2014 Reno to the California Coast

Day 0, June 1, travel logistics

The day began at Len’s place in Lafayette.  I grew up in the area from time before memory until the ninth grade when my family returned to Berkeley, my birthplace.  We picked up Toby in El Dorado Hills where I lived for 2 years while finishing pathology training at UC Davis.  Then on to Reno.  We met Joe and Pat for dinner that evening at the Washoe Grill.

An arrowhead display in the Washoe Grill, assembled by a UNR historian, tells the story of the last 10,000 years in the Washoe Valley.  The apparent disappearance of man and wildlife in the Washoe Valley for a considerable period of time is ascribed to a massive eruption of Mount Mazama about 6850 years ago (one of the largest eruptions of the last 10,000 years). What is now Crater Lake, is the remnant of the Mount Mazama caldera. Mazama was reduced in height from about 12,000 feet to about 8200 feet as we see it today.  Reviewing what is known of the distribution of ash from the eruption indicates that it did not reach as far south as the Washoe Valley.  Time to go back to the Washoe Grill and give the display further study.

Photos for the entire trip are posted in the Picasa Web Album (link on Blog home page upper right).

Day 56 and thereafter - the ride has just begun

Day 56 (28 Sep 09) The Days After - Final Thoughts

From Len:

As I walk through JFK airport to catch a flight to Oakland, CA I am in cultural shock. All these people, all these handbags on sale, all this activity. The ride was a gift. It is a good way to see the US and a good way to see yourself. Lots of small towns, lots of variation (except for the incessant blather of Fox “News” in hotel breakfast areas).

How did two and then three 60+ year old men get along in close quarters all this time? I am sure we all had our own quirks and habits, but we knew that we had to ride. Ride we did. Averaged 80 miles a day through thick and thin. I am thankful for traveling with Jim; for his thoughtfulness and solid as a rock riding and planning. I am thankful for Toby coming and putting up with our drive born of a prior 3,000 miles of riding, and adding his element to the mix. I wished that more of our riding friends could have joined us and experienced such a ride.

I am thankful to my family for supporting and allowing me to take the time.

Now I have to re-learn how NOT to eat when ever I see food.

From Jim:

The transition from the intense microcosm of the ride to a more normal routine has been eased by staying in New Hampshire on a beautiful little lake and no need to interact with modern civilization. Tomorrow I will engage former medical school classmates at a 40^th reunion of Dartmouth Medical School. What will that be like? I have come to that reunion by a unique route: a cross country bike ride starting on the Pacific coast on the Olympic Peninsula of the state of Washington and ending in Bar Harbor Maine. I made the trip with a close friend with whom I have been riding for many years. We ride at the same pace and have compatible personal habits, both requirements for a trip that would last 55 days. Len has been a great riding companion; there a very few others, if any, with whom I would attempt such a two person adventure.

We began planning the trip about two years ago. This particular time was chosen to coincide with my retirement from the practice of pathology and because we were both still in excellent physical condition. In addition, for me, it was an opportunity to plan and prepare for a complex trip, thereby “easing” into retirement.

There were many challenges related mainly to weather and mechanical bicycle problems - the later requiring a call to Len’s bike mechanic in California to tell us how to adjust my rear wheel so I could continue to ride safely after breaking a spoke that we couldn‘t replace without a special tool. The nearest bike shop was 150 miles away. Just one of the things we take for granted at home and that just aren’t available in the middle of North Dakota or as it turned out in much of the country through which we traveled.

I hadn’t previously seen most of the country through which we have ridden and much of it has been spectacular. Your view from a bicycle cannot be duplicated by any other mode of travel. The people we have encountered along the way have been interesting and always friendly. Dan, President of the Clam Lake WI ATV club and self-appointed mayor of Clam Lake has been the most colorful and Truman Johnson of Bay City MI a close second. I will not forget them. We have religiously maintained a blog telling of our experiences along the way and the entire photo album is annotated thus, reinforcing the memories. My wife, Bev has been incredibly supportive despite the long separation. Boundless is my gratitude to Len and to Toby for making this a life-shaping experience. It has been an incredible journey.

