Some additional photos from the day:
I deliberately chose a route that went through some of the most remote geography that I could find, up to the limits of my gear and carrying capacity. I wanted to get out into the middle of nowhere, and encounter as few people as possible on the way.
I tried to make a route like that through California, but all the sparsely populated parts of California are sparse for good reasons. They are all either too steep, too dangerous, or unpaved. One of the reasons I settled on Oregon – the eastern portions especially – was because it appeared to be the flattest and also some of the most remote territory I could find without having to deal with transporting a recumbent bike on the train system.
It is possible to transport a recumbent bike by train, and start a trip that way, if you’re willing to assemble the bike right there on the platform, then fold up the box and haul it to a post office. However, I got lucky on my trip: My father agreed to meet me at the train station with his truck, into which I’d packed the recumbent a few months earlier.
I inaugurated the new year by doing something that I could never have done one year ago. I got up in the morning at 9:00am, packed a campsite’s worth of gear onto a bike – 75 pounds total – and then rode the bike 83 miles. This, after riding 80 miles over the previous two days!
One year ago I would have said, “83 miles? Ridiculous. Forget it, kid. The people who do that are Olympians. You’d be lucky to get 30 miles a day. Twenty or less if there’s a lot of crap loaded on your bike.”
Feels good to prove myself wrong.
In three days I rode from my house in San Jose to Pinnacles National Monument and back. According to my GPS tracker, I burned close to 10000 calories. And that’s just from the bicycling – so it’s on top of the regular 1700 or so that my body uses just to operate each day.
(The “1” flag you see on the map there is where I stopped for the night at the end of day 1, and where I got french fries on day 3. The “2” is where my GPS ran low on batteries, and I had to stop for a while and connect it to the charging cradle inside my handlebar bag.)
As I type this I’m sitting in the Vegetarian House restaurant, with three main courses in front of me. I’ve already obliterated the “Majestic Mango”, and have the “Ocean Basket” and the “Thai Curry Soup” to go. It’s a good start, since I have six days of calories to make up for…
Now it’s time for some pictures and some lists. Let’s start with a list:
Inane Things That Only Long-Distance Cyclists Care About:
Let’s mix thing up a bit. Here’s an audio recording of the side of the road, made between San Jose and Gilroy. That’s me eating a bag of chips in the foreground.
And now some pictures:
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This is the hotel room I stayed in at the end of the first night. It’s the Gilroy Motel 6, and it cost a damn fortune, but on the upside they had an endless supply of hot water.
You can also see the bike. The two front bags have been removed and dumped out on the bedspread, and the food moved to the fridge. That’s about 20 pounds of the 75 pounds total.
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Here’s a shot of the bike against a tree. I took a break to pee and change into a long-sleeved shirt. Sketchy operations in the suburbs, man. The USB charger device is packed into that bag on the handlebars.
Heading south from Gilroy on day two. The fog makes the road look mysterious.
Heading south from Gilroy on day two. The fog makes the road look mysterious.
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A railroad crossing just a few minutes south.
A sturdy white fence and some colorful trees is a classic photograph setting!
A sturdy white fence and some colorful trees make a classic setting.
In case you’ve never seen these up close, these are what the plastic rows on all the fields look like. The plastic insulates the soil, greatly enhancing the survival rate of the crops on cold nights.
In case you’ve never seen these up close, these are what the plastic rows on all the fields look like. The plastic insulates the soil, greatly enhancing the survival rate of the crops on cold nights.
There’s something about silhouettes in mist that reminds me of the otherworlds described in Lewis Carroll books. This probably dates back to my time playing old 2D Windham Classics games on the Apple II.
There’s something about silhouettes in mist that reminds me of the otherworlds described in Lewis Carroll books. This probably dates back to my time playing old 2D Windham Classics games on the Apple II.
The trees just march off into nothingness. How far would you have to walk before you passed the same suspiciously identical tree?
Same with shots like this one. The trees just march off into nothingness. How far would you have to walk before you passed the same suspiciously identical tree?
Some lovely late-fall colors frozen in time.
Some lovely late-fall colors frozen in time.
As the towns get smaller, the periodicals get weirder. I don’t think there has been a single day in the history of The Watchtower where the staff didn’t think they were Living In The Last Days.
