To avoid the mess of the strike, I decided I’d cycle South into Ecuador and get a flight from Quito to Medellin if the roads in Colombia were still blocked after a few days. Today at the border, the Ecuadorian immigration officials wouldn’t let me through because my passport is only valid for two more months and they require at least six for entry. So I had to turn around and go back into Colombia.

I’m stuck. I can’t go South into Ecuador because of my passport, and the road blocks make it difficult to go North. I’m gonna take my chances tomorrow and start heading North to Medellin.

When you’re working in an office most of the year, and you only get a few weeks vacation, you really need to make the most of your time off. At Urban Outfitters, we got a four-day weekend over Memorial Day, so I took the whole week off to meet up with my friend Will Clarke in Seattle to do a bike tour along the Pacific Coast in Washington and Oregon.

It was wet in Washington. Duh.

On our second day riding in Washington, it started raining. And it was forecast to rain the rest of the week too. So we decided to rent a car to get down to sunny California … where everyone’s blonde!

When in California … you gotta go blonde. And hell no, we didn’t do it ourselves. We went to the salon!

We restarted our bike tour in Eureka, California. Cycling along Highway 101 kind of sucked. It was a wide highway, so it was good to have a lot of shoulder, but it was pretty boring. The highlight along Highway 101 between Eureka and where you meet up with Highway 1 to get to the coast was definitely the Redwoods. Make sure to ride along the Avenue of the Giants through Humboldt Redwoods State Park. The road was quiet and the Redwoods were enormous and impressive.

It’s a fairly remote stretch. There might have been a campground or motel, but since we’d wasted some time driving in a rental car, we made a special effort to do some wild camping, especially since we were in a Redwood forest.

Yeah, we’ve got matching tents: TarpTent Contrail.

When Highway 101 split off onto Route 1, we climbed a mountain to get to the Pacific coast. And it was so worth it. The highlight of the trip was riding along the coastal road on Route 1. I’ve done a lot of bike tours, but I think this stretch was the most scenic. God must be some kind of crazy artist.

My Surly Traveler’s Check (aka CrossCheck with S & S Couplers) with a bikepacking setup just after reaching Route 1 on the Pacific Coast in Northern California

Since the Pacific Coast road is probably the most popular bike touring route in the US, I had some idea that there’d be lots of services along the way. I was way off. Route 1 was surprisingly remote. Every once in a while, we’d pass through a small town that had a gas station, or an over-priced convenience store.

Even with my bikepacking setup, I was able to find some room to dry my laundry using my cargo net.

We biked a few days along Route 1, and it was really incredible. The riding wasn’t too difficult. There was lots of up-and-down, and twists-and-turns, but all manageable and it made for more interesting riding especially with the view to the Pacific.

Since we’d had a lot of variety already on the bike tour, we opted for more. We decided to turn off Route 1 to go to Napa Valley. It was an okay choice. We had a long climb over the Sierra Nevada mountains, and the ride through wine country was pleasant, but it didn’t come close to the beauty of the Pacific coast road. If I had to do it over, I think I’d stay on Route 1 all the way into San Francisco.

Crossing the Golden Gate bridge into San Francisco was a nice way to cap off the trip. I didn’t feel all that victorious at the time though because we had to immediately think about getting back up to Seattle. We found a shitty Pakistani all-you-can-eat buffet, and considered all our options while we charged up our phones. After exhausting Craigslist, train schedules, and the idea of buying a car, we took the BART train to the airport, and rented a car through Alamo. Hertz sucked because they wouldn’t let us go over 600 miles in one day; they were going to force us to rent the car for two days. Alamo was fairly cheap, had no mileage restriction, and let us pick any size car. We ended up cramming our two bikes into a tiny car, which later made for an uncomfortable sleeping situation at the rest stop. 14 hours of driving later, and smelling like shit, we made it back to Seattle.

Bike touring the Pacific Coast in Northern California was incredible. Now I’ve gotta do the rest of California.

Road Bone’s #1. Victory in Hanoi. I asked the guy at the hostel to take my photo.

Summary:
Distance: 3,690 miles
Days Cycling: 45
Avg Distance: 82 miles per day
Time Cycling: 278.6 hours
Avg Speed: 13.25 mph
100-Mile Days: 9
120-Mile Days: 4
Fastest Avg Speed: 17 mph
Longest Distance: 122.4 miles
Longest Time: 10:12 hours (6 AM to 6 PM with a few breaks)

During my final 5 days, I cycled 533 miles from Luang Prabang, Laos to Hanoi, Vietnam. After cycling for two months, my body was prepared for this self-imposed 5-day gauntlet through craggy mountains on unpaved road. I’m proud of the 3,700 miles I cycled, but I’m especially proud of my cycling accomplishments in the mountains of Northern Laos, turning two-day distances into one. Road Bone, the magician, making the impossible possible by simply turning the pedals.