From Toby:

My last memory of Maine turned out to be a demonstration of the truth a new friend, Gerry, expressed about Maine a couple of days earlier. During the first part of the ride on the last day, I saw various people returning from church to pound anti-gay marriage signs into their lawns. However, as I was grinding up a very steep hill outside of Bucksport in a vigorous rain, a woman in an old beater of a car rolled down her window as I was crossing (blocking?) the intersection where she was stopped and asked, "Would you like some hot soup." While I declined, the point was made - like most Americans, many people in Maine have dislikes of various groups in the abstract, but when they encounter someone in adversity, they have no hesitation in stepping up and helping if they can. While some think America is changing for the worse, I would offer that DeToqueville, in chronicling his travels in America in the 1830's, offered exactly the same observation of the Americans he encountered in his day. What I thus took from the last day of our ride, was that for all of its faults, what a great country this is.

Day 55 Rockport to Bar Harbor

Day 55 (27 Sep 09) Rockport to Bar Harbor 78 miles

On our last day, we woke to find that, despite all forecasts, we were lucky - the forecasted rain hadn't started. Of course, immediately upon mounting our bikes in the parking lot of the hotel in Rockport (our second stay in a place called Rockport and a near match to a third, Brockport), the rain started, gently at first and then with vigor. The forecast promised an inch of rain (the residual of the same storm that inundated Atlanta). This could be an epic day, but Bev saves us by carrying most of our gear. We just have emergency gear, spare tires, tubes, tools, extra clothing.

So we begin with a grade 1 mist (according to the scale developed on day 2 [a long time ago!], Sequim to Anacortes, WA). In anticipation of heavier precipitation, we put on the rain gear and pedal with thoughts swirling in our heads as the wind and rain swirl in our faces.

The ride itself proved a repetition of the previous day - Maine is a series of low hills, which on the back roads we were taking, meant an uphill, often with a punishing grade thrown in, followed by a short steep descent, which was then instantly and interminably repeated. As we rode the first 40 miles in this fashion, the rain increased, maximizing(?) our riding pleasure. Then, as we rode through Searsport ME, two things happened that provided us with a joint epiphany. Jim picked up a glass fragment from the wet pavement and we change our final flat tire. The spokes on his rear wheel have gone three days without a break (after riding 32 days and nearly 2500 miles with one or more broken spokes); what’s another flat tire seen in that context? As we were stopped beside the road in the rain to fix it, it occurred to us that US 1, which we had ridden for the last few miles, would have much gentler grades and a much more direct route for the remainder of our ride than the route we were on. In short, we decided to utilize "the Wally Option": riding Highway 1 to the finish as opposed to the back routes on our map, thereby not only cutting out the punishing grades of the back roads but providing the added bonus of cutting 10 miles off our total ride. The genius of this decision was proven shortly thereafter, in that after the next 20 miles (on US 1), we outran the storm front, and the rain stopped. Of course, the added bonus was that the remainder of our ride also had manageable uphills. While some may castigate us as shirkers for this decision, we revel in our sagacity and ingenuity in the face of adversity.

We stop for lunch in Ellsworth. Hoping for something and someplace warm, we end up using the outdoor tables of a closed-on-Sunday coffee shop. Must have been a popular place, either that or we attracted interested customers. At least a dozen people tried the door, only to find it locked; should have been open with that many potential customers. They never said anything to us; wonder why?. By the time we finished, Toby was cold (a novelty) and the rain had stopped. The sky remained cloud-filled, but without rain.

When we finally see the road sign for Bar Harbor, it feels so surreal; hard to define. This has been a goal for 52 days of riding and now its here. I (Leonard) feel a thankfulness for the safe 4,200 miles in dealing with traffic, bees, grasshopper sex, broken spokes, wet cement, a visit to a Canadian emergency room, brutal headwinds, flats, customs, blow out, sand on sharp corners, blind curves, downhill plunges on bikes that weigh half as much as we do, suspicious food, RVs pulling BOTH an SUV and a boat trailer, pot holes, gravel/dirt roads. There could have been disasters, but there were none.

