Miles biked – 80.

Approx total miles biked – 3078.

Days until party in Seattle – 13.

10/30/2009  If you read the last post, you might be a little surprised by the distance we traveled for day 61.  Waking up in Laytonville, we had resigned ourselves to making it as far as Fortuna (about 80miles) and then riding then next 40 to Eureka on Halloween day.  Even that seemed like a stretch considering the day before we were wiped out after 45 miles.  We woke ourselves up before sunrise, packed up, had some Grapenuts and rolled over to the gas station for our caffeine fix hoping to get some miles under our wheels as soon as it was light enough.   It was an insanely foggy morning and we were in the mountains, so we were concerned about safety on the winding roads but we didn’t want to wait to long to get started considering our short ride the day before.  We huddled around the gas station coffee machine trying to convince ourselves to start riding when a large, empty, white truck rolled in driven by a young couple about our ages.  It took us a few minutes to discuss amongst ourselves whether it was a good idea and then a few more to get up the courage, but then Caroline bravely approached them to see if they happened to be heading in our direction.  As luck would have it, they were taking 101 north to Garberville, about 40 miles right on our route.   They said they’d be happy to take us as far as we wanted to go.  We did some quick calculations and realized that depending on the terrain, if we road all the way to Garberville, we might have enough time to get to Fortuna for a late lunch at Eel River Brewing Company and then get to Eureka that night so that we could still have Halloween off.

Taking the ride was probably one of the smartest decisions we’d made.  Not only did it give us a jump start for the day but the ride was a very windy and steep road without much of a shoulder.   In a perfect world we would have waited out the fog and done many short days of riding rather than try to make it out of the mountains in one day, but given our schedule the ride was perfect.  We arrived in Garberville at about 10am, still thick in the fog but only a few short miles away from the Avenue of the Giants, a 30 mile stretch of scenic redwood forest parallel to 101.  With less hills and less traffic we were able to meander our way through the fog and check out the scenery without risking our lives.  Thanks so much to Brianna and Keller!

After the Avenue (and a delicious second breakfast in Miranda, a town in the middle of the forest) we got back on 101 for a swift 20some miles to Fortuna.  We had lunch at Eel River and did a small sampling of their certified organic beers.  They didn’t have anyone around to give us a tour so we continued on the 26 miles to Eureka where our warm showers hosts, Dick and Kathy were waiting.  As soon as we were back on the road, the fog returned and it was a somewhat terrifying ride as the sunset.  It wasn’t the safest riding we’d done, but we had made it to the coast were ready for the big day following – Halloween!

Biking through NorCal fog

Biking through the Redwoods

Miles biked – 45

Approx total miles biked – 2998

Days until party in Seattle -14

10/29/2009  This was a  funny riding day.  It started out with the somewhat absurd goal of riding 106 miles to Humboldt State Park, about 80 miles out of Eureka.  If we could ride that far, we knew we’d make it to Eureka on the 30^th and be able to take Halloween off from riding.    We ate a quick camp breakfast and decided to stop for coffee and second breakfast at the next town.  However, just as we were turning on to 101 and starting our way north we ran into Tracy’s friend Ryan!  We hadn’t seen him since Denver, and in the time it took us to bike west, he’d driven up to Seattle and spent some time there before making his way back down.  He was on his way to San Francisco that day.  Its amazing how much faster you can get to things by car!

Right after saying goodbye to Ryan we found ourselves in our lowest gears going a little over 5 miles an hour and we quickly realized that there was no way that we were making it 106 miles.  When we finally arrived Willits, second breakfast ended up being pancakes for lunch.  Our legs were already feeling it from 15 miles of climbing but we still had high hopes of at least making it to Standish-Hickey State Park, only another 60 miles.  It wasn’t as far as Humboldt but at least we’d get to sleep under the Redwoods.

