Beginnings and ends

I MISS BIKING
I MISS DANIELA
I MISS CANNED SPINACH
I MISS THE SHERIFF
I MISS MOVING
I MISS SWEATY
I MISS TIRED
I MISS AMERICA

picnic and presents

Andreas!

Last leg of the journey
Ahh the Pacific
Wooooo we made it. Can go any further
about to cross the bridge

SAN FRANSISCO, the grand arrival

We have been holding off writing this post, because it marks the end of our bike trip. But it was a wonderful day. AMAZING, really, but also sad. We never wanted it to end.

So we wake up early. TOO early. We want to make it to SF by 2pm, when Andreas, our fellow Absurdistani we met in Utah has planned a welcome party. Lorraine drops us off beyond some construction and we say goodbye. It's still dark outside and foggy and cold. It feels exhilarating to know we are going to touch the Pacific ocean today. We pedal too fast. We just can't help it. We're very close to SF, when we realize we have lots of time to kill. So we bum around a bit. We go to a coffee shop, give each other back massages, wander into bike shops, check out a bookstore. Finally we get the go ahead. Somehow Lorraine, who has remarkable paparazzi skills, finds us and begins snapping away. We head up to the Golden Gate. We can see the Bay and it is beautiful. We whoop and shout! Andreas meets us on his bicycle, Lorraine parks on the other side of the bridge armed with her camera, and we set off.

Andreas winds through the throngs of tourists clumping for photos, or swerving around on their bikes, we follow closely. Then there's a gap in the crowds and we see Lorraine crouching with the camera. We speed ahead, trying to look tough for the pictures.


After some model shots, Andreas leads us up and down a hundred San Fransisco hills to the Pacific ocean. We kick off our shoes, run through the sand, and jump into the frigid water. Splashing around, and dunking our heads we rejoice. But we also are hit with the weighted feeling that we cannot bike any further. The ocean stretches out endlessly before us and it is impassible. Jumping into the ocean was the furthest west we could go.



Andreas thought we were crazy. He stood on the beach shaking his head and taking pictures. After putting some warm things on, Andreas led us to Golden Gate park where we would meet Lorraine for a picnic. As we rode, the paparazzi pro followed us closely. One second she would be behind us, the next second she'd be at the bottom of a hill, silver Mercedes barely visible around the corner. It was surely impressive.

When we got to Won (Andreas' hippie car) he got out all these amazing picnic essentials like cheeses, crackers, cookies, 4 different kinds of drinks, and other yumshis and thoughtful snacks. We all munched and laughed a lot. Then Andreas (and Peter in spirit) gave us these really cool hippie dippy things. I got a little green satchel (that i've been using since I got it), and Jocelyn got this really cool orange scarf. Thank you Andreas! and thank you Peter! And thank you Lorraine (aka paparazzi princess)!

After our delicious welcome partay, we said goodbye to Andreas and cruised in the movie star paparazzi car to the fanciest hotel in San Fransisco.


We got to stay with Lorraine at the Palace Hotel right downtown. It was pretty pish posh. We rolled our dirty, squirrel-pelted bikes right through the lobby.

The hotel was so much fun. We did some SERIOUS sneaking around and trying to get into parties we weren't invited to. We even took the sneaking to another hotel a block away and I found a piano to play. Jocelyn and I happened upon an empty ballroom in one of the hotels and we gave a very windy fake speech at the podium. After walking around the city and exploring with us, Lorraine headed back to the room and we went in search of pizza. We found a place that was open, but it was in a very sketchy part of town. So, while we were waiting for our pizza, we went to this "infinite love" club. Kids there looked like Bard students. I don't know what we looked like, sun burnt in our turtlenecks and mom jeans. After a while of feeling awkward, we started talking to people and quickly realized that their initial judgements of us and our initial judgements of them dissolve as soon as you open up and stop reserving and judging and feeling out of place. The music was a bit too psychedelic. We left to get our pizza and head back to the hotel to hang out with Lorraine. Party!


We finally went to sleep after a VERY long and VERY epic day. Thank you to everyone who made this happen. Thank you to everyone who made this amazing and changed who we are and who we want to be.

This is a beautiful country and I encourage everyone to cross it slowly. Take the time to talk to someone you might normally overlook. Act upon a spontaneous desire to climb a cliff, check out a bookstore, jump in a stream. And whatever you do, DON'T have an itinerary. Decide where you want to go, when and how along the way!


send postcards to the people you meet!

