Month: February 2019

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most  intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.  

Charles Darwin

 

 At the red light, the Trek 720  weaves and wobbles.  I backpedal and slow to a crawl.  Trying to balance the bike standing still, I shift my weight and overcorrect the steering.   Drivers near by stare, “That old man gonna fall!” I put aside my pride, place both feet on the ground, and wait for the green light. Gravity rules, rescinds, revokes, and repeals my competence.

In my younger days… you know the child is the father to the man, I could “track stand”  with both feet “clicked in,” and patiently wait for the green light.  As a young man defying gravity, I had competence without comprehension.  Now I am reduced to an old man babbling  about the good old days when “used to”  and “could have” ruled.

I have come full circle...comprehension without competence.  This oldognewtrek approaches the traffic light like a young child, a beginner who has lost his training wheels. But give the bike a little speed, and  mechanical precession  will keep the bike balanced.  Precession is  the bike’s heavenly  gyroscope, the protector against the wickedness, and snares of gravity,  a trekker’s guardian angel, and my St. Michael.  As Issac Newton revealed, a body in motion tends to stay in motion.  Having come  to terms with his first law of gravity,  I’m worried about his third law…. “For every action in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction.”  Gravity still rules my day.

Today the trek from Vancouver to Eureka, has been completed.  I was at the right place, the Pacific Coast Trail, at the right time, summer of 2018, and at the right season of my life, a retired surgeon with means. Starting on Independence Day, with the confidence to travel unsupported,  I acquired competence  by accomplishing this bike tour uneventfully.  The gravity of my age didn’t derail this train ride.  At stop signs I smile, place both feet on the ground and let gravity’s youthful exuberance roll on down the road.  The moral of this old man’s  adventure “is simply that one should never be where one does not belong.”

At seven in the morning I made a nonrefundable, airline reservation from Eurika to Louisville.    The plane leaves at eight PM with or without me.  I need to ride  sixty miles from Klamath to Eureka, stow my gear, arrange Bike Flights to pick up the trek from Revolution Sports, and taxi to the airport. I realize there are  bear traps to my day, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.  

 

The ocean fog hovered 100 feet above sea level.   When quietly passing the Golden Bears guarding  Klamath River (pic above),  I acknowledge  that the future is opaque but the day’s first two obstacles are behind me.  Five miles down Rt. 101, the Pacific Coast Trail took a right turn, followed the Newton B. Drury Parkway, and quickly climbed 750 vertical feet.  Ground fog encased the Prairie Creek State Park, a World Heritage Site, an International Biosphere Reserve, and a section of the Redwood National Park.  The winds whispered through the canopy as the forest inhaled CO2 and exhaled oxygen. The Redwood’ s breathing created light and variable winds. I stopped for a photo op and heard  ” splat, splatter, splash, and plop” echo across on the forest.   The ocean fog collected on the needles and then pattered on the forest duff.  Gnomeboy drank the mountain dew and stored some drops in his canteen (pic below).  For a moment I thought he would bathe in it.

The newly paved road then sloped downhill for the next nine miles.  At eight in the morning I was freewheeling through the Redwood Forest accompanied by two gnomes. I coasted among the largest and oldest living organisms on earth.  Hypnotized by their “dark and deep” grandeur, I hugged trees that were 500 years old at the time of Christ. As John Muir exclaimed, in Our National Parks (1901) “God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods; but he cannot save them from fools — only Uncle Sam can do that.”

The Prairie Creek Visitor Center accompanied by Elk Prairie Campground lodged a mile from the South entrance. The sun peeked through the clouds as a herd of Roosevelt elk grazed near Prairie Creek.  At a picnic table shadowed by “cathedrals” and “octopuses” I ate a brownie, a banana, and drank gatorade, the breakfast of champions.  The visitor center was opened and campers were walking about. Touring cyclists stopped and chatted.  They invited me for a walk on Revelation Trail a dedicated Shinrin-Yoku trail.  I guiltily made my excuses with a plane to catch 50 miles away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The remaining day rolled over hill and dale, staying close to the seashore. At Clam Beach a colony of Northern Elephant Seals baked on the seashore with hundreds of  tourists photographing any movement (pic below).   The urban sprawl of Northern California and resulting traffic gridlock returned just south of this pic.  Google maps routed me through the suburbs to avoid the congestion on Rt. 101 and safely on to Revolution Sports. 

Reading can hold you prisoner or take you on a journey.  Children’s books brought a young boy’s world into my home.  From the comfort of a bed I could drift down “Ol Man River” and relive adventures with Huck Finn (pic below).  Looking back, I was a competent reader without comprehension. Finally, after years of being trapped between the lines, the Huck Finn I knew as a child  jumped off the page and vanished.   

