(with apologies to those who follow this blog for getting so behind with it all! The far greater challenges of South America have come in the way of me and writing. More time planning and resolving issues. Less time reflecting.)

Welcome to Campground California. Such a lovely place (such a lovely place), such a lovely face…didn’t someone sing a song a bit like that? The Brown Pelicans probably – now that’s a good name for a band. Ok, so some jokes don’t get any funnier, no matter how many times they go round your head (for want of anyone to tell them). And one thing that’s certainly true about solo cycle touring is that songs, thoughts, worries, annoyances can go around your head, your pedals, your wheels, with nothing to shift them, for days and weeks on end. You’d think that cycling might be meditative, and it certainly can be when you’re in the zone. But the way that thoughts and songs and worries can tend to get ‘stuck’ on repeat is far from the meditative ideal of noticing these fluffy little thought clouds and watching them pass on by! More like, hand me the sharpie so that I can colour these thoughts in darker. Firmer. There. You aren’t rubbing that out now.

I expected to love California, and I did. I can’t have been the first and won’t be the last cycle tourist on the Pacific Coast Highway to photograph the slightly gaudy signpost marking the state boundary. Bright yellow flowers on a solid blue background. Welcome to California! It spoke of good times ahead – determinedly so. This was the 10^th US state I’d travelled through. Eureka, as the state motto goes. I’d found it! Yet as much as I enjoyed the state, the closer the date of my flight to Lima from Los Angeles approached, the more I found my thoughts being unhelpfully consumed by worries and frustrations related far more to the admin of cycle travelling than the art of riding. I tease my father when he says how much admin there is to do in retirement; I’m equally sure that I deserve little sympathy if I moan about all the THINGS I needed to sort for my cycle adventure. But still… Daniel, the cyclist who I had met in Nehalem state campground in Oregon had described California as bigger in all ways. ‘You’ll see what I mean.’ Bigger hills. Bigger distances. Bigger cookies? Bigger prices, if that were even possible. Bigger blog posts, undoubtedly, and bigger delays in writing them as time spent sorting things ate up any potential writing time. Bigger worries, frustrations and consequences. Bigger admin. Bigger temperatures. Bigger mood shifts. The Eagles. Sheryl Crowe. Moby. Bigger names. Bigger soundtracks on loop.

After a late start, as I continued trying to convince Cascade Designs (makers of Thermarest) that the issue with my sleeping mat was one of design, and that it needed replaced, I really needed to put in some miles if I were to make it to the Elk Prairie state campground that night. Right on cue, the first part of the day was flat and fast, although I was under no illusions that this might last. The elevation profile on Komoot reeked of bad planning. Flat flat flat big hill BIG HILL. Bugger. While cycling through Oregon and Washington,I’d become a bit out of the habit of stealth camping since the state sites were so good, and this of course remained an option. But the thought of camping alone beneath the approaching redwood forests spooked me – as if bigger trees must equal bigger baddies. The best thing about my worries that day was how they powered me fast up the hills, fast through the rays of light which cut like laser blades through the increasingly wondrous and huge trees. ‘Trees older than Jesus,’ as a couple from Portland had described the redwoods to me. Whereas in weeks gone by I’d had my fill of tree-lined roads hiding the views, I was excited about this next stage, during which I was sure that the trees themselves would become a landscape / the view. And by ‘older than Jesus’ they did.

It was only still light when I arrived at the campground if I squinted my eyes a certain way. True to name, elks were grazing the surrounding fields.  Nowhere near as impressive in fact in close proximity (especially not to a Scot accustomed to red deer) as they had been back in Washington, crossing the river en masse. A rugged female volunteer site warden directed me to my pitch and the pay station. A solo female German cyclist poked her head around the trees at the edge of my pitch and said hi. By the time I had pitched my tent it was properly dark no matter how I squinted. I sat sipping a beer and eating crisps while staring out into the pure blackness which accompanies forested campsites, deciding that showering was undoubtedly a daytime activity and went to bed smelly. It wouldn’t be the first or last time on this trip, after all.