Napa, CA

Birthday in the plum tree
birthday swim
the famous Delicatessen birthday lunch

The next morning: leaving for San Fransisco too early


speeding away into the fog

We left Davis, riding through wine country. It was Jocelyn's birthday. We stopped to swim in a cold stream and sunbathe on picnic benches. When we rolled into Napa, we stopped at Genova Delicatessen's (aka Dulcininis) to fill our water bottles. As we walked into the little Italian market, it struck me that we had ridden our bicycles all the way across the country to this place where i used to come when I was young. I blurted out: "WE JUST RODE OUR BIKES ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE COUNTRY" as if i had just come to realize this fact. Jocelyn suddenly realized we had made it on the day she turned 20 and added: "AND it's my birthday".The chefs, cashiers, and servers at Genova went wild! They started asking us all of these questions and giving us all this delicious food. They were just as excited as we were! Three of the ladies made us the most delicious sandwich imaginable. Cecilio, a cook gave us two enormous slices of chocolate cake. They gave us pickles and chips and little peppercinis. They all wanted to see our bikes, so we led the cooks in their aprons and chefs in the hats outside to see Brahm and the Sheriff (the bikes).

We were quite stuffed so we saved the chocolate cake for later. We headed to a plaza so that we could roll up to Lorraine's house right as she was getting back from work. This homeless guy started talking to us. We gave him our chocolate cake and the remainder of our epic sandwich.


Arriving at Lorraine's house was spectacular! We really did make it. This was the place where we would be staying in Cali for a week. We jumped into Lorraine's arms (she didn't complain about our smelliness... yet). Then we all went out to Sushi to celebrate Jocelyn's birthday. It was grand.

Davis, CA

Sac old building
town near Davis



After Placerville, we said goodbye to our biker friends and rode along a bike path. It was great! Beautiful path with plenty of joggers, bikers, power-walkers, and baby strollers.

This old guy caught up with us and we got into a very deep discussion about life and death and bio-feedback. He told us about his cardiac arrest experience of death. He died for 18 minutes. In that time he said he experienced the most incredible feeling of euphoria. Perfect bliss. He said it was very difficult going back into his body and consciousness because here is a world of pain and awareness and worry, and there in his out-of-body state of being, was only peace. It took him three months to realize that he actually wanted to be alive. But now he is quite content biking around and occasionally seeing patients (he is a psychologist). He biked alongside us for about 12 miles, told us all of these personal things, then disappeared just as quickly as he had showed up.

His effect didn't ware off for a while though. I was rather in a state of trance thinking about death and consciousness. That has been a huge theme for me on this trip: not only have we been having conversations with people about such things, but I have also been reading this book about a woman who has a stroke and loses left-brain function temporarily. So our experience of the world is filtered by the right and left hemispheres (each of which provides/processes information VERY differently), and by our physicality (eyes, ears, noses, which receive input uniquely), and all the neural pathways that have been forged over the years...

So what happens when we die for 18 minutes? Or when our left brain function begins to fluctuate? What is consciousness if it contains no energy or matter? where is it housed? How was this man conscious (experiencing bliss) when his body was dead? How was this woman conscious when the left side of her brain (the analytical, language-centered side) was swimming in a pool of blood? If consciousness or an idea or a thought contains no matter or energy, does it exist according to the laws of physics?


These are some of the questions we've been asking over and over again, and collecting answers from people with very different but equally valid knowledge (from pastors, to Native American chiefs, Kentucky hillbillies, grandmothers, firemen/ smoke jumpers, goat farmers, cyclists and motorcyclists, traveler bums, college boys, school teachers, kiwi sailors, corporate officials, police ladies, civil war reenactors, veterans, Kansas kids, bike mechanics, and many more kinds of people along the route).

Of course we haven't figured any of this out, but I have become more thoughtful, more aware, and most importantly, more AWAKE.

So then we passed through Sacramento and made our way to Davis. Davis is a town for bicyclists. They are bikes EVERYWHERE. All over the roads, sidewalks, leaning against buildings, strapped to cars. We felt right at home. Moreover, there was a farmers market going on right down town. We ate loads of fruit samples, bought some garlic, and went to the domes (a hippie commune/ dorms where we would stay for the night). The gardens there are beautiful. So many fruits and veggies growing. The students are responsible for all of it. Quite impressive and what a contrast to Bard.


