Safely Home With Fond Memories

I have finished out my amazing cycling adventure on the coast and am struggling to find the time to sit down and justly record journey in words. Long story short, we biked 1052 miles and it felt like it. We also got our money's worth of adventures and stories from our efforts.

First of I feel very blessed to be able to accomplish such a feat. Not only was I able bodied enough, but I was fortunate enough to have the economic means to do so. I am very fortunate to have the job that I have in such economic times.

Last that I left off I was just off of a rest day where I laid mostly motionless in a hotel room in Crescent City. During the rest day I was in a friendly competition with Brandon Robinson on who could take the most store-brand Nyquil in a 48 hour period. I think I won, but my memories of that hotel room are thankfully foggy.

From Crescent City we biked 82 miles that day to the Eureka KOA campground that was off the 101 between Arcata and Eureka, CA in Humboldt County. We saw awesome redwoods and had the opportunity to traverse some great hills. I believe this is the first time in the trip where we crossed 1000'.

This is near the top of the big climb. Note the redwoods, fog, moisture and my pale/sick complexion

Hanging with Babe the Blue Ox and my chest-hair mentor, Paul Bunyan.

We found the Elk Bros Club. I think there were about 15 bulls in the pasture. All had at least 6 points on a side.

Brandon is unshaken by the elements

We had originally planned to stay with a Warmshowers.org host when we were in Arcata/Eureka because it was going to be the largest city that was going to be on our route and I had previously hosted other cyclists and I thought that it was my turn to be the crazy hippie in somebody's house. I tried about 4 individuals on that were listed in Arcata with no luck. We instead found a KOA that had a hiker/biker option. $17 for the night and it came with a hot tub, laundry and mini-golf!

One of the crazy things about Humboldt county is that it is the Marijuana capital of California, and therefore the country. I personally don't use Marijuana, and have seen its adverse affects on others, but I haven't ever been real adamant on the fact that it should be illegal. That kind of changed after touring that part of California. We were looking for something eat that night and ventured to the town plaza to grab some pizza. We basically had to endure second-hand pot smoke as the sidewalks were lined with homeless drifters smoking pot on the sidewalk. I considered it quite unpleasant. At the pizza parlor we talked to a girl that was attending Humboldt State University. She said that she was from Oakland, but doesn't return for the summers because it is too hard to find an apartment because of the drug trade in the area. Apparently it is popular to rent apartments and not live in them but use the water/electricity to cultivate pot. Low priced housing is tough to find. 

The next night we spent at a campground/RV park where a group of Neo-Nazi-ish people had taken over the campground's lounge. Brandon had entered to find an outlet to charge his phone to be quickly escorted out by people saying that they are using it to run their business. The placed tarps over the doors/windows but he said that he saw a lot of vials/baggies that were being measured out. Legalizing and taxing/controlling the trade sounds like a promising idea, but I don't know if that industry would respond well to regulation. It was for all purposes legal in that area and there was increased shady activity compared to New Mexico where it is illegal and there is no medical marijuana provisions. It was just different cycling through dairy country and then passing a farm with a bunch of green houses and armed guards/razor-wire outside the facility. 

My rant is over for the day. Hopefully in the next couple of days I can find the time to blog this trip justice. 

Over Halfway Through and Way Underbogged

Danny and  Brandon's Epic Journey has now been through the state of Oregon and has now entered California. The last time I blogged I was complaining about the poor weather in Washington. The weather got better in Oregon and we made some great progress before I came down with a really bad cold in Crescent City CA. We have spent the last two days here holed up in a cheap motel drinking gallons of orange juice. I am not 100% yet but we plan on doing almost 80 miles again today. I think the best way to catch everyone up is to bring in specific highlights of the trip in a non-sequential order. Here we go ...

My friend Colin and his wife Melanie camped with us one night in Washington and we were able to dry out all our stuff in a dryer..
We later stayed at Colin's Parents house in Coos Bay. In Brandon's words they lived at the top of a mountain. I think he was feeing the fact that his wheel was out of true and had been rubbing on his break. That is now fixed.