The next town up was Laytonville, where we arrived at about 3pm.  We’d done a total of 45miles.  Not sure exactly what our next plan of action was, we had a pint at the local pub to discuss.  This is never the way to get things done- but always seems like a good idea at the time:)  The closest campground was about 26 miles away, which, at the rate we were going, would just barely be doable by sundown.  If we grabbed some food at the grocery store, we could pedal on and try to make it.  Nut, we weren’t feeling. Instead, we had another pint, played some pinball, and checked in to the cheapest motel.   This was not the wisest decision for making it to Eureka the next day, as it left us with 120 miles to bike, but it was kind of like when you eat cereal for dinner in college: no one was telling us we couldn’t so we just did it.

There were two bonuses to this decision.  We were able to do laundry AND Tracy made contact with her friend Rose in Ukiah who was on her way to our motel with homemade chili and wine (from the winery she works for) for dinner.  I couldn’t say for sure why we just stopped in the middle of the day, but I had a feeling that the twig wanted to make that little reunion happen.

Lake Mendo to Laytonville - meeting up with Rhino

PInball vs. Riding

Miles Biked – 79

Approx total miles biked – 2953

Days until party in Seattle – 16

10/28/2009 Riding out of Williams was not nearly as much work as riding in.  The wind had died down a bit and it was beautiful and sunny.  We fought a bit of wind but it was flat for the first 10 miles or so until we started the climb into the coastal range.  And what a climb it was!  Our highest climb was about 1,800 feet but there was a lot of up and down getting there.  Each time we got to the top of one hill we thought, “was that it?  do we get to go down now?”  When the decent finally came though, it was awesome.  We rolled down into Lucerne for a sandwich break after a 10 mile or so ride along Clear Lake, envying every person with a house along the water.  We also saw our first out it the open medicinal marijuana store, The Cool Cove, which was kind of hilarious to ride by.  Just a little reminder that we were in Northern California.

We weren’t exactly sure at the start of the day where our end point was.  We had hoped to get to Ukiah, which was about 85 miles away where Tracy knew a friend from college was living.  However, we didn’t know until the day before that we were heading in that direction so we hadn’t been able to get a hold of her yet.  In Lucerne we decided that camping at Lake Mendocino was our best bet.  We had about 2 hours of daylight to go 26 miles, so as long as we didn’t hit anymore big climbs we could do it.

As with most of our riding days, we made it just in time.  We arrived at the lake, set up camp, made dinner and went to sleep.  It was another meal of couscous and chili and hot chocolate.  No complaints here.

Williams to Lake Mendocino

Miles biked – 59

Approx Total Miles Biked – 2874

Days until party in Seattle – 17

10/27/2009  Waking up in Chico, the twig was stuck in a whirlpool at the side of the river.  Our planned route was to head north to Redbluff and then across the costal range to Eureka on 36.  It was a very desolate, hilly and difficult route, even without the wind, that would take us about 3 days and put us in Eureka 2 days before Halloween.  However, our plan was to stay in Eureka on Halloween (meaning we had an extra day) and with the wind blowing at about 40 miles an hour from the north, we decided that our plan was not the way the twig was flowing.

Instead, we wandered around Chico: dressed up at a biker shop (in leather) and stopped by Karen’s dental office to stock up on toothpaste and floss. At about noon, we finally got on our bikes and went south.  It was a pretty awesome ride, with the wind at our backs for the first time.  We cruised at around 20 miles an hour for most of the day, putting in little effort.  We even had enough time to frolic in a pumpkin patch. Our new plan was to cross the mountains on route 20, a slightly less difficult crossing, and be able to hit a few more breweries.  We did about 45 miles south to Calusa, and almost stopped for the day.   However, it was only 3pm and we knew we should really get a little bit farther to stay on track so we finally did what we’d been avoiding all day and started riding into the wind.  10 miles of miserable riding later we arrived in Williams, the next town over, and started nesting for the night.  At the bar.  We had food, wifi and beer, so it seemed like the perfect place to hang out.  Caroline managed to find us a place to sleep for the night at a friendly couple’s house so we took our time and updated the blog and tried to figured out how we were going to get up the coast with our new plan.

