13 Dec Blog 6: Cycling 2.0

Before I started on my five day cycling adventure, I wanted to ‘upgrade’ my bike that I bought from craigslist. So I dropped by a cycling shop to get the gears, the brakes and some other stuff checked. The guy from the shop looked at me with worried eyes and said: “Are you sure you want to travel from San Francisco all the way to L.A. on this bicycle?”. He said that he would try to fix what he could about this bicycle, but if it were him, he would buy another, better bicycle. Of course, his comments (that is, his harsh criticism) kind of upset me a bit. But I was determined and still convinced that I would make it. His criticism though, was just the start of all the comments and laughs that I got from many supposed “bicycle-connoisseurs”. I can already give away that I did make it all the way from San Francisco to L.A., on that supposedly crappy bicycle that I got from craigslist. So who is the connoisseur now?

Here I was, day one of my trip, I started early in the morning from Montara. It’s a little town just 20 miles south of San Francisco. I wanted to start there so I could skip the pretty hazardous traffic that you get when you try to leave SF. I had a long day ahead, and my friend Anja was joining me the day after. So the first hundred miles, I had to do it by myself. I can tell you, it was a pretty though first day. I had not trained for such a long time, except for maybe some 20-mile day trips across the Golden Gate. Nevertheless, I was going strong. I had made it about 75 miles when I realized that I had taken a wrong turn in Santa Cruz, which was already 20 miles behind me… “No way, I’m turning back” I thought. I tried to figure out the route to highway 1 (or the Cabrillo highway), but that was going to take me at least another 30 miles on top of the 100 that I was supposed to do that day (and, just for the people that have no clue how long it takes to cycle a hundred miles, I cycled about 11 miles per hour, so I had spend already almost 7 hours on my bike that day).

So, I figured I could take a turn and get on the highway 101. That was a mistake. As it turned out, the 101 is not a highway, but a freeway. Up till that moment, I did not now the difference between a highway and a freeway. It is an important difference that I learned very fast. Because even though there was a pretty wide shoulder where I could cycle, the cars on the freeway go a lot faster than on the highway. And there are also a lot more cars, and a lot more lanes, and a lot more exits. I did not take long for me to figure out that I had to get out that terrifying place as soon as possible, as people were honking their horns at me. Nevertheless, I couldn’t get off, because I could not cycle back (against traffic) and I also could not take an exit. So there I was, stupefied by fear and panic, standing on the side of the road, not knowing what to do. Here comes another example of how wonderfully sweet the American people are. I think it only took about five minutes until a young woman pulled over, and offered to take me and my bike away of that awful freeway. Still shivering from the fear that I experienced that day, I arrived at my first stop in Monterey, where I met my friend Anja, who was joining me from the next day onward.