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!
I can do it! I can do anything! Hot damn! Weeoooo!!!
The iPhone camera has some clever software driving it, but compared to my 7-year-old digital, it’s awful. If you tied it to a pole and nailed it down in front of a sunset and left the shutter open for ten minutes, you’d probably STILL get a bunch of gritty crap, like the bottom of a deep-fryer.
Large amounts of carbs becomes very dull after a while. You start dreaming of vegetables, and oily things, and protein. Hour upon hour of Fritos and crackers and peanut butter and chocolate just … sucks. Sounds good at first, sure, but … Not at hour 8.
Ski-glove fingers don’t work with the iPhone. Drat.
Frequent stops, where you get off the bike and sit down, or walk around, are really nice. My ride took more than twelve hours, but since I took so many breaks, I felt fine the whole time.
The more of your body you cover up and keep warm, the warmer the exposed bits of you will be, thanks to the magic of circulation. It’s MAGIC!
The new crankshaft that I had installed on the bike is totally worth it. It makes pedaling up large hills a pleasure, instead of the torture it was before. I don’t have to swerve around on the road anymore. In fact, I now prefer going up hills to going on flat ground – because when you go up a hill, you get somewhere with a view, and a nice fast ride afterwards, and there are generally fewer people around.
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.
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:
Get some kind of abrasion tool and cut a rough notch on the inside of the left pedal arm, so the magnet for my GPS tracker’s “cadence sensor” doesn’t slide all over the place.
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.
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:
Biking up into the private property of a church-funded “retreat” hospital as part of my route, and rounding a corner to discover an illuminated statue of the Virgin Mary embedded halfway up a gigantic hedge, then going a few more feet and being presented with an unexpected panorama of the entire south valley. Surreal.
Being stopped by a locked gate and a wire fence, and realizing that I was actually on the wrong side it it, then spotting a twisted hole at the underside of the fence just large enough to slide my bike under, which I did. I turned the iPhone brightness all the way up and shoved it under my chinstrap, then laid flat and inched backwards under the wire on my stomach. I’m all Special Ops and shizzlick.
At the south end of the reservoir, after riding up and down a lot of gentle squiggly hills, I stopped in the middle of the road and looked behind me. The black silhouettes of the trees framed a V-shaped wedge of dark blue sky that was glistening with all the millions of stars that I couldn’t see when I was at my house downtown, under the hazy air and streetlamps. It stunned me and I had to stop and just be there for a second, on that dead silent roadway, enjoying that private space. “It’s not really private,” I thought. “People have been driving up and down this road all day.” But then I realized, even if it’s a location that many other people go to, it’s not a time and a way that they do it. Right now, it was mine.
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.
“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.
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.
Setting up a night-time photo and having a 40-minute chat with Mr. Breakpoint about camera technology
Lying on my side next to the camera to photograph a long exposure of the house across the valley from me, and attracting the attention of a concerned motorist. The pickup truck stopped, then reversed 50 yards back up the road, then the window rolled down and after a while a woman’s voice asked, “are you okay?” Since I was almost completely blinded by their damned headlights, I waited until I’d gathered up my camera, then I stoop up all at once and waved at them, smiling. The woman apparently had not been expecting that, and she let out a scream that sounded like, “BGAWK!!!!” … and then she (or her friend at the wheel?) drove away. I wonder if my camera looked like a gun or something.
Going 18mph down a curvy forest road, screaming, “DAMMIT, WHAT’S THE SECOND VERSE TO BIRDHOUSE IN YOUR SOUL? I KNOW THE SECOND LINE, BUT HOW DOES IT START? SOMETHING ABOUT KEEPING BEACHES SHIPWRECK FREE? CRAP, WHAT IS IT!! NAA NAA NAA NERRRR SHIPWRECK FREE… SOMETHING… I SWEAR I KNOW THIS SONG. SOMETHING ABOUT SCREAMING ARGONAUTS.”
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…”
Visiting my dad in Roseburg kicks ass. We get to lounge around the house, talk about photography, make puns, and play Wii and board games. A good way to spend a holiday. But this time I was ambitious, and brought my bike along, making use of the super bike rack that The La got for the Accord.