Riding to Williams, CA

Miles Biked – zero

Miles walked – about 10

Approx total miles biked – 2815

Day until party in Seattle – 18

10/26/2009

It was great to have a day off after our long days through Nevada and then through the Sierra Nevadas (the hills, not the beer yet).  We spent the day on foot, all refusing to pedal for at least one day while we recovered from our 120 miler the day before.  After an amazing breakfast at Café Coda, with some of the best coffee we’ve had on the trip (thanks for the rec Larry!) we spread out to see the town.  The plan – meet up in a few hours for the 2:30pm tour at Sierra Nevada.  Well, Tracy and Caroline made it to the brewery and had a great time feeling especially knowledgeable after having already been on over 30 tours for the trip. Cheers to the tour guide – she did a great job as it was the first tour she had ever given! And cheers to Sierra Nevada who are operating at 99.5 percent sustainability. The taproom was not open though, because it was Monday so there was no tasting.  Anders and Sara didn’t make the tour unfortunately- a bit of bad directions from the google app.  Instead, they hit a few thrift stores, starting the search for our much talked about Halloween costumes.

Everyone met up afterwards back at Larry and Karen’s house.  They had generously offered to take us to dinner at the Western Pacific brew pub in Oroville that wasn’t QUITE on our route.  It was a fun time and we had the sampler of brews served by the most amusing server yet – an adorable and slightly smartallacky older woman who had been at the establishment, through different ownership, for 26 years.

After the brewery, it was off to the Graduate, THE beer bar in Chico, with about 30 beers on tap, including EVERYTHING from Sierra Nevada.  We drank beer, tried every machine they had to put quarters in and decided we’d be more than happy to stay in Chico longer if only we could.

Sierra Nevada

The Crew at the Graduate

Miles Biked – 120. Approx Total Miles Biked – 2815. Day until party in Seattle – 19.

10/25/2009

Waking up in Portola before daylight we were faced with two choices.  We either had to bike 120 miles to Chico, where Sierra Nevada and a place to stay, do laundry, and take the day off awaited OR we wouldn’t make it all the way and would have to stop somewhere in the middle of nowhere.  It was one of those days that you just had to be in it to win it.  We packed up our stuff quickly and headed out to the local diner for a hearty breakfast to get us through the day.   It was tasty eggs and pancakes but we had to eat quickly and hit the road.

Our first stop of the day was 30 miles in at Quincy, the town we’d hope to make it to the night before.   We found a cute little coffee shop and sat down to second breakfast – slightly dreading the next 90 miles.  We’d been told that most of our ride would be downhill through a canyon straight to Chico but the first 30 definitely we not all downhill.  It took us about 2 ½ hours and at that rate we’d never make it before dark.

The one thing that was on our side was that the scenery was beautiful.  After over a week in the desert, we were still totally enamored with the green trees and winding hills.  It was so different from riding through Nevada and being able to see 20 miles ahead.

Leaving Quincy, we finally reached the Feather River Canyon, the long down hill we’d been promised.  It was about 50 miles following the water, some times along cliffs, sometimes over bridges, sometimes through long tunnels with no lights.  It was an amazing ride.  We averaged around 18 miles an hour, but only because we had a warm headwind blowing on us the whole way, otherwise we could have gone even faster but even then it was awesome.  We dropped most of the 5,000 feet that we’d be hovering at since we’d arrived in Colorado and all in one day.

