Day 102
A very accurate wildlife display in the visitor center.
Day 102: relocation
Day 102
Miles: 2*
From Swain’s Flat to Grizzly Creek Redwood State Park
We straggle out of our sleeping bags late, tired and groggy. The coast doesn’t seem so far away this morning with a gray wash of clouds hanging over the forest on the hills around us. I wander out of the backyard to the front of the store, where I find Pacman and J on the porch, nursing cups of coffee and chatting with local dudes about sustainability and community development. I’m happy to sit on the porch myself and listen.
The cool, overcast morning is disorienting after so many days of burning summer sunrises. It’s hard to tell what time it is, and next thing we know it’s almost noon. “We should probably get going, huh?” asks J.
“Yeah, I guess.” We bid farewell to our hosts at Swain’s flat (“be careful out there!” “watch out for trucks, man!”) and ease our sore backsides onto our bike seats. Two miles and we’re here – the redwoods. The road is roofed and pillared with tall, stretching trees, and the light is green and dim. We ride into the Grizzly Creek Redwoods State Park for showers and some time in the trees. At least, I ride in for a shower. Apparently, dudes don’t need showers. We’ve turned into hiker trash.
There were vague plans of moving on today, but they don’t happen. I feel like the threads connecting this crazy ride to the Pacific Crest Trail are fraying – what am I doing here? What am I doing at all? My PCT crazy-self is creeping back, my neuroticism looking for a new channel. Without having to masochistically punish myself, physically and mentally, with unrealistic expectations for mileage and my own body, what’s the point, right? I’m not sure how to say all this. It’s just that I think I got so wrapped up in an arbitrary goal that I forgot what the point was in the first place. I mean, what’s the point of thru-hike after all? Is there a fairy godmother waiting for me at the northern terminus, to magically grant me a happily-ever-after?
I started this hike to be happy – to be happy now, not later, not after. The northern terminus is only supposed to be a crutch, an aid to getting up in the morning and doing something hard – but it’s not the point. The point is all the days in between, right? Everything is confused and mushed-up in my head. The PCT – for me – isn’t a racecourse, where the culmination is the end. And it’s not a pilgrimage either, quite, where the destination is still as important as the journey to it – the PCT is only a middle, a place to be, a place to move and stay in place, a place where I have to work hard every day, but also a place where I am incredibly free. Which takes me right back to the question of what I’m doing now. I’m not even on the PCT. I don’t even seem to be making a point of trying to get back to it.
J and I have a huge fight, there in the soft ferns under the old, old redwood trees. Life-purpose crises can be tough on relationships. We work it out, plan on making moves tomorrow. I go to bed with a headache, fall asleep to the snores of the campers in the site next to us.
Day 101: photos
Day 101: a humboldt county kind of day
Day 101
Miles: 43*
From Hell’s Gate Campground to Swain’s Flat Outpost
We’re packing up our gear to go when Bob, from campsite across from us, comes over. He’s got a neon yellow shirt draped over his arm, and he holds it out to us. “This is the shirt I was telling you about the other night – do you want it?”
High-vis! “Yeah, thanks!” we chorus together. Pacman takes the shirt and attaches it to the back of his pack, a fluorescent offering to the gods of the road, a high-visibility prayer that we will not get squished. Then, packed, decorated, and watered-up, we hop on our wheels and start the uphill.
We have one last big uphill before the eventual descent to the coast, but I’m not afraid of mountain passes anymore. I just have to keep pushing the pedals, pushing, pushing – and we’re at the top. Bam! High fives and a snack break, then we see the old, familiar sign of the truck on a triangle. It’s been only days since our first, terrifying downhill, but already we’ve learned to trust ourselves, and we whizz down the mountain, leaning deep into the curves. My buggy whip describes arcs across the sky as I bank the hairpins.
