Loving the Slo life in California

Posted on by Debs and Jo (brakesandcakes.org)

We sometimes don’t go to cities on the bikes because of the day required to ride in and the other to ride out. Leaving San Francisco was far more complicated than arriving, lots of navigating, morning rush hour traffic and a sudden scarcity of restrooms right when I really needed one. When we finally climbed out of the suburbs and up to a scenic drive there was an unwelcome diversion directing us back down the hill we had just ascended, to re-climb at a later point. With a big climb still to come (Old La Honda Road) we stepped up the pace as much as we could – we had a hostel treat to get to…
Jo is a big fan of lighthouses, and had been pleased to learn that there are two hostels in light-keepers’ quarters south of San Francisco. After a twisty descent, the last ten miles to Pigeon Point were along a beautiful stretch of coastline. The wind switched to the North and we zoomed along past beaches and rocky headlands. We were very excited to find an extremely comfortable sofa in the hostel (small things) and even more so to find out that the hostel manager is a stargazing enthusiast and would be setting his telescope up that evening.

Giant Jo, comedy genius.

If you have never had the opportunity to look at stars like that, seek one out. Ideally somewhere with a dark sky, a proper telescope and a person who knows a bit about it. We had all three. I have seen Saturn before, but it was no less wow-ing a second time, it looks like someone has drawn a cartoon planet with ring and stuck it on the end of the telescope. We also looked at some globular clusters (not a breakfast cereal for Star Trek fans), a galaxy that’s like ours, and Jeff used a super cool laser pointer to show us some constellations that we instantly forgot. Amazing.

A lazy morning and a speedy wind-assisted afternoon ride took us to Santa Cruz (you’re not that far). We spent most of the ride working out who sang that song. We were sure it started with a ‘The’. Two days later we got it. I won’t spoil the game for noughties music fans. Santa Cruz is a trendy town with a LOT of surfers. We took our cereal and milk down to the sea front to watch the action. I’m afraid that’s all the space it gets in this post though as nearby Carmel steals the show. Not because it is super fancy and historic, but because Carmel law states that a permit is required for high heels and you can actually get a permit from the town hall. Amazing. Sadly it is closed on Saturdays, so Jo was unable to don her stilettos for the ride. We settled for an apple fritter from Safeway instead.

Big Sur, bigger cake

South of Carmel the riding was fantastic. More weekend traffic than we would have liked, but stunning scenery through the Big Sur area. Huge forest fires nearby meant that state park campgrounds were housing firefighters, so we shared a pitch in a private campground with fellow cyclists Greg and Pete. We were next door to some lovely families on a weekend trip, and were very well fed with barbecued meat, refried beans, salad, beer and chocolate cake. Much more interesting than our usual pasta. It was a fun Saturday night and the amazing scenery continued for the next few days. We saw sea lions and funny looking elephant seals. We had possibly the best cycling of the USA, one of the best camp spots (Kirk Creek Forest Service), a few outdoor washes (a creek one night, the ocean the next) and only one more night of raccoon vandalism.

Carmel to Morro Bay: Possibly the best riding of the whole US.

We had been undecided about whether San Luis Obispo or LA would mark the end of our North America ride. As we sat by the sea in Morro Bay eating our first fish and chips since the San Juan Islands I became pretty sure I wanted these great days to be the end of the ride, not a busy dual carriageway into a city. This was cemented when our lovely host in SLO Rod told us about the train journey between the two. The train goes right along the ocean for a long stretch where the road is inland. We had a winner, and the end point of our 6500+ mile cycle.

This gave us almost a week to hang out in SLO, live out a few American dreams, and in my case recover from man flu. Back to the dreams. Since April we have cycled past a lot of signs advertising local pancake breakfasts, or fire station spaghetti nights, or church BBQs. They have always been tantalisingly unavailable, the breakfast is the second Sunday of the month, we are there on the Saturday for example. We had never managed to attend one of these ideal-for-hungry-cyclists events, a source of great sadness. Until Rod revealed that on the first Sunday of every month he cooks eggs at a local community centre’s pancake breakfast. That Sunday! We just hoped they had enough batter and bacon for hungry cyclists…
Whilst waiting for our pancake treat there was time for a fabulous All-American Friday night at the local high school football game. It was just like a movie or TV show. Everyone stood for the anthem. There really were cheerleaders. There was a marching band. And a giant inflatable tiger. There were even more people involved in the overall show than there are on an American football team and lots of students and parents had come to watch. It was a magical experience.