We have camped at bruceport county park in WA, at a campground in Cannon Beach Oregon, Cape Lookout State Park in Oregon, Beachside State Park in Oregon, Colin's Parents house and at the most ghetto of them all ... The county Fairgrounds in Gold Beach Oregon.

We found the Prostitution capital of Southern Oregon to be Port Orford. We saw two prostitutes at 2 in the afternoon at the Circle K. We stopped for 10 minutes to have a snack and we saw more than what we wanted to see. The town has a population of 1500!

We crossed the talest bridge in Oregon, but were unable to see anything because of the density of the fog.

We have become endeared to the chinese lady working the front desk that continuously checks on our health and how we are recovering from  our colds.

I forgot the pump to my MSR dragonfly stove. We have not been able to cook with it yet this trip. I am stubborn and am hauling around a 3lb bag of pancake mix and a bottle of syrup for when I get a working stove.

Now I am handing the blog over to Brandon.

Greetings.  It is now my pleasure to share with you the experience we had at the Tillamook county smoker.  What a place!  As we were entering into the town of Tillamook (one and the same as the origin of the cheese), Danny spotted a sign on the left hand side of the road that would change our lives forever and the patterns of our bowel movements for the next 24 to 48 hours.  It read:  "2 ft of pepperoni - 99¢".  And to think, I almost missed it!  (I was in Lance Armstrong mode).  Needless to say, we purchased more than 8 feet of meat that afternoon, most of which was consumed that evening.  The euphoria that ensued caused us to ponder upon some of life's more serious questions like:  What would happen if meat was sold by the foot all the time?  Who really killed JFK?  Did we really land on the moon?   Thank you Tillamook county smoker.

Now that brandon has shared his most tender moment, I will continue my account.

I also got the Lance Armstrong impersonating Brandon to stop at the Tilamook cheese factory for cheese tasting. He claims to be lactose intolerant, but after the visit I did not notice an abnormal increase in methane output from Brandon. It was already at a really high level.

I got to go now, but hopefully I will be able to blog more tonight. We will be seeing a lot of redwoods today and hopefully will have good tales to tell!

Learning to Swim in the Rain Forest.

Greetings from Amanda Park WA! I think that it has warmed up to about 60 degree farenhiet here , so I would consider this a warm spell. So far we have had severa things that have been consistent on this trip and thatt is unforgiving rains and mechanical difficulties.

We have been riding for two days now and Brandon has had two flats and it has seemed to be raining non-stop, but I shouldn't complain too much because I am starting to see a break in the clouds. Maybe it is just me that is still wet because the tend was not as water-tight last night as we had first thought.  our whole tent was soked and had had my taablet sitting next to me before I went to bed, but when I woke up, I pullled it out of a puddle of water next to my down sleeping bag.  luckily my tablet still works, but my sleeping bag was a bit wet and I couldn't dry it out because it was like we were in the middle of a rain cloud with all the fog /humidity/rain that was around the camp. It took us a while but we eventually  bit the bullet, packed everything up and headed out. we have gone 60 miles so far today and have about 15 left, slightly downhill too!

I want to also illustrate the resoursefullness of my good buddy brandon here. Today his clipless pedal fell apart. He had no way of keeping his foot on the pedal and he was left with just a slick plastic shoe and a a metal pedal. He ended up fixing his peda with a zip tie in a very ingenuitive fashion. He then later took a screw from a different pedal and moved it to the broken pedal and then he zip-tied both pedals.

As bleak as this post sounds we are really having a good time and we arrive in Aberdeen tomorow where we can restock on food and buy some badly needed bike parts for branndon. I think we are onlly about 35 miles away.

The even better news is that we have friends from BYU that are driving from Seattle to the Penninsula to camp with us tonight. Colin Barber and his wife Melanie are coming to see us. I am really excited and hope they brought some dry towels!