As the towns get smaller, the periodicals get weirder. I don’t think there has been a single day in the history of The Watchtower where the staff didn’t think they were Living In The Last Days.
As an aside, I look at a religious magazine like this and all my cynical brain can see is a giant, wriggling tick, sitting there on the countertop. An intellectual parasite. People pick it up and it burrows into them and steals their power, sucking it up for itself, and releases some chemical that makes them feel secure in exchange.
Picture them; the devout, scratching at their ears and eyes because they itch from all the ticks inside. It’s a pretty effective metaphor. Um, anyway, moving on…
The combination restaurant, pool hall, and general store that I stopped in for a bottled Spanish coke. The salt and pepper shakers were made from the same bottles.
The combination restaurant, pool hall, and general store that I stopped in for a bottled Spanish coke. The salt and pepper shakers were made from the same bottles.
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The birds were out to play on the farmland. About this time I began listening to the audiobook of “The Worst Hard Time”, a tale which fit quite nicely with a meditative trip through the country. The book describes the situation of my ancestors only two or three generations ago, surviving the horrendous dust storms of the 1930’s. (For those of you not in the know: Once the farming ecology around Oklahoma and Texas collapsed, the region became a host for dust storms so incredibly enormous that they would roll out all the way across the eastern half of the United States and interfere with ships out in the Atlantic Ocean.)
It occurred to me that despite my valid complaints of not having enough time to do things, I have never had to worry about having the strength left in me to do things. My ancestors had to work so hard their fingers literally bled, in territory so cold it could freeze their eyelids shut at night, sleeping in a dirt house crawling with snakes and spiders, burning cow dung for heat, and they considered that an improvement over the utter destitution and government betrayal that they had left behind in Russia. They sang songs and ate bratwurst and had huge defiant weddings.
Just being out here on a bicycle, in such good health to pedal it, armed with my credit card and guided by my iPhone, is an exercise of immense independence and wealth. It kicks ass. If my ancestors had stayed in Russia, I would probably be the same half-frozen peasant farmer of 100 years ago. I’d just have slightly better glasses and maybe a digital watch, and a lot more dead relatives to mourn.
California’s got this nicely varied middle section, where you can get badlands and vineyards in the same shot.
California’s got this nicely varied middle section, where you can get badlands and vineyards in the same shot.
Classic California. Gorgeous.
This is classic California. Gorgeous.
Wanna buy some land? PRICE REDUCED.
Wanna buy some land? PRICE REDUCED.
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It was getting late, but I still couldn’t help myself with the stopping and the picture taking. Seeing how this shot turned out makes me wish I had a better camera. Of course, a new one would weigh even more than this one — but having a fancy camera to fool around with is so much a part of the adventure, I’d happily accept the extra weight.
Just after this photo I ran into a huge hill, the first really steep one of the trip, and I hadn’t been expecting it. As I pedaled in my lowest gear I passed the time by calling the hill foul names and cursing it under my breath. It was obvious that I wouldn’t make it to Pinnacles before nightfall.
I began to scope out the valleys on either side of the road in case I found a spot suitable for some guerrilla camping. I almost tried it twice, when promising spots presented themselves, but changed my mind at the last minute when I realized I would just spend the entire night worrying with one ear cocked out for murderous wildlife or angry farmhands.
Two or three hours later I finally made it to Pinnacles. This was four hours later than I’d planned. Turns out the final stretch of the route was infested with steep hills – wavy ones all bunched up together that hadn’t shown on the 3D map while I was gauging the distance the previous night. Also, I made a lot more stops than I expected.
TOP TEN REASONS MR. FINS, AMATEUR CYCLIST, WILL STOP
A chilly night camping at Pinnacles National Monument, California
This is what my campsite looked like in the morning. I decided to pitch the tent in the middle of the driveway, since it was the flattest part of the site. My original plan was to stay here for two days, but the weather made it unbearable. The sleeping bag I brought was just not warm enough. The mattress I brought was also a bit too small for the sleeping bag.
As I tossed around in it trying to bend myself onto the mattress, I was treated to a chorus of critters yowling in the distance. Here, have a recording!
When I trekked over to the manager’s office at 9:45am, they’d posted the temperature measurements from the previous night. Turns out it had dropped to six degrees below freezing.
The projections for the next night were even lower. I wasn’t interested in dealing with that for a second night, so I decided to pack everything right back up.