A note I forgot to share: People loved it when I rode cocky. Many times I would ride with no hands. It was to relieve the pressure on my hands, and it was also nice to sit up on the bike instead of being hunched over on the handlebars. The response I would get from this was great. The hellos and the smiles were much bigger. And when it was late in the day, and the sun was fading, I’d take off my shirt. Shirtless and riding high with no hands was the ultimate in cockiness, and the ladies loved it the most. Typically, the ladies who rode by on their motor scooters were conservative, but when my shirt came off, I got some big waves, and I broke a lot of hearts.

I did some extra work the day before to set myself up for an “easy” 188 km (117 miles) final ride into Hanoi. It would be the first day for a while that I wouldn’t be climbing some massive mountain, so I thought it would go pretty smoothly, but I was wrong. Just about everything else got in my way.

Ready to take on the world at 5:30 AM.

I got up at 5:30 AM and got on the road after eating some Oreos. Although I was in the mountains, I wasn’t at the top. There was a long, gradual climb, then some down, then more up. When I finally got on the descent, there was a thick fog all the way down. I could hardly see with the rain and fog on my glasses. When I got to the bottom, I had to start climbing another mountain all over again. On an empty stomach, it was a tough grind. On the descent of the second mountain, I passed a long line of stopped cars. There had been a rock slide, but luckily, the police let me ride through the road block. Boulders sat in the middle of the muddy road, but motorbikes and my bike were able to squeeze through.

It was a relief when I got out of the mountains and out of the fog. But as soon as I got on the flat, I had to fight the wind. Although I was pushing hard, I was crawling. Wind is probably the most frustrating thing when you’re cycling. With mountains, the agony is finite; you climb one side, and then you’re rewarded with the descent. But fighting the wind is endless.

Bad boy Road Bone on his final ride.

The outskirts of Hanoi were disgusting. Gray, loud, garbage, stink. Heavy traffic and patchy road. I rode through the smoke from the small garbage fires burning on both sides of the road. The garbage chemicals and truck exhaust got to me. The people who called to me from the side of the road were really irritating, and a guy pulled up slowly in his car beside me and laughed when he looked at me. I started having violent thoughts towards the Vietnamese. When I got a disingenuous hello, I wanted to slash their throat. Blood on the streets on my final ride.

My body was exhausted and my head felt light by early afternoon. I hadn’t eaten, so I stumbled off my bike to get some fried rice. Then I drank two Cokes (I’ve had so much soda on this trip). I stopped again a few minutes later when I saw a fruit stand. I picked up an apple and asked the old lady how much. She held up four fingers, so I took a bite of the apple as I walked back to my bike to get 4,000 dong ($0.20). When I handed her the money, she shook her head. Now she wanted 10,000 dong ($0.50) – after I’d eaten some, of course. Although she didn’t understand my angry English, I think she understood that I was mad. Frustrated by dishonesty, I couldn’t look at her as I handed over the money.

In Hanoi, I arrived at the hotel where I had started the trip two month before. My ride was over, and no one was there recognize it, or celebrate it. It was a lonely, quiet victory. It felt good to be done.

There’s the champion. Having a blast.

As soon as I entered Vietnam, the road became paved. I really loved cycling through the mountains in Northern Vietnam from Dien Bien Phu to Hanoi on Highway 6. It had been awhile since I’d had a smooth, paved road and mountain scenery.

On the road, I had a lot of emotional swings. When I was down, it usually meant I needed to eat. But sometimes it was also the insincere hellos, and the people laughing at me. One morning all this was really getting to me when a taxi driver pulled up in front of me, looked back at me, and gave me a sincere thumbs up. It was odd how much that meant to me, but my attitude completely changed for the better.

As I was climbing the last big mountain in the late afternoon of my second-to-last day, I had to stop for water. I was focused and in a rush — no fun, no happiness — just get up the mountain. As I entered the shop, there were a couple of young guys drinking. One of them handed me his bottle of beer, and the shopkeeper brought out a full jug of water for me. I gave up my focus for a few minutes, and had some fun with these guys. They offered me a smoke out of their bamboo bong, but I’m too much of a prude, so I passed. I thanked them and soldiered on up the mountain.