And so it was that on the second or third day of lounging around I decided to break with tradition and go for a ride. Then, a couple days later, I went on an even longer ride which lasted well into the evening.
Instead of doing my usual minute-by-minute recount of events, I’m just going to describe the photographs I took, and whatever other details they bring to mind.
This is the view from the top of the hill, leading down into one of the valleys that Roseburg is spread across. There’s still some nice color in the trees, even in November.
This big section of drainpipe was sitting off the main road in a beat-up looking field strewn with litter and glass. Roseburg, or perhaps Oregon in general, has a strange dichotomy between conservationist people who are more serious and well-informed than their California equivalents, and rural folks who are content to abandon trash anywhere and leave old structures to dissolve and corrode slowly into the ground.
Sometimes I think the real difference is just one of money. A shorthand rule I’ve discovered is that the smaller the lot, the dirtier it tends to be. I passed huge tracts of farmland without so much as a gum wrapper by the roadside, then came upon little square plots just big enough to hem a manufactured home, choked with garbage.
I rode past a dilapidated home and saw four little kids playing in the back yard. The area was ringed with hurricane fence which ended flush with the walls of the house, like a prison exercise yard. The four kids had taken a bunch of long flat boards from a collapsed storage shed and were laying them at an angle to the fence. As they passed from my sight, I saw one of the kids try to walk up the ramp, only to lose his balance and fall back onto the grass. A few more boards and they might make it over the fence.
I didn’t know whether to shout a warning … or shout encouragement!
Also, on the subject of things I can’t quite figure out, my only theory for this is that the little cement wedges stop brush from piling up all at the same time, so the drainage pipe that passes under the road doesn’t get plugged up. Am I guessing right?
Lots of rolly hills around here. The grass has thick roots to survive the snow, and my theory is that the roots hold these little hills into shape despite a lack of trees or bushes. Elsewhere on my ride I saw open ground that had been flattened into pools of mud by the rains, but each time it was on a construction or refinery site where the vegetation had been torn away.
Mmmyep. Rolly poly. Pardon the oversaturation; I was processing these pictures on an old fuzzy monitor with poor colors, and the camera I used was rather noisy to begin with.
This appears to be a railroad-mounted snowplow. It reminds me of something a four-year-old would play with in the living room, except this one is “actual size”. I can practically taste the rubbery paint over the cool die-cast metal, and nubby sound of the wheels rolling over the carpet.
Dig those crazy spraypaint colors, yo. And those hornet’s nests. I’m not entirely sure what this doodad is for, actually. I’m guessing it has something to do with guiding very heavy cables along mineshafts.
Hand included for size. That’s some bigass chain. Probably a valuable amount of metal just lying around, if anyone had the means to shift it. I could probably carry … let’s see … four links of it home, on my bike. Any more and the weight might blow a tire.
I was gonna keep going up this road to see the view from the top, but a large dumptruck rolled by, fully loaded with grey mud that slopped over the edges every time the truck hit a bump. It ground to a halt halfway off the road, then began beeping and reversed across the other half of the road, then a hatch sprang up on the back and the grey mud went jetting out under pressure, spattering on the hillside. It matched the mud of the hill exactly, and seemed to merge with it as I watched.
Not wanting to disturb this ceremony, I about-faced and went back down the hill. I passed the fork in the road that I’d turned up earlier, and arrived on the back lot of a lumber processing plant. I’m not sure where they get so much mud or why they need it – or perhaps it’s a byproduct – but apparently, when they’re done with it, they spill it out over yonder.
They keep the ground constantly wet to prevent the wind from blowing away their land and dirtying the lumber stacks. Judging by the algae, this pipe has been gushing water constantly for several years at least.
There is an incredible amount of wood here. I’ve gone browsing through satellite pictures of Oregon and seen the sad patchwork of barren or scrubby land that much of the state has become, in the regions set back from the major highways where the tourists don’t go. I wonder how much of that forest has lain stacked on this lot over the years, awaiting transformation into houses, scaffolding, and cardboard boxes.
I had an encounter with a security guard here, who rolled up in his truck and politely asked me to delete any photos I’d taken of the buildings. He was almost apologetic about the security condition, though I could sense he was working under strict orders and could really screw me if I became belligerent. He recognized my camera by model, and we chatted for a while about amateur photography and wildlife before he gave me directions to the road.
