Portland, Oregon

After we left Comptche, we drove almost 14 hours along Route 1 into Oregon. It was a long day. We stopped to say hi to John's Aunt Honey and Uncle Eric, who live on a sort of menagerie in rural Oregon, and then we spent the duration in PDX, itself. We'd both been before, but never with such worthy friends to stay with and never over Thankgsgiving. Thanksgiving is my favorite no matter where you spend it, but may I especially recommend you find a year to spend that holiday in Portland. The drizzle, the bungalows, the comfy style of the city is perfectly and completely suited to a November vacation devoted to eating.

The next few posts will be a collection of the most photogenic moments of our trip. Just to put names with faces, we were visiting Jesse and Lauren, old favorites from Virginia and Mary Frances Wegmann, my better half. Hope you'll indulge yet another photographic reminiscence.











More soon.

The More The Merrier

So I forgot to mention that we had guests staying with us last week. That's right, guests. A pair of them! in our tiny little apartment. I admit that the cozy quarters crossed my mind when John first mentioned that his friend Joey and his lady friend Lauren would be rolling through town for a few days. For those who haven't yet had the pleasure, our house is no larger than 450 square feet and 100 of those feet are taken up by bicycles and our larger than necessary bathroom. Which leaves less than a hundred square feet per person, divided equally.

They arrived Sunday and spent all day at this big bluegrass festival in San Francisco, where John found them and led them back to our place. And much as I had worried, they soon showed me what it means to say The More, The Merrier.


The two of them are currently on a long drive down the west coast, before Lauren departs on a three or so month tour of the globe through Camaroon, India and Thailand. Am I remembering that correctly now? I think so. Their vehicle is the above pictured truck, which has an actual bed snuggled in back, if you can believe it. They sleep on an air mattress, on top of some sleeping pads, on top of a platform and underneath that, they have those flat boxes to store their clothes and personal effects. It's like a little portable pretend house on wheels and sounds so much nicer, to me anyway, than regular old camping.


Within 24 hours, I felt like they'd been living in our living room for years, in a good way. The two of them hail from Virginia and Tennessee and had such fine manners as I have not seen maybe ever. I had known that Joey was pretty great, down to earth and fun and generous, but Lauren was a nice surprise: sweet and hilarious, with great personal style in clothes and in the way she'd hang out in the kitchen with me while I was washing the only pot she'd dirtied while cooking us dinner. She's one of those really cheerful people, in the very best meaning of the word, that made me remember being vastly ambitious about life once upon a time, and wonder what ever happened to that part. Not to gush or anything, but the two of them are just very quality people.

To be more specific: they washed more than their share of the dishes, and our kitchen enjoyed the longest streak of cleanliness in all the history of its being our kitchen when they were with us; they were happy to go to bed around 11--Lauren almost always in her pajamas by 9, a girl after my very own heart; AND, on their final night in Oakland, John and I arrived home to dinner on the table, coordinated entirely without us. Well, goodness. I was certainly sorry to see them go.

Friends who feel like family have a way of making our little apartment feel more like Home. That, and the fact that Joey makes biscuits...

How To Set Out

I'm presenting the account of Our Very First Bicycle Tour (please, hold your applause) in three parts. Mostly so as not to overwhelm you with awe, but also so that you can focus more intently on the details which carried our trip from the just so-so level of fun up to the more elevated, grand level. We definitely achieved the highest level of fun.

First so we're on the same page about what exactly it was that we did, let me say that our trip was a bicycle tour, with camping. Not bike camping, but a short trip with camping accommodations and cycling every single day. Bicycle touring generally refers to traveling by bicycle over some distance, with the emphasis on the journey, while bike camping is just biking to your camping destination in order to camp. In both cases, the rider carries all belongings atop the bicycle, though on a tour, one may opt to sleep in hotels, houses, hostels in addition to camping. In my mind, the inclusion of the word Tourism helps to emphasize the leisurely pace of travel, the emphasis on sightseeing and the ambitious nature of such plans.