Biking, hiking and living dreams

Pancake breakfast was also totally fabulous, and we were sad to say goodbye to SLO early on Monday morning. The train journey was spectacular and gave us a hassle-free arrival into central LA. We had a few tasks to complete before our flight, beginning with locating some Chinese shopping bags to check our panniers in. We had tried to get some in SLO, they are pretty ubiquitous (we got the last ones in Hinckley) but no one seemed to know what we meant. We started showing photos, which drew the comment “They’re a bit ethnic. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s not very ethnic here.” Anyway, we thought Chinatown in LA would be a safe bet, and we had our very own ‘The Apprentice Shopping Task’ moment as we cycled around the streets: “I’ve seen them, turn round!” Lord Sugar would have been disappointed that we did not negotiate and paid the full price of $5 for two bags.


This gave us time to seek out the Hollywood sign and look at some stars on the floor as we rode to our hosts’ house. Tony and Cathy’s help and a friendly bike shop made our pre-flight prep very easy. We enjoyed our last two days of understanding language and (most of) what was going on around us. With the upcoming election we did slightly have the feeling of leaving at the right time, and to be going to a completely new and very different country was exciting. There would definitely be some things we would miss about being in the USA. It is such a fun place to travel – has amazing scenery, friendly people, does such a great job of being American, and has very entertaining veterinary signs. Here’s our favourites to sign off…

A poem for your dog: Roses are grey, violets are grey.

Neutering your pet makes them less nuts.

Your pets will love us, I shitszu not.
Thanks to: The All-American Veterinary Sign Writers’ Association (if it doesn’t exist, it should, people need recognition for quality work); Ruth & Edward; Jeff at Pigeon Point; Esther; Greg & Pete for great company; Roy, Frank and the rest of the Santa Ana camping crew; Rod, Helen & Casey; Helen’s Bikes, Westwood; Tony & Cathy.

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Tall trees and tent invaders: Cycling in Northern California

Posted on by Debs and Jo (brakesandcakes.org)

Usually there’s not much of a change as you cross state lines in the USA, but California felt different. It looked different. The land was brown rather than green. It was dry out here, and hard to believe that just a few days ago we had been pedalling through heavy rain and fog. At least crossing the state lane provided us with plenty of new tunes for the internal radio. Our first night was spent sleeping in a church in Crescent City, and from there the highway turned inland into one of California’s most famous parks – where there would be plenty of trees – the Redwoods.

Redwood trees are tallest trees on earth, and can grow to over 350 feet (over 100m). They can live for over 2000 years. These trees are seriously big – they hurt your neck to look at them while riding. They don’t have low branches, so the trunks seem even taller. The first thing we had to do was ride a big pass, it was hot but the trees provided good shade and kept things cool for us. We met some interesting people that morning. First, at the start of the climb, was a guy who told us with great pride how he had driven all the way from Pennsylvania. Sure, that’s a long way, but when all you have to do is press one pedal at a time (highly unlikely to need a clutch over here) and stay awake, you are not going to impress people who have cycled that far. He also said he loved hugging trees. The second interesting meet was about half way up the climb, we could see a bike ahead with two people stood to the side. When we got closer (slowly, it was steep) we realised it was a tandem, but the two people didn’t look like cyclists. Gradually we could see they had on jeans and backpacks and were smoking. Not your average cycle tourist. They were finding the hill tough. I said “it must be fun downhill though?” to which they replied “I dunno, we haven’t ridden down one yet!” It turned out they had hitched/walked from Missouri (this is a long way, we were impressed this time) and on arrival in Crescent City someone had given them a tandem. So the first thing they had had to do was ride up a huge hill. Bad luck. We said they should probably check the brakes before riding down. They laughed. We repeated this several times, without laughing, and left unsure as whether they knew if the bike even had brakes. Hopefully they survived. On the way down the hill we met a guy riding North (this is very rare) who was carrying everything he owned, including a large knife strapped to his shin. On the the outside of his trousers. Just in case I guess. What was this place?!