One of the interesting things he said was that it was illegal to take a picture of the facilities even if the picture was taken from adjoining public land, like a highway. He said that the law was partly in response to “those eco-terrorism people”. He spat the phrase, like it was an epithet.
Something about that made me quite angry, and I wanted to say something, but I knew that this security guard was not the person I should be saying it to. I don’t know who the right person would be, really. But when private citizens destroy private facilities with the intent of interrupting what they see as environmental wrongdoing, I am not comfortable calling it “terrorism”, as if it were equivalent to detonating a bomb in a concert hall. “Sabotage” would be a good word, and I could definitely use “misguided” and “unproductive” … but “terrorism”? Is Al-Jazeera airing talk shows where furious extremists call for the destruction of lumber mills? I don’t [expletive] think so.
The refinery was spraying a huge amount of hot water into the air. My guess is that they were exposing some additive in the water to oxygen, or carbon dioxide, in order to safely neutralize it. Sure looks pretty though.
I found this fellow just a few steps from the road while I was taking a break. I’m guessing it was a sheep, about a year ago. Now it’s an art installation.
If you ever meet a man who boasts proudly of his “strong jawline”, just remind him to consider the average sheep!
Just after finding this, I rode down the hill on a two-lane road into the forest east of the highway, and began listening to an old vinyl production of “Murder In The Cathedral”, by T. S. Eliot. I was expecting some kind of lighthearted comedic mystery in lilting prose, but that was because I hadn’t done any research whatsoever. “Murder In The Cathedral” is not a mystery, not comedic, and definitely NOT lighthearted. But what it does have is some deliciously creepy, brooding, atmospheric verse about poor devout farmers and the haunted gothic countryside they inhabit. The sections of the play are framed by a chorus of three women, speaking in rounds, lamenting their fate and the fate of the archbishop, and a plague of foreboding omens. They moan for a while about “living, and partly living”, a phrase which rang like a bell in my brain. I’ve heard it somewhere before…
Hearing this, and seeing the hillsides roll around me in the gathering dusk, spotted with animals and broken-down stables and mist, was clearly the highlight of the ride. Once I went down a huge hill and spilled out into a small valley that was lit by the barest yellow light along the fringe of the oak trees to the west, and everything was dead quiet except for rushing wind and the occasional very distant “moo”. I played some piano music and wished there was some way to bring all my friends here, and stack them up in sidecars along the bike, so I could share this perfect moment with everyone. But it was just me.
From home to the Calaveras Reservoir. Well, most of the way. I decided to stop on a hill overlooking the reservoir instead of cruising all the way down to it. Only about 26 miles and 1200 calories, with a climb of about a thousand feet … Nothing fancy, compared to last week’s crazy adventure.
Calaveras Road cuts nicely between the hills to the east, up past a couple of recreational horse ranches and a small golf course. When the road splits off to the north and follows the reservoir, it becomes very steep for a while, then levels out and winds along through pleasant hills. You can see from the satellite photo here that the reservoir is more than half empty.
One of the few instances of decent San Jose bike lane. I expect we’ll see lanes like this all over the city in a couple of years, instead of tacked onto fringe roads where there was only enough room by accident.
I turned left from this onto an easy rise leading up between the hills. I’m the kind of bike tourist who likes to mosey and meander, and I stopped a bunch of times to examine the thistles, sip my water, and munch the tangerine slices Pit Crew La made for me.
The lower valley, obscured in late-afternoon haze. Some of it mist, some of it foreign particulate matter. I saw a lot of large birds wheeling in the sky above the telephone lines.
Much deeper sunset colors. I cheated a bit here and dragged the saturation up in Aperture. Check out those damned blocky JPEG compression artifacts in the upper left. I should have set the camera into TIFF mode.
Highlight of this trip: It was the very edge of sunset, with the light almost gone from the sky, and I was riding back down the gently curved hills. I rounded a long curve at about 15 miles per hour and heard a rustling in the grass to my right. I looked just in time to see a huge white owl take off into the sky. It assumed a position directly above me, and as the curve slowly leveled out, I looked straight up into its face, it’s huge eyes showing a pale spark of reflection from my bike headlamp. We stared at each other for almost five full seconds before it veered away and I looked back down at the road.