Heading out of the canyon we had a 5 mile climb that we crawled out of with relative ease, considering how many miles we had on the bike for the day.  We got to the top of the last pass and that flew down into the valley, dropping the last 2,000 or so feet at around 40 miles an hour.  An amazing decent.  The last 15 or so miles into Chico was some rolling hills and then some flat bike paths through orchards.  It was just getting to sunset and there was a vicious headwind battling us up the valley but we had down the almost impossible and made it to Chico before sunset so we felt victorious.  We rolled into our home for the night just before the it got dark, where our hosts for the night, a beer distributor we’d met at CanFest and his wife (Larry and Karen) had bought us pizza and left us a note to make ourselves at home because they were out for the evening.  It was perfect!  We ate, had a few beers (since Larry had an amazing selection through his connections, and sat down to watch Empire Records on DVD.  As always, no matter what the day is like, it always ends perfectly.

Biking over the Sierra Nevadas

Miles ridden – 52

Approx total miles biked – 2695

Day to end party – 20

10/24/2009 Sometime the night before, we decided that we would not concern ourselves with how far we’d get after we left Reno.  To be completely honest, we didn’t even want to leave Reno.  We were 16 miles away from the California border though, so with that in mind we prepared to leave.  We ate a large breakfast at the Sierra Grand and left our lovely hotel rooms.

While riding the elevator down, Sara noticed her front tire was flat.  At 11am, we all thought this was sort of a ridiculous way to start the day, but no worries, we’d just do what we had to do and then ride as far as we could for the day.  After a stop at the bike shop for some more tubes and patch kits (we weren’t taking any chances these days) we finally started out a little after noon.  We had 82 miles to Quincy, our original goal for the day, and 50 miles to Portola – our new more manageable goal.  With about 5 hours of daylight left of the day, we were ready to attack the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

After our stint in Nevada, we’d toughened up a bit so facing a days worth of climbing didn’t phase us, but we still hadn’t learned out lesson about Google walking directions.  We took the old highway 395 north out of Reno until we reached on of our favorite signs, “pavement ends.”  The option to turn around and get on 395 was there but after 5 days on Interstate 80, we figured a little off-roading might be nice. Two miles of steep ups and downs on a gravel road later, we rolled into a place appropriately called Bordertown and had lunch.  We all ordered chicken salad sandwiches – except Caroline, who in a strange turn of events order a deep fried meat and cheese conconction called a Monte Christo – and were a little surprised when 3 tuna sandwiches came out.  We didn’t want to make a big deal about it but we called the waitress over to point out the mistake all the same.  She grabbed a spoon, took a bite out of Tracy’s sandwich and confirmed it, the order was wrong.  We were pretty surprised at that move but she was pretty happy.  She gave the cook a hard time about the mishap and said that we had made her night.  Then she left the restaurant, her shift ending midmeal.  It was a very strange lunch, but considering it was our last meal in Nevada it was perfect?

The rest of the ride sort of flew by.  We climbed a small pass, road through a beautiful meadow and then started climbing again up to Portola.  It was about this time that the mountains turned from Sagebrush Brown to Evergreen Green.  It was amazing, like entering a new world.

Portola is a very cute town.  Rolling in, we saw cute cafes and a bar called Jimmy’s Roadhouse, which we decided was our best bet for figuring out where to stay for the night (we saw one motel, and we were told there was a campsite 8 miles up the hill but we were out of daylight and sick of paying for motels, so we set out to find a place to camp).  The bar was pretty great, some good local beer on special – Firestone – and some awesome nachos with fresh guacamole.  We chatted with some of the locals and met a man named Robert who leaved a few blocks away and offered us floor space and a shower.  Exactly what we needed!  Especially with the 115 mile day ahead of us…

Riding to Portola, CA

Miles biked – 35

Approx total miles biked – 2643

Days until party in Seattle – 21

10/23/2009  Reno was never on our map when we were planning this trip, we had this idea that it was not a town we wanted to stop in.  Instead, we were going to stay in Fernley and then circumnavigate the big city and stay in Stead the next day.  The twig however, had other plans.