Two hours to go up, twenty exhilarating minutes down. Welcome to Mad River, proclaims a sign. Don’t blink you’ll miss us. We roll our bikes off the road and stop at the burger shack that constitutes the entirety of downtown Mad River and place our orders. (Ah, the luxuries of bicycling.) Pacman carefully parks his bike to make sure that his cardboard sign: “Mexico to Canada” is in full-view, and we devour our food.
The sign works like it’s supposed to, and we start telling our story to the incredulous people eating burgers next to us. “Wow,” they say. “Be careful.” “You’re gonna die.” “That’s crazy.” “Road gets worse right around these curves, you know.” (“Do you smoke?” “Sure” “Here you go – good luck” and Pacman walks away with some Humboldt green.)
We leave the national forest area, keep biking through Humboldt county, where the trees roll across the hills, and the smell of weed perfumes everything, and every gate says POSTED NO TRESPASSING. A long, slightly rolling section gets us to the Dinsmore Store, the center of commerce for a 25-mile radius.
We’d heard about the Dinsmore Store, but seeing is believing. It’s like the inside of Mary Poppins’ bag, small on the outside but impossibly full of everything you could ever need on the inside, one room leading to another, to another – food and clothes and piping and fittings and ammo and knives and kombucha. There’s a gas station out front, and the line is all pickup trucks with beds full of gas cans getting filled with diesel. Huge stacks of bags of potting soil and fertilizer and irrigation pipe are stored outside, and an elaborate closed circuit system watches your every move. The most amazing thing about the place, though, is that this is the first piece of civilization we’ve been to where the three of us hairy, disheveled hikers did not stick out at all. All we need is to have some marijuana leaves emblazoned somewhere on our clothing, and we would be indistinguishable from the natives. If anything, we fall on the more kempt side of the spectrum…
After a food resupply I go relieve Pacman from bicycle guard duty, and I inherit his conversational partner, who simply begins his conversation from the beginning, excited for a fresh victim. “Yep, this road is real dangerous,” he croaks to me. “Just about the windiest, most dangerous road in the country. People die all the time on this road, yep.”
“Yeah, it’s kind of narrow -”
“Oh, you haven’t even seen the worst part yet,” he interrupts. “Just up ahead that ol’ middle line disappears. Have to say,” he muses, “if I had to choose between a truck coming towards me and a bicycle next to me, there’d be a bicyclist funeral, yep.”
You know there’s a third option?? I want to yell, but don’t. It’s called YOUR BRAKES. Standard on every vehicle. Try it out sometime. The choice between a two-second delay or gambling with someone’s life seems like it would be pretty straightforward to me… I mean, I guess it is for all these motorists too: a straightforward choice to pass so close to me I can feel the heat from their exhaust pipes scorching my calves. I silently fume over this while the old man reiterates over and over that first, we are gonna die on this road, and second, he’s gonna be the one that sends us to the promised land. Great.
I’m in a sour mood by the time J and Pacman come back, and we slam back our cold sodas and get back on the road. Just as the old man promised, the yellow stripe down the middle of the road abruptly disappears, and the road narrows. I’m momentarily terrified about the constriction and what it means for my safety, but bizarrely, the cars begin to give us some respectful passing distance. Everyone has slowed down, navigating the narrow turns and tight passing quarters with a little more caution. The cars that pass us swerve nearly to the other white line to give us space.
What is it about the yellow line across the road that affects people so? You’d think it was a force field from the way the drivers treated it on the section behind us. It would be a clear section, no one coming, good visibility, but they would drive their cars right up to the yellow line and not one inch further for passing us. Sometimes that gave us a couple feet of clearance, but more often we got buzzed. Take away the yellow line, and all of a sudden we get passing space.
A brief respite from crazy drivers and the yellow line is back. We pull off the side of the road for a break, across the road from a sign that says GOATS FOR SALE FREE GOATS. “Wanna have a goat roast tonight?” suggests Pacman. “We could strap it on the back of the bike.”