Fifty miles isn’t generally considered a ‘short’ cycle touring day, but the following day it certainly felt this way considering the daily miles I’d been racking up as of late. A good thing too, since heavy rain was forecast to arrive early afternoon and to stick around for 36 hours. Shortly after I left camp, the colour of a bright red coca cola lorry stood out in stark contrast against the greyscale, as if someone had photoshopped the scene to ‘pop’, and mist haunted the coastline as my route curved back alongside the sea; bearing in mind how I’d imagined the whole western coast to be sunny, it was especially disappointing to discover that this wasn’t even true of north California! Further on, in Trinidad, the sun peeked out from the clouds briefly, in a nod to its Caribbean namesake, as I enjoyed my first Californian coffee and cookie. California 1 – Oregon 0. If all my elevenses were going to be that good then me and California were going to get on swimmingly. However, no. No, I really didn’t need the bicycle ear-rings which a neighbouring craft shop tried to sell me, as if the tan-lines beneath my lycra shorts weren’t indication enough of my cycling habits! Yet perhaps not reading the signs was a thing around here.

‘Oh, just ignore that. It’s been there for years,’ explained a hipster guy running a kayak hire centre, pointing the way of a signpost saying that the narrow coastal road was closed due to landslips. The road remained in fairly bad condition, but both that and the subsequent cycle paths were welcome relief from the drone of fast travelling traffic on the main road, until the endless bends of the cycle path persuaded me back onto the highway for more ‘fast miles’. By the time I reached Acata, the surprisingly small home town of Humboldt State University, it had just started raining; by the time I turned off to my warmshowers hosts’ house five miles up the road, it had begun really raining. RAINING. Welcome to California. Wet yellow flowers on a grey background. Or perhaps glistening yellow flowers upon a lush green background if Dick and Kathy’s place were anything to go by. Two beautiful self-built houses in an oasis of vegetation. When I arrived, Kathy was out but she had stuck a sign to the front door letting me know that Dick was in the shed, preparing for the honey harvesting from their many hives in two days’ time. And this sign read true.

Perhaps the best indication that I feel at ease is when I start being cheeky with people, and this was certainly the case with Dick and Kathy, who have put up so many warmshowers cyclists over the years as to be an institution on the Pacific Coast highway, all documented in scrapbooks. Yet no matter that my stay was far from a novelty, I was made to feel just as special as I might have had I been their first. That evening they shared photos of a recent trip to Scotland, and well, I’m always happy to look at pictures of ‘home’, even if they made me feel a little homesick. Next morning Kathy gave me a lift into Eureka to get a bicycle spoke mended which Dick had perceptively spotted was broken and loose, in behind the cassette. It was the least I could do to cook them a meal that second evening, after an afternoon writing up my Oregon blog piece to the accompaniment of Dick’s brass ensemble having a practice session – both are as musical as they remain incredibly fit, especially for a couple aged either side of 80. After cooking up an Ottolenghi chicken recipe, Mum’s infamous pudding invention called chocolate ‘gunge’ even got an outing.

‘This would make fabulous caving food,’ Dick remarked. In other words, it’s so solid you could take a cave monster out with it. Not that the prospect of eating gunge as reward for crawling through narrow underground crevices enamoured me any more to the activity, which has always struck me as awfully claustrophobic in contrast to the openness of the road or mountain. I took note to make some if I ever camped alone in redwoods though.

So you aren’t invited caving,’ Dick remarked in response to my fairly valid feelings about the unattractiveness of the activity, and fair enough too!

The next morning I was sad to leave, and to miss helping out with the harvest of what I understand was in the region of 150kg of honey. What’s the point of this trip if not to see and experience new things? But I had miscalculated distances somewhere along the way, and really needed to keep going. The date of my approaching flight to Lima was getting closer and closer, and the nearer I got to LA, the more preoccupied I was already becoming with everything needing sorted. Afoordable accommodation in LA. A bike box for the flight. A bike service before hitting South America. A replacement sleeping mat, and a replacement phone since the camera on my existing one had stopped focussing well. Working out an affordable way of getting to the airport. Finding wifi in a few days’ time when I had lined up some work, in an area with only two warmshowers hosts, and very basic unconnected campgrounds.

