To Big Sur

I just want to say I have been loving our leisurly pace since leaving San Fransisco. The day we left Pigeon Point, for example, we didn't take off until 12:30, we had an hour long lunch in Davenport, and then arrived in Santa Cruz at 4pm in time for a beer and some nachos by the beach. We rode through some fog as the sun was setting and pulled into New Brighton State Beach campsite just after the last bit of light had disappeared from the sky. It's been great. And I feel good too. We haven't pushed much past 45 miles in a day, which is good because once we pass 50 my neck usually starts to hurt and bike riding for me stops being quite as fun.

At New Brighton we ran into Stephanie, a cyclist who had been traveling with her sister when we met her at the campsite on the Avenue of the Giants. Her sister had since flown home, back to NYC, and Stephanie had kept on riding, with Big Sur as her destination. Why not? She'd already put some 6,000 miles behind her since she'd started in D.C. Incredible.

Yesterday should have been an easy 40 miles from Santa Cruz to Monterey, and as we started out, riding through strawberry fields that made the air smell like cotton candy, I was sure it would be. But we ended up facing some of the most fierce headwinds we've come across this entire trip. Just riding on flat terrain into the wind, I looked down at my spedometer, and I was going 6 miles an hour. The worst part though, was the dirt that the wind picked up in empty fields. We just turned our heads and rode through blocks of dirt blowing over the road. At the end of the day I wiped away a ring of dirt that had formed around my mouth, and my legs looked deceptively tan. But we made it, and were able to enjoy a 15 mile bike path from Seaside into Monterey, avoiding traffic the entire way.

Anyhow, today is our last day on our bicycles heading south. We are about 32 miles from Big Sur where we'll camp and then get up in the morning and ride our bikes up a steep, long climb for the famous view we've been hearing about. I can't imagine it being much more beautiful or impressive than anything else we've seen on this coast. But what do I know? I'll report back once I've seen it. This has been Lyon's goal from the very beginning while I skeptically didn't think we'd make it much further than San Fransisco. After two nights of camping in Big Sur we'll cycle back north to Monterey (where I'm writing from right now), and then take a bus to Salinas.

Then on to see Hina in L.A.! Bye, bye bicycles!