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This tent was a combination Christmas/birthday present from a collection of friends and family members. (A “Vaude Hogan XT”) It kicks ass, and I extend my sincere thanks to all of you!
The whole thing, including poles, weighs less than 7 pounds. It’s roomy enough for two people and has this handy “vestibule” area where you can hide your bike from the weather (or thieves), and you can put it together in only a couple of minutes.
To put it together at night I propped the bicycle against a log a couple yards away and gave the front wheel a long spin, charging up the headlight, which illuminated the spot – but only weakly. I gotta get one of those head-mounted lights that I can plug into my battery pack.
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This is another reason I decided to pack things up. Even at 10:30am, with the sun fully up, my campsite was wedged in the shade of a huge hill. The ground around here was going to get only a little direct sunlight, meaning it would be extra cold at night. Bah.
See all that crud on the picnic table? I brought that here on a bike! Heeheeeeeee!
After packing up I rode down into the preserve to eat lunch and relax. Here I’m eating one of the sandwiches La made for me before she left for Florida, drinking the bottled coke, and wearing my bike helmet to keep my head from frying.
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The sun made me want to lay down and take a nap, but unfortunately, all the ground was either too hard, or too steep. Technically I’d spent ten hours in bed the previous night, but the sleep had not been comfortable. For some reason I’d dreamed about cooking a batch of chocolate covered almonds. I think that’s actually the first time in my life I’ve had a dream about cooking chocolate. Must be the calorie deficit talking.
Anyway, it was quite relaxing, and I wanted to call La and wish her a Happy New Year, but the whole National Monument area is devoid of cell towers.
On the way back out of Pinnacles, I stopped at the manager’s office and bought a huge bag of chips, since I felt hungry for salt. An old fellow saw me on the front steps began asking enthusiastic questions about my journey and my equipment, and I encouraged him to try something similar.
It was one of several conversations with total strangers about my trip. The first happened at the check-in desk of the Motel 6. The next one happened at the In’n’Out Burger where I stopped for french fries (a stocky latino looking dude), and the next was outside a 7-11 where I stopped for a banana (a tough looking black man).
The man looked at the banana, grinned, and opened the conversation with, “I should probably be eating that too, instead of these cinnamon rolls. Where are you biking from? Are you doing a tour?” What astonished me about that conversation was that he used the word “tour”, which is the proper technical term for the biking/camping journey I was on. Up until last summer, I hadn’t even known the term myself.
On the way back I was stopped in my tracks many a time by the sight of the winter sun illuminating the trees. The pictures don’t even begin to do it justice, but it’s fun to try.
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When the sun’s passing down behind the hilltops, the shadows get a bit weird.
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There’s a lot of space here. Funny to imagine that the whole interior of California used to be this open; even San Jose. Well, San Jose was probably wetlands and forest, but, you know what I mean.
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Tree? Or sleeping emu? You Make The Call™
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One of those artsy photos. Expect this to grace the cover of Pointy Fence Enthusiast Monthly, or American Wire Mechanics Feb 2009.
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Glass insulators on a telephone pole. You don’t see those very often around here.
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I’ve seen people throw away a lot of things by the side of the road. Earlier this day I passed three bleached skeletons – either dog or coyote – that had been hurled down the side of a ravine several seasons ago as bodies. Now here’s the remains of someone’s engine block. Eventually I’ll start seeing plundered treasure chests, tarnished oil lamps, and mysterious tomb carvings.
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The trees caught the light beautifully. I had to stop and stare just to take in the colors sometimes.
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The setting sun cast eerie shadows over the valley.
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Many suspicious birds, all in a row, being suspicious.
So there you have it. That ‘Lap 1’ marker is the place where I ate lunch on the last day. From there I rode 83 miles back to San Jose. I was going to stop in Gilroy, but when I got there, I washed my face at the In’n’Out Burger and sat down for a while, and decided that I felt good enough to ride the rest of the way home. Besides, my GPS read 48 miles for the day, and I wanted to finally break the 50 mile mark that had been eluding me all year.
