountered while riding), before getting out on more rural roads. The bike dimishes the separation from the world around you that the bubble of a car creates. Some times it is challenging, like dealing with wind, rain, heat, the smell of a rotting carcass while sucking wind on a big climb, but today there is a treat. I climb through a Eucalyptus forest, enveloped by its pungent aroma. At the crest of the hill the forest abruptly ends in vast strawberry fields. The sweet, moist ocean breeze infused with strawberry delight tickles my nose as it creeps in until I taste strawberries, I can feel them on my skin, it is all I can think about for miles and miles...mmmm sweet strawberries.
Though I am not a particular a fan of Monterey, I am tired, so I layover for a day. I stumble across a band called Rushad and the Butt Wizards, they are comprised of a drummer, keyboardist, and an electric cello (a combination I have never seen before, nor do I expect to see again any time soon). The songs are all about wizards, elves, magic...strange but masterful, they remind me of seeing Phish back when they would play to crowds of 20 people at the Middlebury dining halls on a Thursday night.
The Quiet Coast
I get an early start out of Monterey for the 70 mile ride up and over hills...about noon. Two days of traveling the Big Sur Coast, up and over hills, in and out of coves, I have my work cut out for me. In the end, it is the most scenic riding of the trip and some of my favorite riding as well. No real towns for another 100 miles or so. Despite the road, some traffic, and occasional stores, the place feels wild and undeveloped. The land rises straight out of the sea, creating steep cliff faces, barriers to the movement of wind and water. The intensity of the interaction is everywhere. Erosion, crashing waves, wind, fog...
Over the course of two days, I ride through the forest, up long grades, climbing above the fog, then disappearing back into the folds of this vast blanket. In between is movement, clouds forming and vanishing all around, exposing glimpses of islands, cliffs, coves, drainages, and trees, before quickly hiding them back behind its cape. As the days wear on and the light shifts, I catch views of orange and yellow light on hill sides, translucent, mystical visions through the veneer of fog and mist. The fog climbs up the cliff faces, filling in every gap and crevice as it is forced to climb skyward after so many miles moving over the level surfaces of the ocean.
The world around me is in flux, in motion, quickly and slowly. The fog, wind, and waves move quickly, comprehensible on a human scale, but there is much more here that is on the move. At no place else along the coast have I felt geologic time as I have along the Big Sur Coast. Without experiencing the uplift of the continents edge nor the explosive erosional events first hand, their presence dominates the landscape. The place where the land and sea meet, where neither is going to give into the other.
I ride this section without electronic music. I only use the ipod to block out the buzz of our cultures machines, which are more exhausting than any hills or miles I have ridden. There is a quiet music here, heard not through my ears but my entire being. It propels me along, drawing me in through wonder and beauty mile after mile. There is no buzzing in my head, no thoughts of things I need to do, frustrations, just being, quietly riding.
Travels with Paul
I cannot remember when I first met Paul, or even a time when we did not know one another. He is my oldest friend. We went to boarding school together, have been on numerous backpack trips together, in southern California, Oregon, The Sierra, and the Northern California Coast, we rafted/Kayaked the Grand Canyon together, Climbed Shasta, and traveled to Australia to play soccer together. How could this trip be complete without a section traveling with Paul.
Paul's wife Prima is gracious enough to drive him down to San Simeon in order to ride to Midland (our boarding school) together. We snap a photo before heading out, Paul sits upright, excited ready to ride, while I am slumped and tired. We have traveled together enough that there is no transition time, we are instantly on the same page, as if we have done the whole trip together (partly because Paul is willing to adjust to "Harwell Time" so easily). For the first time in weeks, I am traveling with some one else, it feels good. We talk, laugh, tell stories, eat, and play for 4 days that fly by faster than any other on the ride.
We ride to Midland, where we are welcomed into the homes of former teachers Laurie and Ben Munger. There is an openness to the Midland community, where trust and faith in fellow humans trumps the invisible yet tangible guardedness we all cloak ourselves in as we move through our days. José Juan Ibarra, who was one year ahead of me at Midland and teaches Spanish there now, tracks me down. He gives me a 100 peso note for my trip to Baja, "every traveler needs a lift, some support." It is an amazing school, the most impressive high school that I have ever encountered.
Cracked Frame
As I ride from Midland down to Santa Barbara, I return to a solo ride. All too familiar, to be on my own. At this point the benefits of being solo are far outweighed by the joy of companionship. There is confusion about how/where I can get on to 101. I am waylayed (o.k. partly because of a long stop for baked goods and a mocha), the afternoon is setting in, and I can feel the time crunch of making it to SB in time for my brother's play that night. Eventually, I find the carless backroad which will take me to the crest where I can legally ride on 101. Clear skies in the morning have given way to clouds, mist, and eventually full on rain. I am cranking hard when there is a "pop" as my chain skips gears. Looking down I can see my front sprocket is off kilter. I stop to look at it, but I can't figure out exactly what I have done, only that it looks bent when I pedal and if I push hard, it skips gears in the back. Frustrated.
