Going down the Pacific Coast Highway on our last tour, we ran into these two German kids. Pleasant and polite. Gabe asked them one morning what their plans were, and mentioned later --
"they're going all the way!"
At this point, we were maybe 3 days outside of San Francisco, firmly cemented as the destination in my mind. So naturally, I surmised out loud, "oh wow, that's, what, 200mi in one day? Pretty hardcore."
But no, I had misunderstood. The two Germans were on a tour going all the way down to Patagonia. They would be riding for several more months.
Why do a bike tour?
For me, there's two reasons:
- desiging your equipment to do a job, and then seeing it perform its job
- to be out on the open road
It's not all glamorous. 90% of the time, you're seeing the same tree-lined highway or climbing up the same 5% asphalt grade. Often, you're not in a position to converse with your teammates. In those hours, you have to keep yourself mentally occupied as you crawl across the landscape.
But the other 10% of the time, there's some sights that you can't get any other way. There's vistas that will have you saying "holy shit" under your breath. There's weird scenes that you run into, like when we saw the two hobos (one even with a bindle) walking down train tracks with their dog. There's the utter freedom of deciding what you're gonna do and when, like buying a rotisserie chicken for lunch and devouring it in the trees on the side of the road.
In the first week of the last bike tour, I was so obsessed with keeping to a strict schedule and pounding up roads like that was my only job. Gabe and Matt would take breaks to eat blackberries growing off the shoulder of 101. I never joined them.
This time around, I'll be right there with them.
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