dreirad

“Mama I want to draw!” Chan was shouting in his little house on wheels. “Ok! Your paper and markers are right next to you, do you need some help getting them?” I called back. We were riding Legget Hill, a two hour uphill ride for us on Hwy 1. A windy road with no traffic at all – finally we were off Hwy 101 with its crazy traffic. Chan needed help and so we stopped at the side of the road. With paper and markers ready, he explained that he was going to draw a nice small and quiet road for us with no traffic, so that we could all enjoy our ride. I liked the idea and asked, if he could draw a really long road, so that we could have a nice ride all the way to Mexico. Then we continued to climb. On the top we needed some snacks and I opened the trailer to hand some trail mix to Chan. Chan was blue from face to toes! “I made a long, long. long quiet road for us.”, he explained.

That day we rode over another hill, steeper than the fist one and a long downhill brought us back to the ocean. The beautiful warm sunshine and crisp air were a nice combination for riding. The landscape was beautiful too with its high bushy maiden grasses (miscnthus) sticking out of the dry and rocky ground. Happy excitement filled our bodies and we just wanted to keep riding. After the lunch break though the excitment and strength slowly ran out into the hilly coast line. Tired and with aking muscels we spent the night on a State Park just outside of Fort Bragg. The night reminding us that it was fall, brought damp coldness to our camp. Next morning we waited for the tent to dry in the sun and then headed into town to contact Alex, a friend we had met five years ago on a freight ship from Europe to the US. Because we wanted to spend some time with her and she didn’t have enough room for us at her place, she had put an add on a local internet community board, asking for accomodation for us. The Anchor Lodge hotel offered us two nights for free!

This part of the coast reminded us very much of Great Britan with its rough vegetationa and mild, windy climate. Alex showed us arround a little bit. So we went to Mendocino, a small character town with its many specialty shops and of course spent some money in a coffee place. We also drove to the organic goat farm where Alex works. Chan wasn’t sure how he should feel about the goats and the big pyrenean shepherd dogs and finally decided that Daddy’s shoulders were the safest place to be.

We had heard about the worst switchbacks of the Coast Bike Route and there they were! The road became steeper and steeper, but I could still push the pedals, up and up. It got still steeper and I kept pushing harder, but suddenly , while pushing up, I lifted the front wheel into the air. Frightened I just managed to get off the bike without falling and then had to walk it to the top. Florian, who had the trailer was brave and went over to the center line where it wasen’t as steep to get arround the curve, lucky that there wasn’t any traffic coming at him.

Hill over hill we made our way closer to San Francisco. In Pt. Reyes St. we stopped to check our e-mail, get some groceries and a coffee and a sweet treat from a bakery. While Florian was in the bookstore finding out where we would be staying in San Francisco via Internet, Chan and I were waiting outside, watching people and playing. Then the owner of the bookstore waved us inside as well. Fascinated by our trip he let Chan pick a book and Florian didn’t have to pay for his internet use!

One more night we put up our tent before entering the S.F. Bay Area, one more time beneath redwood trees. There was this beautiful circle of ancient trees and we put our tent in its middle. Early in the morning it sounded like raindrops falling onto our tent. Was it raining? We peeked out and found our tent covered in bird poop.

Now we were finally riding towards the “big city”. Florian had arranged to meet with Jeff, another “warm shower” host we had contacted, at the Sausalito (the city north of Golden Gate Bridge) library in the late afternoon. From Samuel P. Taylor S.P. we had plenty of time covering the distance. Shortly before entering Fairfax though the trailer in front of me went: “BOOOMMMM!” One of the tires exploded. We had forgotten to check the trailer tires and one of them was completely worn through with big wholes and tears in it. Now what? Of course we didn’t have a spare tire with us. So Florian fixed the tube and I fixed the tire with duct tape! Luckily it had to hold for only about six more miles. “Fairfax has tons of bike shops!” one of the passing race bikers told us. To take the weight off the trailer Chan had to switch to his seat on my bike and slowly we made it to a bike shop.

The ride through the urban jungle, that now followed was surprisingly pleasant. Lot’s of bicyclists were out and about, we had good shoulders and bike routes to lead us through traffic. Only once we got lost, but a very helpful race biker put us back on track. Finally a bike path brought us into Sausalito. In spite of the tire breakdown we still had plenty of time before we would meet up with Jeff. So we went to the organic food store and had a big late lunch.

Then we met Jeff and he brought us to the docks. On the way he explained that he had two sailing boats, both out in the bay. He was living in one and we were welcome to stay in the other one as long as we wanted to. Now we had to figure out what to do with the bikes and the trailer. Jeff had friends owning a floating Restaurant Ship, where we could leave everything we didn’t need for the night. The trailer had to be emptied for carrying, the bikes unloaded to be pushed up and down the ship ramps onto a floating deck. Finally everything was stashed away and we got a ride out to the boat with Tim a local boat builder.

The boat was a tiny wooden 1950 sailing boat. Suddenly we had this totally different perspective of the city and the surroundings. Slowly the sun light faded away and thousands of others lit up all arround us. The motion of the boat created a peaceful feeling all arround. Chan was fast asleep within minutes on one of the tiny bunks while Florian, Jeff and I sat out on the cockpit chatting away, enjoying the specialty of our one night “home”. It was a one night adventure only. We needed to find another place to stay. I had shared the bunk, not more than a meter wide with Chan, Florian had the other one. I felt a bit claustrophobic every time I woke up and it was still dark, I felt this urge to run, but there was only water arround us. In the morning Chan needed to move arround, but I had to hold him close, there was nowhere to go and run and play and I was afraid he would fall over board. Finally we packed the skiff Jeff had lent us and rowed over to his sailboat. Jeff took his kajak and showed us the way back to the docks. On land again we made some phone calls and wrote some e-mails to people we had met on the road further up the coast. We were hoping to find a more suitable place to stay for a while in the Bay Area.