While I wandered America’s backroads, hunting for Huck’s footprints, his cave hide outs, or abandoned rafts, Huck Finn was alive and spray painting graffiti on highway signs and railroad cars.   I didn’t know “the times were a changin’.”  I hear he’s been spotted in the Southland.

 SigAlert…  With the bike as my raft and the road as my river,  Oldognewtrek will  drift in a new direction.  I’m stoked !  I want to  experience “California dreaming” in  SoCal, the gnarly section of Rt. 101.  What a dank trip!  Listen to hella people personally transformed, places reinvented and city of angels covered in concrete.  Ride through the Orange Curtain, and behold the industry that makes dreams come true.  

 This unscripted adventure will be “sweet” but it’s time to go home sweet home…  Back to Judy,  Fox Hill Farm and the grandkids.  I’ll rest up and chase Mark Twain’s escapee’s from San Francisco to Tijuana later this fall.  Hopefully hella Huck will return to the Mississippi .

 The more I age, the more I remain the same….  Ol’ Man River.  

“Old Man River, that Old Man River
He must know something, but he don’t say nothing
He just keeps rolling, he keeps on rolling along.”

Romantic perceptions can be unreal at times, but not untrue.  While I trekked The Pacific Coast Trail  ideas emerged like a wave from the ocean and crashed into the shore, “Whoosh.”  Thoughts roamed within the ocean’s fog and were sheltered under the Redwood’s canopy.   We are here, where our thoughts have brought us, and will be tomorrow where our thoughts lead us.  Wherever you go there you are.

 If you  can track your train of thought, that’s confidence.  Once you are mindful of them, that’s competence.  Remember, thoughts and the universe in particular have no obligation to make sense. They just are. Only fiction needs to make sense.

if that’s not nice i don’t know what is

So on down the road i ride

Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people. 

Franklin D. Roosevelt

And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.

John Muir

 

 Logistics, I need a personal assistant to help manage my rides.  It’s four PM  and I’m crossing  the Smith River on the Dr. Ernest W. Fine Memorial Bridge just North of Crescent City. The river is considered one of the crown jewels of the National Wild and Scenic River program. Its waters are free flowing from source to mouth and I barely take notice.  I’m a worried mind.  Should I ride 22 more miles to Kalmath or hold up in Crescent City?  Eurika’s airport is 80 miles to the south.   I was hoping  to make  tomorrow’s  8 pm flight from Eureka to San Francisco and then the red eye flight to Louisville.  I pressed the  highway sign’s  button (pic above) and  passed a “white bike” just prior to the bridge crossing.  Beware, danger is near. But I kept trekking like the Doo -Da Man. “Lately, it occurs to me what a long, strange trip it’s been.”

I had not made hotel reservations for tonight nor airplane reservations for my flight home.  There are several Crescent City motels with vacancies and I can see why.  Once again a city with the resources of the Pacific Ocean,  the Smith River, beautiful Crescent Beach, the Jedediah Smith Redwoods suffered a 30% poverty rate and 10% unemployment rate. The city had not managed its resources. I wanted to keep trekking.

 This morning the Klamath Redwoods Casino was completely booked, but now, while slurping a Mickey D’s Frappe I redialed  the casino’s number. There had been a cancellation. I took a deep breath, ” Gnome boy put your red cap on,  the Redwood Hotel  and  the Abalone Grill await.”  We had four hours of daylight to travel 22 miles, which included a  1500 feet climb through Del Norte Redwoods State Park.  “I’m late! For a very important date! No time to say hello, goodbye! I’m late!”

Early this morning,  fog shrouded the Rogue River and the sport fishermen trolling for Chinook  Salmon and Summer Steelhead (pic above).  Yesterday’s high pressure zone remained over southern Oregon and  the anticyclone help create the morning’s low of 42.  When the fog cleared, sunny skies and  seventy degree temperatures were expected.  After a light breakfast, I bought fishing gloves from the camp store associated with Jot’s Resort (pic below). Snug as a bug with layers of clothing, I departed Gold Beach at seven thirty with Gnome boy wrapped in a wash cloth  “California or bust.” he muffled.  The winter gloves insulated  my hands from the damp cold, so I trolled for seascapes on my way to Crescent Beach.

South of Gold Beach, the road with its wide shoulder had limited visibility.  My lights flashed, and the bike clipped along soundlessly. The morning fog encased the road  like a sensory deprivation chamber.   The pic below is just past Kissing Rock at Buena Vista State Park.  The surf pounded the shore while  a faint gray line distinguished the sky from the ocean. 

