Day 25

30th October 2016

San Fran
The food poisoning of the other day appears to be a 24 hour bug as I am now lying on the top bunk staring at the ceiling after a night of vomming. 

Lucky for me, everyone is happy to stay here for an extra day, so I’m spending it sleeping whilst the others go sight seeing again. 

Yuk. 

Day 24

29th October 2016

San Francisco 

The boys appeared to be fully recovered, managing to eat a total of 8 breakfast pancakes between them. Plus eggs. And bagels. And fruit. And porridge. Holding back on the calories they were not. 

We spent the morning sorting our stinking clothes out, although our hostel room doesn’t smell any better now they are clean. You can still smell the stink of wet dog (or soggy cyclists) down the hallway. Not sure e hostel cleaners will be that clean when we leave. 

We swanned around the city for the day, taking the team around town and walking and eating our way around the city. Greg had a friend living in the city, who took us to a bar where we preceded to get drunk on one cider in the middle of the afternoon.  

We met Gen fo dinner, who was also feeling better, and headed to the Japanese quarter for big bowls of ramen. 


We had big plans for a night of booze and karaoke, but as usual, by 8pm we were all asleep at the table so headed home for bed in the stinking pit of our room. 

Day 23

28th October 2016

Samuel Taylor State Park to San Francisco
Following a now familiar trend, we woke to the sound of rain, which displayed no signs of stopping. Guillaume was feeling like death, Gen wasn’t any better, and Greg announced he had also been sick in the night, so we weren’t looking like a healthy bunch of long distance cyclists. Gen made the sensible descision to take the bus to San Fran where she was staying with friends, but the boys were determined to pedal on. 

Greg managed one mile before vombing in himself, and Guillaume managed a whole four miles before deciding it was a no go from him, so we found him a lift from a couple at a coffee shop who kindly went out of their way to drive him the whole way to the hostel, which was really not where they were headed. 

We pedalled off again into the rain, with pukey Greg at the back on a go slow. We cycled through gorgeous San Fran suburbs of San Anselmo but it was too wet to stop anywhere, so we just kept going. We went up and down a huge hill, through beautiful trees, until we emerged on to a bike path that took us off the massive freeway and through a nature reserve. Not always gorgeous views on the ride. 


We eventually made our way to the nearest suburb to San Fran and stopped for a burger and a trip to the bike shop, where they were very impressed with Gregs spoke change. I didn’t tell them I hadn’t done it myself as the guy was a bit of an arse. 

We cycled on through the delightful town of Sausalito and the. Arrived at the enormous Golden Gate Bridge. San Francisco city was under b,he sky, the bridge was under mist and it made for a very cool view. We stopped for a while to take it all in, before pedalling over the bridge. It was great fun – an excellent entrance to a city. 


We pedalled along the harbour and up and up the infamous San Francisco hills to get to our hostel. By this point Greg was nearly dead, but we made it, met G who had spent the afternoon in bed, and put them both to bed before heading to our favourite Wholefoods for deli bar dinner. Accidental went wild at the salad bar and spent far too much money but oh well! 

Day 22

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. 

Day 21

26th October 2016

Manchester KOA to Fort Ross State Park

Surprise: we woke up in the rain again, but it stopped being  really wet, settling into a light drizzle, which at this point we take as a bonus. 

I discovered the reason for yesterday’s horror. I had snapped a spoke, so had spent most of the day cycling with my back brakes on. No wonder it was hard work. Wonder man Greg came to the rescue and saved me from having to hitch a lift back to the nearest bike shop in Mendocin by fitting a new spoke.


 I’ve renamed him Greg the Lege. He’s also advised if I hear my bike making strange noises, it’s probably best not to just ignore them and hope for the best, but I’m not sure I can promise that. Most of the time I think if you ignore problems, they tend to sort themselves out one way or the other. Apparently this isn’t the mentality of an engineer.

We set off in the drizzle and headwind, just to make a change. Guillaume was back from his friend and ready to cycle again so we were the super six again. We pedalled all morning, meeting for lunch in a cafe, where we performed our usual trick of ordering a heap coffee and the brazenly constructing a whole meal of supermarket goodies. We met Kaba, a German cyclist who we met the night before at the campsite in the cafe, so we set off us a group of 7 for the afternoon. 

My extra large bottle cage has finally come in to its own, bring the inky bike that can easily carry a bottle of booze…

The sun decided to make an appearance, and we pedalled across two familiar looking bikes – Julia and Thorsten were ahead of us. It’s amazing what a bit of good weather does for morale, and we spent a blissful afternoon cycling in the sun, through loads of eucalyptus trees, singing sings and taking photos to arrive at Fort Ross. The campsite was deserted, but not that surprisingly as it had a running tap and loo, but nothing else. We made dinner, then had to hide in our tents due to the amount of flies. Never seen anything like it. Rose and I killed about 100 in our tent, and went to sleep yo the round if rain that was actually just flies on the tent. DISGUSTING. 