It is all about the trees in this part of California. The first place we found to stop for water was a complex with three buildings: Trees of Mystery, Forest Cafe, and Motel Trees. We passed the Immortal Tree (survived lightening, fires, etc), Chimney Tree (hole in the top), Grandfather Tree (old), Big Tree (this made us laugh), two Tree Houses, One Log House… Pretty much anything you could wish for, as long as it was a tree. None of these grabbed our attention until we saw signs for the Tour-Thru Tree. We paid our dollar each to the lady in the booth who told us the road up to the tree was steep and she GUARANTEED we would have to push our bikes the last bit. I heard the word CHALLENGE instead, so of course we rode up. It was steep, but there were no cobbles or gravel – give us a real challenge California. Riding through a tree was fun the first few times, and then it was just as fun watching car drivers try to squeeze their huge vehicles through. We told Ms Cyclist Challenger on the way out that we rode up, did we get a prize etc, and she was very unimpressed. I mean it’s not like we drove there from Pennsylvania.

That night we camped at a state park and were the only people in the hiker/biker site that was miles from anywhere else so quite creepy. We set up camp and watched the Great British Bake Off in the tent (like you do) and then came out to find a raccoon had eaten half of our biscuits and chucked the rest all over the floor. Evil. Why would you waste biscuits like that? This mindless vandalism continued in the night as I was woken up several times by rustling in the tent porch. Each time, I shone the torch on the raccoon which he did not care for in the slightest, staring back at me whilst trying to pull a non-food bag out of the tent. Other times his partner in crime the skunk would wake me. I say me – Debs remained asleep throughout all of this. In the end the only way I could get them to leave the tent was to throw a shoe at them, which worked four times until I ran out of missiles. I was finally getting a bit of decent sleep until it was broken by shouting outside the tent at 6.40am. A college cross country race was passing right by our camp spot and they HAD to set up that early, using very loud voices despite the obvious sign (a tent) that someone was trying to sleep close by.

We only had 25 miles to ride that day but it felt like 100. We were taking up an invitation to stay in Arcata by a family we met in the San Juan Islands. They lived at the top of a huge hill (of course) and on the way up we stopped at a yard sale where some ladies were selling lots of stuff we were not interested in but also had a plate of muffins that we were very interested in. They tried their hardest to offload some books on us and were disappointed to hear that we only wanted muffins, but gave us four anyway as well as a bunch of dried lavender. As we rode off we heard one of them say “look at her leg muscles” and we spent the rest of the ride arguing which one of us they were talking about. Debs has no muscles but was closest to them at the time, so it’s still an unsolved mystery. The 25 miles were completed by early afternoon so we had time for a few hours at the brewery drinking strong local beer in English sized pints.

After a rest day in Arcata it was back into the redwoods for a couple of days. The Avenue of the Giants is a scenic drive through trees so close to the edge of the road that you have to be careful not to ride into them. It really is mesmerising riding through the forest, it makes you feel very small. Not just feel small actually, I enjoyed letting Debs ride ahead of me and see how small she looked when dwarfed by the redwoods. We camped in the state park right among the trees and didn’t see much sunlight for a couple of days. After a particularly brutal pass we suddenly popped out on the coast again, blinded by the sun and instantly amazed by how good the coastal scenery was. So good we had chocolate milk to celebrate.

To rejoin the coast we had left highway 101 behind and forked off onto smaller highway 1. This made a big difference in the amount of traffic squeezing past us as the big trucks stuck to the bigger highway and for the next three days to San Francisco we had the best coastal stretch so far. The road climbs and then drops suddenly to get around a gulch (why not just build a bridge over the gap…. anyway) then climbs again, and repeat. Steep up, steep down. One morning there was a fair amount of fog so we didn’t get any rewarding views for the effort, but on the whole the sun shone and the sea sparkled. We called into Glass Beach in Fort Bragg, where industrial waste was dumped into the sea up until the 1960s. A lot of it was cleaned up but the glass and pottery was left and has been broken down and smoothed by the waves so that now the beach is covered with “glass” pebbles. Pretty cool. As we got closer to San Francisco more and more sports cars passed us and the small towns we passed through became more and more posh. This was the California we were expecting.

