The 2,800km Road Trip
The most beautiful bike riding of my life.
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It’s hard to know where to start with our California trip. A once in a lifetime trip, that I hope I do more than once. The most beautiful of scenery, the most rural of roads and the wettest of days. It was the perfect way to restart winter training. The perfect reset after a year of craziness.
TL;DR
Over ten days, myself and my housemates road tripped from Vancouver Island down to Santa Barbara, California. The total length was around 2,800km, we drove some of it, rode some of it, and had the time of our lives.
This trip was Riley Pickrell’s idea. He first told me about his idea for this trip some point last winter, but he’s been dreaming of it for years. It was one of those trips that sounded epic, but I just accepted it’d never end up happening.
It gets to May 24th, I’m someone in Ireland racing, and the thought crops into my mind. “We doing California this year? Please can we. It’d be f**king sick.” I text him. He comes back with “Would be so f**king sick tbf.” I’m not sure what happened next, but that was that decided, we were riding from Vancouver Island, to California come November.
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This trip wasn’t about training. Yes, it was an epic way to restart our winter season, and we did do a bucket of hours on the bike. But, it was about a lot more than watts, or TSS. It was about something a lot simpler: adventure.
There were four of us on the trip: Maggie, Riley, Franzi and I - all of us live together in Girona.
We all live and breath cycling, travel to weird and wonderful places to race and train. Yet, it’s rare we travel on our own terms. The trip was riding a bike in beautiful places because that’s what we all love to do. Nothing more, nothing less. They were away from their WorldTour schedule, I was a little more at home, but still away from any race constraints.
The logistics of the trip were surprisingly simple. We’re two couples, and we already live together so being in close quarters wasn’t that difficult. Given most US hotel rooms have two double beds, we managed to keep the costs down that way, we also had a few Airbnbs along the way too.
We had a truck with us. It was the only way we could cover that many kilometres in such a short space of time. The truck belongs to Riley’s Dad, and the logistics behind that was pretty simple too. The first two days, Maggie was on off-season so did all of the driving. From there, everything was split up.
Some days, Riley and I would leave the hotel on the bike, while the girls would start in the car. They’d drive to a point 150km away, get out and ride to our next hotel, meanwhile our end point would be the car, we’d throw our bikes in and meet them at the hotel.
Life was pretty simple. We’d wake up between seven and eight every morning, have some sort of sugary American cereal for breakfast and pack the car up. Some days we’d ride from the hotel, others we’d get one or two hours of driving done before the start. Bikes out, we’d ride long most days, and finish either back at the car which had now driven, or straight to the hotel. Unpack the car, shower, find a place to do laundry, somewhere to eat food, do a little bit of work and then bed. Time flew by as there was always something to be doing.
Everyday has its own story that I could write paragraphs on, so I’ll try to keep it brief.
The first week was characterised by rain. I mean, there’s no real surprise, the Pacific North West in November was always going to be wet. It was really bloody wet though. There was one day in particular that comes to mind - Day 4. Thankfully, I was on rest day so I only did the first two hours before hopping in the car and driving to our cabin that night.
While it was only two hours riding, it was perhaps the wettest ride I’ve ever done. I wore everything I owned, and I was still soaked. It was vile. Beautifully amazing scenery, but so bloody wet.
We had a lot of punctures* in the first few days too. We’d average more than one a day, accepting it was a by-product of riding on a lot of wet roads, and on an awful lot of highway shoulders. It was still mightily annoying. We were going through tubes like it was going out of fashion so with the girls on a shorter day, sent them to the bike shop in the next town. As they’re standing in the bike shop, we flat again. We’d left our hand-pump in the car after an earlier flat, and the FumpaPump we had with us was dead. Riley called in the pick-up crew, and I left him at the side of the road. Forty-five minutes later, I get rescued with Maggie making the executive decision that daylight was fading too fast. She was right.
Daylight was another thing. Given how many kilometres we were trying to cover in a day, and how many punctures we were having, it seemed we were fighting daylight everyday. We’d usually get away with it, arriving a few minutes after sunset. Riley taught me a new phrase: “civil twilight”. We rode to “civil twilight” most days.
Our first day in California, we rode way past civil twilight and into dark. Our route was ambitious, and to be perfectly honest, the first poor roads we’d had all trip. We’d already lost a lot of time due to steep climbs and gravelly roads, and knew we’d be facing a job to get home before dark. A little nod to each other at the bottom of a half-hour climb and we agreed to ride hard to get to the top. Riley punctures half-way up, costing us another ten-minutes of precious daylight.
We start chopping home, it’s at this point we realise both of our rear lights had fallen victim to yesterday’s apocalyptic rain. It’s no longer civil twilight, more early darkness. We reach the edge of Eureka in the nick of time, thankful that we’d not be riding in the night dark.
We then learned that Eureka was a bigger town than we gave it credit for (most nights we stayed in towns of less than 2,000 people so were just routing to the edge and then relying on Google Maps for the final destination), it was at this point, we realised our hotel was the other side of town.
It was now dark. “If you ride the same speed as the traffic, the traffic won’t hit you”, Riley quipped. At one point, we get a “get off the road” heckle from a truck. I mean, the guy had a point. Twenty minutes later, we turn right into the hotel straight into a waggy finger from Maggie. All I’m saying is that I’m happy my mother wasn’t there or I’d have got a bollocking.
I could write thousands of words about the final three days in California. Hats off to Riley, his route planning was spectacular and we’d taken some back roads that even locals didn’t know. Each night he’d look over Strava Heatmaps and Google Street View to see what was rideable. One day in Oregon, we rode a perfect logging road where less than 10 people had ever ridden it on Strava. We also had to clear a tree off the road, so it clearly wasn’t used too often.
I digress, California was absolutely spectacular. Our day from Eureka down the coast took us through the Redwood Forest, and down the most beautiful coastline you’ve ever seen. That stretch is called the ‘Lost Coast’, and let me tell you the natural beauty is phenomenal. It’s quiet, few cars, few people. We stopped in the small town of Petrolia, which Google tells me some 300 people live there. It seemed we met half of the town in the fifteen minutes that we were there. Over Honeydew Mountain, I punctured on the descent while Riley was ahead - he had all of our tools. It was a long ten minutes as I waited for him to flip around.
Anyway, I’ve already gone on too much, we’re at 1400 words at this point. Our rest day in San Francisco was epic, oh I forgot to mention our other all time ride as we went further down the California coast and crossed the Golden Gate Bridge at sunset. And then, Santa Barbara, our finish point for the week. I love it there.
Eleven days. Four housemates. Two couples. Three States. 49hrs and 1,423km of riding. Plus, an awful lot of driving. Vancouver Island - Santa Barbara, the best trip of my life.
Put this trip on your bucket list.
Joe
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Sounds like a great trip and I love your descriptions. Couldn't help but wonder if tubeless set up would have been a better option?