Cycling to SF – Ride Report!

This post is long over due! Back in June myself and Chris Tremonte decided to bike to San Francisco, fortunately I was able to make it.

Here is a brief video summarizing our trip and the feeling we had just on reaching San Francisco:

From July 23 – Aug 1 we made it to San Francisco along the Pacific coast visiting amazing parks and meeting fun people! Chris has a detailed report on each day, however I’ll try to summarize my days in short here.

Day 1, Day 2, Day 3 (Seattle, WA to Florence, Oregon): On Chris’ Day 1 I was still debating if I should go on this bike ride, I had a relatively swollen ankle and my doctor was not very happy about me doing a long bike trip. I don't know what it was, may be it was Chris’ look when he first saw me injured. He showed up the previous Tuesday at work with his newly crafted bike and panniers to show me all the goodies and telling me how he is ready to ride, but instead I showed him my foot, which at the time was in a cast! Anyways! I decided to go for the ride and meet Chris in Florence, Oregon , the plan was I’ll ride for a bit and see how I feel. We started to head down south on Chris’ DAy 3, it took us day to get drive to Florence. Myself and Maris were wondering how Chris got there in three days on  his bike! The dude is fast and tenacious, well speaks for his pro-triathlete status.

Day 4 (Florence,Oregon to Sunset Bay – Charleston, Oregon):

 

I was testing my abilities to ride or not to ride! After a 11am start I had three flats. I had the third flat around 2pm when Maris came to see me, I was almost about to go back with her – damn flats ( & surprisingly not the ankle) had worn me out :(. Anyways this time Chris fixed the flat (I guess expertly). Him & Maris’ convinced me to stay on the ride! After 63 miles of feeling rather good, we reached our day 4 camp in Sunset Bay – Chris wanted to continue riding but i convinced him to call it a short day (one of the many times when I slowed him down :) ). We were just in time at the camp to enjoy the campfire & company of fellow riders!

Day 5 (Sunset Bay to Harris Beach – Brookings, OR): This was my first long day. My knee started bothering me a little but mostly I felt good. As I was riding through this day I felt as if I was almost meditating and I thoroughly enjoyed the beautiful Oregon coast. One of the reasons I took this trip was just to relax, and as the days to come and numerous hill climbs would tell, I did get my fair share of relaxation :).

Day 6 (Harris Beach to Elk Prairie – Orick, CA): This day I decided to focus each day for the remainder of the ride to focus on one of my loved ones and think about how I can improve my relationship with them and also add value to their life. Of course all the details won’t be on a public blog but I rather felt very good about doing this. However I still have a lot of follow ups to finish from these dedicated days of thinking. Hopefully I won’t need another vacation to get to them ;). We befriended an Australian, Andrew,  at Sunset Bay he rode with us for the next few days and we had quite few interesting incidents and experiences..

 

On Day 6 I was almost convinced that we would finish the ride and this was almost in stark contrast to the previous day, we did 106 miles that day and I was thinking man I might need to quit tomorrow and take the bus home. With another solid day backing day 5  I was convinced that I can thrive, although I kept telling Chris and Andrew that I might have to walk the hills :).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day 7 (Elk Prairie to Burlington Campground): This was one of the most eventful days of our ride! We rode more than 100 miles and got to the Burlington Campground at 7pm and then rode to the nearest village (of course of 150 people & 6miles down the road) and celebrated Chris’ birthday. A fellow biker, Sofie, who was at this Campground also joined us for the celebrations!

Day 8 (Burlington Campground to Mackerricher Sate Park – Cleone, CA): I was starting to enjoy this lifestyle of biking from place to another and meeting new people, and just coming in to the whole new fraternity. I loved the long downhill after of course a six mile uphill through the Redwoods -

Day 9 (MacKerricher to Stillware Cove Campground – Ocean Cove, CA):  Our ride-mate took a break here but before he left we enjoyed a long and thorough breakfast. In general breakfast were a big think i looked forward to every day. Most days we tried to ride a good 20 miles before stopping for breakfast and when we did, man the food felt out of the world!!

Day 10 (Stillwater Cove to San Francisco, CA): This was out another 100 mile day we got to San Francisco a whole day in advance than our schedule! One of the goals of our trip was also to help spread the message of HealthDataRights and HealthVault, our discussion with folks in Jenner got along these lines and they were impressed by two young folks trying to better the state of US HealthCare!

Day 11 (San Francisco, San Jose): We idled the day in San Francisco enjoying company of friends and family. In fact. I was in time for Rakshabhandan!

 

My sister had organized a surprise party welcoming us to California and successfully paddling across the coast (well she complained to my mom about me doing such stupid and crazy things ;) ).

I have done a many multiday mountaineering trips, overnight organized cycling trips but this 10 day bike tour was totally different. It was very relaxing at the same time challenging. This bike tour changed my perspective of few things in life, made me think harder and introduced me to a whole new way of enjoying a trip!! Hopefully in near future I will get a chance to tour more places – may be italy, may be Chile or hey may be you can suggest…I have created a forum for the same…or use the comments …