As I pedaled for home I had to stop often just to give my wrists a break. They were hurting pretty badly from the weight of my leaning body, no matter what position I tried on the handlebars. Plus my sweater leaked through the teeth of the neck zipper, sending jets of cold air down my chest. La called me on the phone and she kept me company for almost an hour of my ride, which was very helpful, since it was quite dark beyond the range of my headlight and all I had to look at was an endless reel of curb and the cold pavement. She even told me a bedtime story, and stayed on the phone while she brushed her teeth. (The story was about a fish made of frosting, who lived on a cake, and took a journey to the sea and discovered he was actually a regular fish underneath!)
Every now and then I would concentrate on my legs and try to gauge how well they were doing. Would they wear out before San Jose? Were they getting cold? But they felt fine, and with the blood flowing a circuit between my exposed legs and my insulated torso, they were warm enough. They just kept on turning. I wasn’t even breathing hard. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I felt like I wasn’t breathing any more then I would just sitting in a chair, reading a book.
Just outside of the San Jose city limits I stopped and took one glove off to poke the iPhone, and wiped my chin with my hand. A mass of water spilled off my face. Apparently I’d been riding through the mist long enough for it to collect in my beard like a wet sponge, but it was the same temperature as the air so I never noticed.
Things Mr. Fins Learned On This Ride:
For the last 8 miles or so I kept staring at the little blue dot on the iPhone map and yelling, “Move, damn you! MOVE!!” I was cold and tired and there was nothing to look at, and I just wanted to be off the bike. Two miles out, I began singing They Might Be Giants lyrics out loud, since the streets were deserted and I was getting a bit delirious.
But I made it. That was my first “official” touring adventure, and my first day over 50 miles. And my first day of 2009!
So today I rode for more than 12 hours, up 5000 feet, through the hills east of San Jose and up to the Lick Observatory at the top of a snow-covered mountain pass, and then back down to my front door. I wanted lots of hills to test out the new crankshaft and gearing on the bike. And I sure did get ’em. Hoohah!
All these pictures were taken with the iPhone, since I didn’t have the regular camera around.
Here’s the stuff I brought along for the ride (except for the laptop, smoke detector, and tape):
This is the view from partway up the East San Jose hills:
This is the view from further up the East San Jose hills:
This is the view from most of the way up the East San Jose hills:
This is the view from the top ofhe East San Jose hills, before I went down behind them and began to climb the REAL hill up to the observatory:
Things that Mr. Fins learned this day:
Here’s the bike as it looks now:
Stuff that Mr. Fins saw this day:
I passed an odd French-looking guy on my way across town. He stopped at the same signal light as me, but didn’t turn his head or wave. Serious looking fellow. On Le Serious Businesse, no doubt. His bike looked expensive. He also passed me on his way back down the hill later in the day, while I was still grinding my way up it. He stared, but didn’t wave. The reason I remembered him was not because of his stoic expression; it was because he wasn’t wearing a helmet.
I wanted to stop him and ask, “So, is that a political statement? Are you protesting helmet laws, or helmet makers, or something?” … But he would have probably though I was mocking him. No, I was genuinely curious. Even if I had hard data that my own helmet wouldn’t help me 99 percent of the time, I would still wear the thing because it’s damn cold outside, and the helmet keeps my head warm, is very light, and doesn’t fall off. And on hot days it keeps my scalp from frying. What could his reasons be? His hairstyle maybe?
I saw dozens of cyclists on my ride, and he was the only one without a helmet.
Also, just after dusk, I was passed by a woman going downhill on her bicycle with two lights on her handlebars – one of them flashing – and an extremely bright light on her head, which she pointed straight at me, making me blind. At fist I didn’t know what was coming at me, but whatever it was, it was irritating and I immediately felt angry at whoever was doing it. … Which is not something that you generally want to inspire in people when you’re heading downhill at them on a bicycle. When I saw it was a cyclist doing all that flashing and blinding, I wanted to yell something at her, but she went by too fast for me to think. Oh well.
I passed through an area of road that made me very nervous. It was curvy and had a gentle downhill grade, with thick forest on either side. I felt spooked, and had to pause my BBC documentary podcast about Afghanistan, and just listen to the wind.
The reason I was spooked is that on the 4th of July eight or nine years ago, I was driving my car along this same stretch of road in order to watch the fireworks from the peak at the Observatory, when a mountain lion jumped down from the bushes on the uphill side of the road and began running in front of the car. I slowed down so I wouldn’t hit the beast, and when the car drew close it leapt back off the road, into the foliage.
