Day 58: Pave America with bike trails (Cedar Falls to Cedar Rapids)

Woke up feeling fresh this morning, stomach seems to be all healed up. John made us Scottish oatmeal with raisins and vanilla almond milk with a touch of honey. Plus the best coffee we've had this trip. Well. I've had. Rachel's cutting her addiction loose and reverting to tea.

Goodbye goodbye!

Goodbye's are always bittersweet and this one especially so. Naomi and John took such good care of us, so that while this could have been an extraordinarily low couple of days, it wasn't. Instead it was a treat to spend an extra day in a house full of art, adventure, clean sheets and generous meals. But pedal on we must so off we went.

We rode bike trails along the Iowa river almost the whole way to Cedar Rapids. The first segment, to Waterloo, was all paved, green light filtering through the veil of cedars (I assume, I don't know trees) that bowed over the path. Every so often we caught a glimpse of the river, of an old man with a cap and his fishing rod, of a couple of happy kids out on boats. 

Construction blocked the bit of trail from Waterloo to Evanston, where we caught back up with it and rode an easy 20-something miles on a blacktop path through the riparian forest. The pavement gave way to gravel, then to dirt, sometimes totally grown over with grass, until 10 or 15 miles out from Cedar Rapids. Sometimes the mud got real sticky, catching the tires and making each pedal a slog. But for the most part, it was incredible to be off the road. One of the pieces of this trip I didn't really think through was that the best roads are often the most traveled.. or at least well traveled. So on a bike, we can only really access places you can access by car - until now. It looks like we're going to have trails almost clear to La Porte, Indiana, our next teaching spot. 

Day 18: Never want to give you up (somewhere in the desert to Burns)

Out of every kind of environment, deserts set me most at peace. They seem to absorb chaos and turn down the pace of life a little, each plant and animal balanced precisely in the scheme. And it's quiet, quieter than forests and oceans. (Except for the cars rumbling by). 

The Oregon outback is an especially full one: cows graze and wild antelope startle amid (relatively) dense shrubbery. It's not as open or sparse as Joshua tree or the Mojave. I prefer my deserts emptier, but still I took today slow. Watched a hawk for a long time floating up and forward on thermal currents, seemingly effortless looking, though I'm sure it was hunting. 

Just past the alkaline lake, I saw Rachel stopped ahead. The side of the road had just turned to sand dunes. Turns out, a lady we had found on couchsurfing but who hadn't responded in a couple of days recognized us. She was headed out of town, but offered her home as a place to stay, the key hidden in the yard so we could get in. It was one of the first - but definitely not last - moments of serendipity and kindness on this adventure. 

As I got closer and closer to the end of the desert, closer to water and to civilization, I slowed down even more. I was so reluctant to leave this place that I had been so afraid of. And three miles from the border I'm pedaling 7 miles an hour.. Half my usual speed.. And Rachel is ahead eating lunch at the one-building town at the border, and these frantic antelope bound past me on the outside of the barbed wire fence that lined the roads to keep the cows in. They looked ethereal and worried when they turned back to watch what I would do with my camera. I saw four antelope in the distance, behind the fence; no doubt these two were trying to rejoin the herd. 

Eventually hunger bested me and I met Rachel at the picnic benches in Riley, right below a big sign that says "woah you missed Riley". It's a two building town - the post office is across the street - so the self-deprivation was well-received.

Marc Delval, Riley just a smidgen in his roll around the world 

But then up rolls this older guy and he's got the telltale load, four bags and a sunburn, and he sees us and stops too. His name was Marc Delval and he was just a few months away from finishing a world tour. He didn't speak much English but he showed us a book with all the different tours and paths he'd taken. He reminded me of Peter Smokka, who I met and took on a bike ride and wrote a feature on at the Davis Enterprise. And now that I'm on this tour I am horrified I insisted on that bike ride. The last thing I want on my day off is to have to talk to someone for three hours *on my damn bicycle*. Oh well, live and let live.

The rest of the way was just shoulders filled from white line to dirt with rumble strips. So we had to ride in the road, and it was two-lane highway, lots of semis, hit it right and rush hour. I tried to listen to Startup but couldn't hear much.

At Kelly's house in Burns that night we tried to set up some hammocks but it rained. I got really homesick. Reminded me of summer camps wen I was little. I loved the idea of leaving home but hated being away from it. It hurts right in my primal gut. See I had three weeks at home before leaving and hadn't lived at home for years before and I'm leaving in a rush right after this for grad school and I love being home. So I cried a little and looked up flights from Boise and slept badly. 

Listening to: Startup 

Day 6: Take me to the candy shop (Yuba City to Chico)

I woke up before Rachel and slipped inside. Ashley poked up from the couch and Josh emerged from his nightrobe; I felt a little like St. Nick popping down a chimney to kids waiting under the Christmas tree. We held a pre-breakfast science lesson with the Sol Cycles. Ashley named the purple one Sunny, appropriately, and she had the bicycle moving in the weak 8 am light. She and her brothers are being homeschooled, so her assignment for the morning was to write an essay on it. Awesome! (Ashley, if you’re reading, we’d love to see it!)

After breakfast burritos, we rode out with Rick, their grandfather. He took us up Larkin road and talked a little about “world’s smallest mountain range,” the Sutter Buttes.

In Live Oak, we found Penny Candy. Sugar sugar sugar sugar baby.