The road swerved away from the shore and climbed the mountainside. I  cranked up the twisting gray Rt. 101 and got lost in the bike rhythm. At 800 ft the fog lifted and the sunshine appeared. The road crested and on the descent the fog returned.  With brakes on I “turtled” my way down to  Cape Sebastian State Park and the sound of the surf…”Whooosh.”  An unspoiled beach, rugged outcroppings, and  a panoramic view of the Oregon coast were muted by the ground fog. What prefect morning solitude (pics below). 

 

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No other visitors entered Cape Sebastian State Park. Gnome Boy suggested we rockhound on the beach.  After gatorade, a banana, and a brownie, I put my  polar penguins back on and rolled down 101.   “I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.” 

With the California State line thirty miles to the South, the Pacific Coast Highway kept a tight grip on the coastline. From Pistol River to Brookings the steep and rugged  coastline was thickly forested with small, scattered sand beaches. I don’t know why, but the closer to California the faster my pace.  Two hours later, I entered California, and wondered  why I had raced past the Samuel H. Bordman State Scenic Corridor and Cape Ferrelo.   But Crescent City was only 20 miles away so off I sped… again, uncertain if I could fly home tomorrow night.

 The road had come to own me.  The destination was more important than the journey. I had stopped wandering and felt lost, worrying about the logistics. Gnome boy smirked, “Welcome to California.”

Leaving the scrub and the salt tolerant Sitka spruce behind, the Del Norte Redwood State Park  climbed 1500 feet over the California Costal Range and  occupied 31,00 acres.  A mile into the forest the climb began in earnest. The road twisted and turned skyward with an eight degree grade. The afternoon wind filtered through the canopy of Douglas firs at six hundred feet.   The highway’s shoulder narrowed and near some switchbacks disappeared. An occasional eighteen wheeler ground by in low gear, groaning to maintain a twenty miles an hour pace.  Cars and Suvs followed, like the trailing  tail of a kite.  

At one thousand feet, the road flattened, and the shoulder resumed as I pulled into  Vista Point.  More strikingly,  a thin mist drifted across 101 (pic above) and highlighted the majestic Coastal Redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens). I rode among the earth’s tallest living organisms to mile marker sixteen.  Damnation Creek Trailhead (1100 feet) appeared on the West side of Rt. 101. A few feet down its dirt trail the sounds of the highway faded away. Mariah hummed a sweet forest lullaby.  In the background, a high pitched song bird  whistled, “Pretty, pretty, pretty.”

The Pacific Ocean, one mile away and a thousand feet below crashed into the shore.  Dense ocean fog rose up the coastal range, as the surrounded Redwoods swayed and blue skies peaked through the canopy and clouds.  Beads of  water collected on evergreen needles and soaked the tree’s bark.   My feet froze, I couldn’t move.   I gasped and held my breath while witnessing the forest’s magic. Her sleight of hand was quicker than my eye. (pic above and below).  The forest breathes. Del Norte lives.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“G’day, mate. Breathe!  Inhale… slow, deep, breaths!  Ranga, a “Stryla expat”  with his side kick “Red” hopped upon a lichen covered outcropping (pic below).   “Ay, fill your lungs,  it doesn’t get any cleaner than this mate!  We call’m God’s Rays or Redwood Rainbows.  Either way it’s  a ripper, Mate!”

 “Oi mate how ya going this S’Arvo?” Ranga waved his walking stick over his dominion.  “You’re not knackered from that climb, Ay?  Forest bathing are ya? Welcome to my new world, “my California !” 

After welcoming us to “his California,”  Ranga  poured  “mead dew,” a concoction distilled from fermented honey, raspberries, and spiced juniper gin from a canteen in his backpack.  As you might guess,  minutes later Gnome Boy and Ranga were  “loose,”  and rolling out  “Gnome sweet Gnome jokes”.  I finished  the gatorade while they carried on about their  common ancestry.   We never did discover how this Aussie emigrated to California.  Ranga’s last pun, “The Redwoods were Gnome Man’s Land.”

 Gnome boy with a slight slur, chimed in, “Slow down, let the moment  wash over you.  Don’t focus on the future or worry about the past.  In the forest Nothing is ornamental.  Everything, including needles, are exactly where they are to be.”   “Just breathe.”

Ranga didn’t want to be a “Dobber”  but, “Redwoods shed more than needles. Redwoods speak evergreen.   They  gossip constantly, and sing resurrection songs.  They wrangle over water rights and root space,  and  can hold a grudge for a  two thousand years.”