Day 19

Standish Hickey State Park to Fort Bragg

We woke up in dry tents, but before porridge was eaten, the weather had descended into utter horror; torrential rain, horrid wind and mist. We managed to get packed up and decided the only appropriate action was to cycle to the nearest coffee shop which was less than a minute away, and wait there for things to get better. 

They didn’t. 

Guilluame bailed and decided to get a lift with his friend who had visited with her van. No room for the rest of us. Gen set off wearing a pair of marigold washing up gloves to keep her hands dry, and then Greg left us to be a hero. After an hour of sitting drinking coffee and eating breakfast burritos, Charm, Rose and I decided we just didn’t fancy it, and seeing as you couldn’t actually see the road for the pond that was developing from the rain, we decided hitching was the best plan of attack. 


We had zero takers. Despite the Lycra. After an hour we gave up and decided we were so wet anyway, we may as well cycle to the next town to see if we could butch a lift from there.  We cycled for a whole thirty seconds before getting stuck in a traffic jam for road works. Ever the optimist, Charm decided knocking in the windows of puck up trucks in the queue was worth a bash, and happened upon the saints of Michelle and Steve. ‘Honey, get in!!’ ws Michelle’s response to a request for a lift, soo we piled our bikes into the back of their truck and got in. 


They were an utter dream. It became apparent they weren’t going our route at all, but after saying we would go anywhere towards Fort Bragg, Michelle announced that she had always wanted to go to Fort Bragg so Steve spun the car onto Route 1 and off we went on a road trip with them.  Heating cranked to top whack to dry us out, they regaled us with stories and laughter.

We followed our planned cycle route, up the infamous Leggett Hill which took you up and up and up. We passed Greg in the pouring rain and gave him a wave, confirmed the destination (which he wasn’t that happy about as we had told him somewhere much closer when we had planned to cycle it) and then passed Gen. She was wet and miserable so we stuck her bike in the back and she jumped in for a lift too. 

The roads would have been beautiful if you could have seen the view, but the rain and mist Kent we really only saw the steamed up windows of th car until we arrived at an all American diner at Fort Bragg. Michelle and Steve said goodbye after refusing our offers of coffee or lunch, so we ate on their behalf, and drunk double rounds of hog chocolates each to make up for them.  

We booked ourselves into a cheap motel for the night, joined by Greg and Guilluame. 6 people, 6 bikes and 6 people’s luggage in a room for 4 wasn’t luxurious, but it was cheap. And dry. We did our laundry, ate massive burritos and watched TV before sleeping like sardines. 

Day 18

Burlington to Standish Hicky State Park

After another breakfast of porridge wth powdered milk, we set off for another ride along the Avenue of Giants, and without Greg’s influence, they day took a very leisurely stroll. We managed a whole 5 miles before stopping for a great coffee in Meyers Flat, another 6 miles to a petrol station where we tried to find some toilets (but failed), then discovered I had lost my purse only to find it still in the tent after unpacking all of our belongings on the forecourt. Another two miles so we could wee in a suitable bush, another 2 miles so Guillaume could do a poo, before Charm took control and made us do a whole 10 miles to Garberville for a lunch stop. The whole ride was pretty odd, with loads of slightly unwashed characters around who apparently come to the area to harvest the cannabis. Known as trimmers in the local area. 

We’ve got pretty good at surreptitiously making our own sandwiches in coffee shops, so bought ourselves a coffee and then constructed a great arvo tomato chicken salad roll. Topped off with a peanut butter tortilla. It is quite amazing how much food we can now eat. Not sure the quantities will be permitted back at home. 

We eventually left Garbageville (as we took to calling it) and headed along the road towards Fort Bragg, growing more and more nervous about the dogs. We had been told that they lived in a house with a green and white fence, and a distinctive aroma of weed nearby, so we spent most of the afternoon hypothesising about where they might be. It didn’t stop our leisurely take on the day, wth afternoon stops at the Curiosity Hill tourist attraction (still no idea what it is), and a few stops at a tourist tat shops where we resisted the urge to buy big foot tshirts. 

We eventually happened upon Fort Bragg State Park, only to be met 2 minutes later by a heroic Gregg who had pedalled 84 miles to catch us from his venture to the Lost Coast. We celebrated his safe return with a bottle of wine and some vegetables! We never saw the dogs, who were probably nursing themselves somewhere after the bear sora from the previous day, but found Julia and Thorsten again which was a delightful trade off!