So we stayed at the domes after a stone soup style dinner (we started with pasta, and the hippies started adding things from the garden .. tomatoes, basil, squash, zucchini).

We slept under a mulberry tree.

Placerville Bike Shop Bob and the Fam

Bob's bike shop family



We left Joe and Lindsay at South Tahoe and went to the GROSS OUT. (the grocery outlet). Spent WAY to long shopping and delaying our riding. Finally we hopped back on the bikes and zoomed off. We started to hit lots of small California towns. Everywhere. Little chocolate shops, wineries, cafes, boutiques. We had taken route 50, which was rather lonely in Nevada (the loneliest road in America), but had become quite the interstate by California. IT was scary. No shoulder interstate. Cars and trucks whizzing and honking. We had to bike on the wrong side of the road where there was a small shoulder. Somehow we stayed alive. It was beautiful anyway. We ended up in Placerville, CA and needed to inflate our tires. So we went to Bob's bicycle shop (don't go to Golden Spoke in Placerville, go to Bob's). We ended up talking to his son a lot, and he, Geoff, decided to guide us to the route for Camron Rock. But as we were biking Geoff decided it was a better idea that we stay with him and his family in their beautiful Placerville home.

Their house was great. The three kids, who were all grown up and had wives and kids of their own, were living temporarily with their parents in one big happy family kind of way. We all sat around the table together laughing and eating home-made calzones. We felt so at home with the bike shop family! They told us a lot about bike mechanics (like when you see someone bring in a broken bike bought from Wal-Mart, you can't fix it). The next morning, Bob the bike mechanic drove us up this really big hill out of their neighborhood. We got to ride in a 1944 pick up truck with the dog. Thank you Bob, Geoff, and family- you guys were great and we felt so at home in your home!


Daniela

North Lake Tahoe

The crew with pilots
pilot Debbie and Darby
Lettuce Ladies
Emerald Bay waterfall




Leaving Carson City was problematic because we both had TERRIBLE stomach aches. We decided the best thing to do would be to check out the Trader Joe's up the hill and maybe get some ginger or something. We ended up spending WAY too much time at TJ's. We hung around the sample area awkwardly long. We bought fancy salads, ginger chews, and truffles (don't ask me why). Then we headed over to Barnes and Nobel, a few blocks away. We spent the whole morning there, reading, sipping Jocelyn's specialty drink (it's free! just order one hot water and add milk, cinnamon, honey, etc).

Finally we decided to leave the bookstore. We biked up a seriously long pass (Spooner Summit) and got these cute boys from Davis U to take a picture of us at the top. Then we saw lake Tahoe. It was BEAUTIFUL!

After having spent a week in the desert, where the largest body of water we saw was our camelbak in our panniers, seeing a great big blue lake like this was amazing. We zipped down the mountain and rode to the north shore, Incline Village, aka Income Village (it's seriously pish posh there). So we were tired and wanted to see a movie. We went to the cinema and asked the ticket lady if we could watch Salt for free. She said we could, so we blobbed around in the movie theater watching Angelina Jolie kill ever character in the film. She was very tough. and impossible.

Then we met Deb #1 and Darby. They invited us to stay with them at Deb #2's house. Apparently she had a hot tub and was a really cool pilot and stuff. We wanted to go swimming, so we zoomed down the hill to a private beach and convinced the gate keeper that we just HAD to jump into that water. Ditching the bikes, we kicked off our shoes, tossed our helmets, and raced into the water, diving deep into the cool waves. It felt so refreshing to swim in snow melt. After plenty of swimming and splashing around, we got out our truffle box and a couple of bananas. MELTED. the truffles had become soup. Delicious chocolate soup, perfect for dipping bananas.


We rode up the hill, shopped at Raleys (and went sample crazy again), and arrived at the "Debbie squared" house. Deb #1 and Darby watched us fall into our routine cooking and home-making habits: set out our mats and sleeping bags, heat up the stove, open a can of soup. We ate an entire head of lettuce raw, just munching away. the hot tub was amazing! We looked up at the stars, relaxing in the hot bubbly water.


We fell asleep under a full moon and a sky full of stars.

The next morning we got to learn all about pilots and flying from Debbie #2. She showed us some cool books, pictures , and model airplanes. She told us stories about flyinf and landing and everything that can and does go wrong.