I gladly followed Dick’s recommendation to detour into Eureka and its beautiful Victorian painted houses, with the lyrics to Moby’s song ‘Sunworshipper’ my ear-worm for the morning: ‘I just decided I was going to find a new way of life. And so I took off on my bicycle. Pedalling up Highway 1. And found myself one day in Eureka, California,’ All about right, even if I was travelling 180 degrees the wrong way…! Lael Wilcox, the American ultra-endurance bicycle racer who was attempting to beat Scot Jenny Graham’s record for cycling unsupported around the world, was also due to pass through Eureka later that day, and I found myself avidly following the dot on her tracking app ast it came closer. Closer. CLOSER. She has since finished the attempt in 108 days, taking a fortnight off the record, but not without controversy. As incredible as her achievement is, her chosen route stuck entirely to ‘western’ countries (for want of a better term), avoiding Central or South America, Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe entirely, which (while conforming to the ‘rules’) strikes me as a narrow definition of ‘world’.

My second detour of the day to the small characterful agricultural town of Ferndale for a wonderful coffee, panini and cake was certainly worth the extra miles. So much less so my third detour which Komoot kindly selected for me: on dirt tracks, up three entirely unnecessary 800 foot climbs. That morning I’d forgotten to change the route selection from ‘bike touring’ to ‘road biking’, hadn’t I? At least the detour plonked me out at the start of the wonderfully named Avenue of the Giants, where the road wound in and around such incredible redwood growths that I almost forgot my unnecessary efforts entirely. Not even the accurately named BIG TREE of the redwoods north of her could compare. So tall as to lack horizon. So vast and old as to make a mockery of my own grumbles about turning 50 next year…When I arrived at Burlington campground, the Belgian couple who I’d met a few days previously in Oregon and the German woman from Elk Prairie campground were sitting by the side of the road waiting for Lael to pass.

‘We think she must have stopped for the night though,’ they explained, pointing out that her dot hadn’t moved for the last hour, and packing up their chairs. I thought this a bit unlikely, but shrugged my shoulders and chose to believe them. How wrong the app was. Ten minutes later she whizzed past in the dark while I sat cooking at my camping pitch picnic table, whooping loud as I could as the night swallowed her tail. Earlier that day, Dick and Kathy had sent me a photo of her passing the end of their road with an entourage of local cyclists, while here she was setting out into the night alone, with only trees ‘older than Jesus’ and the kind of presumed baddies who hang out around tall trees for company. My wee tent looked like a bungalow in Manhattan. I hoped Lael was carrying some gunge to attack the tree monsters with.

Even though I was hoping to go further than both the Belgians and the German woman that day, of course I was last of all to set off. There was a certain wisdom to their plan of stopping up just before Leggett, where the road climbed steeply up, over and down to the coast after bending inland, but I wanted to get a bit closer to the warmshowers hosts’ house where I’d now managed to secure a stay (and use of their wifi) to work the day after next. That morning, even though the road had only come about 10 miles inland, the temperature was also about ten degrees higher than it had been on the coast; my morning coffee in Garberville was necessarily iced. And by the time I reached the grocery store in Leggett, not even the logos on the tourist t-shirts were encouraging: ‘I survived Highway 1!’ What on earth was awaiting me? Yes, a climb. Steep enough. Hairpins. I spun my pedals round, counting the strokes. Since setting off, I’ve become expert at estimating how many double pedal strokes equal certain climbs, and somehow this (combined with setting myself targets before which I’m not allowed to rest up) helps me get to the top. Am I making this sound fun?! The place where I’d thought I might camp wild that night, between climbs, was dark and unappealing, so off I went again uphill and back down to the sea where an informal campsite stretched along the coast took me by surprise. Which is the best pitch? I wondered for less than a second before stopping at the very first one. Rigged up my tent. Lost myself in the sunset, which was pretending to be Oregon.