“Sounds like a pain in the neck to me. I’m not really in the mood for butchering a goat tonight.”
“Could be delicious…”
“Could be…”
We’re cruising through hills and woods on a rolling section of road when suddenly it appears: the truck on the triangle. 10% grade, it declares, right next to the brake check pull-out area.
10% GRADE??? The steepest we’ve ridden so far is 7% – this is going to be a doozy of a downhill. We check our brakes, then drop down over the hill.
I’d let myself go flying on the other downhills today, but we blast into the descent with our brakes screaming, miles and miles of relentless descent, hairpin turns with 10mph speed limits and steeply banked curves. At every pullout is a truck with smoking brakes, and the persistent marijuana aroma is overpowered by the stench of it. We take the road, not letting cars pass us – for once, we are all going the same speed. It’s a relief when it’s over. Maintaining that sort of attention wears me out, even if I don’t have to pedal. Actually, bicycling all day wears me out too.
Exhausted, we pull into a small general store on the side of the road to get a cold drink. Next thing you know, we are having the same conversation we’ve been having all day. “You’re BICYCLING this road?” “You’re crazy!” “You’re gonna die!” (“You guys smoke?”… Pacman’s pockets bulge with Humboldt green.) This is a friendly crew though, that runs the little store and the giant complex next to it that sells grow supplies, and in no time at all we’re in the back, hanging out with the locals, and setting up our tents for the night in the backyard. I pick blackberries from across the road, the bushes loaded with the most luscious, the biggest, juiciest, dirtiest, dustiest, dieseliest berries ever. I soak and wash them five times before I eat them, the warm, deep blackberry flavor still faintly exuding diesel. We’d meant to get to the redwoods tonight, just two miles down the road, but this will do.
Day 100: contentment
Day 100
Miles: 0
Hell’s Gate
It’s not really discussed so much as assumed, between the three of us, that we’re not going anywhere today. Now that we know we can pedal up passes, know that we can make up time, the pressure is released. The PCT pressure – that particular brand of neuroticism – the kind that makes any stop guilty, any break an underserved luxury – I’m finally free of it. For the first time in three months, in 100 days (because today is our 100th day), I am at peace while at rest.
J has never succumbed to the PCT craziness. He’s always been aiming for happiness, not miles, and views take precedence to big days. His resistance to groupthink hysteria is one of his better points. Pacman also seems to know better then to think that more miles = a better PCT thru-hike. Good companions to have around.
So, free at last, we swim in the beautiful swimming hole, play at fishing, nap in the shade, try to catch up the blog (still desperately behind).
The sun shines, the river runs, the breeze slides through the trees. Contentment. And tomorrow, we’ll see redwoods.
“Do you think I should keep it?”
“Seriously?!”
The river.
Day 99: back in the saddle
Day 99
Miles: 35*
From Beegum Creek to Hell’s Gate
Waking up is crawling out of a deep black hole. “Where am I?” I think groggily. “Oh yeah. Sleeping in my underwear under a bridge.” Where else would I be?
Team Whiskers is well rested and ready to ride today. We’re at the part of highway 36 I’ve been worried about: the passes. Walking passes is hard enough – I’m worried it’s going to be twenty miles of walk-a-bike when I can’t pedal myself uphill.
Downshift, downshift, downshift, go. When it’s low as it goes, put your head down and pedal. Team Whiskers slowly goes up the mountain. As long as you keep going, you will eventually get there.
We make it to Platina and buy breakfast burritos, surprisingly delicious. We pump every customer in there for information on the road coming up. The white-haired woman behind the counter, when asked about herself, refers obliquely to the time she left get husband, hitchhiked across the country with another man, only to get left herself in Iowa. She leaves us hanging there, to wonder about the rest.
We siesta in Wildwood, next to the foundation of the store, burnt down two years ago now, then water up at an RV park. It’s not 100 degrees up here, but it’s still pretty warm.