The last 20-30 miles of the day are along 101, it is a beautiful section of coast with wide shoulders. I have been thinking about taking in the views and plugging into my ipod to drown out the freeway. The rain obscures the views and no ipod, just the roar of vehicles. Years ago I was watching an episode of MTV sports about a group climbing a big wall some where within the arctic circle. I had gone to college with one of the guys, his voice was ringing in my head, talking about times when you need to push on long after the trip has stopped being fun. Today was just such a day, bad directions, something broken on my bike, soaked through, and covered in road grime (of course I do recognize the difference between a bad day on a bike trip and being stuck on a frozen wall for many days).
I make it to SB in time to shower and head off to dinner and my brothers play. The dinner conversations are fast and mostly revolve around shma shma in SB, I am exhausted, it all seems surreal to me, dropped into the everyday lives of others. The play is hilarious and my brother is BRILLIANT, which keeps me awake through the end. The next day we head out for brunch and a stop at the bike shop to get the repairs going on my bottom bracket. The guy at the bike shop spins my pedals and doesn't see what I am talking about. I take a go at it and can't either? I get on the bike to show him and it becomes clear, the whole frame moves. We flip the bike over and find two cracks more than halfway through each tube. The rest of the bike shop guys comes out to see. They are expecting a story of a crash, but there is none. I tell them, "I'm just that ripped!" It is a small piece of comfort/joy that I can take in the situation. I have broken the one thing on my bike that cannot be fixed in a day, or even a week, or as it turns out even a month.
We go to brunch and talk over the possibilities. I call Brian Melley (who paddled with me in Alaska), who is planning on meeting me the next day to ride. He may be able to hook me up with a bike that he rode cross country in the 80's. My brother is on Craigslist looking for bikes and showing me his mountain bike. Paul calls, he is excited to hear about how I am going to finish the trip. There is momentum to pull something together, to make it happen. Deep down, I know it is over, it just had that feel. In the end I called it in SB, spend a few extra days with my bro, then took the train back to the Bay Area.
A Curiosity
I come out of a store in Big Sur to find a group standing around my bike. They are touching it, like something at the petting zoo. It has become more the norm than the exception, I am a curiosity. Everywhere I have gone over the past 3 1/2 months I have been an attraction. In Alaska, tour boats would veer towards us and slow down so that people could come out and take pictures, Phil would demand that they "stop stealing his soul," the bike would bring comments from "how far you goin'..." to "why" to "you're crazy" to "I'm envious" and so on. I have given the short version description of my trip hundreds of times with the full gamut of reactions. Near San Francisco, while climbing a big hill, a woman pulled her car in front of me such that I could not pass in order to ask directions to 101. I am totally befuddled as to why anyone would think that some one on a bicycle would know how to get to a super freeway? or that it would be o.k. to force them off the road to ask for directions? Stopped for lunch at a beautiful view spot, I take a bite of my sandwich. A car pulls up 20 yards behind me and a woman yells to me, "where is such and such campground." I tell her I don't know, which draws a glare, as if I am purposefully withholding information. "Well have I passed it, or is it up ahead?" "I don't know?" She glares again. Every stop along the Big Sur coast drivers talk about how exhausted they are driving the coast without the slightest note of irony that the person next to them is biking it. I feel simultaneously more visible yet more separate than ever before.
At the Bioneers Conference and back in SF I am anonymous. My few months of fame have come to an instant end. I am no longer visible against the backdrop of our culture. No one touches my car, or asks me how far I have walked that day, or where I am going, nor do they give their two cents about what I am doing. It is a double edged sword, it has opened up conversations and interactions like few other things do, yet it is rarely true connection. Even amongst my friends, I can feel the difference between interactions with those who I have traveled with or who have met up with me first hand some where along the way and those who have viewed it from afar or not at all. It is neither good nor bad, just an unexpected reality of my trip. One that I will both miss and enjoy leaving behind.
Where to Next?
Southern California and Northern Baja on fire and I have no aspirations to push through that right now. I am taking some breathes, sleeping in my own bed, getting to know my new housemates, and just being in one place (what a novel concept). Soon I will gather my gear and start to make my way south. There is after all more to come. Baja is a magical land of desert and sea, so incredibly different from Alaska yet like the whales, I love them both.
My final return is just one month away and I can feel it looming. I have been drawn towards movement over the past year, like a physical meditation, a healing. After months of movement and thousands of miles, the draw to be on the move is coming to a close. The meditation and healing near complete. I will return refreshed and ready to impart what I have learned and how I have grown over the past months into an evolving story.
When I left on this trip, the only thing I knew for sure was that I had no way of knowing what space I would be in upon my return. I am a little closer to understanding it, though it will continue to unfold for some time to come.
