A Break, for Now

Hi folks,

I've had a feeling growing inside of me for quite a while, and I think it's reached the point where it's grown large enough so that I can no longer ignore it: I'm tired of maintaining this blag, and taking the time during my travels to find a computer, sit down, gather my thoughts, and fiddle with technologies. It's been a great joy to get some of my thoughts and experiences down in words for others to share, but what should be a fun and light-hearted endeavour is coming to feel like more and more of a chore for me. I think this struggle is reflected in my writing, both in quantity and quality, and in earnest, I'd rather just not write than do it so half-heartedly. Thanks for tagging along with me thus far, and I'm sure there will be more stories shared here at some point (like when I'm finished with this trip, and am back in front of my own computer with time to spare). Until then, I'm signing off for a spell.

(A brief update: I made it to San Francisco yesterday, after a pleasant, scenic, and sunny-but-not-too-hot few days down Highway 1. I'm staying here with my friend Alan, who is working on a postdoc at Stanford (I previously visited him during another bike trip through Providence in 2009, where he showed me how to dissect fruit flies.) I've never been to San Francisco before (except for a brief high-school band trip that really doesn't count), so I'm planning on taking some time to explore the city before continuing on.)

Much love to all,

Scott

The Lost Coast

Number of miles: 555

It's hard to travel with vegetables. It's a sad, sad fact of the road, but, for the most part, they just don't keep in a saddlebag. As a rule, anything leafy that cannot be consumed on the spot, does not get consumed. I do my best to mitigate my lack of fresh food by gorging on greens whenever I can, but the opportunity never presents itself as much as I'd like. When I departed from Orleans, though, I left with a thoroughly rejuvenated colon, cleansed with the bounty of a growing season a good month or two ahead of what I'm accustomed to; the gardens are already raging here, in all their cruciferous splendor.

In between the produce stands, I've been pleasantly surprised to find the coast liberally dotted with breweries I've long ago come to respect. This has a tendency to impede my process some, but also provides an excellent escape from the midday heat. Lost Coast, Eel River, Mad River, Boonville, Lagunitas, North Coast, the list goes on. I can't visit them all, but I'll be damned if I can't try. Who's ever heard of a BUI, anyway?

A ways south of Eureka, I decided to split off from the 101 for a spell, to take in a stretch of rural coastline known as the Lost Coast. The California highway map I have didn't go into enough detail to actually show the route that meanders through tiny, forgotten towns, but I had heard mention of the trail, and at least knew the start and end points, and figured that was good enough. It was, to the extent that I made it out alive, but I would highly discourage any cyclist from following that route; in the end, it was the most taxing and difficult day of riding I've ever done. The road was pleasantly free of traffic, but miserably pock-marked, potholed and crumbling, and outright unpaved for many stretches. Mountain after demoralizing mountain appeared before me, making for endless climbing. These were the steepest grades I've ever seen, literally impossible to ride up in some places, my front tire lifting off the ground with every pedal stroke from being pitched back so far. (I later found out from a local that that stretch of road was the steepest paved road in the entire state.) The weather was miserably hot, and water was scarce; three towns in a row provided no services, their water all unpotable. I stopped frequently to eat, rehydrate, cool off, and fortify myself in any way I could think, before continuing on, only to stop five minutes later, thoroughly exhausted and discouraged. My inadequate map told me nothing of where I was going, or how much further there was to go. I walked and pushed my bike up a lot of gravel, it constantly sliding out from under my grip. At the end of the day, I gave up more than thirty miles short of where I expected to be, unable to muster the psychological or physical strength to go on. I slept in a wooded cemetery that night, along with every mosquito in Humboldt County.

I kept trying to find silver linings in my misery, but all I could come up with were ways in which things could've been worse, like getting flat tires (knock on madrone), which is hardly a silver lining at all; things could always be worse. Lost Coast, as far as I'm concerned, you can stay lost; your scenery is weak by comparison, and in the end, just not worth the trouble. While I was riding along the water, I stopped for a spell to explore what certainly would've been tide pools in Oregon or Washington, but here were strangely devoid of life; all I could find was some seaweed, a few pelicans in the distance, and some strange giant barnacle/jellyfish-like thing, but may have just been half of an old papaya, I couldn't tell.

