f o t o b u r n s

 We started our journey with a relentless headwind…

Hearst’s cows.

Power food.

Big Creek Bridge was not cooperating with my plan of waiting for the fog to burn off for the photo.

The elusive California Condor makes a flyby.

Quite high.

Calvin heads into the hills. There was quite a lot of epic climbing on this trip.

I’m not sure what kind of birds these were, but there were hundreds.

The sun sets on day 1. We would end up riding an hour into the night to reach our first destination, Kirk Creek. Day 1 was grueling. We were rewarded by seeing the crescent Moon, Jupiter, and Venus set over the ocean in a tight cluster.

Delicious Breakfast.

Scenes from Pfeiffer State Park.

Camp life.

Spirits.
This is Ken. Ken is a perpetual bike tourist, artist, and self-proclaimed tennis ace. He has developed a method of playing tennis with a racket in each hand; he calls it Tennisance. Ken is a trippy guy.

This is Bob and his dog Happy. Bob is from Alabama. Bob is a former US Army Ranger, sniper scout. He served in Desert Storm. His pinky finger was blown off by shrapnel in combat. Bob became homeless a few years after the war, and has had a hard life. He prefers the term “houseless”, but Tanner came up with the term “home free” and I think Bob liked that the most. Instead of being homeless in one place and becoming stagnant, Bob grabbed a bicycle 18 years ago and started riding across the USA. He has since ridden around/across the country something like 8 times, Canada a few times, and has put in miles in Mexico & Australia as well. Bob does mechanic and construction work for a few months out of each year to earn some loot and then rides the rest of the time. Bob has been living with stomach cancer for 7 years, and is currently in the process of dying from it. Instead of withering away in a hospital or in the street somewhere, Bob has instead chosen to keep riding. When we came across him at the Pfeiffer campground, he was on his way south to Los Angeles to meet some people in the bicycle industry…apparently Bob is somewhat of a legend in the bicycle touring world. He said Trek was sponsoring him with a new touring bike (Bob currently rides an early 90s Trek mountain bike), another company was custom building him a new trailer, and some bicycle magazine is doing an article on his whole deal. Bob is 600 miles short of hitting 100,000 total miles ridden on the bike. After he gets hooked up with his new rig, Bob is going to go on his final tour with Happy dog back home to Alabama to live out his final days with his grandkids. I’m glad we came across Bob.

Ken let us jam out on his guitar for a bit. I picked it up right after I shot this photo of Tanner, went to do a little blues lick and broke one of the strings. Sorry Ken.

My little MSR stove got us through the mornings and evenings.
Calvin tried to tell me we didn’t need to bring coffee on the trip but I told him he was crazy.

Heading north from Pfeiffer to Monterey…more awful headwind. Check out that flag!

Tanner was hanging tough on this trip. Aside from some 30-ish mile long rides around home, this was his first time getting into serious cycling business. He was charging.

On the approach to Monterey, we took the scenic 17 Mile Drive route through Pebble Beach…
We stayed at this sweet hostel in M’rey to take a break from sleeping in tents.

8 a.m. piano jam at the hostel.

The sleeping arrangements were funny.

Headed south we finally got to ride with a tailwind! And what a sweet tailwind it was….the section where I took this photo was amongst the most enjoyable cycling I’ve ever done. The wind pushed us along at full speed with hardly any effort necessary.

Bixby bridge. This photo is a composite of three 35mm film images.

Big Creek area again, no fog this time.

Calvin was looking pretty Euro.

We stopped in Lucia for refreshments. The restaurant there has really good food, albeit pricey.

Still more tailwind…

Les Touristes.

Until next time…