Bar Harbor is loaded with tourists’ shops and cruise boat people. I feel like I just landed on another planet, yet at one point in our journey, I observed that we must have looked like space invaders with wrap-around glasses hiding our eyes, rear view mirrors attached, streamlined helmets and body hugging, brightly colored spandex clothing.

We end with a dinner and wine at the Havana restaurant, but somehow the ending seems incomplete. Maybe because my thoughts are still jumbled.

Days 53 and 54 Bethel to Lewiston to Rockport

53 (25 Sep 09) Bethel to Lewiston 50 miles

We slept in - at least for us. Jackie was up early preparing a delicious breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, juice and coffee. I (Jim) awoke to the smell of cooking bacon - what a change from the last 50 days! We ate a relaxed breakfast and Gerry showed us his progress on his “man cave” in the basement - wonder why it’s down there? We said our goodbyes and thanked the Bells for their great hospitality.

We were off, this time down Paradise Drive, but into the wind again. Much to our surprise, as we turned on to Route 26 to head toward Lewiston, it became a tail wind and we nearly flew south. Despite a late start, we reached South Paris around 12:30 and decided to stop for lunch at a restaurant rather than doing our usual forage at a gas station convenience store. Jim spied Shaner’s Family Restaurant. The parking lot was full, always a good sign, so we stopped there. Lunch was unexpectedly good (guess the parking lot sign worked). The restaurant was full of senior citizens and we chatted with a few of the other patrons during lunch.

With a persistent tail wind we breezed into Lewiston for a stay at the only truly bedraggled Super 8 motel we encountered on the trip. We took a long walk to a not so good Thai restaurant (Toby’s iPhone told us 7 of 8 people who ate there and wrote a review thought it was good - so much for that source of information). Toby and I slept through a fight in the Super 8 hall between a 75 year old man and a 25 year old woman (age estimates provided by the night clerk at breakfast). Len said there were flying shoes and lots of execrable language. I was wearing my earplugs, a defensive maneuver when rooming with Toby, so never heard anything.

Anticipating a hilly ride, we started riding close to 7 AM.

Day 54 (26 Sep 09) Lewiston to Rockport 73 miles

It was brisk when we started out of Lewiston - record low of 30 degrees for September 26. After being passed by a parade of pickup trucks (at least 8 of them) towing variations on the ATV, we encountered little traffic leaving Lewiston. After crossing interstates 95 and 295, we reached Dresden Mills at mid-morning. Making our usual stop at a gas station convenience store, we encountered an unusual culinary fare: freshly homemade sandwiches and egg rolls provided by the Asian proprietress. It was on this particular morning that Toby discovered Len’s stealthy eating habits: before we were back on our bikes, Len had consumed his ostensible lunch - a problem to be solved later.

A bit of riding adventure was provided by a short cut down the Bog Road (unpaved) and across Rabbit Run Path - almost worse than the unpaved Bog Road by virtue of huge frost heaves and an “alligatored” surface. Toby breezed over the rough road on his Surly Long Haul Trucker (that really is what his bike is called) and Jim took it gingerly, afraid of breaking another spoke. Len suffered on his modified regular road bike with narrow, highly inflated tires.

We stopped for lunch by a small pond in the sun and out of the wind (it was still cold) on Route 1 after climbing a viciously steep hill in historic Waldoboro. Len solved his lack of lunch problem by visiting the restaurant next to the pond, returning with a bowl of hot clam chowder and a biscuit. He suffered jealous looks and comments from Jim and Toby.

With the exception of a lot more hills, the remainder of the ride into Rockport was relatively uneventful. We were joined by Jim’s wife Bev who drove over from her cabin on a small lake in New Hampshire near the Maine border. Following a glorious reunion, Toby and Bev drove to a nearby wine shop (more on that from Toby in the last day’s entry) where celebratory libations were purchased from a most entertaining shop owner. Finding that it would not be possible to eat out at a reasonable hour, we proceeded to a nearby Shaws for rotisserie chicken and cooked to order lobster among other things - stuff to go with the great wine selected by Toby. It was an early night in anticipation of what we thought was going to be a 90 plus mile ride into Bar Harbor, possibly with a lot of rain.