Oh Canada!

Disclaimer: i am still trying to figure out the blogging from a tablet thing. Paragraphs and spell-check have yet to be mastered. copying and pasting blogs from the word processor from when I write them offline is what I am doing at the moment.

So I  am in the ferry bulding  waiting for the 8:30 ferry to Sidney British Columbia. It took me quite some time to figure out my new Bluetooth rolling keyboard but I think I am finally figuring this thing out.  I slept for about 3.5 hours agaian last night, the second night in a row. We got to the Ferry Terminal in Anacortes last night around midnight. We assembled the bikes in the terminal and had them ready to go by 12:45. After this we had to find a spot to camp. We decided to run up by the upper parking lot to find a spot. We found one, but it was very hilly and right off of the parking lot (I don't know if they appreciated us camping there) In the morning, which at this lattitude happens around 4 AM, I woke up to find lots of wild rasppberries in the area. I tried one and it was a little more wild than I thought it would be. We had the camp up and packed before any security personnel compassed the area. I had co-workers imagining that I would get arrested in a spectacular fashion, but that hasn't happened ... Yet!  

We are on the 8:25 ferry to Sidney BC this morning and they are starting to call our  loading groups.   There are many posters here in the  station which feature orca whales (the ferry even passes Orca Island). I want to see Shamoo in the wild. I hope he remembers me! I was really friendly and waved a lot last time I saw him at Sea world.  I will blog more once I get on the Ferry.    

The ferry trip was uneventful, but beautiful. Shamoo was too afraid to show his face but maybe he will show his face tomorrow as we take the Ferry to Port Angeles. Like I just said, the ferry was amazingly beautiful. It made a quick stop at Friday Harbor on the Island of San Juan. The Ferry had special ropes for bicycles to tie up on a ramp for the voyage as well. The charge for the bicycle was $6. The Ferry had several large Korean families on it that seemed very excited to be in North America. I chatted with them for a while and they were happy that I enjoyed Seoul 4 summers ago. Being short on sleep I tried to doze off, and succeeded for about 10 minutes when a crewmember woke me up to make sure that I was not supposed to get off at Friday Harbor. I wasn't able to fall back asleep again.   Once we landed on Victoria Island, we had to go through a particularly grimm border patrol agent. We succeeded and immediately after we disembarked the Sidney Ferry Station, we found signs directing bicyclists towards Victoria on the Lochside bicycle path. It was fairly well marked for the 20 miles into town and it was absolutely georgious. We were told by locals that it followed an old rail bed so it was particularly flat as well. There were some areas that were on dirt paths, but they were really well mainttaianed and smooth. Neither Brandon or myself had bike difficulties because of it.   We easily found our hostel tonight despite both of us rejecting the huge $/mb charges on our data plans for roaming in Canada.

For lunch Brandon wanted to try what I think is spelled poutin, which is like a french canadian version of chili fries (Brandon served his mission in Belgium/France). We found a place called "The Pig" that served it, and it was delicious! This particular location was a barbeque joint that loaded fries with pulled pork, cheese and a gravy type sauce. I also tried the establishments mustard barbeque sauce and was instantly taken to another level, it was very good. I  am sure we will have further adventures with Canadian Cuisine in the next 24 hours.      

The hostel we are at is pretty nice and provided a warm shower/place for a nap that was greatly appreciated. It looks like we have one Canadian and one German roommate for the night. We need to decide what we are going to do for breakfast, but they have a full kitchen that we can use if we want to cook in the morning. I need to buy some stove fuel (TSA frowns on white gas in checked luggage)  and allergy medicine. I am absolutely dying with allergies, which is funny because when I went to seattle this time of year 3 years ago, I had absolutely no problems.   Off to explore the city!

The call of the coast!

