(Written from San Francisco Haight branch library)
Miles biked: 70.6 (1,005.3 overall)
Time on bike: 5 hours, 26 minutes, 56 seconds
Maximum speed: 30.0 mph
Roads taken: In Arcata: 11th Street, G. Street, 7th Street, Bayside Road, Buttermilk Lane, Old Arcata Road ... Myrtle Avenue, in Eureka: 101 ... Tompkins Hill Road, Hookton Road, Eel River Drive, SR-211, Ocean Avenue/Grizzly Bluff Road, Blue Slide Road/Belleview Avenue, Wildwood Avenue, 101, Avenue of the Giants.
Places stopped: Revolution Bicycle in Arcata (to make sure I hadn't done irreparable damage to the bike), side of the Grizzly Bluff Road (for my first food stop), bench of closed general store in Redcrest (for cheese and crackers), Humboldt Redwoods State Park (for the night).
This began what will definitely end up being the toughest five-day stretch of this trip.
And it didn't start out smoothly.
First off, I'm really bad at goodbyes, so it wasn't easy -- after a large, filling breakfast in Arcata -- bidding adios to Dad from Marnin's driveway a little after 11.
To make matters worse, I thought I had somehow lost my camera case, which has my old memory card with the first 300 pictures from the trip. And then, as I was trying to saw off a band from the handlebars remaining from the tuneup I had gotten the bike, my knife slipped and I instead almost cut the break cord.
Not knowing if I'd caused any damage, I rode up to the bike store prepared to hear the worst. Thankfully, everything was all right and I could finally get on the road -- a little after noon.
Oh, and, of course, I had found that camera case in my jacket pocket.
So all was bliss, right?
No, not really. My rough day continued.
As much as I loved Arcata, its southern neighbor Eureka gave me no positive vibes. Heading into town, I lost my route and ended up on 101, which bisects the city. And unlike Arcata, where 101 is a bit outside of downtown and is underneath the city's streets, it runs right through Eureka.
And it provides hardly any biking space for poor souls like me. Which is why at one point, I actually felt that I had zero biking space. It was as if I was back in Durham, riding down 15-501.
So I got off the road, letting my pride take a hit -- not that I have much -- and navigated the city's sidewalks as I bypassed disgusting shopping mall after disgusting shopping mall.
It was far from scenic, but at least it kept me on the bike. I felt no reason to stop, no reason to take in anything that I was seeing. So I rode a good 40 miles, roughly, before finally pulling over to the side of Grizzly Bluff Road, taking a much-needed leak in the bushes and then devouring a Power Bar.
And I still hadn't seen anything pretty.
That would continue as I biked past vast fields littered with cows -- I think I've seen about 8,493 of them now -- and farmhouses. At least there wasn't much traffic, but my map sure wasn't helping me.
It told me to take a right on Blue Slide Road, which would then become Belleview Avenue, but I never saw a Blue Slide Road. So as I continued to climb hills and see nothing ahead of me -- and I'd been on what I thought was Grizzly Bluff for 10 miles when I was only supposed to be on it for 7 -- I started worrying that I was lost in the middle of nowhere.
Thankfully, that wasn't the case. I guess teenagers tore down the sign that would have told me I had merged onto Blue Slide, but I was going the right way.
And then, finally, after about 55 miles of nothing special, I exited 101 -- yes, took an actual exit; that's the 101 I've biked on in California -- onto the Avenue of the Giants.
I quickly stopped to admire the beauty around me.
On both sides of the shaded road were huge redwoods, the same kind of trees Dad and I had hiked through just three days before. Some of the enormous trunks sat just inches from the side of the road as if to say to wild drivers, "Ya swerve off course and it ain't gonna end well for ya."
I let my muscles relax for the first time all day and cruised through the forest, occasionally emerging into sunlight and tiny towns before pedaling back into the trees.
The behemoths also provided much-needed shade after a long afternoon of pedaling under a bright sun. And they made the time seem much later. Even though there remained about three hours of daylight, I felt like I was biking in the evening -- my favorite time of day, so it all worked out.
At about 6:27 (real time), I pulled into the Humboldt Redwood State Park campground just south of Weott, a town I knew was there but never saw. As I unpacked my stuff, I was prepared for a night alone after four days spent in Dad's company. It was time to transition back to the the isolated camping phase.
But then a guy who looked to be about my age biked into the hiker/biker site, a big smile plastered on his face. As I would learn, he was from Sweden and was doing a long trip in the U.S.
He'd never been to the country before, but was living it up. He'd started in Las Vegas, worked his way past the Grand Canyon and into California, and was prepared to head up the coast through Oregon and Washington and into Canada before ovaling his way back down to Salt Lake City.
I enjoyed his company throughout the evening, as well as the s'mores he shared with me. He told me that he'd learned about them just days earlier while staying with an American he'd met along the way.
Clearly he was taught well, because he whittled a couple sticks and made sure not to burn his marshmallows but to get them nice and crispy.
And when I crept into my tent, full and content, I was in a much better mood than I'd been in at the start of my biking day and throughout much of it.
Credit the trees, my new Swedish friend and, of course, the s'mores.
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