We ride out late afternoon, and crest the passes. The road here has no shoulder, no guard-rail, and a sheer dropoff. I blast a downhill riding in the middle of the road, but right down the razor edge of excitement and fear.
The fading light convinces us to try and get off the road. We spot a group of cars on a side road and pull off, thinking it’s the campground. The group of tweaked-out backwoods rednecks, after telling us to watch out for cartels, and to stay out of the marijuana grows, gives us directions to a campsite in a couple miles. Righty-O.
Another beautiful, heart-racing downhill. I’m getting more comfortable letting the bike rip down 7% downhills. Hell’s Gate awaits us, turning out to be a lovely campground on the South Fork of the Trinity River. The river is full of crawdads, and Pacman fills up our three-liter pot with the teeny river lobsters. I catch only five because I’m afraid of those terrifying half-inch pincers.
Our campground neighbors are two retired guys on their yearly camping trip here, and they make room at their picnic table for some hiker trash. (In return, we make some room in their cooler…) We have a crawdad boil and cook dinner and laugh at how crazy this is, that we’re here, that we made it through the central valley, that we made it up the passes, that we made it down the passes too, that the PCT can be this too…
We fall asleep under the stars, straining our eyes for a glimpse of the Perseids meteor shower, but see only the full moon instead.
Day 97: and then there were three
Day 97
Miles: 29*
From Red Bluff to the shoe tree
Sometimes you just need to sleep on it, and then in the morning you know what to do. 3D seems just as lost this morning as last night. She wants to come to the coast, but she’s not going to ride the passes on the 36. She wants to get back on the trail, doesn’t know where to start back to. A bus to Arcata? Redding? Ashland? “I’ll flip a coin. Heads I come with you guys.” Tails. “Best two out of three.” Tails.
We go to the donut shop, hang out for a bit, then it’s time to part ways. 3D rides off alone in the other direction. Oh man.
Up Main Street, then a left back onto the 36. It only takes us a few minutes to get out of town, start riding through the countryside. We pass a goat farm, and Pacman bleats at the goats. They bleat back. “Did you see that little goat back there?” he exclaims, “he was all, ‘I’m coming too!’ ”
It’s super hot. The high for Red Bluff today is 99 degrees, and we’re not any higher in elevation. The sweat is rolling down my face, my arms, my back. We pull over onto the side of the road under some oak trees, and we all lie on the ground to sweat some more.
Ride, stop. Ride, stop. Heavy laden blackberry bushes hold us up for a bit, sweet, purple, warm (hot). Ride, stop. It’s simply too hot. We’re aiming for the South fork of the Cottonwood River, marked in blue on our road map. Cool blue water, swimming holes, water to drink and pour over ourselves… all figments of our imaginations.
The river is dry.
If this is dry, it may be a long time till our next water. “Let’s wait it out here?” suggests Pacman, stopping past the river in the driveway of a gated dirt road. “Wait till it cools off. No point sweating out all our water.”
It doesn’t cool off, but it’s 4pm and we decide to start back up. I’m in front, pedaling away, but all of a sudden we’re losing Pacman. We’d planned to ride for an hour but I stop early to wait up. He rolls up, lays down his bike, pulls out a Gatorade bottle, frozen solid.
“Wait a minute, where did that come from?” I ask. “Have you been carrying that all day!?”
“Nah, I stopped at the farmhouse we passed, asked for dinner water. The lady gave me this. Chick was cool, but wouldn’t open the door. I turned around for something and when I turned back the water was outside.” He has some other water as well, and we share it, passing around the frozen bottle until the ice is melted across hot necks and backs and bellies. We’ve been short water all day – this helps, but isn’t enough. The Middle Fork of the Cottonwood is also marked on the map (in blue), and at fifteen miles away seems achievable.