Eventually the Golden Gate Bridge emerged on the horizon. The sky was so blue that it seemed to shine against the background. Reaching the iconic bridge felt more momentous than any of the milestones to this point. It has a bike path down the side so for once we didn’t have to fight traffic for space. Unfortunately being a Sunday we had to fight other cyclists instead. These came from two camps – the roadies trying to race across and weave in and out of the slower traffic, and the tourists on rental bikes trying to ride and take selfies at the same time. And then there was us with our wide loads. I’m not sure whether it’s more difficult to dodge truck wing mirrors or selfie sticks – at least wing mirrors follow a predictable pattern of movement. But we made it across safely and into San Francisco.

For two and a half days we left the bikes in the garage and wandered around the Mission neighbourhood where we were staying. It’s a diverse area with Latino bakeries next to posh coffee shops, and alleys full of street art/graffiti (delete as appropriate depending on your perspective. We thought it was cool.)


We sat in Dolores Park, enjoying the view of the city and the people watching. We were close to the Castro neighbourhood, famous for a history of LGBT activism, so joined a walking tour of the area (‘rest day’…).


We had managed to go the whole last five and a half months without going to an American sports fixture so took the opportunity to watch some baseball over in Oakland. It was a Monday night at the end of the season so there was hardly anyone there but it meant we got good cheap tickets. The teams repaid the low crowd with a low score (4-2 loss) and it was difficult to stay awake for the whole match, but we managed. My tv-influenced image of drinking beer and eating pretzels while watching the game was shattered when we saw the prices – $11.50 for a beer (not even an English sized pint), so currently about £9. How do people afford to get drunk there? Despite the low score it was fun to experience a true American Sporting Spectacle.

San Francisco is a cool city, no doubt about it, but walking around you also can’t help but see it’s ugly side – the high level of homelessness. We walked through streets where the sidewalk was lined with tents and people sleeping rough, and along with this comes sanitation issues. Trash/rubbish covered these streets and as you can imagine when people live in tents with no toilet, it didn’t smell great. Homelessness has been very visible as we have ridden down the west coast, more so than any developed country I’ve ever been to, but in San Francisco the gap between the rich and the poor appears to be bigger. Homeless people sit outside expensive whole food shops and cafes, and the tech money pouring into the city is evident in the miles of shiny apartment blocks we rode past on our way out of the city. Our hosts explained that affordable housing is little more than a dream concept and the gentrification of neighbourhoods is driving people out of the city or onto the streets. All of this gave us much food for thought whilst riding out of the city in our own strange situation of self-selected, temporary homelessness.

We had been told many times that the best of the coast was coming up in the next few days, so thought about this instead and hoped for clear skies and a tail wind…

Thanks to Katie; Allison, Ryan and Arwen; the yard sale ladies of Arcata; Judy; Mark; and Ruth and Edward.

We(s)t coast blues

Posted on by Debs and Jo (brakesandcakes.org)

After weeks of endless sunshine and blue sky, our weather fortune finally changed in Oregon. It rained. A lot. When it wasn’t raining there was usually a heavy sea fog that blocked any chance of ocean views. We spent a week camping every night in state parks, and waking up to and packing up in the rain was slow, tiring and annoying. People had been telling us for ages that the Oregon coast was the best bit, with great scenery and camping, and the weather was making this the least enjoyable stretch for us. It reminded us of miserable days in England where it stays grey all day. This was Orengland. We weren’t finding the people as openly friendly either – there are so many cyclists on this route we are just two of many. The towns we rode through were mostly drab, unappealing strips of stores. Add to this an increasingly busy road full of large trucks towing even larger trailers and the cycling blues started to hit a bit.

