Monday: pick up the BikeE from Rincon Cyclery, buy some last supplies, finish packing.
Tuesday morning: repack and depart. The forecast was depressing but not hopeless. The rain was light but steady. The wind was gentle but head-on. I started an hour later that I'd wanted, which didn't help. Into Forestville for cash and coffee, on to the Graton-Sebastopol bike trail, then across the coastal hills to Freestone and Valley Ford.

My glasses need windshield wipers. Everything else works fine - the bike, the fairing, the GoreTex, my knees. All systems are nominal.

So, I made my halfway point [by the map] in Valley Ford in just 2.5 hours, no problem. Sandwich and coffee consumed on the bench on the General Store's veranda, watching a convoy of bikers roll past. When I caught up with them a couple miles on, I learnt this Swedish family [Papa, Mama, 4 sons] was riding from Canada to Mexico, looking for the sun. Sorry, wrong day for that...

Everything is misty green/brown, except that Oreo cat crouched in the field and a few brightly-colored human artifacts. The rain is gentle, intermittant, not too cold; and when I hit a colder cell I just have to zip up my jacket some more. Bored cattle, tall eucalyptus, occasional fences, rocky hillsides, a rural anywhere that used to be a redwood rainforest.

South on Hwy.1 from Valley Ford the road becomes a series of ups-and-downs approaching and skirting the long, long San Andreas Fault trench of Tomales Bay. The first few hills weren't too bad, but they just kept on coming, and it became apparent that spending a day riding 65 miles along River Road to Jenner and back, as I did last week, was NOT the same as riding 50-60 miles down the Coast Highway. I'd been over-confident this morning. These were longer, harder miles here. I kept looking down the bayshore, wondering if it ever ended, where the vital junction lay. I was tired, tired, tired.

And I also had no lights. I'd expected to reach the Pt.Reyes hostel by dusk, but the cloud cover was dark, I'd started late, and the last lap of my route involved climbing a mountain. By the time I reached the village of Pt.Reyes Station it was obvious that my options were:

1. Get an expensive B&B room, forfeiting hostel reservations;
   
2. Find some transport out to the hostel in the Nat'l Seashore;
   
3. Call for help, a ride home, forfeiting reservations anyway.

Thus,I called home, then rolled across the road to a cafe for lots of hot chowder and a safe place to park myself and the spacecraft-looking BikeE, and considered what I'd learnt on this ride:

1. Pacing. 40 rolling miles a day is enough, maybe more than enough.
2. Stowage. Big cheap under-seat panniers for lower center-of-gravity. And a big waterproof nylon duffle to strap onto the Load-Llama rear rack.
3. Compactness. Carry a mandolin inside the duffel, not a banjo atop it.
4. Gearing. Pedaling with a +30-lb load requires a smaller main gear.
5. Toys. Make a handlebar rack for tape/camcorders, radio, maps etc.
6. Accomodations. Relying on hostels only works in the immediate Bay Area, they're just too rare elsewhere, so I need a tent, groundpad, stove etc. for camping-out. Extra weight to carry. Bother. Well, more exercise, be in better shape, bla bla bla...

  Ric Carter — 17 Oct 1999 — Forestville, CA