Throughout my riding in California, I seemed to keep alternating long and short days; the following was once more to be deliberately ‘short’ in order to leave time that afternoon to prep for mentoring the next day. Yet not only do miles tend to stretch to fit the time available, but ‘work’ never really appeals after a day riding! I made slower progress than I had for weeks. It was already mid-afternoon when I dug in for the final steep climb up to the house; when I got there it seemed like a far better idea to crack open a beer and relax in a sunchair while making friends with the cats than open my laptop! Certainly, my lack of sleep partly explained my lethargy; I’d awoken with bruises on my ribs and hips from another night lying on a deflated Thermarest sleeping mat. In this context, I had enjoyed the slower pace of the cycle path which tracks the coastline north of Fort Bragg, where vergeside cacti and succulents marked a change both vegetation and climate. I found out in Fort Bragg that not everything in California is bigger, and was forced to buy two small cookies to accompany my coffee. No wonder the woman in the neighbouring bike shop was so grumpy when I got the lingo wrong when asking for a puncture repair kit.

YOU MEAN PATCH KIT, she said in the tone of someone who took my terminology as a personal affront, and I had to repeat PATCH KIT after her before she would sell me it.

Beyond Fort Bragg, there was far more apparent wealth than I’d yet seen down the coast; Grand Design type houses popped up on headlands, looking out to sea like old men do in Oregon. Yet it was all very pleasant; Mendocino was a lovely small town of organic cafes, craft beer, and the kind of supermarket that you enjoy walking around. I managed not to take photographs of colourful oddly shaped vegetables. Down at the beach, people were enjoying their weekends. One man in particular caught my attention – stretched out on a sun lounger. ‘Blimey,’ I thought. ‘That looks nice. Perhaps I could get into that!’ Life ambitions and all. Good to have something to look forward to.

Nobody was around when I arrived at the warmshowers house. Judy was at work as the local postmistress. Her brother was out with the volunteer fire brigade, which was stationed on their property, attending the death of an elderly local man. Nick, an old friend of theirs, was…there, soon enough, there not being any need for any kind of rush, on my behalf nor his on this lovely sunny afternoon. It was another remarkable house, designed by Judy’s late father to make most use of the local sun and light. Nick explained how they had started hosting for the benefit of Judy’s father, who as he became increasingly infirm hadn’t been able to travel any more, but enjoyed the company of passing cyclists. Since his death they hadn’t hosted as much, but still…my conversation with Nick as he chopped veg for dinner turned to politics. An exercise in confirmation bias, but no less interesting for that. Nick, an ageing Californian hippy. Me? A leftie cyclist with environmental leanings still riding high on the defeat of the Conservatives at the election. Dinner with Nick, Judy and her brother was a relaxed, gentle affair until two male German cyclists arrived, two days earlier than they’d requested, and the tone of the evening changed. I didn’t need to be regaled with tales of their bravado and physical prowess; it was time to retreat to my mattress in the greenhouse porch. I had work to do tomorrow!

After a very early start, both mentoring sessions went well, although I was glad of the cameras-off policy of the second organisation I was working for, as I huddled in a corner of shade behind the house; sounding professional was a leap enough, without having to look it! Indeed, the effort involved in such a shift of mode took it out of me far more than I’d expected. Once I was done I was more exhausted than I’d felt after many a long day of riding, and it took an exercise of will to get going again. Five miles in, I once more overtook the German woman cyclist with whom I seemed to be playing a game of turtle and hare. Every time I took a rest or work day, she caught up with me. And indeed, that day she literally overtook me while I’d stopped to take yet more photos, much to my egotistical chagrin. I wasn’t having that, I thought, as I overtook her back with just the kind of arrogant attitude that I’d so little enjoyed with the German guys the night before.

I don’t blame the landscape for taking her side in things – that day it began to punish me. I just couldn’t get going, and my instinct that I needed a scenic outlook for the night rather than another campground in trees was good enough reason to camp up wild, down a short cul de sac with a small parking area at the end, above some crumbling cliffs, and with some scrubby trees to hide behind. A signpost at the turning area read THE END, and I couldn’t have agreed more. In contrast, I decided that the other signpost reading NO CAMPING was probably out of date – open to interpretation – just like the ‘road closed’ one had been back in Trinidad. I camped far enough away from the cliffs so as not to fall off them if my middle of the night pee set off a landslide, and was only awake long enough to briefly enjoy the sunset through the door of my tent.