Totally worth it.
Also saw another crew of bats spiraling around an oak tree. Also listened to my ambient music+poetry playlist as I climbed the steep hill and the curves beyond, including “Christmas at Sea” by Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Green Eye of the Yellow God” by John Milton Hayes, and “Lepanto” by G K Chesterton. Such fantastic imagery in that one…
On Sunday I rode down Highway 1, from Monastery Beach to the first campground spot of Big Sur, a few miles south of the lighthouse and the military base. 20 miles total.
I was expecting this route to be a little less dangerous than it was. There were some spots where the road had NO curb, NO gutter, NO embankment. Just a few seconds of lapsed balance could send you down a cliff and onto the rocks. The bridges didn’t even have walkways. Yes, it’s supposedly legal for you to ride in the middle of the road, but in practice, the cars just go too darned fast to make it feasible. The only time I took my place in the middle of the road was when I was going about 30mph downhill.
Still, to keep things in perspective, Highway 1 south of Monterey is dangerous for drivers as well. At the speeds most people take it, all they’d have to do is slip their hands off the wheel for a quarter of a second on the curves, and they’d be unable to stop a plunge to the sea. Fast drivers just don’t think about these risks because they are so very used to taking them. All the motorcyclists I passed seemed well aware of the danger – they were going uncharacteristically slow. They also grinned and waved at me. Even the harley-riding toughies game me approving nods. Whaddaya know; motorcyclists like bicyclists.
Thanks to the wonders of GPS tracking and Google Earth, you can see the route I took in 3-D. This view is of the coast looking south. This technology is really freakin’ cool. Downright magical. I didn’t need to do anything except plug the tracker into a dock when I got home, and press three buttons. Even though I know how most of it works, the fact that it exists and is so easy to use is amazing to me.
Here’s the middle part of the ride as seen looking north. Pretty steep hills. Though it was beautiful and invigorating, I really can’t recommend this route to other cyclists. The cars just make it too damn dangerous. I never quite feared for my life on it, but a less patient and perhaps less stubborn rider could. When the hills got steep I just cranked down to a really low gear and pedaled along at three miles per hour. Staying balanced and off to the side was my focus.
Photo taken by La, my pit crew, just before embarking. iPod in a saddlebag since I forgot the iPod Shuffle at home. At one point the darn thing fell out of the saddlebag, but I just dusted it off and dropped it back in. By the way, I know they’re called panniers … but the word just confuses everyone I use it with. Plus it sounds way too bohemian. So I’m calling them saddlebags.
Looking back. Right around here the iPod hit the final verses of “She Cries Your Name” by Beth Orton, and I closed my eyes and felt the cliffside wind rolling over me, and had a moment of peace that made the whole ride absolutely, totally worth it.
After I went the rest of the way up the hill, I met up with La and we stopped and had sandwiches. Then she motored on, to the campsite, and I followed after to complete my ride. When I arrived the mosquitoes were beginning to emerge, so we packed up quickly and drove north to Santa Cruz. There we ate Saturn Burgers and chatted with Dan, the night manager. Then we met three kittens Alison was caring for. When we got home we were both dead tired, but we’d had an excellent day.
Things I learned from this training day:
Highway 1 is more dangerous than I thought.
Cell phone coverage is better than I thought.
Photography via bike is good because you can stop your bike anywhere along the route – not just turnouts – and stop immediately. To “park” you just drag your bike over the rail.
An iPod clipped inside a saddlebag is not very stable. A real bike mount would be better.
Going slow, pedaling at the low end of your ability, is the key to long rides. Even if you can stand up and power yourself up that hill, you shouldn’t because the extra effort will cost you dearly. A tour is NOT a race. Hell, it’s the opposite. You’re biking to see the sights, so you should slow down and see them!
Motorcyclists and bicyclists tend to get along.
No matter how much a full water supply weighs, it is worth it. You will consume and then expel it as you ride, so the extra weight is effectively half what it feels like at the beginning. Also, anytime you’re thirsty, just coast to a stop and drink. Hydrating yourself is always worth any lost momentum.
Cycling a route that you could otherwise drive is worth it: You see stuff you always missed before, and you are actually IN the place you’re traveling through, not just seeing it through a windshield.