I love Sundays because it is a great day to rest! I also love Sundays because it gives me time to procrastinate the things that I should be doing like getting ready for my amazing trip that is coming up. I have decided to get a quick blog in about the planning of the trip and how I am going to be able to use this trip and the interest that it produces for the use of good in the world. I have decided to ride later this summer in the New Mexico MS 150 "Pedal Los Pueblos" bike ride. To do this I first have an obligation to raise money to benefit the National MS society. Last year I rode in this ride and had an incredible opportunity to meet amazing people that cycled with me who not only volunteer with the MS Society but also suffer from MS. This experience has really helped me understand the good that this society does and the pains that people with MS suffer through. As you read this blog I would implore you to donate and help this good cause.

A great way to do that is to pledge money for each mile that I will ride along the Pacific Coast in the next month. My early estimates (rough estimates through Google Maps' Beta Cycling instuctions) says that I will be riding 1048 miles. This means that if you pledge to donate one dime for every mile that I will cycle, you will donate $104.80! I know that adds up to a lot of money when you are cycling these kinds of distances! This can easily be simplified to $10 for every penny/mile that one pledges to donate for my ride. I would love to raise $1000 - which would be $1 for every mile that I ride. We will  see how far I can get! If you would like to donate you can do so on my MS Society profile page Here.

Now onto cycling! Bellow is a rough map of where I predict we will be camping each night sans the discontinuous British Columbia section.


View Bicycling directions to King St in a larger map

So far I have gone slightly Henry David Thoreau and have started to plan out the cost and the Itinerary of the trip. Bellow are some grammatically emails between Brandon Robinson and myself on the plans of the trip. The links provide information on the plans so far.

Hey, I found an awesome hostel and reserved a room because I guess next week is of some Canadian Holiday. Here the hostel, it costs $33 Canadian a night: http://oceanisland.com/

My plan is to get into Seattle and if Colin Barber doesn't pick us up we can take the 9:00 shuttle to Annacortes where the ferry is. It costs $31 for a 2h45m ride. Here is the link http://www.airporter.com/schedules/schedules-rates -I plan on just finding an open field in Annacortes to sleep in as we await the Ferry the next day. 

The next morning (the 28th) we take the 8:25 ferry to Sidney BC. The cost is $24 and includes a $6 surcharge for the bike We get into Sidney at 11:05 AM. We might take the later ferry if Colin drives us. http://www.wsdot.com/ferries/schedule/ScheduleDetailByRoute.aspx?schedrouteid=1420

From Sidney we bike about 20 miles into Downtown Victoria which I hear is an absolutely incredible city. the hostel we are staying at was built in 1891. The next morning we will then take the 10:30 ferry to Port Angeles where we start the camping part of the trip. Here is a link to the Ferry ($23.50 Canadian with the bike) http://www.cohoferry.com/main/?Fares We will be biking 60 miles the first day (after arriving at noon so we will have to lunch up on the ferry) after this we will start following this map -[ https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=203101903429155817735.0004c051fc5fc1c49f42b&msa=0 ]- The first day we camp right after Forks, WA (bring Garlic). The next day is a campground just before Humptulips WA and the town has a major road called Kirkpatrick Road. Be ready for high levels of testosterone and low levels of education!

Brandon, I have just been planning, so let me know if you object to something:

His reply was this, classic Brandon:

I hate planning crap.  You do the planning and Ill let you cling on to my back hair all the way to San Fran.  The money side should be fine too.  Ive been selling crack cocaine like that guy on breaking bad to Pre-med students at BYU that cant hack it for the last six years.

Love,

Brandawg

This is going to be an amazing adventure and I am trying to make sure I go into it with the right attitude so I can make the most of the trip.  

Hey Everybody! Pacific Coast Highway tour #2 will be getting underway by the end of June 2012! This time instead of dealing with the Mexican Border Patrol, we will be flirting with the strict socialist variety that comes from our syrup loving neighbors from the North. As from now the plan is to bike from Sidney BC (Just north of Victoria BC) to San Francisco. I am also hoping to have a charitable tie for the MS society to go with this. Stay tuned!