We woke up at The Lazy Inn in Fernley and walked over to the Wigwam diner for a big breakfast.  We had lots of eggs and coffee and then hopped back on i80 for our last hurrah into Sparks, Reno’s sister city and home to our first brewery stop in a week: The Great Basin Brewery.   We had been emailing with their general manager Tom and set up a tour and a lunch stop before going on to Stead, where we’d arranged our first warmshowers.org stop.  It sounded like a great day in comparison to the many lonely nights before, but Tom mentioned something that ended up making it even better: the first annual CanFest at the Grand Sierra Hotel and Casino in Reno.  In attendance would be some old favorites – Oskar Blues and New Belgium, along with some beers that we’d been hoping to try, like Reno’s own Buckbean, and some California brews like 21 Amendment and Anderson Valley, and a beer we missed along the way, Minneapolis’ Surly Brewing Company.  It was pretty much going to be the awesomest beer event since the Great American Beer Festival (at least for us… although we did miss the GABF this year… so i suppose it was the awesomest beer event of our trip).   After a few emails to our friend Allison at the Brewers Association we found our way on to the guest list for the event and decided that if we were going to spend the night trying canned beer we would not be biking to Stead so we called up the Grand Sierra can got very reasonable rooms for the night.  Might as well do one more night in a hotel while we were still in Nevada, especially if it was cheaper than our last motel and much nicer!

Our new plan in action, we got a great tour of Great Basin, including the opportunity to help brew a little beer!  We helped mash in their latest pilsner, which was much harder than we expected.  It was like trying to stir a bowl of hot oatmeal the size of a small apartment with a little green kayak paddle.   After that, we learned a little bit more about their brewing process, including all the local ingredients that they integrate into their brews.  They also do a lot of experimentation with their beer.  Tom told us “that’s why we are in this industry, to try to new things.”  So true, so true.  Their experiments have lead to some great beer, and their brew pub has some great food to boot.  No wonder they are selling so much of there beer that they have to contract out their most popular beers to keep up with demand!

After the tour, we went for a short ride with Brian, our new friend from Warmshowers.com.  Since we’d decided to bipass Stead, we didn’t get to take a longer ride with him but he did give us some great tips about the Feather River Canyon, which we’d be riding very soon and took us by a local bike shop so that we could restock on tubes after our 15+ flats on I80 in the last week.  It was great to be back in civilization!

Saying goodbye to Brian, we made our way over to the Grand Sierra.  What a beautiful hotel!  After showering up we went down to the theatre where they were staging CanFest.  It was a great event.  We tried all the beers we’d never had, including a very cool Coconut Porter from Maui Brewing Company to which we added some chocolate ice cream thus creating a mini beer float.   Delicious!  We also made friends with a few of the brewers.  Ryan from Great Basin was there and Colin from Buckbean (the hosts of the evening) showed us the full size airplane behind the current on the acre size stage.   We met a ton of different people, from beer drinkers to beer reporters to beer distributors and felt like we’d made the right decision and we’re in just the right place at the right time.

After Canfest, we explored the casino and ended up on the dance floor along side some very impressive line dancers.  Who knows why we wanted to avoid Reno, it was one of the funnest nights of the trip!

Great Basin Brewing

Bike and Brew with Paul Gatza of the Brewers Assoc at CanFest Reno

miles biked – 85

approx TOTAL miles biked – 2608

days until our end party in seattle – 22

10/22/2009  Waking up in Rye Patch was nice.  We hadn’t camped in a while and though we’d been dreading waking up cold in our tents, it actually wasn’t that cold.  Our plan was to pack up and head over to the nearby truck stop and make our oatmeal and have some coffee.  But just before biking away from the campsite we were stopped by a friendly couple in a nearby RV (Paddy and Marilyn) who offered us coffee and hot chocolate before we left.  Never ones to turn down coffee, we chatted with them for a bit before heading out.  It was pretty neat to hear their stories from the road, they camped when they were younger, then graduated to a trailer and now the RV, but they just kept traveling and like us, they were at Rye Patch for the first time.  We would have stayed all day but we had over 80 miles in front of us so we got to making our oatmeal and then starting riding.