Achievable some other day, but Pacman is done, toast. I’ve been slow to realize the seriousness of the situation. J and I are hot and exhausted, he’s in danger of heat stroke. We’re out of water. It’s getting late – soon it will be too dark to ride. This whole bike trip is turning into something of a mess: a dehydrated, hot, exhausting mess. The back of my brain keeps asking me how a PCT thru-hike turned into being stuck in California’s central valley, on a bicycle, when it’s a hundred degrees, without any water. “I don’t know, brain! It seemed like a good idea two days ago!”
Hot, but charming.
There’s a sort of pullout where we’re stopped, and we decide to try and camp. I start rolling my bike across the grass and fill both my bike tires with thorns, instantaneously. Pacman too. “Stop! Stop!” I yell at J. “Don’t bring your bike back here!”
Pacman’s tires seem ok, and my front seems ok, but my back tire starts to hiss when the thorns come out. I swap in my spare tube.
We really need water now if we’re going to continue. Pacman is laying on the side of the road trying not to vomit. I take the lid off my ditty box, white plastic, and write WATER PLEASE in sharpie across it, in hard black letters. (Ah-ha, I think. This is a low point.)
Two cars pass – ZOOM ZOOM which is incredible to me. What would I have to write on my sign to get these people to stop? A fire truck zooms past, then slams on the brakes when they get in reading distance. They’re skidding to a stop; J is riding to meet them. By the time I’ve turned my bike around and met them there are four firemen, arms full of water bottles and Gatorade. I can’t stop saying thank you. They end up emptying their personal canteens into our bottles as well, while telling us that the river is dry, but Platina is fifteen miles from here – we’ll have to make it there tomorrow. The firemen are from Denver, where my parents live, which seems like a talisman, or omen maybe. Like the force of my mother’s love charmed them here to help us.
We ride another half mile but Pacman can’t do it, and we stop under a huge oak tree with a wide, gravel pullout for us to rest at. There’s a pair of old underwear and a crusty sleeping bag there already, then I look up. Shoes! Hundreds of pairs, flip flops, boots, sneakers, all festooning the sturdy oak limbs. “I don’t know whether to think this is cool or creepy, guys.” (The old underwear is definitely creepy.)
“Hopefully it doesn’t mean anything,” replies J.
“We can try and keep going,” adds Pacman.
“No, I don’t think we can. We’ll stay here.” So we camp beneath the shoe tree on the side of the road, grassy hills dotted with oaks rolling out in all directions, split up by dry gulches. It’s like an illustration out of a children’s book, charming and golden. I hope Pacman can ride tomorrow. I hope we don’t get murdered tonight.
Day 98: boot and rally, round two
Day 98
Miles: 11*
From the shoe tree to Beegum Creek
The night turned into a surprising and blessed cool one, and at the cusp of dawn, breeze across my face, it is perfect. Perfect for sleeping. Man, I do not want to get up. We need to get started soon though, because we need to get Pacman someplace he can recover.
He still feels terrible, weak. We ride two miles, then we have to stop. One mile, stop. Pacman has a flat. He lays on the ground, trying not to vomit, and J and I change it for him. Two miles, and there’s a tiny general store! Water! Shade!
The guy running the store wants nothing to do with three sweaty, homeless looking bicyclists. It doesn’t take a professional to know we’re not the real deal – no lycra clad road warriors here. Pacman warms him up for us somehow – he could butter up a nun if he wanted – and we sit on the porch and drink water. The thermometer rises from 79, to 80, to 89…
The guy tells us the river is dry, but there’s a spring fed creek before then. It’s at the bottom of the big climb up the mountain passes, and there’s a way to scramble down. No one will bother us there, he says. There will be a place to stash our bikes.
It’s not a hundred degrees yet. To Beegum Creek!
It’s just as promised, a cool, running creek underneath a bridge. We hide our bikes in the driveway down to the property next to the creek (right next to the keep out sign) and scramble down to the water. It’s beautiful. There’s a small sandy beach in the shade, and we lay in the creek till we’re cool, then lay down in the beach to nap, where we all sleep for hours.