The Oregon coastline is over 350 miles long and quite unique in the USA in that most of it is state owned and therefore publicly accessible. The coastline is dotted with state parks, wide beaches, lighthouses and cliff walks. All state parks with camping have specific sites for hikers and bikers at a cheap rate. Again people had raved about how great these are – maybe (likely) the weather impacted our perspective but we weren’t that excited by them as mostly the hiker/biker site is a small and not particularly flat area stuck at the back of the campground furthest from the ocean, the showers and anything else you might need. One exception to this was Cape Lookout state park, where we could fall to sleep to the sound of the waves and walk from the back of our biker site to the sea in less than a minute. That evening we cooked dinner on the beach on a rare clear evening as the sun set and Oregon was starting to impress us. Unfortunately the next morning Orengland was back – the rain was heavy until lunchtime so we hid under a shelter and ate porridge until it slowed enough to pack away and hit the rainy road.


Some days the cloud would break mid- or late-afternoon and treat us to some blue skies, but even this just seemed to be a tease – “hey look how great Oregon looks in the sunshine! Bad luck that you don’t get to see it often! Ha!” At least we got to see bits of the famous coastline, and it is pretty nice indeed. Rocky bluffs, steep cliffs, big waves, and we even saw some grey whales splashing about off the coast. We also rode past the supposedly “world’s shortest river” and “world’s smallest harbour”. I say supposedly because there is a habit of assuming that if they are the smallest (or biggest, tallest, etc) in the USA then by default they must also be the smallest in the world…


After a week of us and all our kit being soggy – it was impossible to get anything properly dry as even when there’s no rain overnight the air is damp – we decided to detour inland for Labor Day weekend to Eugene, 70 miles from the coast but home of Bill who we met a few times cycling across Montana and Washington and then camped with on the San Juan Islands. The lure of seeing a friendly face, sleeping in a bed, sitting inside on a sofa AND washing and drying everything we currently own outweighed the extra miles. It was well worth it. As well as those benefits noted above, the detour was memorable for a number of reasons:

1. There were no campgrounds on our route inland so for the first time we camped in the woods by the side of the road. Unsurprisingly it rained a lot, and we were also woken by a car driving very close to our tent at 2am. It was not the best nights sleep.

2. We ate the best piece of pie in the whole of the USA. Homemade rhubarb pie at Donna’s Low Pass Cafe, if you are ever passing by on Highway 36 in Oregon, comes highly recommended.

3. The total trip computer ticked past 17,000kms. Ace.

4. We spent most of the Saturday watching football (of the American variety) as it was the first day of the college season. By the end of the day we had watched parts of least five matches, and I had probably learnt at least 25% of the rules.

5. It was finally time for a Changing of the Flags. Our Union Jacks from Boston were looking more tired than we were, which is quite something, so got replaced.

6. Bill cooked us amazing food. Salmon, ribs, waffles for breakfast, you name it…. We ate it. It was very hard to leave.

7. We finally booked our flights out of Los Angeles. Next stop Japan!


Back on the coast we had another miserable, wet day to Bandon. The highlight was finding a community cafe to dry off in that served a hot lunch with a hot drink for $2 per person. Thankfully we had a host that night so wouldn’t be in the tent, and we kept being told that better weather was coming. Bandon was one of the few appealing towns we rode through on the Oregon coast, and had a nice beachside area and boardwalk. It also had one of the coolest art projects we have seen – a collection of sculptures made using waste washed up on local beaches. Visitors to the gallery can help to make future creations, but unfortunately we didn’t have time to contribute our artistic talent. We also rode past the storage area where waste is kept before being used, and seeing the huge amounts of plastic was very sobering. It was good to see the waste being collected and used but sad to see it existing in such volumes.