 I couldn’t get a word in edgewise  between the two chatting, woodland gnomes.  With all of their advice I  couldn’t understand why they were not sitting on a mushroom quietly humming, “OHM” (pic below).  Instead, they were  washing down the last tastes of “mead dew.”  Go figure!  Gnome boy  did invite Ranga back to Fox Hill Farm for a taste of Booker’s Bourbon just before he nodded off. 

 Ranga’s Redwood home had breathed for over two thousand years and grown to 350 feet, which trumped Gnome boy’s 500 year old oak tree by Cox’s Creek.  Gnomes  fixate on their tree.  While they slept off the mead dew, I tried visualizing both gnomes in Napoleon’s uniform.   But the notion evaporated on Damnation Creek Trailhead (pic below) thanks to Shinrin-yoku.  I could smell the sun, warmed bark, watch the timbers sway, inhale the fog bathing the forest, and enjoy the sun-driven wind drying this timberland. Even here they call the wind Mariah.

 It was all downhill from there.  Literally, Route 101 came down from the clouds and  rolled past the Trees of Mystery tourist attraction (pic below).  I checked in to the Klamath Redwood Hotel owned by the Yurok Indian Tribe.  What a ride!

 After a long hot shower I strolled past the casino and into the Abalone Grill.  I inhaled smoked, wild-caught, Chinook salmon over a bed of fettuccine, bathing in a white wine sauce .  Like I was taught by two sleeping Gnomes, “Inhale the future and exhale the past.  Shinrin-yoku.”

if that isn’t nice I don’t know  what is

so on down the road i ride

Let us go in; the fog is rising.

Emily Dickinson

 Overnight a dense ground fog veiled Face Rock State Park.  Squawking seagulls scattered crouching crows from  garbage bins. All dissolved into the morning mist screaming, “Mine, mine, mine.”  The Pacific shoreline played hide and seek, but the distinctive sound of waves pounding  the sand... Whooosh echoed across the park. Beads of moisture collected on the handle bars.  The taste of sea salt and the smell of seaweed filled the air.  The dense fog backscattered the red flashing, bike light . Blue skies, dry cool air, and the wind will prevail by ten.  Meteorologists call this daybreak an anticyclone, a large clockwise, circulation of wind slowly revolving around a high  pressure zone centered on the Southern Oregon coast.  But we call her Mariah.  And she travels with the sun….Cum Sole.

The fog burned away as I rolled past Langlois and  Denmark.  Rt 101 rolled over foothills and creek beds two miles from the coast.  Small farms dotted the landscape.  South of Sixties,  Elk Creek was dry and I could spot fish trapped  in the pool of water (pic above).   Mariah gathered speed the bluer the sky shined. She pushed me southward, toward Port Oxford and the California Redwoods.

 

 Port Oxford’s shoreline included sandy beaches, hidden tidal pools,  and exposed sea stacks, sculpted by wind and sea erosion (pic above left).  Port Oxford Bay extended 27 miles south-eastward past Humbug Mountain State Park.

 

 

In 1850 congress passed the Donation Land Claim Act where homesteaders could claim  Native American territory as their own.  The indigenous  Idene Tsut Dah Tribesmen unsuccessfully fended off white settlers in 1851 (pic above left ) at   Battle Rock (pic below).

Rt 101 had rolling hillsides and spectacular vantage points along the bay.  Until Humbug Mtn. State Park (1677 feet) the road hugged the coast. The picture below shows the mountain in the distance.  By noon Mariah “Howled” and the surf  pounded the shore…Wooosh (pics below).

 

 The climb out of Humbug Mountain  followed Brush Creek  and was shaded by an old-growth rainforest of Douglas-fir, spruce, grand fir, Oregon myrtle, alder and Western red cedar.  At the summit the terrain reverted back to the semiarid scrub (pic below).  But I could hear California and her Redwoods calling.

Rt 101 trekked by Nesika, Bailey and Gold beach, Otter Point and eventually  the Rogue River.  I crossed Wedderburn Bridge and coasted into Gold Beach.  After a cup of clam chowder, blackened fish san and Gold Beach Lager  at the Port Hole Cafe, I relaxed in the hot tub at Jot’s Resort. 

 What a great day riding the wild Oregon coast!  Blue skies for everyone! California is within reach while Vancouver dissolves into my foggy memories. Life is such a funny, funny riddle.  I am chained to my bike, birds are prisoners to the sky and Mariah is a hostage to isobars, yet we all travel with the sun.  Cum Sole.

If that’s not nice i don’t know what is.

So on down the road i ride.