By the time we left the Redwood National Park Hostel we were soon enough in entering the Emerald Triangle – a combination of Humboldt, Mendocino, and Trinity counties in California.

Even fat trees need hugs

Our first night was spent at Patrick's Point State Park just north of Trinidad, CA. Throughout the trip Ryan and I occasionally hear from people how inspiring our trip is for whatever reason. I think a lot of the time it is hard for me to see how this is so just because I am so close to it. I feel like all I am doing is riding my bike and seeing a lot of shit, but that nothing about that is particularly inspiring. But on certain occasions I understand, because I might someone who inspires me.

Ralph invited Ryan and I to sit around his fire at Patrick's Point. The night became cold quick. Fog rolled in from the Pacific and covered the moon in its white glow. Ralph was a face to the otherwise faceless economic recession happening around the country. After 14 years of working for the same company Ralph was laid off. For months leading up to his departure from the company he was racked with stress, unable to sleep, and drinking excessively. He was in charge of telling many people he had worked with and known for a long time that they were being laid off. Soon enough Ralph too joined the double-digit percentage of Californians without employment. He told Ryan and I that after it happened he decided to ride his bike up the Pacific Coast. An idea he had decades ago. He sold his furniture and his car. He disconnected his phone. He told his sons what he was doing, and before the end of dinner they slipped some Clif bars and a prepaid cellphone into his bags. For one and a half months Ralph had been traveling by bike and sleeping in his tent. He had lost around 25 pounds in weight; he hadn't touched a drop of alcohol; his energy was higher than it had been in decades. I feel like it takes someone of incredible character to take a situation like Ralph's and turn into something positive. That was fuel for me, and for that reason people like Ralph are my inspiration.

Ryan in front of a fallen redwood

The economic recession, at times, starts to resemble what I feel like I have gathered about the issues of world hunger and drinking water: it feels as much a lack of resources (in this case money) as it is a lack of efficient distribution of those resources. While riding around the country Ryan and I have constantly passed through road construction and a lot of times there are signs talking about recovery.gov and how this road construction project is putting [Insert State Name Here] back to work. I do not argue that you need people to work, to make money, to spend the money, to go into more debt, so the economy can grow, but when I pass by a chorus of 10 men with weed-wackers in a line clearing the same 30 feet of highway shoulder I start to question if we could not be spending that money somewhere else. Do we really need that many people to do that little of work? On California's legislative chopping block has been the issue of funds over the state parks. Luckily, so far, Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger has kept the parks open although certain seasonal parks did close early. Usually it wouldn't matter too much to me, but the state parks have pretty much became my home now that I don't really have one.

One morning in a local diner in Mendocino county we talked to the waitress and another local guy after eating our breakfast. From what she said the local economy would be destroyed if all the parks were closed. She said so much of their business relied on all the travelers on Highway 1 and the parks closing would result in less tourism. I didn't know the extent of the local economy at the time, but as we traveled south I started to learn much more about it all.

At Richardson Grove State Park we met Phil. Phil was a hippie on his way to the Earth Dance music festival, but unlike most of the “earthies” we saw in Garberville, Phil had his own vehicle and was not hitching a ride. Within a minute after meeting Phil he asked if I wanted to smoke a joint with him. While he rolled it he talked about how earlier in the day he was down by the river and some guys were trying to get him to smoke some fresh huge buds they just harvested from up in the forest. In Mendocino county it is estimated that 67 percent of the economy is marijuana based. It is and has been the cash crop of this area for decades. A local politician on a CNBC special about marijuana estimated that 60 percent of the people in the county are somehow involved in the marijuana industry. This year alone over 500,000 illegal plants have been seized by various law enforcement agencies. I had seen people smoking in public for the last couple days. I thought to myself about how people travel to Japan and drink sake, people go to France and drink wine, and how fitting it was that on this long tour in one of the if not the most famous place for growing pot about ready to light up some swelling joint of dank norcal weed with silver pony-tailed hippie under the canopy of redwood trees.

Where da trees at?

We smoked that thing down until the roach singed our mustaches. Within minutes I couldn't tell if I was high as a kite or melted into the picnic table. I had a hard time remembering if I ever felt that out of my skull. I laughed to myself. Phil started ranting to Ryan and I about how he couldn't find his campground fee envelope. We talked about a lot of other things, but I could see his search efforts increasing. I was trying to not pay too much attention to his concern, but after seeing him spend the longest 10 minutes imaginable quadruply checking all his pants and backpack pockets it was clear that the paranoia of being stoned had gripped him, and I wanted no part of that. I didn't want him bumming out my high, but didn't want to be a dick. I spent considerable time trying to explain through a diagrammed map made out of pine needles on top of the picnic table how to get back to the campground entrance and get another envelope to fill out. He marched out into the darkness in the general direction, and I wished him luck as I crawled into the tent and tried to get a little reading done.

One of the things Phil mentioned while franticly searching his pockets the night before was how if he couldn't find the envelope he believed mainstream-white-middle-class-suburban-california America should pick up the slack. The mixing and overlapping of ex-hippies from the 60s growing pot in forests and living in vans and tents and well-to-do mainstream America owning cliff-side mansions and driving a convertible or a Toyota Prius gives the demographics of California's northern coast a really interesting dynamic. Ryan and I have met both ends of the spectrum, from retired doctors to retired deadheads to retired doctor deadheads, and it always makes me question where I fit in along the continuum. But regardless of who we meet the experience is almost always positive. The only exception of this is usually when we deal with people our own age.