I did not want anything like that happening while I was on a bicycle. So I stayed in the middle of the road, and started singing “Doctor Worm” at the top of my voice until I was out of the forest. No deer here; just a lunatic human, thank you very much.
I’m going to have to learn how to repair a bike chain, I think. Today the chain slipped off the front gear and got caught under it, wedged around the joint where the axle meets the bike frame. If I’d tried to pedal even one turn, to try and correct it by force, the chain would have broken. Maybe there’s some way I can fix it so that doesn’t happen… A plastic wedge maybe…
While I was tinkering with the chain at the side of the road and getting my fingers all greasy, a guy in an old pickup truck stopped, backed up 20 yards or so, and asked if I needed a ride. I told him that it was a minor repair and that I’d be okay, but “thanks for stopping, though – that’s very good of you!” He said, “Alrighty, then” and drove off.
Hours later, I was stopped at the side of the road making a phone call, and another guy pulled up and asked if I needed help. I said no, but thanked him for stopping, too. Such nice people!
I’m also going to have to learn how to replace a tire. I passed another guy on a bike, who was on his way down the hill, and had his bike turned upside down with one tire off, and the tube out. He was working both his fists around the tube in sections so he could find the leak and patch it. We had a nice chat about the cold and tires and headlights, and he showed me a tiny bag that he kept under his seat, which contained a spare tube and all the tools to install it. “Huh,” I thought, “If the equipment to fix the problem can be that small, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t carry it around.”
I felt sorry for the guy – his hands were frozen stiff from rushing downhill with no gloves on. When I was passing through the preserve area after the sun went down, the air got so cold that my hands were sore just from standing still. If I hadn’t packed those ski gloves, I would have turned around and gone home. Yes! I am actually listening to my own advice! Heh heh heh.
Two sweaters over a long-sleeve shirt, and sweatpants over bike shorts with hiking socks, plus the ski gloves, turns out to be just enough to feel normal in this cold weather. Not hot, not cold. Also, with the bike helmet on, my head stayed warm. Some kind of air current or convection thing going on perhaps.
Here’s the whole route in 3D, via Google Earth:
And here’s a closer view of the hill with the observatory at the top:
If anybody out in the world tells you that “vegans are sickly wimps who can’t do anything”, refer them to me. I will pwn them.
Things Mr. Fins needs to do:
This marks the first time I’ve done back-to-back “training day”-style rides, with food, gear, and a destination. I felt surprisingly good afterwards, except for some minor butt soreness and a little tossing and turning overnight. I’m beginning to realize that my stamina is greater than I thought. Perhaps a lot greater, thanks to all my riding this year.
This also marks the first time I have been able to use the battery pack I built, even though I don’t have an enclosure for it. I put the batteries and the regulator board in little plastic bags and then sealed the whole thing in a large bag with a USB extension cable running out. With the whole mess stowed in my luggage, I was able to keep the iPhone charged at 100% full the entire time. (I’ll be crowing about this later on in the story…)
Saturday I did a ride across town to the south end of the valley, then entered the rolling hills around the Lexington Reservoir. Along the way I listened to the full broadcast of the latest “Intelligence Squared” debate, about whether the government should be responsible for universal healthcare. It was an excellent debate, and very relevant, as I considered what kind of situation I would be in if I were hit by a car, or if my knees deteriorated. I spent one of my rest breaks sitting on a stone bench outside of a hardware store, and just as a debater was talking about the crowded conditions in emergency rooms, I saw an ambulance go screaming down the street.
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Night fell fast. I probably spent less than a mile biking in daylight, and had my headlamp on for the rest. That lamp continues to be a brilliant piece of hardware – literally. It lights up my bike and the road around me without being an eyesore to traffic and it stays lit for as long as I need it, no matter how long I ride. I feel very sorry for all the other night cyclists I see out on the roads. I worry for them. Their lamps are either pathetic and impossible to see, or blinding and annoying to drivers. I saw one guy who had what looked like a damned flashbulb screwed onto his handlebars, going FLASH! FLASH! FLASH! FLASH! every half a second. What numbskull engineer designed that? I can imagine a driver being tempted to run him over just to stop that damned flashing.
There were three “totally worth it” moments for the first ride:
Now that I can keep the iPhone perpetually charged, I don’t have to worry at all about how intensely I use it. I can leave the GPS running and the display on all the time if I feel like it. And for the trip through the woods leading to the reservoir, that’s just what I did.