Nothing to do but relax, swim, read. We’re not going anywhere till Pacman feels better. This might be the first time this entire trip where I’ve felt completely relaxed, with no pressure to stop dilly dallying, to get back on the trail, to keep going, to go, to go, to go.
After Pacman wakes up from his nap, in the golden afternoon, he announces he’s going to build a dam and improve the swimming hole. “Ah,” I think. “We’re out of the woods. We’ll ride tomorrow.”
We swim, relax, and read till dark. The moon is nearly full, brilliant. I take off my clothes and slip into the water and float for a held-breath, hovering between black water and moonlit sky.
Tomorrow we ride.
Day 96: a sore backside
Day 96
Miles: 75*
*bicycle miles
From Chester, CA to Red Bluff, CA
I hear Pacman and 3D rustling around next to me in the gray dawn. I’m comfortable and warm on the floor of the dentist’s carport, but today is day zero. I crawl out of my quilt and start packing up. J bought a pair of padded boxers, which he pulls on. Pacman found a pair of padded bike shorts at the thrift store, and 3D was given a pair by Tooth Fairy. “Dang,” I say, putting on my non-padded pants. “I feel left out.”
We’ve all got different setups to jerryrig our backpacks into bikepacks. J wins for the tidiest: he bought two 5gal rubbermaid storage bins and lashed them to his fender rack, with another three gallon bin lashed on top. Looks neat, clean. Driving a wide-load.
Pacman wins for style. He picked up a pair of leather saddlebags at the thrift store. 3D reminds me vaguely of the wicked witch of the west (the Kansas one), with a bucket on one side and an old wicker basket on the other, trash bags with stuff in them lashed on top.
My own bike packing setup has turned out well, I think. I’m pleased. Chuck from Bodfish Bicycles threw in a basket with the purchase of the bicycle, so I didn’t have to rig up panniers. I found some giant ziploc bags at the Dollar General that I’m going to use protect my gear. You can use a vacuum to suck the extra air out of the bags, but I’m guessing I’m not going to use that feature. I ziptied on a little storage container for odds and ends, and a couple bungees over the top secures it all. I found an old fishing pole in the trash, so I ziptied it to my basket and put a handkerchief flag on it for a buggy whip. In sharpie I wrote: TEAM WHISKERS. (Dumpster-diving, a time-honoured family tradition.)
After a stop at the coffee shop there’s no more procrastinating to do, so we get on our bikes and ride out of town. I can’t believe we’re doing this. (Neither can anyone else. Parting words from the old-man cyclist at the coffee shop was basically a scoff.)
Two miles out of town, there’s no shoulder on the road, and I’m getting buzzed by logging trucks. I can’t believe I’m doing this. I focus on the four inches of crumbling pavement to the right of the white line – the bike lane.
We stop at the PCT trailhead. No one has signed the trail register in four days – no one has crossed Hwy 36 and gone on. The trail stops here. We sign back in. This departure feels more official somehow. 3D is already uncomfortable – “do you want these padded shorts?” she offers to me. “I think they’re making things worse.”
“Sure.” I take them from her. Her free shorts also happen to be men’s XL shorts… I pull the spandex shorts straight over my pants. It looks stupid, but way less stupid than you’d think.
Uphill, man
There’s no real plan for the day, in terms of mileage, or stops. We’re just biking off into the sunset, see where we end up. None of us know how this is going to go. We have strong legs, but not for biking. None of us have ever sat on a bicycle seat for more than three hours running. I imagine these first days are going to be terrible, sort of like our first days out of Campo. In other words, unbelievable suffering, then it will get better. I know now that I can suffer for a long time, so that’s ok, although I hope the curve for this is a little bit shorter.
The profile on Google maps showed that it was all downhill from Chester to Red Bluff… on closer inspection, it’s all downhill except for the uphill that comes first. A thousand feet of uphill to break us in, or just break us. I’m glad I have 21 gears because I’m in the lowest one. Pedal, pedal, pedal. Hiking half of the PCT taught me that you can go really slow and still get really far, if you only keep going. So I downshift and keep going. Downshift and keep going again. Every pedal a new pedal.