Days 48 to 52 Pulaski, NY to Bethel, ME and points between

Photo album will be updated tomorrow.

Day 48 (20 Sep 09) Pulaski to Inlet 88 miles

First frost this morning. Us on our bikes and the Amish going to church in a horse-drawn buggy are the only people on the road this early. Jim and I wave to the buggy and to our surprise we see two small hands with straw hats wave from the back of the buggy. Are these kids curious about these bike riders? Are they curious about the outside world? No doubt; they’re children.

We roll down and pedal up sharp hills in the Adirondacks. It’s still cold at 10:00 AM. There’s a snap to the air that we did not feel at back in August on the West Coast.

It’s another long day on the bike. We stopped in Old Forge for a rest and snack at a convenience store. Len found an Adirondack chair and collapsed there for awhile and Toby engaged a couple of taciturn local guys in conversation - mostly Toby talking.

There wasn’t much to Inlet, but the folks at the Inlet Marina Motel were really nice and Jamie, one of the owners, drove us a couple of miles down the road for one of the best dinners we had on the trip. Guess there’s lots of old money in the area, so a high end restaurant can make a go.

Day 49 (21 Sep 09) Inlet to Ticonderoga 97 miles

We leave in a cold fog. Lots of layers of clothing and thankful for the hill out of town to warm us up. Len’s nose drips like an old leaky faucet (he wrote this, not me). The Inlet Marina Motel is run by a young couple. She is a Jersey Girl who goes back to Jersey to have her babies. (Len, a Jersey boy hears the Jersey accent in a second.) Henry is a stone mason trying to build a business because the stone work is breaking his body. Jamie drives a huge yellow Ford 250 with “MomsRig” on the license plate. Nice place to stay. He is restoring 7 fire places in local “camp” owned by the heiress to the Chase Manhattan Bank founder.

Fall colors are just starting to appear in the hills. We climb most of the day and then there’s a fast decent to Ticonderoga, NY and Lake Champlain. On the way we met a couple from Modesto, CA who are touring on a tandem. They are taking 5 months to cross the US. They have stoppped and stayed at National Parks and visited relatives in Ohio. We all agree that the toughest part were the headwinds in North Dakota.

The day is warm, but you can feel the edge of cold coming out of the forest on the side of us. Winter is around the corner.

Day 50 (22 Sep 09) Ticonderoga to White River Junction, VT

The $2 ferry across Lake Champlain arrives just as we reach the dock. Addie B’s captain flies the Jamaican flag. The owner of the ferry hires Jamaican’s to pick apples. “They can pick 5 bushels a day,” according to the Capitan. He shaves his upper lip, but nothing else. He left his teeth at home.

It sprinkles of rain off an on (never enough to put on rain gear) most of the day and is very humid.

Once again we go up and down all morning on our way to Middlebury, VT. Len is seeking a replacement tire and we figure a college town will have a good bike shop. The bike shop was ok, but no luck with the tire. The owner advises us to take a different route than the one we planned because the road is better. It turns out to be about 14 miles longer, but takes us by Lake Dunsmore where Jim’s son James went to music camp for two summers. Despite the overcast skies, it’s a beautiful ride. Getting over the Green Mountains turns out to be a real killer, Brandon Gap with a 12%-18% grade. We cross VT in one day and end in White River Junction.

Road signs in VT give distances in 10ths of miles, unlike Minnesota. In Minnesota, if there were a sign for a town, there was no mileage. Most of the road signs were for the next Lutheran Church. Information certainly useful to Lutherans

Day 51 (23 Sep09) White River Junction to Moultonborough, NH 79 miles

We start with a short tour of Dartmouth College. Jim shows us the beautiful campus; it is the sort of place that us public school guys dream of when we trip over cracked sidewalks at our poorly funded schools.

