Day 14 – Fort Bragg to Sea Ranch (68 miles / 680 total)

So, I’m at Sea Ranch, CA watching the cloud covered sun set below the ocean. It’s been a hard but a good day.

To start I left Fort Bragg and dealt with a number of cars not interested in sharing the road with a crazy looking bicyclist with a yellow fireman-dirty looking jacket flaying from the back of the bike.

It was a slow start. After 10 miles I felt like stopping. The same cloud that has been hanging over me the past couple of days was right there when I woke up.

So I called some friends. From the side of the highway at that. I found a spot with plenty of shoulder and sat down. Why not? It felt good to have a couple of regular conversations.

But before I made calls I realized the impossible was happening. The wind was blowing south to north. One can tell this is such a rare occurrence in this area simply by looking at how bent the coast trees are due to the north to south wind. Oh well. This was going to be a hard day.

Riding a bike into the wind is about as easy as pushing a kite. But I was making progress one mile at a time.

I decided early on in the morning that I needed a new approach to my day. Instead of stopping for a huge lunch I would eat every 1.5 hours. Thus providing me more breaks and not making it hard to leave lunch. This, along with the weather, seemed to make the day a successful one.

The scenery:
You see a lot when you are cruising down Highway 1 at nine miles an hour: organically fed cows, horses that seem fascinated by every passing car, tons of no trespassing signs, trees that smell like Christmas, seal lions that fight by bumping up against each other, bridges with no shoulder and wooden side rails small enough to stop a tricycle from going over, people that wave and smile, people mowing their huge lawns, tourists driving down the coast asking for directions to San Francisco (keep going south), prisoners cleaning trash from the side of the road (not allowed to take pictures), prisoners working for the fire department clearing dangerous brush, deer hit by a car, deer not hit by a car, all different types of birds, no whales, for sale signs, tons of for sale signs, and my favorite – lots and lots of ocean (today the water was so clear I could look over the rails of bridges and see down to the ocean floor).

As I write this I have no internet access, no cell phone reception, no tv, and one radio station that seems more consumed with growing weed and what the last episode of Lost really meant than providing me with what I really need to know – the weather. We’ll see what tomorrow holds, tomorrow I suppose.

Today’s trivia can be found in my pictures.

Special thank you goes out to those of you that are constantly sending me comments, emails, texts, calls, etc. I really appreciate them. I know I don’t respond but they mean a lot. Also a special thanks goes out to Brooks and Jean for letting me stay at their place tonight.

Sellers

Towns I passed:
Casper (may not be a town)
Mendocino (pop. 824)
Little River (pop. 412)
Albion (pop. 398)
Elk (pop. 250)
Manchester (pop. 462)
Point Arena (pop 474)
Anchor Bay (pop. 178)
Gualala (pop. 585)
Sea Ranch (pop. 250)