The Gualala campground where I’d initially planned to stay wasn’t only under tree cover, but the next morning was enveloped in thick mist. Spectacular views kept popping out of the clouds as I rode through though, and where visibility was bad, the pungent fresh smell of vergeside fennel more than compensated. I’d been warned not to expect to wild camp in the ten miles of land beyond Gualala called Sea Ranch – a vast private estate of exclusive houses which I was entertained to notice all looked the same. Like a housing estate with land benefits for the wealthy. If I’d ever wanted to live there then the best way of affording it would have been to go into the business of making ‘no entry’ and ‘no trespassing’ signs, I figured…and if the anti-access sentiments didn’t make me grumpy enough, the series of emails I proceeded to exchange with Cascade Designs tipped me off the edge of many crumbly cliffs of frustration. I can become a bit of a terrier when fighting my cause, and this was no exception, although the unhelpful responses from the company belied my expectation that they might understand the needs of outdoor adventurers.

Having already splashed out for one new mat when my Sea to Summit mat failed, and the company failed to reimburse me, I wasn’t about to let this go again. Cascade had by now admitted it was a design fault, and agreed to replace my mat, but they clearly  weren’t going to make it easy for me to receive it. Yes, they would post me a new mat, but they required a week’s notice for postage; if I wanted it sooner I’d need to pay 99 dollars postage (more than half the cost of the mat). I explained that I barely knew where I’d be that night, let alone in a week – and did they really expect me to keep sleeping on the hard ground in the meantime? By the time I found somewhere to stay in San Francisco it was already too late. I suggested that they post my replacement to the shop in Victoria where I’d bought the mat; the shop had agreed to refund me in these circumstances, but Cascade Designs refused. Neither could I pick up a new mat from one of their distributors in San Francisco since that ‘isn’t what they do’. The more alternate solutions I came up with, the more they repeated that the only one they’d consider was their own, as near-on impossible as it was for me. And so the day passed…by the time I stopped off at a rock outcrop called Elephant Rocks (popular with rock climbers, where I’d seen pictures of people wild camping online) I was done, and certainly didn’t have the energy to find somewhere to camp with less barbed wire and fewer NO CAMPING signs. I settled down in the one patch of long (comfy) grass which I could easily access, and slept.

Of course, there’s  nothing like a good night’s sleep to shift one’s mood. Although perhaps nothing could have dented my excitement, because that day I was going to arrive in San Francisco! Hell yeah! Not even another grey old start was going to put a downer on things. ‘Mooooo!’ I called out to some Highland Cattle. ‘Today I’m going to San Franciscooooo!’ The cows just kept on chewing, not even peering up through their George Michael fringes to acknowledge their fellow Scot. A cormorant balanced, wings outstretched, on the post of an old bridge, not even twitching a millimetre as I shared my news. The estuarial landscapes sat down in their own mud instead of cheering me as I rode on by…in Point Reyes station, an elderly cyclist pointed me the way of the best coffee shop, and crikey cyclists will know. Yet not even a top dollar cookie prepared me for the stunning and challenging Marin headlands that were to come – a fierce side wind blowing me this way then that. I’m sure I’m not the only cyclist who turns their head sideways in a side wind to pretend it’s a headwind? It’s not always the safest strategy, but I went with it until fast fast down the other side into Sacramento, around another corner and another blast of wind where…oh crikey blimey. There San Francisco was.

Wow wow wow! I thought, eloquently. And then burst into tears. Cool as ever. Although it wasn’t really a milestone, it felt like it, no matter that it remained a long old way to LA. Arriving into San Francisco via the Golden Gate bridge was a fairly iconic way to do so, albeit in reality horribly noisy, windy and a bit stressful, even on the shared bike / pedestrian path. Unbeknownst to me in advance, I managed to arrive into San Francisco on a bank holiday weekend for Labor Day, so I was even more grateful than ever for the hospitality of Karin and her housemate in their Richmond apartment. A large double bed. Cotton sheets. A powerful shower which I couldn’t figure out so I had a bath instead! Warmshowers California! During my travels, I’d already seen many different landscapes, but I’d (deliberately) spent very little time in cities, since they are usually so hard to get in and out of. Yet, perhaps unsurprisingly, San Francisco has a great bike path / lane network, which made it fairly stress free. And upon arrival I couldn’t wait to head out and enjoy those parts of city life that one can take for granted when living in them. A hipster bar for craft beer. A meal in a Burmese restaurant. Great outdoors stores for replacing supplies and kit, not least a foam mat to last me until I won the argument with Cascade Designs. Culture. Art. Sightseeing. Imagine! If only I’d planned to stay here for more than a day, the morning of which was spent doing admin and catching up on this blog. I did an amazing job of high speed sightseeing on my bike that afternoon – the painted ladies houses in Lower Haight, Chinatown, City Light Bookshop (hangout of the Beat Poets and others), the slightly bleak city centre and its addicts and homeless problem, Coit Tower, Fisherman’s Wharf and the sea lions. Tick! But I hadn’t even yet visited Golden Gate park, despite its proximity to the apartment, let alone the modern art gallery.

