November 16th, 2003, approximately...
Jesus love you!

a view of Francis screaming

We climb through light rain and fog in a magical landscape and reach the top at 3,800 a few hours later quite wet but not too cold…yet. A long descent awaits us as well as a few days of riding to get across the Cascadia Mountains to the coast where we assume it will be warmer and sunny. It’s California right?
We coast down a very long slope and arrive at the bottom with the chills.

It’s only 4pm but I’m in urgent need of warmth so we pull off to camp. We go to check at a nearby house if camping is okay, nobody answers the door but we hear repetitive gunshots from behind the house. We ask elsewhere, a young dude who’s taking care of his parents place says that it’s all good but they might be doing ‘that’ for a while with a gesture towards the continuing gunshots next-door. We shiver our way through a tent set-up and warm up over some soup. Just as we are drifting off a while later we hear a dog growl up accompanied by some footsteps. The dog is called off and then we hear a gun cock close by, an unmistakable double ‘click’ followed by a man’s voice that calls out ‘wassup’. We explain that we have asked permission to camp from his neighbor and he takes his need to shoot elsewhere.

We head over the Cascades through rain, wetness, falling water, and precipitation. The wooded mountain countryside is interrupted from time to time by small towns where we find comfort in hot coffee. We head into the last mountain past with enough time to get over the top but only enough energy to get to the top. Around 2000feet we stop to camp, we’re hurting from days of wet hills. We behold the undeniable proof that Francis has a hot butt! My seat is steaming as if someone had poured boiling water over it.

The next morning we head up towards the summit, but before we get there it begins to hail. We almost decide to stop riding because traction is virtually nonexistent and we only avoid serious bailing because it’s a slow climb. We have a good laugh as the ice falls on our heads and hit the top where a sign proclaims ‘7 mile descent 7% slope’. Normally this is good news but not today when your body needs to be working in order to keep warm not to mention how traction is sort of necessary for this whole thing to work. Luckily the hail has turned to rain for the most part. We scream and yell and coast down for an hour or so with our hands cramping on the breaks. Rowan gave us some sharked shaped jellies before we left. Chewing and sound effects from shark attacks in the movies punctuate our frequent hand-warming stops. Before we make it out to Arcata and the seaside, we have another seven-mile descent and lunch in a local tavern at Blue Lake, where they let us eat our own food by a roaring wood stove if we buy beer.

We arrive in Arcata after sunset and settle for a campsite in a local swamp that serves as a bird watching area. Bird watchers are statistically the earliest of all early risers, so we wake up at the crack of dawn with the first whistler. It’s sunny, we’re sure that this is it we’ve arrived in sunny California! We hang out in a local café reminiscent of the Trailhead in Oakridge where we check our email while as much of our gear as possible dries outside. We then head up to the University where Johanne does some internet research for PASCI and I read about the exploitation of the poor while watching the bikes.

We head off in a harsh headwind along the main highway towards nearby Eureka. The road is flat, and lined with Eucalyptus trees. We pass by Eureka in the rain and meet a guy who pulls over to talk to us. He’s done a whole bunch of bike touring and we talk for a while in the drizzle about trips. For all those who think this kind of adventure is only for the youth, this guy was 65 and heading out soon to tour New Zealand by bike. He invites us over but we have a previous invitation a little farther down the road. We stop at a stone shop to buy a small marble egg and phone Steve in Rio Dell. We had met him in Arcata and are soon welcomed into his cozy little home. We drink and make music late into the night, articles of wet clothing hanging up all around the house trying to dry with various degrees of success.

We say goodbye to Steve and hit the road. We have a spot of sun so we book it, happy to move fast in this better weather. A little ways down the road we meet Johnny B. He’s touring Frisbee golf courses around the United States on his bike and we decide to ride with him for a while. We’re not used to adjusting our rhythm to ride with others however and when we stop to put on our raincoats for the oncoming rain Johnny zooms past us down a hill. We only see him once more as we take a turnoff a couple hours later in search of bread. He’s on the onramp on the other side and we wave as we head down a hill. The bread turns out to be free as it’s almost expired, and who knows where Johnny goes as we gorge ourselves on spicy tuna sandwiches. We hit the road good after our big lunch and ride till sunset, passing all sorts of campgrounds. The roadside is cut into the mountainside and no flat areas are available but then we hit upon a good one beside a stream and sleep through a rainy night to the sound of running water.

Jesus Loves You

The next day we wind through mountain countryside until we stop in need of water at a building with large letters proclaiming JESUS LOVES YOU on the roof. A group of extremely friendly Christian youth welcome us for lunch and we meet Chet. Chet tells us the story of his salvation from drug use and we are touched by his honesty and the sad story of dependence and pain from someone our age. We receive his blessing with his hands on our heads and remount our bikes. My heart is in my throat as we begin to pedal and when we hear someone call out “bless you guys” from off in the distance we both call out in return. We spend that night in a redwood park created somewhat ironically by a logging company. All is damp, ferns and funguses are abundant in this drippy atmosphere.

We have left Hwy 101 for Hwy 1, which runs directly down the coast and is much smaller. It continues to rain day after day and the numb chafing is creating some nice looking blisters on our feet. Day after wet day we wake up wet, pack a wet tent, and head of through the wet wetness with spongy wet shoes in search of the nearest coffee.

The sun has come! The ten days of rain have finished and we head off through the sunny morning in search of coffee. The landscape that we couldn’t see this whole time due to fog and rain we now notice has become somewhat brown and mostly treeless. Hills stretch up on the left and the sea is on the right. There are so many deer that we almost get bored of seeing them bounce away from us through the tall grass. We sleep on a 45-degree angle squished on a single sleeping pad with the second as a vertical support.

We continue on through miraculous sunshine to Bodega Bay. We are pastry cows and chow that pastry we do. We leave the local grocery store with eight big pastry pieces and thereby meet the guy who runs the candy store across the street. Him and his wife love to ride tandem all over the place and so they encourage our efforts with a big bag of toffee…each.

Wheelchair accessible sleeping

We continue on thinking of our friends at JESUS LOVES YOU. The sun will soon set and everything around us seems fenced in or on an angle. We say “lets see what God has prepared for us” and around the corner we find a wheelchair accessible park. We coast in and set up in front of a marvelous sunset. We have our own personal picnic table on which to prepare pasta carbonara, what luxury.

Napa bound

On our way into Napa through some serious wine country we stop a taste or ten. It is 11am in the valley and we stagger out at noon with a bottle of wine. The road has suddenly lost any semblance of a shoulder and we float through rolling hills posing as a serious obstacle to traffic flow. Weeeeeeeeee

We arrive at Marie’s house. Marie is the last in a long line of self-propagating contacts that started with Liz way back in Montreal. Marie is my roommate and fellow YAAK team member Liz’s-brother’s-friend’s-collegue’s-mother. Let me recap. Liz’s brother is Alex, we stayed with him in Vancouver for two weeks. Alex knows a guy in Seattle, that’s Brian, we stayed at his place for a few days. Brian’s colleague and friend is Jennifer, we hung out a bunch in Seattle. Jennifer’s mom is Marie who lives in Napa. Marie was amazing with us. We enjoyed a whole lot of food at her house, and managed to recuperate from our crazy rainy northern California ride for five days.