Avenue of the Giants

This was written the night before last. Internet problems prevented posting

Wow, it is amazing that today is already over. It was a fun day, and a lot less demanding than yesterday. In the last 5 miles I tried to really push it because I had a bit of energy left, and I also wanted to see if I could drop Nate, but every time I looked back, he was sitting there like Alberto Contador following my every move.

We started out just north of Trinidad and are in a campground in a place called Myer’s Flat. I believe we did about 82 miles today, but I am not positive about how many we did because my bike computer had a spasm and reset itself as I was headed down a hill. I think we had gone around 73 miles when that happened, and then we biked another 10 miles into the camp.

Adventures of the day include letting the map lead us to a dirt trail that lasted about 6 tenths of a mile. I hit a patch of sand and took a spill because I couldn’t get my speedplay pedal unclipped. I need to work on it, because it has gotten a lot of debris stuck in the cleat and has become overly stiff. Not to brag, but they are speedplay zero pedals, so I can adjust the float if necessary so I can clip out quicker if it comes to that. – Enough of the bike-geek digression. After the spill We thought the dirt path went on for miles further so we cleared a fence with our bikes and helped a girl lift her bike and gear over the same fence. She had been traveling solo and took our advice to stay on the freeway. Bad idea.

After traveling about a mile on the Freeway we looked to our right and saw that the pavement started up again on the trail, we called back to solo girl, but she didn’t follow us. It turned out that this path was really scenic and even took us over an amazing old railroad bridge that produced amazing photos. Also we passed by a lot of pastures filled with milk cows. We stopped to take pictures by them when one of them came over to see us. We thought that was nice, but she was breathing heavy, and had horns, which was different. I then realized it wasn’t a cow but a dairy bull. According to my mom dairy bulls are the meanest bulls around. He walked right up to the fence and started to paw at the ground and snort. He didn’t want us anywhere near his harem. We thought it was funny until we saw a large gap in the barbed-wire and decided to get out of there.

After the pretty scenery with the cows and the bridge, we rode into a small town named Arcata where we saw and went into a bike shop. Nate needed new brake pads and I checked out all the classic Tour de France posters they had. It was a pretty good collection, but probably the highlight of my day came around 8 miles later when we rode in hungry to Eureka, The bike shop told us to try the Coop on the 101, but before that I saw an all you can eat Indian food buffet. SOLD! Nate had never eaten Indian before, but before he could say no I had 2 pieces of Naan bread and half a piece of tandori chicken in my mouth. It was delicious and the perfect biking food. I just probably shouldn’t have ate so much. I definitely got my moneys worth out of it. I felt kind of bad because I had eaten so much I wasn’t extremely hungry when I road into camp 50+ mile later and my dad was cooking delicious pork chops with mashed potatoes. So I ate two HEAPING plates worth and two bowls of custard for desert. I ate so much and was so full we had to sit around in the restaurant watching Indian music videos until I could start biking again.

The next ten miles went slowly, but after the digestion process was underway we took an amazing route on the other side of the eel river that was extremely beautiful. We saw some amazing farmland with many more dairies. Most of the small dairies had signs outside that said “Horizon Organic” so maybe some of you hippies have drank milk from the cows that we saw.

After the farmland we hit some hills and passed some other bikers with pannier packs. I wanted to stop and talk, but I wasn’t getting my pedal out, so I just waved and continued. As we got into Rio Del I stopped to fix my pedal, and the other bikers caught up with us. I started talking to them, they all had good hobo beards and had interesting stories. One guy started out walking from Philadelphia and was making a film documentary. When he reached Iowa he bought a bike and started biking through, he hit Colorado, and Montana and went up to Washington. When he was in Eugene Oregon he had all his video equipment stolen and is now just pedaling  back to San Francisco and calling it quits. You had to feel for the guy. The other guys were two people he met and started to bike with in Eugene. As it turns out one of them knows my brother-in-law Peter. They were in the same 500 level Aeronautical engineering study group this last year at the University of Michigan. It truly is a small world! I really enjoy meeting other people, hearing their stories and making connections.

After the encounter, we rode around a town festival in Rio Del, rode through Scotia, which is a spectacular little town. It was extremely clean and in step with its heritage. After these small towns we followed the 101 along the Eel river until we hit the “Avenue of the Giants” road. We road quickly through here, but stopped to take pictures. Nate went Ewok hunting, but he has yet to produce, I am starting to think that they are nocturnal. The last 20 miles were all on the Avenue of the Giants road along the Eel, and were fairly quiet despite the incredible scenery.

Having recapped the day, and being incredibly tired …

Good night!