Jim gets a flat just outside Plymouth, NH literally across the street from the Rhino Bike Shop. These guys know what they are doing and replace 6 spokes on Jim’s rear wheel (two were broken when the repair began and the other four broke as the wheel was trued). They tell us that the Baby Jesus must have been with us for the trip because the wheel was not intended for touring. Thank goodness we did not have a such a breakdown in North Dakota where there was no food, no place to stay and no bike shops for 100’s of miles.

Our advice: if you plan to do touring find a bike shop that sells you the right equipment.

We are about 100 miles from the Atlantic Ocean, but we will turn north to take the diagonal route to the Ocean at Bar Harbor, ME.

Day 52 (24 Sep 09) Moultonborough, NH to Bethel, ME 74 miles

Last night the lighting knocked out the power in Moultonborough, NH. The owner of Berry Pond Motel offered flashlights, but we all just decided to sleep. He was kind and drove us to the North End Restaurant for a great meal and entertainment provided by our waiter Charlie. I doubt that half of what Charlie told us was true, but he was a great story teller.

It is unusually warm for NH and ME we head into the wind for most of the day. Jim finds two more broken spokes as we leave the motel. We stop for a great breakfast at Rosie’s on route 16 near West Ossipe. We cross the Maine border near Freyburg and ask directions in the local bank. We are told by the bank teller that we can take the “wicked hard” route or the regular route. We opt to avoid wicked hard. Besides, the regular route takes us by the sign with directions to everywhere - photos are in the album.

What a gorgeous day as the weather front moves in lowering the humidity and the temperature. The trees are coloring the skyline with oranges, gold and reds.

At the end of the day, we opt for the “wicked hard” short route rather than the much easier long route to Gerry and Jackie Bell’s house in Bethel, ME. That last climb included bare ground at at 12% grade. That end of Paradise Drive is hardly paradise for a road bike rider loaded with 40 to 50 pounds of stuff. The view at the top is worth the pain of the climb. After a short, gentle downhill we encounter Gerry walking is dog, Dakota, along the road.

Gerry is a classmate of Jim’s who, many months before, graciously agreed to put us up for a night. Jackie prepared a fantastic dinner. It was a welcome respite from the endless nights of motels.

Days 46 and 47 Brockport to Fair Haven to Pulaski

Day 46 (18 Sep 09) Brockport to Fair Haven 99 miles

We continue on the plains of the Great Lakes and have the advantage of the canal trail for the first part of the ride. We know that we have a long day, and need an early start. However, despite Jim’s magic with the Internet it is difficult to find a place to stay. (Later we learn that it could be fall colors, tourists and a salmon run on the Salmon River that has places booked.)

The circular winds from Lake Ontario are blowing up to 20 mph sometimes in our faces, sometimes a quartering wind, but it seems never a good tail wind. The towns along the canal have downtowns influenced by the canal trade. As we approach Rochester we have to be careful to follow the correct canal trail because there is a confluence of the canal and the Genesse River. We pass along industrial areas of chemical plants, railroad yards and manufacturing plants.

As we follow the canal trail signs we end up on the campus of Nazarene College, where Jim comments that the tail signs, “just petered out.” We go in a circle and end up in Pittsford. Pittsford has incorporated the canal into its character by having barge trips and restaurants along the canal. With the wind at our back we end up in Palmyra quickly. Turning north we push against that 20 mph head wind.

A ride along Lake Ontario and we end up in Fair Haven just as darkness is settling in. Town and food is a mile away up a hill. Fortunately, Dan from Fair Haven Inn gives us a ride to town. Dan runs the hotel, has a Christmas tree farm, and moves to Lake Placid for the winter to coach bob sledding. Yes, he did coach the Jamaican bob sled team. The Jamaican bob sled team never made it to the bottom of the hill without crashing, but they had fast starts.

Day 47 (19 Sep 09) Fair Haven to Pulaski 52 miles

Only 50 miles we have time for a sit down breakfast. Maybe we will even have time to talk about our feelings.

