Dave rides his bike to school

 

 Above:  One of my favorite pictures of the trip so far.  This is Redwood National Park in the rain/mist.

 

Above: Across the street from the RV park at which I stayed last night.  I took this picture just before departing, in all of my profound wisdom.

 

Above: Goofy Dave, wearing his goofy raingear, arriving in Crescent City with the rain still coming down…

 

Friday, 6/2 10pm
Location: Crescent City, CA

Coordinates:

41.7511 N

124.1822 W

Today’s mileage: about 25 (Ah!) 

Tomorrow’s destination: Gold Beach, OR

 

It rained all night long!  I could not believe how hard it rained.  When I woke up this morning, it was still pouring.  Because I couldn’t pack up my tent in the pouring rain, I decided that today would be laundry day.  So I washed all of my clothes, and when I was finished, it was still raining.  I read a few chapters of Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell (which by the way, is excellent), and when I was finished, it was still raining.  I ate a little breakfast, and when I was finished, it was still raining.

You repeat this enought times, and eventually a pattern emerges…  At around noon, I decided that I could be wet in Klamath, CA, or I could be wet making my way north.  Taking advantage of my legendary dexterity and nimbleness (ahem), I managed to disassemble my tent while it was still under the rainfly.  As a result, I was able to get the fabric of the tent to a dry, covered area without exposing it to the rain.  As for the rainfly, I just bungee’d it to my bike trailer.

Anyhow, I hopped on my bike at about 2pm and survived the single most harrowing bicycling experience of my life.  After 4 years in kollege, you’d think that I would have figured out the following truism:

When it’s foggy, rainy, and hard to see at sea level, it’s REALLY foggy, rainy, and hard to see at 1200ft up in the mountains.

The ride from Klamath to Crescent City would have tested the true grit of any cyclist.  I won’t go into detail because I don’t want to scare me poor mum, so let’s just say this: I won’t be doing THAT again.  Mom, I’m safe and sound, so no need to worry!

When I finally pulled into Crescent City a little before 5pm, I decided that I’d had enough of the rain.  I booked a room in the first Best Western I saw, and now I’m sittin’ pretty with dry clothes and a comfy bed.  Yeah, yeah, I know, a hardcore bikepacker would have camped out.  Well, a hardcore bikepacker would also be sleeping in a rain puddle tonight. 

 

Random musings:

–After I descended down from the mountains, I rode past a guy getting ready to go surfing in the wind and rain.  I thought to myself, “Doesn’t that dude know it’s raining cats and dogs right now?  You’d have to be crazy to go surfing today!”  He looked at me with a perplexed expression that said, “Doesn’t that dude know it’s raining cats and dogs right now?  You’d have to be crazy to go biking today!”

 

Guess what I saw lots of today.  I’ll give you one hint:

 

 (I guess that should be plural)

 

Below are some pics from the spot along the river where I ate “dinner”.

Thursday, 6/1 9pm
Location: Klamath, CA
Coordinates:
41.5429 N
124.0519 W

Today’s mileage: about 62
Tomorrow’s destination: TBD

Today was incredible.  I got rained on for the first 3 hours of my morning today, and the weather report said that I should expect more of the same.  By 10am this morning, which was about an hour after I had wanted to leave, I still didn’t know whether I was just going to have to write off today as a rain day.  Well, I ended up leaving Arcata a little before noon, fully expecting to get rained on all day.  In addition, I didn’t really expect to make it to Klamath, which was my originally planned destination.  To top it all off, my maps showed a 1000 ft climb at the end of the day’s journey. 

Things could not have gone any more differently!  It didn’t rain on me at all, even though it was completely overcast all day. I DID make it to Klamath, with energy to spare.  Finally, that big hill on my map…  it didn’t exist.  I’m not sure where it went, but there was no huge climb, thankfully.

I pulled into an RV campground sitting on the banks of a wide, pristine (it looks that way, at least) river.  Unfortunately, I don’t know the name of the river.  Anyway, I bought a can of chicken meat, a small jar of spicy mustard, and the nice old lady who runs the RV park gave me two slices of bread.  It’s no Boulevard meal, but it’s dinner.  Sitting on the banks of the river, looking across at Redwoods National Park, I had to admit that at least the ambiance was exemplary.  In fact, as I watched the water slowly roll by, I thought to myself, “THIS is why I’m riding my bike cross-country!”

Just as I finished eating and took a shower, it started raining again.  I’m glad Mother Nature was nice enough to let me get ready for bed before unleashing on me!

Random musings:
–Based on my observations, here is a statistical breakdown of the niceness factor of the people who I have run into during this trip:
80% – very friendly and welcoming
19% – aloof
1% – mean (this category is pretty much represented by the jerks who drive by me and yell insults or scream “get off the road!”)

–Kombucha.  I’ve seen this stuff in stores ever since I got north of San Rafael.  Generally, it looks like some sort of bad science experiment.  It’s a kind of Chinese tea that is fermented for 30 days.  It contains a trace amount of alcohol, but mostly it just has a really strong taste.  Even after I watered it down by about 50%, it still had too much of a kick for me.  Actually, from my one experience today, the stuff kinda tastes like wine that’s gone bad (or any kind of wine that David Kerwar serves).  Supposedly it’s the magic elixir to solve all your problems.  I don’t know about that, but I’ll bet that it’ll be the next health food craze.

 –You really do notice a lot of things while riding on a bike that you wouldn’t notice in a car.  For example, I was riding down this one road north of Trinidad, CA which runs alongside the rocky coastline.  As I was cruising along, I heard the sound of seals (or maybe sea lions… I get them confused) coming from the rocks below.  A few moments later, a car drove by, and it completely drowned out the sound of the animals.  I’m sure the people in the car had no idea that there were seals below.  It’s kind of ironic that they were driving down a designated “scenic” drive, and they were completely oblivious to the scenes around them, as most drivers are.  That’s cool, me and the seals don’t need ’em anyway…

Thursday, 6/1 10am Location: Arcata, CA Coordinates: 40.8268 N 124.0828 W Previous day's mileage: about 40 Today's destination: it depends on the weather... (with any luck, it'll be Klamath, CA)   After it stopped pouring yesterday, I rode a few more miles and set up camp at a KOA just ... [Continue reading this entry]