Category: U.S. West Coast 2012

Despite all the horror stories, Delta Airlines chose not to destroy my bicycle, and only charged $150 for the carriage of the big cardboard box I’d picked up from a bike shop in Pasadena.

The sales assistant had been rude and grumpy — perhaps he’d had a bad night’s sleep. Or perhaps life as a bicycle salesman was beginning to wear thin; maybe (like almost everyone I’d met in the 8 days I’d been in L.A.) he’d arrived in the city nurturing dreams of fame and fortune in Hollywood, still introducing himself on social occasions in a well-practiced way as an up-and-coming actor or director or comedian — while trudging daily to a never-mentioned job in a retail store. 

With curiosity we steered off the asphalt at the top of a long climb on the road south of Honeydew. The track plunged down through dense forest, rocks and loose gravel shaking our bikes and bones, disc brakes squealing round sketchy hairpins, as the King Range Road wound its way down to the gushing creek in the depths of the valley, where an old concrete bridge had once been plonked.

After an impromptu and most welcome day off at Kathy and Dick’s house near Arcata (thanks Warmshowers!), we stocked up with 4 days’ worth of food supplies in Eureka and set off down the monotonous highway. The lands here were flat, but the skyline to the south suggested that a dramatic change was just ahead: the steep and tangled ridgelines of the Lost Coast.

If the northern half of the U.S. Pacific Coast had been one of timber trucks, small towns and persistent rains, the southern half would tell a very different tale.

I wasn’t sure how to bring up the subject. It seemed a thorny one, fraught with emotion. So I took the only approach I really knew, which was to speak my mind and deal with the consequences later.