With the Border Patrol on on our trail ...

When the blog last left of we were in sunny Malibu eating pancakes and getting ready for out assault on Los Angeles. We were looking to make Dana Point, south of Laguna Beach that night - Which was about 87 miles from Malibu. Jon and Ryan had to be in LA to catch a ride back to Utah by Friday at 11:00 AM. This gave us two days to make it from Malibu to Mexico, about a 180 mile trip. Everyone was feeling good from the day before, and it was my turn to drive, and so I reluctantly took the keys. Some friends of ours from BYU were in the LA area, so they met us at the RV park where we camped, so there was a total of six bikers in the peloton chasing the suburban. 

By the time the first 23 miles were up in LA, our friends had bounced out, and Jesse was ready to drive again, still tired from the 94 miles the day before, I slammed some fruit snacks and got on the bike. The first part of the LA path follows a bike path along the beach. It was really fantastic! We were riding with sand on both sides of us, watching people play volley ball, surf and sunbathe. The going was a bit tougher as we climbed over the Palos Verde peninsula and down into some not-so-pretty parts of Long Beach. We had missed a turn and were headed through LA on surface streets that were not on our bicycle map. It wasn't hard to get around and people seemed eager to give directions. As we crossed the gorgeous industrial parts of Long Beach, we came over the immaculate LA river on Anaheim Blvd. As we were hooking up with a bike path in the area, I noticed a building that said "West Coast Choppers". We, by happenstance, had arrived at the Jesse James garage where they filmed Monster Garage. We stopped and took pictures, and then took off to have an immediate flat tire on Jon's bike. We put in a new tube and inflated it, only to have the new tube puncture. We didn't have any more CO2 cartridges, and so we just called Jesse Sprague (I guess we could have tried Jesse James) to come and bring us the floor pump. Not only did Jesse save us on the mechanical problem, he had lunch in tow. We gobbled down some fried rice. I suppose it was delicious, but I didn't really take time to savor the taste. After we left the flat site we were off down to the mouth of the LA river.

As we reached the coast, we found the Long Beach coast was a little bit nicer than the industrial inland. We again rode along the sandy beach until we found and filled up at a In-N-Out. Orange county was a great scenic improvement. Huntington beach was really nice, and so was Newport. I had been calling campsites all day long, and couldn't find a place to stay, but Jesse again came to the rescue by locating a reasonably priced hotel room in Laguna Beach. We fit 5 people in a king room and locked the bikes up outside. We obviously didn't have enough room to cook and were famished, so we looked up a Italian resaurant in the area. We decided on a Macaroni Grill in Laguna Hills. We walked in at 9:30, and they had no Idea what hit them. The first thing out of our mouths was - "What has a lot of food?". The hostess suggested the Mama's Trio, and it still wasn't sufficient, We downed about 8 loaves of bread, and they gave us our own water pitcher, that was refilled about 3 times. We might not have been able to cycle with the best, but we were definitely top-notch eaters. We were all pretty tired, and filled with endorphins, so it turned out it we were especially giggly. I don't know if we were oxygen deprived, but everything seemed funny and we were excited, because this was our last supper before we would hit the Mexican border and the trip was over.

We figured out that we had to do 100 miles on Thursday to get to the border, and so we tried to get out early. We had hit the road by 9:00, Having fueled up on Granola cereal and fruit snacks. We rolled through Dana Point and San Clamente, where Ryan stopped by a bike shop to adjust a pedal, and I picked up two CO2 cartridges. We now had three, and a spare tube. We continued on through towards San Diego along another incredible beach. We saw tons of people in wet-suits and surfboards, and we had a good tail wind, so we were making good time. After we passed the beach, we entered Camp Pendleton, a marine base that allows cyclists through if they have an ID. We met another cyclist around our age before the base and showed him how to get through. I think he was appreciative. 