It was really quite incredible. I’d never been there before, but when I saw the road lose shape and change to dirt, I was not worried at all. I pressed a few buttons and instantly I had a daytime satellite photograph of the entire woods. My route along the road was drawn across it with a purple line, and there at the top was a little dot, showing exactly where I was. As I rode the bike I could glance down at the dot and confirm that, yes, there’s the tree I should be seeing, and there’s the spot where the road bends,… et cetera. All this with one device, and as I was navigating, it was playing music for me too. I even got a few new emails. I was so impressed that I just had to talk about it, so I began calling people up, and chatting as I rode.
One device. Frankly, it’s like having “god mode” for a bicycle. It turns my bike into a mobile command center, almost an extension of my home. DO YOU NOT SEE!!! I cannot EVEN CONVEY how impressed with this technology I am!! It is fucking amazing, people!!! I ARE SERIOUS!!!!
It also makes me overconfident, I think. I have often taken risks with my navigation that could have ended badly. It’s not that I expect the phone to get a signal all the time – I don’t depend on it for that – it’s the feeling you get from using it. With a few bars of signal and a data connection, I am just as connected to the digital world and my social network as I am when sitting at home, vegged out in front of a computer screen. That connectedness inspires a feeling of closeness to home, a false sense that no matter how deep into the woods I push my bike, I am still just a finger-touch away from all the trappings of modernity. On the second day of this weekend I was hit by this cognitive dissonance pretty hard, when I wandered very far into the back woods of the Nisene Marks nature preserve.
I was pushing my bike over a dirt-and-gravel road that looked like it had been literally carved through the woods. The press of branches was so thick that they effectively formed a wall, and I wondered how the animals could possibly thread their way between them. The canopy was closed overhead of course, so I was in total darkness except for my headlamp and phone. And every 30 yards, as the road lurched down the backside of another misshapen hill, the gravel was erased by a shallow creek that seemed to flow right out of the wall of branches on one side, and into the wall on the other side. Here instead of road was a corridor of rocks and pools of water lined with mud. At the first one I tried to ride my way through, lost my balance, and had to dunk my shoe in the water. At the next one I carried my bike across, simultaneously using it as a gigantic flashlight to see the rocks I had to step on.
The road was extremely uneven, so the recent rains had formed innumerable potholes filled with water. Whenever the beam of my bicycle headlamp brushed along one of these, some of the light would be scattered upwards and reflect off the trees in front of me, creating a wavery illusion of movement. The first three or four times it scared the crap out of me. I kept thinking that someone was coming down the road towards me, waving a flashlight. After I figured out what it was, I was impressed by it. It’s just the sort of unexpected material phenomenon that could make people scream, “THE WOODS ARE HAUNTED!! AAIIIIYYEE!!!”
Anyway, I got past this gauntlet, and the road tilted upwards. The phone began displaying ‘NO SIGNAL’, but the GPS still had my location marked on the map, which was already loaded into memory. “I’m still alright,” I said to myself. “I just need to stay on this road and I’ll pass through Nisene Marks without trouble.” (I was babbling to myself out loud in order to make my presence obvious to things like skunks and mountain lions.)
Then the road wandered off the map. It began to squiggle all over the place like a damned spaghetti noodle, and my path (as described by the line on my GPS tracker) did not match the map line at all. Then it got steeper. I had to dismount and push my bike uphill. Out of curiosity I launched the “clinometer” app and calibrated it, and it told me that I was going up a 22-degree slope. (Yes, the iPhone does that too! See? It is “god mode”!!) Since my wheel wasn’t turning as fast as the headlamp wanted, my light became very dim. Then the road forked, and forked again, and again, and again.
Each time I chose the fork that pointed back towards the line described by the map, but each time the road would turn and wander away, keeping me off course. Eventually the phone started showing a few bars of signal again, so I called up La (who was having dinner with Alison at her house in Santa Cruz) and whined to her about how damn steep the hill was… But I couldn’t help thinking in the back of my head about the potential severity of my situation.
Suppose the dynamo in my front wheel failed. I’m not sure how it would, since it’s tough, water-resistant, and relatively simple… But suppose it did. I’d have about five minutes of dim light on my headlamp left, and then I’d be in darkness.
