57 mostly uphill miles ridden today to get to Patrick’s Point State Park for the night. The climb south out of Crescent City is one I’ve heard mentioned a few times as being memorable and I can confirm it certainly lived up to the hype. The upside was that my legs were ready, and the scenery just fantastic. Gigantic redwoods as far as the eye could see. None of those pitiful baby redwood trees that Oregon has. After the climb, and subsequent epic descent, while grabbing a snack met a northbound cyclist who had started all the way down in Baja. In chatting I inquired about upcoming road closures from mudslides. The main one I was worried about is just south of Big Sur, and while the road is closed until September it’s still passable by bicycle. The road is “safe”, but you have to wait until the guards leave in the evening or you’ll be stopped. Good intel I can put to use in a couple of weeks!
As I gained a total of 4,000 feet of elevation today there was another huge climb up next. Grinning like an idiot flying down the other side I heard an odd noise and wondered what kind of bird it was coming from. When the sound was still present after a couple of miles I looked down and saw my rear tire was almost entirely flat. After patching it on the side of the road I discovered I had brought along with me the biggest piece of shit bike pump on earth. It took over 10 minutes to get the tire up to an acceptable PSI level. A dude from Germany on a motorcycle pulled over and said he had a compressor, but there was no way to adapt it to the Presta valve of the bike tube. Nice guy though, and I enjoyed hearing about his 10k kilometer journey through the US and Canada. After getting the tire back on it was nearing 3 o’clock and I had about 30 miles left to go to get to camp. Kind of a later arrival than I wanted, but the campsite tonight was only $5 and is situated right by the ocean.
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