Eventually we made it sixty miles to Sierra Nevada, the first in our brewery tour of America. Rachel conducted a solubility experiment, for science of course, comparing nitro and CO2 stouts (see right).

Big burgers, two tasters laster, we wandered over to the store to see if they had bike jerseys (they didn’t) and ran into their Earth Day celebration. They were showing “The Little Things,” a documentary about some environmentally-conscious? snowboarders. I can’t say I’d recommend it. There were a couple of stories that spoke to innovative ways to alter lifestyles and positively impact the earth, but mostly it felt like the director shopped around to a bunch of his/her friends and asked if they knew anyone doing something along Earth Day lines. Like there were a lot of "tiny house" examples. Eh, it was a free movie and there was free popcorn.

We hung out at the Naked Coffee Lounge for a while, propped our legs up on the tables and bit into the internet.

Our couchsurfing host, Raymahh, returned from Muay Thai class around 10:30; she had the whole set up going: mattresses and couches for us in the living room, which we took advantage of fast.

Day 2: Bike breaks down, car breaks down (Pt Reyes to Napa)

Quails are probably named as such because, man, they coo a racket in the morning. They were up collecting worms and running the kingdom long before the alarm (California, by The Kooks, set for an ambitious 7 am). We inched ourselves out of our warm sleeping bags and started packing. I’d hoped to leave camp by 8:30 – my dad had arranged to meet us at 9 to bike to Napa – but what with hardboiling eggs and the fog, not to mention the friends and the coffee and Rachel’s front rack falling off, we didn’t get out ‘til 9:30.

I was definitely feeling frustrated. Rachel and I have traveled before, and we’re close friends, but she hadn’t slept much in the days before we left, which made the leaving/organizing haphazard. So I was feeling a lot like a mom being taken for granted, neither of which are healthy for three-months of constant companionship. We’re in this for the long haul though, so we talked on the trail once we broke camp (Incidentally, the trail was beautiful when it wasn’t pitch black and uphill and at the end of a 3400 foot-elevation-gain day).

Because for the duration of these three months, we’re married, in it for the long haul, the good, the bad, the ugly, the stinky.

And there’s guaranteed to be lot of the first and the last (we oughta bottle the smell of our socks; like these are chemical weapons), so it’s just figuring out how to minimize the middle stuff and as with any partnership, it’ll take some work and getting used to.

Eventually, we made our way down to my pops in the Bear Valley Visitor Parking lot. Rach loaded her bike into the Prius – my mama was going to take her to Napa to get her rack mended or replaced, since it failed two separate times on Friday.

At the visitors center, the babies are confused. I think in the world they’re carefully learning, we fail to fit any object categories … we look like human buffalos.

For a hot minute, the bikes worked and the Prius failed, but a quick call to AAA scared the transmission into action and Rachel and my mom were on their way.

My dad and I took to the Pt. Reyes-Petaluma road, and it’s a gorgeous ride that’s chivalrous to mind and body. The hills roll with grass that’s somehow still green, the reservoir is somehow still full, the hawks circle by the dozens, their great big wings stretched out like a morning yawn.

But man man man my legs were on fire and just tired from the mountain before, and the hills were high and tall and each crest, that flat bit right as the parabola turns over, like the softest red carpet welcome.

Meanwhile in Racheland:

Jan, Liz's mom, was so sweet and offered to drive me to hunt for a new front rack. I figured it was worth it -- I had felt incredibly unstable on my bike yesterday with my cheap Racktime rack (what time is it? NOT Racktime, but rather it's time to invest in a hurdy gurdy front rack.) Or, as I joked about seven too many times, it was time to go get myself a "nice rack." I was also feeling really overwhelmed and unprepared from yesterday, and so it was nice to have some time to pick up some of the things I'd forgotten.

So we zipped car-speed to Petaluma to prowl the bike shops. First stop: Bruce Gordon's Cycles, a fancy custom bike shop known for their, well, nice racks. What followed was a fat slap in the face. We met Bruce in the parking lot of his shop. He told us it would take several days to get a rack ready, and painted, and that we had "no chance" of finding one anywhere else on this short notice. That's about when he poked his head into the car, took a look at my bike, and LAUGHED. CHORTLED even. "China, huh?" he said, and then something along the lines of "cheap shit." He then began the long list of things wrong with my bike and why it was too crappy to take me across the country. I told him I'm a scientist and fresh outta college and I don't make enough money for a custom carbon frame bike, and that this was going to have to do (sidenote: my Jamis Aurora is the best bike I've ever owned, I bought it new after my old one was stolen in Berkeley and it's probably the most expensive thing I've ever bought). The last thing he said, which he repeated several times, was cemented in my memory. "I feel sorry for you," shaking his head. Gee, thanks Bruce! I can't wait to send him a postcard from New York in three months.

We tried a few more shop, but nada. So I called ahead, and arranged to pick one up when we got to Sacramento. Problem solved!

And back to Lizland:

We made it to Petaluma by 3 and ravaged meaty sandwiches from the deli. Then we clown-car piled three bikes, 17 bags and 4 adults into the family Prius and booked it to Napa, where we were staying with our first couchsurfing host. She took us in, greasy hands and stained jerseys and all, and then drove us to meet my parents for dinner.

Josh and Jenn joined us for an Italian feast accompanied by an 80’s-covers rock-and-roll band, complete with a digital drumset. Helped make that goodbye good.