We stop at a pullout to catch our breath, give our backsides a break. “This is not awesome,” Pacman declares, ruefully rubbing his nether regions.
“I don’t think this is ok,” replies 3D. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to do this with this much… compression.”
“Things aren’t great over here either,” commiserates J.
“Do you want to try switching seats?” 3D asks him. Her seat has too much padding, and it’s squishing her lady bits. J’s seat is too hard, but it’s not as bulky. They swap. Bicycles are cool machines, but after a hundred years, they still haven’t worked the kinks out of the seat. Surely by now they could have come up with something that doesn’t cause infertility?
First you go up, then you go down. We summit at 5750 feet above sea level: Red Bluff is at 350. The grinding uphill (I probably could’ve walked faster) is replaced with exhilarating, terrifying speed. The road widens out a little, so the shoulder is an entire foot, instead of the 4 inches I’ve been trying to balance on, but I ditch that entirely and ride in the middle of the road. A little rock on the shoulder here could seriously mess me up. My mind keeps wandering to scenarios of skidding out and destroying my face on asphalt. “Pay attention Gizmo!” I admonish myself. “Eyes on the road! Mind in the present!” I struggle to stay mindful and present on the trail, but there is no room for that here.
We’d only planned on doing forty miles today, maybe fifty? But the downhill sucks us into complacency. We can go thirty miles an hour! (At least on a 6% downhill grade.)
Down out of the pines now, into oak country, and it’s hot. There’s so much smoke in the air that it’s overcast, which helps, but we’re out of the high country. We stop on the side of the road to rest, and a crazed looking old man with a beer walks out towards us from behind an abandoned building. “Well,” I think. “This is where we get shot.”
“Howdy!” Pacman calls out. The man comes over and chats. Maybe a casualty of heavy drug use in the seventies, but friendly. Turns out he bicycled around the continent with his wife back in the day – 9000 miles. “Twenty-one speed tandem, man. That thing was fast. Forty-five on the downhills. We had our problems, you know man? Tire caught on fire coming down out of Humboldt. But it was good. You’re really free when you’re on a bicycle.” He fills up our water bottles and offers us a place to stay. 3D has visions of a new bicycle seat dancing in her head though, and if it stays downhill we can make it to a bike shop… We continue.
We’re only ten miles away from Red Bluff, but we finished the downhill, and we’re on a long, rolling section of ups and downs. (Nothing clues you into grade better than a bicycle, walking included.) There’s no way we’ll make it to Red Bluff during business hours, so the rest of us would like to stop. 3D hesitates for several minutes at where we’ve stopped, at a trailhead parking area for access to the Sacramento River, but ultimately can’t banish the visions of a hot shower and a bed, and she takes off towards town.
We’re already sprawled out on some desert pavement, rocky but flat, with oak trees rising out of long golden grass like soft, yellow fog. The sky is dim with smoke, the sun orange in the haze, the hillsides disappearing quickly into gray. It’s all very post-apocalyptic. We take off our shirts, lay down, and sweat.
After half an hour 3D texts us that she made it to town. “That was faster than I expected,” says Pacman. “I think I could rally and get there after this break.”
“Me too,” I reply. “I just needed to stop for a minute.” I’m feeling guilty – and I think the others are too – about letting our team splinter so fast. So we get up, put our clothes back on, and go to town.
Crossing the Sacramento River in red bluff.
We get cheap hotel rooms and take blessed, wonderful showers. We did 75 miles. It wasn’t walking, sure, but it was too many. We’re going to be real screwed up tomorrow. I think 3D is done with this. I sort of expected the four of us to split off at some point, but not this soon. I’m feeling down about that, but I think I’m still excited about this. I don’t know that I’ll be able to bicycle tomorrow, but I want to try. J and I are going to ride this out a little further. Pacman might come with us, but he’s going to stick with 3D if she decides to hitch or to bike north from Red Bluff instead of to the coast – make sure she doesn’t get stranded alone, at least.