While waiting for Tim to get back to us to be taken to a friend’s place who had invited us to stay for a night, Florian played with Chan on a playground and I went to the bike shop. I was looking at bike mirrors when someone called:” Rebekka!” Peggy came up to me saying:” I was just looking for you! How are you? You can stay with us, our house is small, but we can make it work!” Peggy was one of the people we left a message on the phone. We had met her in Florence, Oregon, and spent the night together. She had given us her phone number and encouraged us to call once we arrived in the Bay Area, since she lives in Mill Valley with her family.

And that’s how we ended up staying with her and her family in Mill Valley for a week already. Tyler, Peggy and Michael’s oldest son is racing bikes and so he has a little bike work shop set up which we can use to fix up our bikes again. Chan loves the family so much. Here he found two brothers and a sister who are beautifully playing with him. In the past week he has made huge progress with his english speech using lots of new words and making real sentences now.

Florian’s friend Felix had brought our new trailer to San Francisco while on a family visit. Chan already climbed in and out declaring it to be his. But what surprise the hitch only fits my but not Florian’s bike. So we contacted the manufacturer, who is now sending us a special piece for Florian’s bike. So we will be staying in Mill Valley for a few more days, waiting for the piece to arrive and thus have more time to explore San Francisco and visit with our old friends Becky and Dave.

It has been quite a while since the last update and some 800km filled with encounters and stories waiting to be told. But where should I start?

Well, southern Oregon, Harris beach S.P. just outside of Brookings was our last stop before entering California.

At the campsite we found Thomas and Marianne’s tent (swiss couple we had met before) and were looking foreward to some more chatting in Swiss german. We had arrived early and went for a bike stroll into town to look for the Visitor Information where we wanted to pick up the official Highway map of California. As it turned out, the Visitor Information was just across the street from the Park and we had missed it!
Back at our camp we got ready to cook dinner, when more and more cyclists turned up and set up their tents. They invited us for dinner with them. At a nice camp fire we shared corn on the cob, baked potatos, wine as well as biker stories. Chan had a blast taking Randy, one of the other bikers, by the hand, pulling him all over the hiker/biker site and finally riding on his shoulders.

In Brookings we had to replace Florian’s back rim, which had some small cracks. The mechanic showed Florian the inside of his wheel (the cracks were a known problem to him for ths particular brand), where some of the cracks went over 4 spike wholes! Lucky Florian that they didn’t collaps the rim while we were riding!

We had been warned several times about an inspection station at the border to California where all fresh produce would be collected. It is prohibited to bring any fruits or vegetable into California because of a fruit flie plague some 30 years ago. So we ate our last fruit a few 100m before entering California, but what disappointment: The inspection station was closed!

After Crescent City Hwy. 101 led us on a steep windy road up into the redwoods. And that’s what it sounded like for us: “Truck! Auto (car), auto, auto… ui, ui! (Pause) Achtung (careful), Achtung, logging truck, schnell drab, drab (move over)! (Pause) Auto, Truck schnell (fast)!” Florian’s back mirror was broken and so I was warning him about traffic in our backs. The further south we got the busier 101 was and somethimes it even turned into a freeway, shoulders coming and going! We took every chance to get off that 101 onto smaller back roads.

One of these detours was on a road closed to motorized traffic, because the road had been washed away. The police asured us though, that we would be fine on bicycles. Only that our bikes were quite heavy and wide too, so that we needed help from Pedestrians getting the trailer over a road barrier and through the worst part…

Beautiful was the ride on a Redwood National Park road closed to commercial traffic and with a 45 m/h speed limit! The trees lining the edge of the road were some of the oldest redwood trees left. Huge are some of the trunks and how small we were next to one of these giants who can reach up to over 100m into the sky!

So far we weren’t very successfull in repairing Chan’s trailer. Arcata was the place we wanted to get it done. Randy had introduced us to a website where bicyclists offer “warm showers” to each other. That’s how we found Sandy and John, hosts close to Arcata. They served us a delicious dinner and helped us finding a place that could fix the trailer. The next day Chan and I spent at the Arcata food coop (organic and local) while Florian was working with a mechanic on the trailer in a car body shop. Late in the afternoon we headed out of town and for the first time asked people again for a spot in their back yard to put up our tent. I got a glimps of kids trailer in a back yard and that’s where we stopped to ask. “Of course, come on in!”, said Greta, mother of two small kids. Her backyard was full of toys, there was a huge gardening space an apple tree, goats, chicken and a dog. Chan quickly found his way to the toys and played with the kids while we were setting up and cooking dinner.

We were turning our backs to the coast for a while now, following the Eel River along the Avenue of the Giants. What a relief to be emersed in the green quiet of these ancient trees, away from the noise and busyness of 101. Chan loved our campsite in the midst of the redwoods climbing on old stumps and drumming away with fallen branches.

Garberville! That’s where we finally decided to get a new trailer. We think that our trailer has some weakness in the design and that it would therefore be only a matter of time until the next crack, once on gravel roads in Central and South America. It would be a lot harder to repair or replace the trailer after crossing into Mexico. So we went to an internet cafe (one of the rare once since Canada!) and sent out a few messages ordering the trailer from a german company and organizing its way to us via a friend of Florian’s.