THANK YOU Deb and Deb and Sue and Darby!


We ate breakfast burritos and shared stoires together. Then we packed our things and biked into Tahoe city. We found a cafe and both fell asleep. The owner guy, who also owned a bike shop, came over and asked if we were biking across the country. (how did he know? do all cross-country cyclists fall asleep on his couches>?).

We slowly made our way too emerald bay, which i thought was the bay full of rocks for bouldering. When we arrived I realized I was wrong about that. THere was however, a beautiful waterfall and a wedding.


We continued circumnavigating the lake and ended up meeting up with Chadwick, whom we had met in Austin, Nevada. The three of us got ice cream and gossiped. Then Chadwick found us a place to stay (with the ice cream parlor kids).

Carson City Nevada

Salt Flat muddy footprints
The pink crystallized patches
Colleen scratching Daniela's back
Hemi, the American Bull Terrier that slept with us




So we still have stories to tell for the last two states of our voyage (Nevada and California). We left off in Nevada, describing nocturnal desert riding. After sleeping under the tree with hundreds of shoes dangling by their laces, we found the "town" of Middlegate. It consists of one motel and that's it! We got coffee and made our yummy oatmeal (this morning was particularly gourmet with bits of trailmix, apples, left-over chocolate...

We continued riding and came across the most bizarre landscape. There were vast salt flats with sand dunes behind and mountains behind the dunes. But dappled throughout the salt flats were pockets of pink crystallized ponds. It was as if pink water was just beginning to freeze over. We collected a sample and I will run it under the mass spec and H-NMR (chemistry machines) when we get back to school to find out what it is. Strange.

So finally we start seeing trees. And they're WAY in the distance. That must be the town of Fallon. A few hours later we arrive at these trees. But Fallon is nowhere to be seen. Finally we get to Fallon and locate the public pool for showers. The pool boys take one look at us and tell us we can go on in free of charge. But they don't have soap, so we have to go traipsing around town looking for a place to buy soap. And it's HOT. We are lower in elevation at this point. After showers with soap, we look for food (we operate by instinct: showers, food, lodging). So we end up eating at this weird place that's half Mexican and half Italian cuisine. We get burritos that nearly make us implode. Then it's time to start finding a place to sleep. After cruising around unsuccessfully, we go to the jail. A very nice police lady tells us there are no places to sleep legally and safely in town, and that we should go to the campsite out of town. We smile and nod and go to the side of the road out of town to camp. We find a beautiful secluded spot though. We read some Harry Potter to each other (it's really a comfort item- whenever we feel slightly unsafe we crack out the HP... who cares about mace or knives anymore when we can just pretend we are in some magical land far away).


So we fall asleep under a sky brimming with stars. there are lizard prints all over the sand outside our tent. It seems that we parked right in the middle of the Sierra lizard nightly convention. We made oatmeal again for breakfast and hopped on the bikes.

We rode for several hours to Carson City. There we showered at the pool and found Comma Coffee, a great little shop. After spending hours reading, sipping joe, and charging out phones, we stepped outside to meet a group of kids. they were hula hoopers. and really good. They taught us how to hula-walk and do all kinds of tricks. Then the wind started to blow like crazy and they disappeared. As if the wind whisked them right away. Just like that.


So, with nothing better to do, we did the ol' cruise around. We found this guy playing guitar behind a bar in an alley/parking lot. We started talking and it turns out this bar was a hub where really cool locals went. Colleen came out to ask about our bikes and the squirrel pelts on our handlebars. She was a very tough lady. She was a bar tender, and once picked a guy up by the neck and through him out of the bar. Colleen found us a place to stay at some friend's house a block away. We sat on the couches and she showed us all her animal calls. she can make all sorts of sounds: donkey, pigeon, ducks, rooster, orangutan, wombat, ANYTHING- you name it, she's got it and it's good. Colleen also taught us how to look real tough. She showed us how to stare at someone and intimidate anyone giving you trouble. She showed us some defense moves that worked great on each other when we practiced. we wrestled and laughed and made funny sounds until late. Then we set up our tent outside and got to take Hemi, the American Bull Terrier i had fallen in love with to our tent. Hemi was huge. His head was twice as wide as mine and his body so massive and solid. He didn't fit in our tent very well, so he ended up curling up right outside the open door on the fly.

We slept well with our protector dog at our feet.