New Friends

To Standish Hickey State Park, California -- 55.2 miles, 12.2 mph, 2950 ft.

The plan this morning was to eat in the cabin. Since we had a mini kitchen, coffee and hot water for oatmeal would be a snap. Unfortunately, we only had two packets of oatmeal, so breakfast was decidedly on the slim side.

As a result, I was anxious to get down the road with our first potential breakfast stop twenty-one miles away. The towering redwoods, however, quickly made me reconsider. It was amazing. We instead pulled off the main road onto a small side road to better appreciate the majesty of these gigantic trees. It truly felt like being in a natural cathedral.

We eventually got back on the bikes. As we crossed over a small river and veered back into the trees, both Meg and I recognized that this was the starting spot of the Avenue of the Giants half marathon that we had run six years ago with good friends Mike and Ely. It was during that weekend trip that we had first mentioned our newly hatched scheme to take a year off and travel around the world in 2016. How cool that we are now riding through the same section of forest at the end of that very journey.

It was also almost exactly twenty years ago, again, on this same road that I first got the call that Intuitive Surgical was looking for mechanical engineers. You could say, The Avenue of the Giants has had a giant impact on my life.

As we rode past the Burlington Campground, nine miles from our start point, I noticed a tandem bike and the two English riders, Andrew and Emma, that we had met a couple days before in Bandon. We rolled in to give them grief for getting on the road so late (it was already ten o'clock.) I had figured they would be miles ahead of us by now, and we would never run into them again, so it was a happy surprise. We rode along chatting for the next few miles and soon caught up with a much larger group of riders, all of whom had been moving down the coast at a similar pace. Four of the riders were part of the same group of guys, all on electric bikes, who had done some variation of this ride for more than a decade.

Newlyweds, Emma and Andrew

Breakfast stop in Miranda

In Garberville, we did some grocery shopping and also realized that this is apparently the unofficial cannabis capital of California. That may explain the number of "free spirits" wandering around town, usually bare foot and shirtless with sun baked skin and unkempt hair.

The ride on 101 from there was primarily up and featured some of the busiest winding roads of the trip with narrow to non-existent shoulders -- definitely not for the faint of heart. On the plus side, the wind was working with us for much of the last twenty miles. As usual, we were happy to reach our destination -- the hiker/biker site at the Standish Hickey Park.

As we set up the tents, Dex and Kylie were happily recounting stories of our travels -- Nepal, Africa, the Galapagos. Emma and Andrew were an extraordinarily attentive audience as we walked down the hill to cool off in the river. Ah, nothing like a plunge in cool water at the end of another solid day of riding. And, at least for Dex and Kylie, this would count towards their very infrequent bathing regimen.