my first bike tour

Just went on a cycling adventure October 5th through 8th with my brother in law Adamen. It was a pretty crazy time. We pedaled about 215 miles from the eastern suburbs of Sacramento out to Point Reyes on the coast, and then back inland to Santa Rosa.

Day 1: Fair Oaks to Lake Solano Park - 57 miles.

This was the easiest day of the trip - we were fresh, the weather was very cool (even got rained on a bit), and most importantly, the land was almost totally flat the whole way.

We started on the bike path in Fair Oaks, which took us all the way to oldtown Sacramento. We had lunch at the "Happy Pita". They have really good falafel there, but the place is terribly misnamed - the people who run it are always very grumpy. Some teenage girls heckled Adamen about his bike clothes. "Get some real pants - the eighties are over," they said.

At one point we stopped for a break on a stretch of the bike path near the freeway and found ourselves in a homeless person's den of sorts. There was wire pulling back the tree branches, some women's clothes strewn around, and a tube of toothpaste stuck in the nook of the tree trunk. It was sad and a bit creepy.

We made our way through the UC Davis campus (LOTS of cyclists - more than I have ever seen in one place) and west to Winters, where we stopped for lunch at a burrito joint whose name escapes me. We bought sandwiches for dinner there too and strapped them on to our bikes. They were a bit squished.

We arrived at our campsite in Lake Solano at about 5 p.m. We had a beautiful campsite near a lake filled with all manner of birds, including several groups of geese. They were really pretty. Only problem was that they honked on and off all night long so we didn't sleep too well in our tent.

Day 2: Lake Solano Park to Santa Rosa - 67 miles.

The hardest day by far - this was the longest and most difficult day of biking I've ever undertaken. Not only was the mileage longer than I've ever done, but there was a LOT of climbing. It started right away when we left our camp - highway 128 near Lake Berryessa has a lot of up and down on it. We didn't really have a good breakfast either, just a bagel each and our ubiquitous Gatorade. We went about twenty miles to the intersection of 128 and 121 before getting our first meal at a very strange diner: it was a long building consisting of a grocery store, a diner, and a bar all stuck together.

128 is a beautiful road though, and there was not much traffic, so the biking was first rate all the way through Napa County into Oakville. We stopped there for a quick snack at a taco shop before tackling the hardest climb of the trip: Oakville Grade. A punishing 10 mile long climb averaging 10-15% grade or higher. I confess I had to walk in spots. It was really hard. By the time we came down the other side into Glen Ellen we were both really spacey. I went into the grocery store there to order us up some sandwiches and it felt like I was in a totally different dimension from the people helping me.

After that we still had about fifteen miles left to get into Santa Rosa. On the way we had our only technical incident on the trip - I got a flat tire somewhere on Lawndale Road from running over a small piece of metal.

We got to our friend Heather's house after exactly 10 hours being on the road. We were bushed.

Day 3: Santa Rosa to Point Reyes hostel via Sebastopol & Tomales - 49 miles.

Compared to the previous day, this ride should have been a piece of cake. We had unloaded a lot of our gear at Heather's house, the mileage was lower than either of the first two days, and there were few major climbs. Unfortunately, my body was totally shredded from the day before and I had little energy for the trek. The couple beers we had with dinner the night before weren't helping either. Heather joined us for the last couple days as well, and with fresh legs she laid down a brutal pace that I couldn't keep up with at all. I kept whining that it was too fast but wasn't getting a lot of sympathy. :( I was especially grouchy in the first hour or so, but then something interesting happened. I got stung by a bee. Instead of making me feel worse, it actually snapped me out of it. As if someone poked me very hard in the stomach and said "HEY WAKE UP!!!"

The weather was stunningly beautiful, and once I got warmed up I began to appreciate the amazing country that is west Sonoma and Marin counties. We got to see some great little towns along the way like Tomales and Point Reyes Station, and we met and chatted with some interesting characters along the way too. We even saw a guy who looked just like Jesus walking along the road at one point. He looked like he had been walking for miles and miles. His clothes and shoes were falling apart, but he just kept walking past us like he didn't even know we were there.

Riding on Highway 1 isn't my favorite thing - the road is filled with up-n-down rollers, a coastal headwind, and lots of traffic - so I was quite glad when we turned off onto the final stretch into Point Reyes. Limantour Road is one of the most beautiful roads I have ever biked on. It goes through a magical forest on a long gradual climb, then opens up to eye-popping views of the coast. As we got onto that road, the agonies of the previous miles fell off me. It was a great moment.

Just before we reached the hostel we came down a ridiculous 17% grade hill - that's very steep, folks - that would be the first thing we would have to go up the next day. I declared openly my intent to walk up it. I was tired.

At the hostel we met the manager, a guy named Greg. Greg's lifestyle is clearly so much less intense and stressful than us city people's. Talking to him was like swimming through jam.

We met a super cool couple from Switzerland on a 1 1/2 year around-the-globe honeymoon trip. They shared some beer with us and told us of their adventures. The five of us tried to figure out what animal was making this crazy half grunting, half belching noise that was coming from outside our cabin. Greg said it was deer but we didn't believe him. It sounded like a frog-goat-Chupacabra mix.

After others had gone to bed I still couldn't sleep. I always have a hard time sleeping in hostels because someone always snores, and this night was no different. So I got up and went out into the lounge. There I found a whole group of international students from Stanford hanging out drinking a bottle of wine. I didn't even get their names, just their countries: Bulgaria, France, Hungary, Germany. We talked until about midnight. I love meeting people like that when I travel.

Finally I fell asleep on the couch in the lounge. I was cold, but able to sleep better away from the snoring.

Day 4: Point Reyes back to Santa Rosa via Petaluma - 41 miles.

Well, by some miracle I didn't have to walk up that insane first climb. I didn't exactly speed up it either. It was hard. I stopped for a break halfway up it and had a great moment watching a buck with a big rack of antlers. It came down the road towards me until it was about fifty feet away. Then it stared at me for a while. Eventually it left the road.

We got back in to Point Reyes Station and had a fabulous breakfast at the Marin Station Cafe (?) there. The best pancakes I've had in a restaurant? Perhaps, or perhaps that was four days of fatigue talking. Who knows.

I wasn't having any of Heather and Adamen's tempo on this day, especially because there were more hills going back in to Petaluma. I was really getting tired of watching them tear up the hills in front of me while I struggled up behind. So I just told them to go on ahead and I would catch up with them later. That suited me a bit better. I had some introspective time on the road that day.

We had lunch in Penngrove. We were all tired and wanting to get back home by this point. Adamen set a very high tempo on the way back to Santa Rosa. I pushed hard and kept up with him, which for me was a really big feat.

All in all, I felt the trip was very successful. I think next time I will try to have someone there who is more at my level though so I don't feel left behind and don't feel like others are always having to wait for me.