Pacific Coast Bike Route

In the summer of 2022, I planned to ride my first long bike tour before the start of grad school. I was loving cheesemongering at DeLaurenti but a recent, depressing shoulder injury and my impending return to school were enough to convince me to use my savings on an awesome adventure.

The "reach" goal was to ride from Seattle to my parents' home in San Diego and back. Starting with an Olympic sendoff from Aisling, I cycled first to Neah Bay, the northwestermost point of the lower 48. Then begun the long journey south along the Pacific Coast. At a pace of 90-115 miles a day, I made it just in time for a wedding in San Francisco. After visiting friends in Oakland, I crossed through Marin to return to SF and had the best burrito of my life in the mission before departing again southward.

I ride some trails with friends in San Luis Obispo before continuing to LA where I crashed with a high school buddy in Hollywood. Took a couple days off the bike to backpack and summit Mt. San Gorgonio and enjoy the SoCal sun. To finish the southerly route, my dad trained up to LA and we rode the century+ down to our house in San Diego (and to mexico and back the next day).

When it was time to go north, I made the ~120 mile journey to Pasadena to crash with a PhD friend at Caltech. A chill morning of cortados meant I started up the San Gabriel mountains in the hot sun. After a devastating flat on the ascent, I was lucky to come across a fire station with running water near the pass. It was in the 90s and full sun, and increased to the 100s by the time I arrived in Palmdale. A pit stop of ice cream and tons of beverages was made before heading west on the aqueduct bank trail, where I got multiple flats. The sun was setting beyond the walls of Antelope Valley. The trifecta of insane heat, 70 miles of hilly, encumbered cycling, and the distopian nature of the juxtoposed green suburbia in the desert along a continental scale aqueduct flipped a switch in my mind. For the first time I felt doubt about my journey. I shuddered at the realization that my reasoning for suffering through such a trial had vanished. My love of adventure and human-powered feats of endurance felt suddenly meaningless and stupid.

I persevered with a nagging headache and finally ditched the aqueduct and descended into the valley. Antelope Valley is hardly a valley as I know them as a pacific northwesterner: it is surrounded by faults that bound the Mojave desert and basically has no natural/perennial surface water. The further into the valley I went, the further the northern valley wall sank into the distance. I started feeling short of breath, sick to my stomach, and the headache was dominating despite plenty of food, water, and ibuprofen. I then had the bizarre feeling that I can only describe as forgetting who I was. I called Aisling to confirm my identity and it became clear I had to find a hotel immediately. Luckily, Rosamond was just a few miles away. I made it to a hotel in a psychotic state and relished in the AC and cold running water.

The next morning I visited the Wikipedia page for heat stroke and heat exhaustion and decided the continuity of my tour was less valuable than my internal organs. I got on a bus to Bakersfield, then a train to Stockton, then a bus to Sacramento, then a train to Klamath Falls. In my first steps back in Oregon, I was greeted by a drizzle on a ~60 degree day. I remember tearing up a bit at the comfortable coolness of cloudy Cascadia.

From there, I went on a world class tour of the Cascades that was massively more interesting than the Pacific Coast. The riding and scenery were just stunning, and the traffic was far less persistent. I meandered through stratovolcanoes, followed the Yakima, Columbia, and Methow rivers, and crossed the Cascades for good before arriving in Bellingham. I bopped up to touch Canada before heading south to stay with friends on Whidbey Island. Finally, I reentered Seattle southbound on the Burke-Gilman and made it home, all organs and unforgettable experiences intact.

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