Our last day and a half in Oregon was by far the best riding. The skies cleared just at the right time, as Highway 101 passes through empty, rugged coastline with amazing views of sea stacks, natural arches and coves. Reflecting the bright sunlight, the sea was finally that azure colour that it always seems to be on tourist brochures. We stopped every few miles to sit and watch the crashing waves. The kids were now back at school so the traffic was much lighter. Oregon pretty much redeemed itself in the last 70 or so miles. To add a bit of icing on the cake, on our last night we were down by the marina marvelling at the size of the salmon that had been caught that day. One of the ladies who caught it offered us a piece for dinner – all we had to do was find someone to cook it. As we had already discovered, Americans are not light campers so it wasn’t difficult to find someone with a grill at the campground. Thirty minutes later we were sat eating salmon that had been swimming around in the river just that afternoon. Amazing. Though probably not if you’re vegetarian.


Thanks to Bill; John and Kathy; Suzy and Ed; Andrew and Tracy; and the salmon fishers of Gold Beach.

Olympic Games and Olympic waves: Cycling US Highway 101

Posted on by Debs and Jo (brakesandcakes.org)

We had crossed North America by bike. So what next? The Pacific Highway (route 101) winds its way down the West coast of the USA, and all across the country people had been telling us how beautiful a drive it was. It’s also a popular cycle route, being a much shorter way (a mere 1800 miles) to cross the country than the East-West route. Six weeks riding by the sea? Ok then. It seemed like a logical next step for us. 

Vancouver, BC. Not a bad place to “rest” for a couple of weeks

First we had some friends to catch up with in Vancouver BC, one of our favourite world cities. This coincided nicely with the Olympics, so we had a couple of weeks swapping cycling for sitting watching cycling. The last time we were in Vancouver four years ago it rained pretty much solid the whole time, but this visit we were treated to sunshine so enjoyed all that Vancouver had to offer. We climbed Grouse Mountain, saw a couple of grizzly bears, made Yorkshire puddings, went to a few different beaches, ate lots of ice cream, took part in a huge water fight… All essential tourist activities. The bikes were away and we barely looked at them. We also spent a few days on Salt Spring Island, right next to a lake perfect for swimming, canoeing, stand up paddle boarding, and relaxing. The sun continued to shine. It was all too perfect, and before we knew it two weeks had passed and it was time to get back on the bikes before we forgot how to pedal.

Hanging out by Cusheon Lake, Salt Spring Island

We crossed back into the USA from Vancouver Island, spending the night in Victoria – probably the most British town in British Columbia. There’s red buses and black taxis and everything. The best thing that happened there was nothing to do with British heritage though. Victoria is on the south coast of the island, and we were riding around the headland enjoying views across the sea to the USA when a guy in a car slowed down next to us and shouted that there were some Orcas (also called killer whales but they are actually the largest dolphin) on their way. We raced round to the next viewpoint and there we saw three of them passing by not far of the coast. They are huge! We felt pretty lucky as people who live there told us they had never seen them before.

The orcas were too far away to get a good picture, so here’s some killer cyclist sign instead.

The next day we packed up and left The Best Place on Earth (British Columbia’s modest tag line) and caught a ferry to Port Angeles on the Olympic peninsula. This would mark the start of our west coast trip, ending in Los Angeles – making it an Angeles to Angeles ride. Unlike most ferries, on this one cyclists are treated as foot passengers rather than cars. Good points: no need to queue with cars to get on, no riding down into the car deck, no hanging around breathing in exhaust fumes, nice waiting room to sit in rather than standing out on the dock. Bad point: wheeling a loaded bike through passenger queues. As we had to go through customs and immigration, this was not easy. The low point was trying to manoeuvre them around the maze of bollards while queuing to get into the US. You know when you queue to check in at an airport and it can be quite hard to get your luggage around the corners? Getting a loaded bike around those corners without dropping it or taking out other passengers was quite the challenge. But we made it, and although we were sad to leave Canada and our friends behind, 1800 miles of coastline lay ahead. Pacific Highway 101 starts here and we would mostly follow it all the way to LA. 

The start of our Highway 101 trip. Next Angeles… Los!
Nice people around.