Twenty-one miles and less than one hour in, we were ecstatic that we were making such great time – right up until Caroline got the first flat of the day.  She did a great job though and got that sucker changed in 24 minutes.  Then it was back on the road for 2 miles into Lovelock (yes, Kaley – lock your love! hehe), the only town on our route for the day.  We hit up the Safeway for lunch fixins and snacks and then road some more.  The terrain was pretty flat (some long, low grade hills to keep things interesting) and we had what MAY have even been a tail wind, so we continued to make good time.  We stopped for lunch at a rest stop around mile 48 and made sandwiches.  According to signs, we were about to ride the “40 Mile Dessert”, a part of the California Emigration Trail that was apparently a very dangerous section, in 1850 or so 1000 people died trying to get through it.  We had some very large turkey sandwiches and Craisins in our bellies though, so we figured we’d be ok.

About another 10 miles down the road, Tracy had the second flat of the day.  This one caused by a Goathead (a plant that is known to cause a large number of flat tires – not as many as those stupid pieces of truck tire tread though as far as we could tell).   Tracy may have set a new record for tire changing, with an impressive 14 minutes before we were back on the road.

At 85 miles, we rode into Fernley, pretty much spent for the day.  We had a very good meal at the Black Bear Diner (burgers and sandwiches) and then checked into the Lazy Inn because they were the cheapest place in town and they had the much need laundry option.  It wasn’t the most exciting night of the trip, and we were a bit bummed to spend ANOTHER night in a motel but we had crossed the Nevada desert, made in back into civilization, and we were going to a brewery the next day! What more could a bike and brewer ask for?

Crossing Nevada

miles biked – 105

10/21/2009 The one good thing about staying in a motel (besides beds and hot showers and music videos and internet access and power) is free breakfast.  At the Big Chief Motel we had our fill of cereal, oatmeal, fruit, coffee and pastries and then got started at a very reasonable – though later than we were hoping – 7:45am.  The reason for the early start was that we were going to try to break our own record of 102.5 and ride 103 miles to Rye Patch, the only campsite in Nevada (as far as we could tell).

It was a cold morning in Battle Mountain, even bundled with 4-5 layers of clothing, pedaling was hard.  We started to wish for hills just to warm up, but we had 20 miles of flat as a pancake before we got to anything interesting and then we had a decent 5 mile climb towards Winnemucca, our 50-mile lunch stop midpoint.  We did excellent time there, arrived before noon and quickly sat down to lunch at the 4th Street Cafe (after smelling the fresh baked cookies from the street).

After lunch things quickly took a turn for the intriguing as we were approach by a group of nomadic Christian bikers who were in town for a few days waiting for some mail (one of them had broken a tent pole).  It was like meeting an alternate version of ourselves, people who travelled by bike with tons of stuff, only they didn’t drink and they’d been on the rode for 16 years.  They we really nice and had that look of being quite at peace with the world. We could have chatted with them for a quite a while, but after a half an hour we had to say goodbye and get back on the road.  It was interesting though, we’d only stopped there for a few minutes to get food because we had to bike another 50 miles but they had been camping there at the local park for a few days (which to them that was a short stay).  Also, you won’t find any photos of them in our Flickr as they politely declined being in a photo.

The rest of the day went by quickly.  We rode another 55 miles, making up songs along the way while Tracy played the harmonica and then we set up camp in the very scenic Rye Patch campground that cost only $1 per biker.  There was what looked like a great bar right up the road from the campground but once we set up camp and made our chili and couscous dinner we were done for the night.  We had a beer (the best option at the truck stop – Budweiser American Lager – oh dear) and a hot chocolate and hit the hay.

Rye Patch - Nevada's only campground