At breakfast we meet a former Kodak engineer who worked on carbon fiber bikes for Lance Armstrong. He was consulted on the stresses on the headsets for carbon fiber bikes. He rode across the country several times on his motorcycle.

The chef pre-sold the oatmeal. He tells us he just had some. His wife is the waitress tells us that he samples the oatmeal too much. They live there all year round and the winters last one month too long.

The smell of apples accompanies us and we see the Hispanic pickers being shuttled to the orchards. We pedal through Mexico, NY turn on Route 3 to head to Port Ontario on the lake (Jim wanted to skip going to Texas (Texas, NY of course), having lived there for three years and not wanting to go back). Then to the Salmon River and the Pulaski Salmon Festival. Leonard is thinking about the salmon we will eat at the downtown festival when we arrive. Alas, its ½ chicken, salt potatoes and macaroni salad for $7 from the Lions Club and an elk burger for Jim. Later it is a rotisserie chicken in the Super 8 where we continue to talk about our feelings over dinner. We discovered we didn’t have any - well no more than one for each of the attorneys and maybe two for the pathologist doctor.

Days 44 and 45 Port Dover to Fort Erie to Brockport NY

Day 44 (16 Sep 09) Port Dover to Fort Erie 87 miles

On the road at dawn and we start by missing a turn. No problem. We stop to review the map on the last street that connects to the street we want - our luck is confirmed by a local passerby. And we’re off into the wind - later to find out that wind speeds were a sustained 15 mph with gusts to 23. Long day on the bikes.

On arrival in Fort Erie, we visited a nearby large supermarket to purchase a rotisserie chicken and sundries for dinner. A stop at the LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario - netting over a $ billion last year according to the clerk) netted a bottle of fine (well fairly expensive anyway) French wine. Typical of government run liquor stores, the selection was meager. We returned to the Comfort Inn to eat. When we asked for three paper plates, we were greeted with a complaint from the desk clerk that he would do it this time, but that if he did it for us, everyone would be asking for the same thing - there was no one else around. Three miserable paper plates! You’d have thought we asked for the keys to the city.

Day 45 (17 Sep 09) Fort Erie to Brockport 100 miles

Things were looking good until I (Jim) noticed that the zipper on one of my back panniers was partially open. While straddling my bike in the parking lot of the motel and trying to close the zipper, the handle bars turned and the front gear ring put a big divot in the lower part of my right leg. Off to the ER at the nearest hospital about a mile away. The Canadian health system in this case was far more efficient than any such encounter in the US would have been. I arrive a few minutes before 8 AM and was out by 9:30 AM having been sewn up. A quick trip to the local pharmacy for antibiotics and we were ready to go on a 100 mile bike ride including a crossing of the US Canadian border and a visit to the Canadian and Niagara Falls.

“After they put the 2 wires in my head and I dropped the blood clot I no longer had grand mal epilepsy,” said the white haired woman on the bike in front of the pharmacy. Jim was packing his ointment and antibiotics. She perfected the life story treatment in 5 minutes or less. Husband lost his 4 fingers in the laundry machine; she married him anyway and had 9 children. She pedals off. We know we are facing and epic ride by leaving late.

A fast push of 28 miles to Niagara Falls, Ontario; a quick view and lots of photos of Horseshoe Falls and Niagara Falls and we are pedaling to find the Lewiston Bridge to find our port of entry to the US. After a bit of wandering around and an extra six miles we figure out that the way across is through Canadian Customs. The US Customs Officers see out passports, ask questions about our bike ride and we are waived through.

We are running late, but stop at “Smokin Joe’s” smoke shop on the Tuscarora Indian Reservation doing a brisk business in smokes including to a woman who drives up, unhooks her oxygen tank, buys 2 cartons, re-hooks to oxygen and drives off.

We find the Erie Canal Bike Trail in Lockport and have a flat, dusty ride 40 miles to Brockport. The light is getting low and glows on the water. We will be arriving at the hotel at dusk. These towns along the Erie Canal have character influenced by the trading history of the canal now open to biking and boating. We can recommend that you take a look at riding/boating the canal with 500 miles of boating and 300 miles of biking.