Animal or vegetable?

I'm in Garberville now, visiting another friend of mine from Seattle, who is down here working on a farm for the summer. I've been lending a hand where I can, planting, watering, and mulching the day away until it's too dark to work. We went swimming in the Eel River yesterday, during the heat of the afternoon. It was an unbelievably refreshing reward to wash off the compounding layers of sweat, sunscreen and dirt, but I slipped on a wet patch of moss and cracked my tailbone right on a jagged rock sticking out of the sand, an unpleasant popping sound made on impact. I don't think I broke anything, but a day later, it's still pretty damned tender, and very painful to sit down. I have yet to try climbing on my bike to see what riding is like, but I'm really hoping it doesn't interfere with the rest of my trip.

On a final note, and as a brief aside, happy Fathers Day to all the dads out there, and thanks for everything you've done to raise your children as best you can. Keep it up.

Sleeping in Trees

Number of miles: 377

One of the unfortunate consequences of moving immediately prior to starting a bike trip is that my belongings are all inaccessible, or at least in a state of severe disarray; I often have trouble locating what I need to bring along with me, or just outright forget to pack something. In this case, I ended up leaving Eugene without soap or towel; no major consequence for me, per se, but I pity the person who finds themself in close proximity to me for the next few weeks, between my infrequent bathing. Far more significant, though, was my neglect in packing a sun shirt, which protects me from the relentless evil rays of the afternoon, and, as a bonus, protects me at dusk from mosquitoes, with too tight a weave for them to penetrate. Compounding this problem was the bottle of sunscreen that I set off with, it having expired about three years ago. Now, most everything comes with expiration dates these days, and some matter, and some really don't. Turns out they matter for sunscreen. I lucked out during the first few days biking, with overcast weather, or cool enough temperatures to warrant long sleeves, but on my fifth day I got royally torched on my arms, shoulders, and tops of my legs, making everything, even sleep, a painful and difficult task. (Everybody do yourself a favour: watch this, and act accordingly.)

But I get ahead of myself. The ride from Eugene to the coast was splendiferous; I followed the Smith River, a well-maintained, but utterly forgotten scenic backroad through the Coastal Range. The Smith River lazily carves its way through towering cliff faces covered with sword, bracken, and delicate maidenhair ferns, past waterfalls and moss-carpeted cascades, on its way out to sea. The forests were rife with wildflowers, with wild irises, foxgloves, and giant cauliflower heads of hogweed bursting from every surface. It was an excellent time and place for foraging: fiddleheads, miners lettuce, oxalis, and salmonberries were in abundance, with thimbleberries not far behind. Even crawdads could be found in great numbers, if I were ever brave/desperate enough (I'm not). In the forty-mile stretch along the Smith River to Reedsport, I was passed by four cars.

Sunset at the Oregon Coast.

The coastal route of southern Oregon was largely forgettable until Gold Beach, where the highway starts following along cliffs overlooking the ocean. The powerful coastal winds were at my back for much of the day, and pushed me down to the state border with relative ease. I was hoping that the border between Oregon and California was a latitudinally arbitrary measure of statehood, but in fact, the landscape changed within minutes of crossing, the public beaches of Oregon giving way to miles of nothing but heavily-farmed agricultural fields. It stayed this way until just north of Crescent City, with small stands of forest giving a glimpse of what lay ahead.

Roosevelt elk grazing in Redwood Creek valley.

Redwoods! After spending a day biking through, walking in, and sleeping in, the redwood forests, I am convinced that no amount of prose, measurements, statistics or comparisons will do justice to describe the humbling experience and grandeur of standing in the middle of a redwood grove. They are truly a marvel of nature, simultaneously difficult to comprehend but easy to accept. And, um, big. Really big. (I read a sign about a particular tree, appropriately named "Big Tree", that told a story of an early settler in the area who wanted to cut it down so he could make a dance floor out of the stump.) To illustrate: I got caught in the middle of a long, steep ascent out of the Redwood Creek valley late in the evening, with both sundown and rain imminent. I stopped and wandered into a stand of redwoods, and found a tree, hollowed out by fire but still very much alive, with ample room for my bicycle and rolled out sleeping bag. I slept dry and peaceful that night, nestled snugly inside of a tree, insulated on three sides by four-foot-thick walls, the fourth opening to a sloping hillside of forest shrouded in mist.