Things always look better in the morning, see how it is tomorrow.
Day 95: TEAM WHISKERS
Day 95
Miles: 0
Chester, California
Today’s the day to decide: where to from here? Am I really going to pedal blaze the PCT? I think so.
This interruption in my thru-hike comes at such a strange time. Exactly halfway. Halfway to where? To an imaginary line drawn a long time ago? To a little monument in the woods, but nowhere in particular? To enlightenment? Happiness? Two more months of crazy foot pain?
The trail was the thread, a brown ribbon of continuity tying together the days, pulling me forwards, wrapping me up in obsessive thoughts about WALKING FASTER. With the thread severed I feel adrift – untethered – lost – free.
Outside the grocery store we run into fellow hikers Chris and Sarah. “Be honest,” Sarah lowers her voice, looks me straight in the eye, “don’t you feel like you’ve sort of been let off the hook?”
Yes! Yes, I do. If the trail is there, if I can walk, I feel obligated to finish. It’s what I set out to do, and I finish what I start. Now, with the fires, what was one path has branched into many. Road walk? Hitchhike? Skip and flip? Skip and come back next year? Go home?
Options/questions, every day has them, but today they have me. I’m relieved to have nowhere to walk to for a moment. The horrible obsession/anxiety about walking more, walking faster, walking harder, walking longer… all gone. My pilgrimage had turned into something else, something less, and I can reinvent it again.
It’s going to be born again, with oceans and fog, redwoods and sea cliffs.
At the library I spend a while looking at routes, but the internet is too slow to accomplish anything. I stop by the local dentist to say Hi to Tooth Fairy, and I am given a complimentary toothbrush, toothpaste, floss, and homemade cookies. I inquire about chiropractors in town – I’ve got something up with my back and neck and it’s driving me crazy – but the two in town are closed on Mondays. She says to try Good Vibrations, a local health/art shop – they do massage therapy.
I walk into Good Vibrations, an eclectic mix of beautiful prints, alternative health supplements, crystals, and knick-knacks. I’ve hardly explained my predicament to the two ladies running the store before I’m on a massage table getting worked on. It feels like something underneath my shoulder blade is twisted, pinching up into my neck and down my back, and my left arm has been twitching for three days now. Oh, to finally have someone touching it, with magic fingers, magicking it into place again! Sharon doesn’t let me pay – “go buy a bicycle!” she tells me. “Good luck on your journey!”
J and I head over towards the bicycle shop. It’s closed, but the owner of Bodfish Bicycles, Chuck, is going to open it up just for us at three.
It’s his one day off a week, but there he is at the shop, our bikes-to-be outside in a row. Pacman and 3D are already here. Bicycles, spare tubes, helmets, racks… Chuck is incredibly generous, both in materials and in time. (Far more than we expected or deserved… Chester is full of trail angels, but Chuck more than earned his wings.) I get out my little rectangle of plastic and for the first time in my life, I’m the owner of a brand new bicycle.
We’re all giddy with our purchases, riding around the parking lot like Christmas morning. “Team Whiskers! Rowr!” Pacman yells.
“Team Whiskers!” 3D joins in. Spending money like this, all at once, is like giving blood, but now it’s over and we’re lightheaded and bicycled.
The day is overwhelming with feelings, kindness, new adventures. Bicycles! I’ve lost my mind! I don’t think I’ve ever sat on a bicycle for more than two hours running. Looks like that’s about to change.
The rest of the evening we spend discussing ideas for the trip, plans for transferring our pack contents to our bike racks, and just being excited. Every day a new day, right?
Chuck, 3D, Pacman, and Dirtnap (J).
We’re going to be riding in style!