27th October 2016
Fort Ross to Samuel Taylor State Park
My birthday. Woke up to a round of happy birthday shouts from various tents scattered around our campsite. Rose provided an excellent birthday collection of America chocolate bars and a bottle of gin, and we stuck a candle in my pot of porridge. Julia and Thorsten made me a banana cake and the German version of Happy Birthday.
God was obviously also happy to celebrate the day of my birth, and showed his delight with another day of torrential downpour. We packed up the soggiest of tents, and set off into the pissing rain.
We cycled all mornin in the torrential rain, with horrendous head wind up and down hills. We couldn’t keep our eyes open when going down hill because of the rain hitting your eye balls, which isn’t helpful when you need to see where you are going. Rose got a puncture, so we huddled like penguins trying to keep ourselves from throwing ourselves off a cliff whilst she fixed it. A guy cycled past us in shorts and sandels, with the biggest grin on his face. We were morning about our daily plan, but felt much better when he announced he still had 80 miles to cycle to get his train from San Francisco that evening. And he was laughing about it! He cycled off, into the lashing rain, feet white with frostbite but still with the biggest grin. Smiling Joe he became known as.
We stopped for coffee and cake in the smallest little town, and managed to flood the place with our dripping clothes. They didn’t seem to mind which was lucky. Bumped into Smiling Jo again, who was now looking at taking a bus to San Fran as he had realised his plan was flawed! After an hour of hiding with the coffees and cakes, we decided we couldn’t live in the coffee hut, so stepped outside again.
We recommenced cycling, more wet than I have ever known. If it was raining like that at home, you wouldn’t get off the sofa, definitely not getting on your bike for 10 hours. But off we pedalled. Guilliuome said he really was considering not turning his handlebars at every corner, to fling himself into the sea, as it was preferable to going on.
We eventually arrived at Bodega Bay, where we met Gen for lunch in a tiny fish shack. Rose and Ishared a birthday lunch of Calamari and chips, washed down with a few cups of warm tea. We also picked up Smiley Joe who decided he wasn’t going to make the train, and would camp with us for the night. All downbeat, we spent two hours trying to find somewhere closer to stay for the night, but unless we wanted to stealth camp, or spend an awful lot of money, it b came clear we were just going to have to pedal on, and shouldn’t. Have wasted 2 hours of daylight trying to do otherwise. So off we cycled. Into the rain.
Spent all afternoon cycling through the mist with Rose and Charm, as they boys had gone in (Rose and Charm were cycling especially slowly as a birthday treat for me), past big oyster farms and boats and restaurants. We didn’t stop once, just head down, no moaning, cycle as long and as far as you can.
We eventually arrived in Port Reyes Station to buy dinner, and bumped into another huge group of cycle tourists following the same path. We discovered that there was a cabin at the nearby state park, but only one of them, and now two groups of cyclists trying to get there. We sent Greg on a secret mission to pedal as fast as he cold to beat them to it. Lucky for us, he’s the eternal hero, so we arrived to a warm cabin with a fire place to set up home.
Luck the ran out, as Gen and Gui had got food poisoning from the fish shack, so they spent the night vomiting, the rest of us spent the night listening.
Celebrated the wettest birthday known to man with one gin and tonic before we were all too tired and went to sleep.