After Camp Pendleton we me Jesse in Oceanside and crammed a footlong subway. In Oceanside we were once again along the beach for a while before we hit Encinitas. It is here that Jon has a flat tire. We were close to a bike shop, so we turned around and he used their floor-pump and purchased another tube for us to carry. We then started off again, to have his tire blow out again, almost instantly. We went back to the shop and had the guy look at it, he found a broken tread, and made a sell to Jon for a new rear tire. It had taken a lot of time, but I was thankful to finally get back on the road when in about four minutes later, Jon suffers his 3 flat. We decide that there was a problem the new wheel that he had bought in Santa Barbara, and he decided to stay there and call Jesse to pick him up. Nate, Ryan and I continued on. We hit the big hill right before Torrey pines and decided to take the more direct, steep route. It was fun and we got to see some pretty scenerey, after we peaked out at the top of the hill we rode along Torrey Pines Golf Course and UCSD. After we dropped down and rode through La Jolla, Ryan stopped by another bike shop in San Diego, because he had a spoke break off of his wheel and it was badly out of true. They fixed it within 25 minutes and we were off again.

The route had us riding along the boardwalk in San Diego, but it was too crowded and again we had to use surface streets. We had to move quick, because we were very time pressed, we were racing the sun for the border. Our time situation just got worse as we passed through the Mission Bay area and Ryan had flat #4 on the day. We had used all the tubes, and so I found I was the only one carrying a patch kit, and the glue in it had evaporated away. I didn't know where a bike shop was, and so we had to call in Jesse for a second time. He came, we fixed the tube, and Jon jumped onto Jesse's bike and we were off again. We were starving and had no time to stop for food. This is where I started to get testy and push it, and I lead people the wrong way, and then we had to turn around and finally hit the pedestrian ferry late in San Diego. We had another 40 minutes before it left for Coronado and we decided to pay the $7 each and get there right away. The ferry ride was gorgeous as the sun was going down and everything in San Diego harbor looked magical. I snapped some good pics, and then we hit it hard when we landed in Coronado, we still had 18 miles to ride. 

I am sure the Silver Strand was pretty, but I couldn't see it in the dark. I was concerned about it being a downer to bike in the dark, but it turned out pretty nice. We were on a bike path, so we didn't have to worry about cars. Riding in the dark made the moment just seem more memorable, and since we were no longer in a rush, we just slowed down and enjoyed the pleasant weather. The bike path took us into imperial beach, but it was not as it was shown on the map, so we again took surface streets over to where were supposed to end the trip. As we approached the border, we were stopped by a Border Patrol agent who told us where we were trying to go was only open during daylight hours and we couldn't really proceed any further because the border was completely wired with cameras and infra-red to catch people crossing it, and 

we would definitely attract attention. We decided to go towards the port of entry to get better pictures of Mexico. Here we were again stopped by a Border Patrol agent, who further directed us to stay off the border and showed us a way to approach it, and get food. Both agents seemed happy to hear out cycling story and told us how they catch about 50 people a night between I-5 and the ocean.

We reached the port of entry for pictures and then proceeded to the nearest mexican restaurant on the American side of the border. It was about 10:00, and I had biked 104 miles without eating anything since a 11:45 AM subway sandwich. I ordered a fish burrito combo meal, and a kids taco combo meal. We ate and then had the pleasant experience of packing all guys and gears on and in the car and very tiredly driving to a Motel 6 in Oceanside. Jon and Ryan had to catch a 6:00 AM train to LA so they could meet up with Ryan's brother and catch a ride back to Utah. I slept hard, but  not enough and woke up in the morning to see Ryan and Jon gone.

Jesse, Nate and I hit up breakfast in Oceanside, and then the beach for some body surfing and sun bathing. We left Oceanside around noon, and got into Albuquerque around 3:00 AM. It was long and tiring, but the most fun I have had in years, and very fulfilling. 

I would do it again in the drop of a hat.