The Olympic Peninsula in Washington state is the most westerly point of the US mainland and has a wild feel to it. The forests are old and huge and the towns few and far between. The only town we passed through on our way to the West coast was Forks, famous for the filming of Twilight and seemingly living purely off this – not much else seemed to be going on. The Olympic National Park goes right up to the coast so we followed 101 in bright sunshine for the afternoon, looking forward to camping overlooking the beach and our first west coast sunset. But just as we approached the coast, we were plunged into thick sea fog. Suddenly it was freezing cold and we were stood overlooking Ruby Beach, one of the most photographed spots on the Olympic Peninsula, and though we could hear the sea, we couldn’t see a thing. As we rode south down the coastline there was the strange experience of blue sky above the trees to our left, and thick white fog to our right. Arriving at South Beach campground we were offered a spot between two RVs right on the front overlooking the fog/beach. Gradually as we set up camp it cleared and we were treated to the most spectacular sunset over the sea. This is what we had been hoping for!

The sea started to become visible when we got to the campground…
West coast sunset. Hopefully the first of many!

For the next couple of days to the Oregon border the road is mostly inland through more forests. One morning we stopped for a huge milkshake on the recommendation of a local. Later that day we were back by the sea again in a popular oyster catching area, so stopped to sample a couple of fresh cooked-in-front-of-you samples. Debs had a hot tijuana (chilli, lime, cilantro, tabasco) and I had the rockafella (parmesan, bacon, breadcrumbs, oregano, basil). Awesome. The day of great food was finished off with a couple of slices of key lime pie as an accompaniment to the first episode of the Great British Bake Off. The next morning our friendly camp neighbours came over to offer us breakfast burritos – we were cooking porridge at the time but we never pass up a food offer, so after a two course breakfast we were full for at least two hours that morning.

Oysters, milkshake, key lime pie, Great British Bake Off. A good day.
Cycling by the water. Whats not to like?

Crossing into Oregon was probably the worst cycling we have done since Naples. Highway 101 crosses the state border estuary on a narrow 4-mile bridge that was not designed with bikes in mind. The shoulder was about two feet wide, not big enough to ride in easily but big enough to make car drivers think that we should. This is a popular tourist drive, and it was Friday afternoon, so it seemed like every other car was towing either a trailer or a boat – fast. Nobody on their weekend away wanted to be delayed by a bike for a few seconds. Scary stuff. The heavy traffic continued and we were relieved to arrive to the town of Seaside and catch our breath. It had been hot again and I commented to some other cyclists that after a month of hot weather I would quite like a couple of days of cloud cover to stop my skin from frazzling. No prizes for guessing what happened next….

Entering Oregon. Preferably not by bike, but hey, that was our only way…
Wise words. Not sure about the spelling though….

Thanks to Andrea and Dave, and Robin, Dane, Riley and Sasha and all of their friends for an amazing holiday in Vancouver; Robin and friends for the great camp spot at South Beach; Marnie and John; Ray and Charlaine; and Neil and Carrie.

Pacific Island Hopping (kind of)

Posted on by Debs and Jo (brakesandcakes.org)

How to cycle across America in 3 easy steps:
1. Choose start point

2. Choose end point

3. Ride bike between the two.

Sounds easy. It is really. We love riding our bikes, and this trip is just going for a bike ride somewhere new every day. What’s not to love? If you keep going in the same direction, and do it for a long time, you can get quite far. Across a continent even.

Our flags were starting to look as tired as our bodies felt

But we made quite a basic mistake. In our eagerness to ride, we skipped step 2 and rushed ahead with step 3. Our end point was always “somewhere on the Washington coast”; as we got nearer it became defined as the small port town of Anacortes where we would celebrate with a beer before catching a ferry to explore the San Juan Islands at a slow pace for a few days. Great plan. However we looked at a map and realised that Anacortes is not west facing, so it not at “the end”. This would not do. It is however situated on a peninsula with a west-facing coast, so that was our vague end point. But even that didn’t quite go to plan.

