The morning at Plaskett Creek dawned cold and foggy, and Suzanne and I were eager to hit the road. We packed quickly – as always, Suzanne packed faster and left sooner, but we reconvened at a coffee shop a few miles down the highway. I left the coffee shop empty-handed and uncaffeinated because lattes were eight dollars. This little coffee shop in the middle of nowhere was really taking advantage of their cornered market.
Unfortunately, it was another low visibility day. I got the impression that we were probably passing spectacular views, but it was sort of irrelevant given the weather.
When I finally reached the next coffee shop at Ragged Point, I was also fortunate enough to meet their in house band. One of the members was wearing the most excellent outfit of head-to-foot tie dye, which is essentially the look I aspire to. Another band member started asking me about my bike and my trip. When I told him I was riding from Vancouver to San Diego, he was flabbergasted. He told me I was his hero. This was quite the confidence booster on a foggy and hilly morning, and I rode away ready to tackle the rest of the day (the coffee probably helped).
The next stop turned out to be an important one, although I didn’t know about it beforehand. But what could possibly be more important than elephant seals?
These majestic creatures lay flopped along the beach, happily displaying their girth and their misshapen faces. A flock of elderly volunteers informed all the passersby that these are the biggest seals in the world, and in the summer they come to these California beaches to molt. The biggest ones can get up to 5000 pounds (the ones in Antarctica get even bigger – up to 8000 pounds), although none of the ones there that day were quite so big. apparently the big daddies of the elephant seal world don’t show up until December, when it’s time to breed.
After communing with the seals, I made my way to Hearst Castle. This is apparently a mansion of epic proportions, so stately that it was made an official Historic Site… but I wouldn’t know, because it was expensive and took a long time, and I had little time and even less money. There was still a lot of ground to cover before I got to Morro Bay. So on I went, with a heavy heart due to a decided lack of zebras (someone told me there were zebras along the road by Hearst Castle, because rich people I guess).
We spent the night at Morro Bay, and then carried on to Arroyo Grande. This part of the California coast is low on hiker/biker campsites, but luckily there is a woman in Arroyo Grande who will let cyclists camp in her yard for ten dollars. Suzanne and I weren’t really sure what to expect, but it was actually a little slice of paradise. The woman, Laura (great name), had bought a property two decades ago that was completely covered in eucalyptus trees. Over the years, she cleared the land and populated it with a horse, a dog, cats, chickens, budgies, fruit trees, a garden, and a variety of eclectic but adorable structures that she rents out as accommodations. I went to bed much later than usual because a cat fell asleep in my lap and I couldn’t bring myself to dislodge him.
The ride from Arroyo Grande to Gaviota State Park was warm. Actually, it was hot. So hot my handlebar grips started to melt, which I consider a major design flaw. I am now in the market for new, non-melting handlebar grips. In any case, it was an abrupt shift from a trip that up until then had been quite chilly.
I rolled into Gaviota sticky and dehydrated, as if all the moisture had been transferred to the outside of my body. I felt a bit better after chugging a litre of water and taking a shower, but I felt the most better after a little girl named Lila gave me a box of candy because “you biked all the way here so I thought you might want some candy.” Lila and her candy-sharing ways made the melted bike parts and possible heat stroke all worth it.
The following day was Santa Barbara Day, which just means that we rode through Santa Barbara. Before going, Suzanne and I looked up what was important about Santa Barbara. The internet told us that Oprah lives there, which is of course the most important fact of all, so I immediately forgot everything else we read. Tragically, there were no Oprah sightings, but I did spend three hours eating donuts and admiring the beautiful architecture.
After my donut binge, I rode to Stearns Wharf – the end of Map 4! Only one map left to go. The rest lay crumpled in the bottom of my poorly organized panniers.
At our campsite in Carpinteria, Suzanne and I met a lovely couple who were on a bicycle book tour from Seattle to San Diego. Their book, Breathtaking, is about biking around the world on tandem bikes with their daughters, who were 11 and 13 at the time. They homeschooled them for a year and a half while covering thousands of kilometres, multiple continents, and probably several lifetimes’ worth of social studies curriculums. They also used the trip to raise money and awareness for asthma and clean air, hence the bicycle book tour – they felt it would be hypocritical and darkly ironic to tour the country in a car for a book about clean air.
In a strange twist of the universe, the woman, Paula, was actually born in the same city as me (Regina, Saskatchewan), and they finished writing the book on Bowen Island, where I just lived for two years. It seems our paths were meant to cross at some point.
I bid farewell to Paula and her husband Lorenz and proceeded to have a whirlwind day of laundry, biking, coffee, visiting the Patagonia Headquarters store in Ventura, arriving at a campground only to find it was closed, and passing a military base with a weird roadside display of different kinds of bombs and missiles. I kind of wish I’d taken a picture of that last part, because it was so bizarre. It was called the ‘Missile Park’ and begs the question – why are we like this?
As I cycled along the highway through the Santa Monica Mountains, I encountered a construction zone where the shoulder was blocked off. This forced me to take the full lane on the highway, which I actually have every right to do as a cyclist. Unfortunately, drivers often don’t see it that way, because apparently a few minutes of their time is possibly worth my life. Makes sense, right?
So the angry lady behind me was whaling away on her horn as if I had anywhere else I could possibly go between a concrete wall and the lane of oncoming traffic. I biked like my life depended on it, because maybe it did, and finally saw a gap in the concrete wall where I could pull off to the side. After she went by (giving me the stink eye the whole time), I was going to let the other cars pass – but the motorcycle next in line slowed right down. The guy flipped up his visor, and said “don’t worry about them – they can wait.” He then ushered me back out into the road and drove at my pace for the rest of the construction zone. We rode two abreast, so that no one behind us could attempt an unsafe pass. When we finally got out of the construction and back to a road with a shoulder, he looked me in the eye, said “good luck” and sped off while pumping his fist in the air. My hero.
Leo Carrillo was our last state park of the trip. I’d lost count of how many we had stayed in, but it was strange to think that there wouldn’t be any more. Our last night in the wilds of California – the next day we would hit the big city.
And what a city it was. My first experience of the greater Los Angeles area was Malibu, where it really did seem that money grew on trees. After a death-defying sprint along the highway, Suzanne and I finally emerged on a bike path on the beach, which led us directly to Santa Monica.
Santa Monica was quite a shift from campgrounds and windblown coastlines, but they did have great lattes. I hunkered down, fuelled up, and prepared for the last leg of my journey.
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