Blog of my bicycle tour of California from San Jose to Oxnard, mostly along the Pacific Coast Route.
In May 2017, the Mud Creek Slide came crashing down on Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) in California, turning an 80-mile section of highway with no exits into two separate 10-mile and 50-mile dead-ends. As bad as that sounds, the details made it even worse. Additional slides and a bridge failure isolated the tiny and beautiful …
Day one of my tour turned out to have many of the problems I was afraid it might have. But a defining trait of an adventurer is how you deal with the problems that will inevitably happen. If you react by wishing you had luxury accommodations, panicking, or giving up, you are probably not an …
Day two of my trip began with my resolve not to put my head down and hammer out a fast ride, but to take my time and stop to explore what I saw along the way. My first chance to exercise that was only a few miles in as I passed Seacliff State Beach. It …
Day three of my tour would be a relatively short ride from Monterey to Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park. I liked that it would be a short ride so it would give me time to take lots of pictures of this very scenic area. I got a late start because I spent time fraternizing with …
My bicycle tour of the California coast continued into its 4th day on a Tuesday. That put me right in the heart of a work week, beyond the feeling of a mere three-day weekend, and firmly in a vacation-adventure frame of mind. My ride that day would take me from Pfeiffer Big Sur campground to …
I awoke Wednesday morning on day 5 of my 8 day bike tour of coastal central California, greeted by the sound of the waves crashing on the cliffs below my tent at Kirk Creek campground. The morning weather was very damp fog, classic Big Sur, so my gear was pretty wet but manageable. I was …
Day 5 of my 8-day tour would be a long ride through a wide variety of California terrain, but it started with me fixing my kitchen. Quick backstory: I thought my fuel canister was empty after very little use, so I pitched it and bought a new one. I was pretty excited to cook bacon …
I awoke to the luxury of a hotel room on Friday, day 7 of my 9-day tour. I was enjoying camping every other night, but the hotel was a nice change of pace. My room had clean clothes hanging over every available spot, and leftovers from the restaurant meal the night before sat in the …
Waking up at my campsite at Refugio State Beach on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend was a nice experience. This was day 8 of my 9-day bike tour. It had only taken me a few days to shrug off the hectic life of suburbia and work and embrace a nomadic existence. I was already …
Bike travel during a busy weekend means busy roads, campgrounds and everything else. But it also means more to see and do. The last day of my tour began at the very full Carpinteria State Beach campground on a Memorial Day weekend Sunday. I had a short ride planned that day to the Amtrak station …