I proposed to Eric that we alternate the self-contained touring that I preferred with the "credit-card touring" that he preferred. He made the alternative proposal that we only do self-contained touring in prime-numbered years. I said I thought that 2017 was a prime-numbered year, but that I didn't want to try to factor it.
Even without taking time for showers or bathroom troubles, it still took us until about 7:20 to strike camp and hit the road. We just can't seem to overcome that three hours.
This is where one of the least pleasant parts of the trip happened. We were approaching a huge dip in the road with a long hill afterward, and I was ahead. Eric saw some cute dogs by the side of the road. He was shouting to me to stop, but I thought he was just petting the dogs and decided to stop at the top of the hill. Turns out he was trying to tell me that there was a geocache at the bottom, one of very few out there for the day, but I couldn't hear that. All I got was that, after I climbed the whole hill, he now wanted me to come back down. I rode back to him, frustrated, and stopped by the side of the road across from him to try to figure out why he'd called me back. Now, we'd been on this remote road for over 50 km at this point, and I think once in all the hours we'd spent, we saw two cars passing us in opposite directions at the same time. Unfortunately, this circumstance arose for a second time at the exact moment that we were standing across the street from each other. The driver on Eric's side, a man in a pickup, paused to yell at him, "Do you always stop in the middle of the fucking road?" Who was stopping in the middle of the road? Us, by the side of the road, or him?
This is where I'm going to take the risk of getting up on my high horse. I had been lying awake at night feeling angry about an opinion piece by annoying columnist C.W. Nevius of the once-proud, now fear-mongering, San Francisco Chronicle. Nevius had recently written that both motorists and cyclists needed to tone down their anger and rhetoric. This false equivalence was quite bothering me, and now it was clear why.
This is a routine experience for cyclists. If you think it isn't, I suggest you try riding along Grizzly Peak/Skyline around the Berkeley/Oakland border, around Tunnel Road or Claremont Avenue, around sunset on a Saturday night. If you're a man, I suggest riding behind a woman, far enough behind her that people will think she's alone. Watch how drivers treat her. And it's not just yelling. Worse are the people who think it's hilarious to fake that they're going to run into bicyclists. When motorists get yelled at by other motorists the same way cyclists get yelled at by motorists, then C.W. Nevius will be right. Such callous disregard for one's fellow human beings should not be tolerated.
We tried to put that unpleasantness behind us and look for the cache. We walked though a cow pasture, not at all sure we were in the right place. It finally became apparent that the cache was up on a hill, while we were down at the bottom. We decided just to skip it and get back on the road.
As was the case with Sunday, there would only be one opportunity to resupply all day. Unfortunately, that opportunity was located only about 10 km from our starting point, in the tiny town of Petrolia. I said that we should refill our water in Petrolia. Eric feared that the weight of extra water would bog us down on "The Wall" and "The Endless Hill." It turned out to be fortunate, later, that I prevailed in this argument.
We arrived in Petrolia before the store even opened! We got there at 8:50, and the sign on the door said they would open for the holiday at 9:00. If it hadn't been for the geocaching delay, it would have been tempting to skip the store and eat car snacks all day. But since it was only ten minutes, we sat down on a bench outside the door and got a whiff of Petrolia.
And I do mean a whiff. As we waited, several cars pulled up, and other people sat there waiting for the store to open. One young redheaded guy drove up in a beat-up Volvo. He got out of his car and was talking to a couple of women in a pickup truck. He pulled out of his pocket what I first thought was a cigarillo, and one of the women gave him a light. It turned out to be marijuana! I've lived in Berkeley for 13 years, and I've never seen anyone with a joint that size. And don't forget that it wasn't even 9:00 yet. Once again, Humboldt County lived up to its reputation. I began to suspect that everyone around us was stoned all the time.
One bearded guy who wasn't smoking (at least yet) came over to talk to us. We talked about the hills we were about to climb and he said, "You'll find out what you're made of!" I liked that.
The store finally opened a few minutes after 9:00. The owner showed up with a cute German Shepherd. We had some tortillas from the day before, so Eric got us more turkey and cheese to put on them. No avocado, but the turkey was freshly cut rather than packaged this time. We also added a liter of water to our bottles, topping them off. I noticed a doggy water bowl just outside the door to the store. It had two unlit joints resting on the edge of it. I decided it would be impolitic to take a picture.
As it turned out, we found that Mattole Beach Camp was off to the south, and thus would have represented a detour. It was better for many reasons that we had stayed at Arthur Way. This meant, however, that Petrolia was the very last place to fill our water bottles.
The next 10 km or so would be along the Pacific Ocean, perhaps even more scenic than the Avenue of the Giants.
This was where we at last ran into trouble. I stopped to take a picture, and when I tried to get going again, I couldn't turn the cranks. It was as if I were in much too high a gear. Fortunately, I stopped and looked down before I forced the cranks to turn very far.
"May this be the worst problem we have on this trip," I said.
We looked for a cache right after that, but couldn't find it.
I remarked that we weren't seeing any marine mammals. Eric pointed out that they must have had the day off for Labor Day.
Lonely Planet had told us to expect a lot of wind on the beach, but it wasn't bad. For once, we gained some time.
"That's it?" I said? Frommer's had told me to expect a one-mile-long 18% grade. The scared me, because we had trained ourselves to ride with the gear up a one-mile-long 12% grade. I had been afraid that the ride would be half again as steep as our training road. But this certainly didn't look any steeper than Moeser.