Even though I knew it might (and did) cause problems down the line, a further day was obviously needed, and Karin was kind enough to oblige.

The next morning, however, I awoke feeling out of sorts. Displaced. More lonely than I had all trip – something that is actually not uncommon when on my own in cities, surrounded by people in the company of other people in a way that emphasises my own solitude. In recent years, I’ve come to understand the disassociated place to which I can go in these circumstances as closely related to my childhood experience of trauma – trapped in the footwell after a car crash, with my mother in the front, already in a coma, and unable to respond to my cries for help. The life narrative that three-year-old me decided upon – that I was all alone in an unsafe world – was as unhelpful as it was untrue, but continues to accompany me through life. And this trip is certainly one which really risks triggering that (over and over)! I’d in fact been super proud of how well I’d managed this dynamic so far, but that day, the emotional flashbacks kicked in. There was only one thing for it. Art. Abstract art. San Francisco’s Musuem of Modern Art. And certainly not the ride I did through Golden Gate park (filled with people enjoying time with family and friends) in order to get there!

In my writing, photography and in my academic work, I’ve come over recent years to think of abstract art as an interim material state between moments of concretion, in a world characterised by constant change. A state replete with potential and energy. With possibility. A world in which nothing is fixed, and it’s always possible for things to be different. And if things can be different, then hope is possible…And on that day, the work in particular of a great array of female abstract expressionists helped pull me out of my funk. Joan Mitchell, Agnes Martin, Helen Frankenthaler, Lee Krasner and others, besides the more predictable Jackson Pollocks and Mark Rothkos. When I walked back out of San Francisco MOMA, I was once more in a far better state of self. I went out again for a bite to eat, and realised that I was so hungry that I ate the city out of food – all but the one broccoli floret that I dropped on the floor which I left for the locals, because I’m kind that way.

When I got back to the warmshowers apartment I was feeling great until I sat down on the sofa with one of the two hosts who asked me how I planned to get around the closure of the road due to landslips at Big Sur. I looked at her. Eyes wide open. I’d originally planned to fly out of San Francisco to South America, but I’d decided to continue to LA for the sole purpose of riding this supposedly spectacular stretch of coastline.

‘Like, for real? How have I got this far without hearing about this?’ I asked her, as we began trawling online for evidence that this was no longer the case. It seemed like a better plan of action than seeking out evidence that she was right.

‘Are there any online cycling forums where you could ask?’ Karin asked me when she joined us after an evening out.

I nodded. Nodded again. I hated consulting online cycling forums. They’re too full of opinions and mansplainers. But I might just have to let that go.

I felt unsettled again as I pulled my cotton sheets up around my chin that night. Of course, the notion of ‘change’ and adapting to it is central to how I think about life, and how I’d interpreted the art just that afternoon, but…at least, having not known, had saved me all the worrying about it? Worms were already overflowing out my ears without my having needed to add this worry into the bigger mix. I closed my eyes, and left my route planning worries until tomorrow. They’d still be there. That was one thing for certain. Better for now to think of all the kindness that I’d already experienced in California, and would keep experiencing. I thought of bees for a moment. And fell asleep in a stupor of 150kg of imagined honey. Hot. Sticky. Happy, mainly.

PS this is not the end. Part 2 of California is still to come. You see, you’ve just got to read the signs right.