Day 34: Point Arena, CA

How many people can say that they rode down The Golden Gate Bridge, Lombard Street, across the Coast and ocean, and had fish and chips for dinner on their 21st birthday? I can tell you it sure beats drinking...








I just wanted to say thanks to all the people that sent me Birthday messages. It really makes the day feel more momentous and special then a typical riding day.

I also want to thank Bodega Bay Church for hosting us for the night. They bought me hostess donuts for my B-day and then woke us up with a well put together breakfast. We had to make up the miles that we failed to complete the day before so we set off in the opposite direction to redue the 40 miles we missed making our 50 miles day supposed "easy" day turn into a 90 mile "hard" day.

It passed quickly, but as we drew closer to the final milage of the day things went horribly wrong....

Andi, speedracer as we like to call him, thought it was a good idea to cruise down a deathly steep hill. Unfortunately the hill was unmarked as having a sharp turn. Andi flew off, misjudging the turn, falling off the embankment barely missing the 20 foot steep cliff into a river. Andi, thankfully was ok and happened to crash with a park ranger close by. Help was on the way and he was fetched from the bottom of the brush. It could have been a lot worse, thankfully the damage done was a crack in the tire and minor scrapes and bruises. Alyson was ofcourse very motherly with patching him up and then smacking him saying "Don't you dare scare me like that again!"







After that ordeal we thought we had all the excitement for today checked off the list, but nope. We ended up with a flat tire 100 yards from the entrance to Point Arena.

There was some good that happened today even with the near catastrophe of Andi's experience. The roads are very forgiving with very little traffic and we see plenty of bikers touring the country like us. We had a lot of fun conversations with several bikers coming through. By the way the roads are absolutely breathtaking. Everyone needs to see the ocean at least once in their lifetime. As we ride along the road we just look at the vastness of the ocean and feel truly alive. The air is fresh here and the smell of the pine trees and the sound of the waves crashing along side the rocks make biking a enjoyable experience. This is the best part of the trip thus far.






ps Andi is now under a watchful eye from Alyson aka Mom.

-Justin Brown