One of the cyclists we had talked to along the way had told us that only the first two turns or so of the Wall were really steep. This turned out to be correct. We stopped for a rest on the approach to the second curve. Suddenly, Eric warned me not to move my tires off the road.
We were not 100% sure that this was the same plant, but it certainly closely resembled the picture in my electronic Audubon Guide app. It was annoying not to be able to get completely off the road while resting, but we certainly couldn't risk getting our tires anywhere near those thistles. As a precaution, Eric carefully checked all of our tires before moving on.
We climbed and climbed, resting frequently. But in only about an hour, we did it! We rode up the Wall! Lonely Planet had said that, "[e]ven the strongest cyclists" might walk up that hill. But we rode it! We may be far from the fastest, but we are the strongest!
Quite pleased with ourselves, we stopped for lunch. It was quite windy at the top of the bluff. It took both of us to prepare a wrap. The first tortilla we tried became a frisbee and flew to the ground. Eventually, with additional care, we managed to prepare a wrap for each of us.
Next, we flew down a hill that was even steeper than the one we climbed up. Almost as soon as I took off, I heard something drop, which turned out to be my front light. Apparently, with the bumps in the road, its mounting bracket had come unhooked. Fortunately, the light survived. I went a few more meters and heard another thing dropping off my bike, which turned out to be a Platypus bottle with our extra water. That did not survive the fall, but we were lucky to manage to rescue most of the water. We had to stop to cool off our rims (to save our brakes), and used a trick we learned from Ginny and Dave from Dave's Bike Shop in Ukiah--squirting a little bit of water onto the rims. I did one side of my rim, but couldn't reach the other on the steep downslope. Eric did that one plus both sides of his front wheel, and I complained that he was using a lot more water than I did.
This is where I began to feel cheated by the guidebook. While it had greatly exaggerated the difficulty of the Wall, it insufficiently described the steepness of the Endless Hill. The Endless Hill turned out to extremely front-loaded, with most of the elevation gain early on. While we had been promised 15.25 km to do a 578-meter climb, which is quite a gentle grade, instead, we found that, in the first 2 km, we had already climbed 233 meters! That, folks, is an 11.5% grade! (See how easy it is to calculate elevation gain in metric units?) While the ocean and Wall segments of the ride had taken less time than I anticipated, this section was taking quite a bit more.
About halfway through the linear distance of the Endless Hill, Eric suddenly announced that he had tapped out his water supply. Now, this is highly unusual. Normally, I drink all the time and always need more water than I have. For him to run out of water before me was just crazy. I had a bottle that was about half full and gave that to him, but this forced me to conserve seriously. I did not like it. My mouth was parched and my voice got hoarse.
It quickly became apparent that, while Eric viewed the water problem as a problem of hill-climbing, and felt that we'd be OK once we got to the top, I viewed the water problem as a time problem, and felt that every minute we spent resting by the side of the road was one more minute of thirst until we got all the way to Ferndale. In other words, I viewed the downhill portion of the ride as a problem as well, since I drink even when I'm going downhill. I knew we would need to stop a couple of times on the downhill to cool our rims, and I was worried. Eric complained that he was bonking and needed to stop for a snack; I didn't dare put anything as dry as food in my mouth.
I started to feel like a military leader in a game of Battlestar Galactica. As a military leader, you periodically get a chance to make a space jump and have to choose between different jump destinations. Assuming you're not a Cylon, you want, on the one hand, to make bigger jumps that get you closer to Cobol. On the other hand, bigger jumps use up more fuel, and running out of fuel is a losing condition of the game. It would seem that the conservative course would be to make smaller jumps, but that's not actually the case, because you're also playing in a race against time. You might use less fuel with a smaller jump, but you'll be in the game longer, giving you more chances to run out of other resources, like food, morale, and population (which are also losing conditions), and also giving the Cylons more time to blow up your ships. So, I wanted to ride faster, which would cause more water-drinking in the short term, but be more likely to beat the long-term race against time. I told Eric what I was thinking, and he said, "Frakin' skinjob!"
We didn't talk to any other cyclists all day, but a passing motorcyclist stopped to say hello. He told us we were most of the way up the hill, but he didn't have any water. He was very nice and encouraging.
This part of the ride was not terribly steep and could have been quite enjoyable if not for the water problem. The inability to drink was taking all of the fun out of things.
We crested a hill, and I stopped just a bit downhill because I saw that Eric was not behind me. He was just out of sight around a curve, and I assumed he was taking a picture. He seemed to be taking a very long time to take a picture, though. I thought I had seen a dog and thought he might be petting it. Eventually, he reappeared, and handed me a full bottle of water. He had seen a house, and gone up to ask if he could get some water from the faucet on the side of the house. The woman had told him he could use the faucet on the barn. Apparently house faucets are too good for cyclists, but at least we got some water. Back to having fun!
We started the steep descent down the other side of the Endless Hill. It was fun, except for all the pits in the road. At one point, I bounced, and landed on loose gravel, and was quite uncomfortable with the amount of time it took to regain control of the bike on the poor surface. We had to stop and cool our rims again (by spending more time rather than using precious water), so that we could safely use the brakes more. Eric pointed out that Dave and Ginny had used that water technique for rim cooling only when they were practically home and had no more climbing to do. We had to stop a couple of times on the way down, but at least now we had water to drink.
Success!
We just can't tell you how proud of ourselves we are to have accomplished something like this. I am particularly proud to have accomplished it on a self-contained basis. If we can do this tour, we can do any tour. It's just a matter of getting time off of work. Nothing is beyond us! We can do it!