We left mid-morning on Sunday with our sights set on a small campground outside of Santa Rosa which would be our home for the two nights of our three day excursion. Mostly so we could leave some of our weight behind the second day and tackle more countryside. In addition to regular bike clothing, extra socks and a toothbrush, we also carried with us a full outfit of camping equipment: one tent, 2 sleeping bags, 2 sleeping pads, 2 aluminum plates, a 2 qt. pot and a small stove.

All of this was carried by way of a handlebar bag for each of us, and a set of panniers for each of us; in fact, my set had been whipped up in a frenzy only 12 short hours prior to our departure. Like magic!


John gets full credit for devising our route, which was concocted from a combination of Google maps, Mapmyride and the various county bike maps available in pdf on the internet. That way we were able to investigate the route accurately and with an eye for safety, in order to make it ultimately the most enjoyable. Because it's much more fun to obviate potential arguments over traffic situations, it was worth it to spend plenty of time perfecting the cue sheet and double checking the size of a road's shoulder.


Our route began with a short 9 mile warmup ride up to the El Cerrito del Norte BART station, where we caught a bus across the Richmond Bridge and into San Rafael, CA.


And really we were off to a good start. We met John's ghost of cycling future in San Rafael, who rode with us a good three miles or so. A man of 60 or so who shared John's facial bone structure, cycle enthusiasm and hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia. The coincidence was eerie. In spite of all the interesting similarities, we failed to snap a picture of the man and so he lives on as a mere figment of our imaginations. Instead, we got a shot of how the man might remember us:


From there we took a scenic route to Santa Rosa, via Petaluma. This leg involved a great valley, a big hill and a small redwood forest.




John wasn't always way out in front of me, but he was some of the time. Especially when we were headed uphill. We did manage to arrive at our destination together. We made camp quickly before the sunset and were so tired we didn't even have a campfire. This exhaustion turned quickly to lunacy; somewhere between setting up the tent and sleeping inside it, we all but lost it, as evidenced by that wink. I couldn't stop winking! The wilderness works in mysterious ways.



62 miles down. Stay tuned for How to Keep On Going, the next installment of Our Very First Bicycle Tour.

Our Volvo Is A Champion

My Friday afternoon went something like this.

Roxanne: Want to drive me to Monterrey tomorrow and back to pick up a table and chairs? I'll pay you fifty bucks plus gas money!
Me: Of course!
Roxanne: Super!
Me: Super!

Maybe I'm a pushover. Or maybe fifty dollars is a lot of money these days. Monterrey is 2 and a Half Hours away, friends. And it was SO HOT out on Saturday in our wagon with no air conditioning and vinyl seats. But I knew I'd made the right decision when we pulled into an In N Out Burger at 11:30 in the morning for "breakfast", unflinching, and Roxanne not only bought me lunch (not part of the deal, you'll recall) but also Taught Me How A Real Californian Orders At In N Out. Let me just say Animal Style, people. Grilled Onions, Special Sauce, Cheese and Pickles atop French Fries. Oh baby. I should have documented, but I was too busy getting all the nubbins from the bottom of that little paper boat and sucking down my silky chocolate milkshake.


With that caliber fuel in our belly we set off again down the freeway, bound for glory in the way of a formica dining set located in Seaside. Jennifer, the peddler, lived in some pretty wacky military housing near the DoD base in Monterey. We must have been catching some radiation or something because we got a little spun around, wandered through a commencement at the nearby Cal campus, stumbled across a self-proclaimed Scout Hut, noticed that all the cars in the whole town were sporting For Sale signs, got some bum directions to an atm and then took the longest possible route to her house.





But finally Jennifer greeted us warmly and even helped us strap the thing on top of the car before we got back in and headed off back in the direction from whence we'd come.


All in all, it felt pretty quick; down and back in roughly 6 hours, with only a driver's sunburn and a memento to prove we'd been gone at all. Roxanne finally has a table! Hooray! And now I know where Watsonville is. But the very best part was the new friend bonding. Even mini-roadtrips are good for that.