We only had 20 miles to ride on our final day, leaving plenty of time to find a decent spot, dip the wheels in the Pacific Ocean (we had a ceremonial wheel dipping in the Atlantic in Boston) and maybe even spend the afternoon relaxing. After the hard ride across Washington we were very excited about this plan. We looked at the map, and realised we could ride a slightly longer route via Deception Pass, a famous high bridge with decent views out to the ocean. This might even fit our requirements for a West facing end point. With only 20 miles to Anacortes, what would be the harm of a little tourist detour? We had all day after all. So after a long leisurely breakfast in Burlington we rode the flat route towards Anacortes and then turned off towards Deception Pass. Uphill. On a fairly narrow, busy road. Sweating and questioning our judgement we climbed and dropped, stopped to buy a 6-pack of beer, climbed and dropped some more and arrived at Deception Pass only to find it completely covered in fog. We couldn’t see an amazing view; we could hardly even see the sea. This would not do as the finish point. So we ate a quick lunch and rode on.

The road on the West of the peninsula looked to be right along the sea, but as with many places in North America a strip of private land with waterfront properties kept us away from the edge. There was a beach marked on the map – we aimed for that only to find that was private too. The road was steep and hilly, it was boiling hot and the day was slipping away from us along with our dreams of having a few hours to relax with a cold drink. Finally we came across a vacant lot with a ramp down to the water, facing out to the ocean. Not ideal but we could touch the water with the bikes. So we wheeled them down the ramp and got our coveted picture, almost losing the heavy loaded bikes to the ocean. But we had made it. The end of almost 5000 miles across the USA was a steep concrete ramp on an empty scrub of land that we had to climb under a very heavy chain to get to. This was not quite how the “end” had been played out in my head over the past week. And as we were trespassing we thought this probably wasn’t the ideal place to sit, so we hauled the bikes back up the ramp, over the vacant lot, under the heavy chain and back to the hilly road until we found a place high up where we could sit and see the ocean and drink our beer. It was almost 5pm. Not much time for contemplation or reflection. We had cycled across the huge continent that is North America. How did it feel? Just the same as any other day.

We were lucky to be staying in Anacortes with a wonderful family who helped us celebrate with a big dinner and berry dessert – we had been picking roadside blackberries. The next day we caught a ferry to Shaw Island, the smallest of the four San Juan Islands that can be reached by public ferry. The island has a permanent population of about 200, has no town, just a country park and a small grocery store at the ferry dock. There are no printed maps, just a hand-drawn one at the port. The beachside campground with only 11 sites seemed like the perfect place to set up camp for a few relaxing days.

Clockwise from top right: Riding on San Juan Island; relaxing island style; the map of Shaw Island at the port; picking berries; enjoying the ferry (ice cream and a jigsaw, perfect…); deer by the camoground; riding on Shaw; the ferry ride

A great thing about the islands is that once you have paid to get there from Anacortes, the inter-island ferry is free for foot passengers (and bicycles) so once you are there you can ferry to the other islands as much as you like for free. So we did. The first day all we did was take the ferry to San Juan Island, the biggest of the group, eat fish and chips and ice cream (separately), then take the ferry back. On the second day we stretched ourself a bit more and took our bikes to Orcas Island, the hilliest one, and rode up to the highest point on the islands. This was a 40 mile round trip with 5 miles steep uphill to the summit of Mount Constitution at 2400 feet. It was 8-10% grade for most of the climb, which our unloaded bikes managed without a problem. From the top the view was spectacular over the islands, and in the distance you could see the snow-covered Mount Baker back over the border in Washington.

Our campground was small and quiet, and right by the beach. As with most North American campsites, it was full of people who take camp cooking very seriously. One night we were treated to paella cooked in a proper paella pan, followed by individual chocolate puddings cooked on the campfire in a Dutch oven. It doesn’t take much to beat our pasta dishes but this was some serious camp cooking, and we enjoyed testing the results.

After four days it was time to head to Vancouver, a couple of days ride north. Here we planned to have a proper holiday, and hang out with people we knew for the first time in months. As we crossed the Canadian border and arrived at The Best Place On Earth (British Columbia is very nice, but that’s quite a claim), it felt maybe like this was the end of our coast to coast trip – a familiar place where we were going to see familiar people. Welcome to Vancouver!

Thanks to Pat and Don; Jude, Carrie and the rest of Team Apple; John and Bill for so,e company on the islands; the Seattle campers for the paella and Dutch oven cooked goodies; Reid, Erin and family.