Then I’d have to take the iPhone out of the holster and hold it in front of me, and push the bike with one hand. By itself, in ideal conditions, the iPhone would probably last about four hours this way. But I’ve got my battery pack. But suppose that failed too? Or suppose the backlight in the iPhone just broke all of a sudden?
Then I’d have to take the GPS tracker off my bike, leave my bike on the ground, and go blundering back the way I came in total darkness under the forest canopy, using the mini-map on the GPS to retrace my route along the road. Once I stumbled back out onto pavement I’d have to walk for a good long while until I found a payphone – or perhaps I’d get lucky and flag down a car. This is assuming, of course, that I don’t break my ankle or my neck by tripping over a deadfall back in the woods.
But say the GPS tracker craps out too. Now I’m in total darkness in the middle of the woods, with no shelter, and some meager snacks. I’d have to stay put until daylight and then attempt to backtrack along a road that now looks completely different from how it was in the dark. Maybe I’ll come out in a few hours, maybe it’ll take me all day. Either way I’ll eventually come home to a La who’s been up the entire night worried sick and probably called the police.
This all went tumbling through my head as I pushed my bike up that huge hill. I had not been expecting a road like this. All I remembered of the roads in Nisene Marks was the road leading in, from the front, and that was nice and flat and wide. This road was the opposite. I should have checked the route in satellite view before committing to it. Actually, no, my problem isn’t that. I’ve just been too stubborn again. I saw that sign at the head of this road, where it suddenly stops being pavement and turns into a sheet of gravel. I should have obeyed that sign. Instead, I thought, “Oh boy, another deep woods adventure! Last time this was awesome!” Apparently I’d forgotten that last time I was obviously pushing my luck. Now here I was again, pushing my luck. A couple of mechanical or electronic failures could endanger my life.
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“On the other hand,” I thought, “how is that any different from driving a car?”
I had to ponder that for a while. Eventually I reached the peak of the hill, and the road leveled out and opened up to a clearing. Then I forgot all about the danger I was in, and just stared.
There, before me, was the Monterey Bay, wide and black, swathed in the glowing yellow embers of civilization and the sparkling diamonds of the midnight sky. Transparent ribbons of cloud swept down across the stars and joined with the mantle hanging over the ocean, like fingers of a gigantic white hand. The moon lit the panorama from behind, sketching the jagged tops of the trees that blanketed the valley, all the way down to the fringe of city lights in the distance. As I rolled to the edge of the clearing and dismounted my bike, a soft breeze flowed down from the hilltop behind me, picking up the heat that was still bleeding out of the hills and drawing it across my back like a warm cloak. Right there in front of me was a pair of park benches. So I sat down.
DCF 1.0
The urge to sit there for the rest of the night, caressed by this warm breeze, staring up at the stars… Was almost unbearable. This had not been on my to-do list, or even a stop on my route. I drank some water and ate a little bit of chocolate, and thought to myself, “I can’t believe I’m actually here. It’s midnight on a Sunday and I’m here, all by myself, miles from any paved roads… And somehow I feel as safe as if I was sitting on my couch at home. What a strange feeling.” Then I looked over at the iPhone and noticed it was displaying “3G” and five bars. “Hell yeah. Best invention ever,” I said, and called up La for a while.
I was so impressed with the phone, once again, that I opened up a voice recording application and began to rant out loud about it. “It’s perfect! Perfect for a bike! It’s like the software was chosen specifically to complement riding! Even the size is perfect!” Rant rant, rave rave, et cetera. I felt kind of foolish talking out loud, but I kept doing it since it helped me avoid mountain lions. I’ve only ever seen one up close once (and that was while I was in a car), but the paranoia never fully leaves you…
Anyway, I eventually kept riding. The downhill route out of Nisene Marks and into Aptos, then Santa Cruz, was easy going. I sang They Might Be Giants songs out loud. I went through every single one I knew, and had to switch to Weird Al for a while, before finally being free of the forest and potential lions. Then I found it hard to stop blathering out loud to myself, since I’d been doing it for so long. I felt a little crazy. So I called up La and talked to her, which helped. She eventually met me at the Cabrillo exit, with a change of clothes and some snacks.
DCF 1.0
She really is an excellent pit crew. :)
Other highlights of this trip:
All these pictures give some sense of just how dark and creepy it really was … but they also make me think, “Wow, I definitely want a better camera…”
