19 Apr California soul – a trip to Big Sur

Written By: Alexander Mak-Pearce

What’s the dumbest reason you’ve had for going on a trip somewhere? For me it was a Beach Boys song… Big Sur: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PejT7jp7_o0  this is a song I’ve listened to for years but until arriving in California I was completely unaware where it was, so when I found out it was just a hop, skip and a jump down the coast my mind was set. I had a grand plan to bike there.

Now as it turns out grand plans do unfortunately require some fine details. In fact, there were a few glaring issues to iron out: where to get a bike?  Where am I going to stay? Will I even be able to bike such a distance? For this first problem I’d been sussing out a bike in my apartment’s washing room which looked to be unused for quite some time, great that I ought to do. On where to stay I need to keep it cheap, and what’s much cheaper than sleeping in the dirt aka camping. Finally, will I even be able to physically do it, well time to find out.

9:00 AM time to set off, rushing out of the apartment, backpack ready with spare socks and underwear, I hurried away from the building as fast as I could in hopes that whoever’s bike this was wouldn’t even have time to notice it was gone before I left. Here I was on the road heading down to school, feeling on top of the world. This feeling lasted all of 30 seconds before almost getting run over riding down the wrong side of the road, some swearing and horn beeping later I was back on track and would not soon forget they drive on the other side of the road here.

An uneventful ride down the coast and exactly one class later the camping rental place was open, so I headed in to pick up the all-important tent and sleeping pad. Now fully stocked up I could properly start my adventure.

It only took a few gruelling miles of San Francisco hills to come to the conclusion that this bike would be well out of its depths missioning all the way to big Sur. Pfff who am I kidding this bike has a whole 7 gears on the back and 0 on the front, many would consider that well above average, maybe even too much to handle. So, with that thought I peddled on. After winding my way around crystal springs reservoir, it got to about 2 PM so I found a nice spot to sit and started working my way through lunch. It was at this moment a little old eastern European lady came up to me to ask what I was doing, anyhow after some back and forth she left me with a quote that I thought was just too nice to leave out, she said, “Life Is beautiful, go out and live your best” and with that I carried on feeling a newfound responsibility to try and live my fullest.

Pain in my arse, this is really the only accurate way to describe the next portion of this trip. Between an endless sea of switchbacks spiralling up the mountain, men in Lycra on road bikes speeding past me and saying a whole lot of curse words, I was done with going up. It eventually rolled around to about 9 PM so I pulled over to the side of the road next to a sign warning about mountain lions and ticks carrying Lymes disease. So, with that in mind hidden behind a tree I set up my tent, munched through a ham and cheese baguette, then proceeded to pass out.

The next day was incredible after a crisp start cruising on down through Big Basin, I was zooming between grandiose redwood trees, it was starting to feel like the scene from Star Wars with the land speeders racing through the giant forests, only I can’t imagine Luke was letting out a little weee! every time he went round a corner. Soon I made it to Boulder Creek where I stopped off for a much needed coffee in a diner that looked like it hadn’t changed since the 60s and got talking to some locals who were intrigued on my travels. The most fascinating of them being a Chinese lady called Judy, going about her business hula hooping down the street telling me of her grand ambitions to be a part of a traveling circus! After seeing her shop and playing what she said was the oldest upright piano ever produced we exchanged contact details and I carried on my journey.

Then believe it or not I did some more cycling, in fact just the right amount to make it to Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz is a cool place, apart from its hilarious pointless pier which is 50% road and 40% parking spaces, it has plenty of interesting streets but above all an atmosphere of laid-back people. So, in that spirit I went out to Steamers Lane for the afternoon to chill out, read a book, draw some scenes and watch the surfers shred.

After meandering through the streets, I pottered on over to New Brighton Beach where I proceeded to pretend I was on a downhill mountain bike, went down a hill, hit root and ate shit flying off my bike. Some recovery later I snuck through the back of the campgrounds and set up my tent. Sitting out at the cliff edge there was the most striking blue moon painting the entire bay with its cold pale light. I’m not sure if it was the moon or the fact I had just found out my sweater had disappeared flying off the back of my bike but it got me in a philosophical mood. So sitting there freezing, I thought to myself, to really be experiencing stuff in life things must be lost and gained, and that’s something to be happy about for all its good and bad.