Redwoods embraced in fog.

I awoke the next morning with the fog still clinging tightly and thickly to the mountainside, obscuring visibility to just a few metres, with many miles of a winding, 20% grade climb still before me. The mist dewed up in my sorry excuse for a beard as I strained and sweated my way above the clouds, and up many more miles of desolate, sunny dirt roads, to finally descend into the next valley over. I quickly left behind the lush and damp old growth for a drier and much hotter, but equally beautiful, climate: the Klamath River watershed (cue the aforementioned sunburn).

Morning mountain dew.

As luck would have it, my debilitating blistering coincided with my arrival in the tiny little town of Orleans (population 600), to visit my friend, Stormy, for a couple of days. (Recuperation is far easier with an abundance of reliable shade, aloe, a soft bed, and some goddamned functional sunscreen.) I first met Stormy in Pittsburgh two summers ago, during the G20 protests in Pittsburgh. An activist and media specialist, she works here in tandem with the local Karuk tribe on issues such as resource management, dam removal, and native harvesting rights.

It is easy to see here, more than other places I've been, that water is the fundamental life source of the region. All life is centered around the magnificent confluence of rivers in these mountains; the hills are a dry, prickly, forbidding place, but every gully, fold or valley is burgeoning with creeks or tributaries or outright raging rapids. In the afternoons of summer, everybody's work stops early, and folks spend the rest of their day at the river. It has fed and sustained populations here for millennia, and the forest itself seems to flow down the mountains along the same gradients, orienting itself in the direction of the water. Its importance is even reflected in language: the Karuk word for "good-tasting", I'm told, more literally translates as "pretty close to salmon". I was hoping to get out in a raft or kayak while I was here, but the rivers are all dangerous torrents of snowmelt right now. Another time.

The confluence of the Klamath River and Bluff Creek.

The weather has thus far been incredibly accommodating; the days have been mild on the coast, the nights pleasant, and I've only needed to roll out my tarp once. (I love sleeping without a tent, but it's funny how many times I've woken up in the middle of the night with a squirrel or chipmunk crawling on my head. Seriously. It's a thing.) It's much hotter inland, though still quite bearable. I set off again in the morning, though, back toward the coast, where cooler temperatures prevail, at least for now.

The Great Jefferson Adventure

Hey folks, summer is here (read: it's not raining every day anymore), and you know what that means! It's time to wipe the winter deposits of road grime and grease off the bike and hit the road for adventures unknown.

In keeping with vagabondic tradition (the fourth year in a row, now), I've officially moved out of my house, shunted all my crap into my parents' house (thanks, Mom and Pops), and have readied myself for a summer's worth of bumming around. Regretfully, the summer is shaping up to have much less opportunity for bike trips than I would like, but that bitter pill is sugar-coated with the very reason it's true: at some point this summer, I will be moving back up to Seattle, in time to start graduate school at University of Washington this fall. It will be a dramatic departure from my current lifestyle that can satisfy capricious whims such as, say, hopping on a bike for a month, without repercussion; I'm very excited to be returning to Seattle, though, and even more excited about starting my program. The new direction that my life will soon take is a welcome one, whatever the consequences.

But in the meantime, onward! I have just under a month between now and when I need to be back in Eugene for the Oregon Country Fair, and I'm going to do my best to utilize it. I'll be making my way west to the coast, down to the nether regions of Our Great Republic, and into the great State of Jefferson. I've heard nothing but wonderful things about Jefferson, but have seen almost none of it in my adulthood. Likewise, I've never biked any of the coast south of Florence. Redwoods and gold country and foreign coastlines and mountains await me, in all their unknown splendor. I can't wait, nor need I.

Please join me here, once again, as I bumble my way forward.