This was most notable in Arcata, California – home of Humboldt State University. Rolling through Arcata with well equipped touring bicycles made me feel awkward. We were too professional. We didn't look homeless or vagrant enough. We were homeless chic. We had too many possessions. If it wasn't for my grizzly beard our shaggy hair I felt like my pretentious peers at the local coffee shop would revoke my counterculture club card. I would be banished from this hip town because I lacked earplugs, tattoos, tight pants, and consumed too much; which tacitly showed my consent to the global corporate capitalist machine. I thought that I was over thinking the vibe of the place, but after leaving town Ryan and I talked about it and drew similar conclusions about the way in which we were perceived.

It has been over 7 months since we first started this trip and the longer we are on the road the more frequently we asked how we can afford to take so much time off. Sometimes the question comes wrapped in curiosity and sometimes in scorn. Some people want to believe that two 20-something year olds that just graduated from college must have great parents paying for them to take the trip of a lifetime, but that is only half right. We have great parents, but we have raised all the money ourselves. And I want to stress that it doesn't have to be a lot of money. Besides staying in hostels in large cities the most we pay for “rent” is around $5 a night for a campground – even though we have only stayed in actual campgrounds 10 percent of the time we have camped on the entirety of the tour. Most of the time we are hiding behind a pile of rocks, some trees, behind a building, in a small town park, or under a bridge. So excluding our lodging fees, the only real cost of travel is the cost of food; our fuel.

$5 a night = decent rent and the views are nice

Bike touring can be one of the cheapest forms of travel possible. It isn't always extremely cheap, but that really depends on the individual. Along the Pacific Coast we have ran into all different types of bike tourists/travelers. We met the previously mentioned Ralph. We met a younger kid from Washington riding an old road bike with a trailer behind it pulling all his supplies. Although, we actually never saw him ride his bike. The few times we did see him he was wither pulling his bike out of various trucks or holding a hitchhiking sign on the side of the road. We met an older German couple with custom built frames, 9-speed internal hubs, a swiss-made super tent, odometers, altimeters, speedometers, and any other possible meter promising full statistical analysis.

As we moved our way down the coast and crossed through Sonoma county and into Marin county we were constantly finding ourselves staying with a lot of the same bikers at hiker/biker camps in California's State Parks. Even though we have been without doors that close on our tent since Oregon (broken zippers), being able to shower every night and have a picnic table to drink beer and write at for $5 a night made me feel like I was living in the lap of luxury.

One night while we were staying at Samuel P. Taylor State Park our sense of security was rocked a little. Ryan and I had spent the early evening drinking a couple bottles of local wine with our new friend from Ontario, Manfred. It was his last night on tour before reaching his destination, San Francisco, so we celebrated with the two bottles and listened to some music at the campground. The previously mentioned German couple was also there. I went to sleep with a warm wine buzz thinking about how grateful I was knowing this would be my last night sleeping in our busted tent for a while, but sometime in the middle of the night I was awakened by the snarls of what sounded like large animals rummaging the camp for food left out in the open. For 30-45 minutes I rested one hand on top of my sleeping bag – gripping my knife in case any animal got curious and dipped its head under the rain fly. I was ready to jab it in the head with the blade. Even though Ryan and I thought it did not make sense at all for a large cat to be rummaging a campground for food and making so much noise, the growls and raspy voice sounded like a large hissing cat. Eventually all the excitement subsided and I fell back asleep. The next morning all the evidence made us amend our conclusions to the idea that two large raccoons were the culprits. I walked to the bathroom past the torn up chocolate bar wrappers and marshmallow bags and brushed my teeth.

Riding through the Marin county corridor of Fairfax, San Anselmo, Ross, Larkspur, Corte Madera, Mill Valley, Marin City, and Sausalito on our way to the Golden Gate Bridge was pleasant. We rode on city bike paths feeding us through a maze of beautifully tailored neighborhoods and small downtown strip malls. I was grateful there were so many bike shops around, because slowly but surely our bikes, along with ourselves, are breaking down and wearing out. Somewhere during sprint to the coast Ryan's back rack had snapped on one side, and sometime when we were on the coast more north the other side snapped. With all the stress now misplaced on the frame one of the eyelets on the frame snapped off, so with only 30 miles until San Francisco I hoped Ryan could gingerly hobble the steel beast into the city before the other eyelet snapped off and there was no bottom support to hold the rack from scraping on the fender and tire.

As we got closer to the Golden Gate Bridge the number of bicyclists shot up considerably. As we rode our wide-load bikes on the pedestrian path I tried my best to steer clear of tourists with rental bikes wobbling towards me. Soon enough we rolled down into San Francisco and made our way towards the Pacific coast again. For almost the last two weeks we have stayed in the Sunset District of the city. The suburbs of San Francisco. It has been our longest stay in one place. It was a vacation in a vacation, but now it is time to leave. Tomorrow we will head south.

Copyright: C-Rob AKA HardCory