Waking up the next morning I found my ideas put into practice. Turns out for this experience I had lost blood and gained a Tick, now that’s a solid joke mother nature fair play. Thinking back to the sign warning of Lymes disease I rather frantically removed the Tick, packed down the tent and moved on. Day 3 was hot, sun beaming all the way from Santa Cruz to Monterey through a patchwork of farms, moving past people working the shadeless fields (much love to everyone out there, they are the ones keeping this county alive). I was glad to end up at Monterey Beach without much trouble, sitting down in the sand for a moment to catch my breath.

Getting into Monterey town I did the only sensible thing a person can do when arriving at an unknown place, I went to the pub. After a nice pint of Guinness which cost precisely an arm and a leg I headed on over to the main street with grand ambitions on a Saturday night to paint the town red. This did not happen. Instead, after realising every pub was equally as expensive as the first, I ended up just strolling the street until I came across the cinema where I got talking to a curious man with a large grey bushy beard in a Grateful Dead shirt who was on his way to watch the Banff mountain film festival. Hearing this I enquired about a ticket which turned out to be $40 so that was off the cards, but nonetheless this man was confident that he would get me into the screening. Up and down main street we must have asked half the people in Monterey if they had a spare ticket, but to no avail. Eventually it came time for the film to start so, he shuffled off into the cinema.

Feeling not quite yet satisfied with my night I went off again to continue the adventure. Now I’m not sure why but I decided to head over to the pier to see if any interesting people might be hanging out. Rolling along getting closer to the end, I begin to hear Nutshell by Alice in Chains blasting out of a truck. As I pull up I shout over to the dude in the truck “Nice music man”, he gets out of his truck, beer in hand, looks me up and down and after some thought starts mumbling to me. Grand stories of seeing Alice in Chains live and living on the North shore of Oahu surfing pipeline, all in some of the most incoherent English I think I’ve ever heard. Anyhow he left me with this line “I don’t know you, you don’t know me, we are all strangers but I’ll see you tomorrow”, which I’ll leave up to you to decide if it’s deep and meaningful or just ramblings from a wasted dude.

On my way back down the pier I bumped into another guy, he was wearing just a trucker’s cap and shorts, toes out n all looking about as carefree as one can be. I struck up a conversation and he told me his stories of quitting his lawn cutting job for the golf course and moving out into an RV with his wife and kid, ready to live his own life, inspiring stuff. It was at this point he said he was cooking up a whole bunch of burgers and invited me back to the RV, somewhat cautiously I accepted his offer and we walked over together to meet the family, who were some of the most grateful people I’ve come across, the small things in life were not lost on them. Some time later the burgers were ready, and holy shit that man was not playing, they were the largest burger patties I’ve ever seen, probably at least a pound of meat each. After I thanked him for the food and wished my best to the family, I said my goodbyes to Monterey and went off up the hill to set up my tent at the veterans memorial park for the night.

In fitting to the name of the campground I was woken up sharp at 7 AM to the tune of a bugle playing over a loudspeaker and the sight of a park ranger marching towards my tent. Turns out I had finally been busted and he had come to collect payment for camping, never mind, between my $3 and a dream left I was still confident I could make it to big Sur today.

Whilst packing up my tent a lady with a sweet southern accent came over and offered me some breakfast which was awfully kind, so I waltzed on over to her van and was introduced to her husband and dog, they were an eclectic bunch to say the least. Apparently, she had come over from Tennessee after meeting this man sitting on the corner of the street with his guitar playing the old slide blues, and was now living the hippy life out in California. Now those who know me will understand my love for the blues so, while not all that much interesting happened while sitting there for me it was bliss. Fresh hot espresso, warm bowl of oatmeal and fruit, dude twanging out the blues in the background with the sun shining on my back felt about as close to perfection as one can get.

With my spirits high I left off down the coast, destination Big Sur. I’m not making this up when I say there are some of the bluest waters and incredible coastlines down that stretch of California that anybody would be lucky to experience. This is getting rather long now but in short it carried on like this the whole way down, climbing up and rolling down over the ridges and bay all along Highway 1 right into Big Sur itself. Finally being greeted again by the redwoods felt like a nice familiar welcome so I took a moment to reflect, sitting down by the Big Sur river itself taking in the magic of the place. So that’s it, in Big Sur sitting by the river Big Sur I got to listen to the Beach Boys song Big Sur, freaking cowabunga dude.

I did also have another day riding back the same way, but it sounds nicer finishing it here. All in all, 5 days and 240 miles of tremendous biking through the California coast with over 19,000 feet climbed. Now I have very sore legs and an even sorer arse. 10/10 would do again.

Much love to all the people who I met and helped me along the way.

Check out the photos below: