Ends and beginnings

I'm home again in Australia.  The trip is over, but it's not.  This ending is only a beginning.  On the scary ride along US 101 down the Pacific coast, I was already planning my next bike adventure (TBA).  The homicidally close log trucks and RVs couldn't spoil my enthusiasm.

The 600 mile ride south from central Oregon to San Francisco wasn't as lonely as I expected it to be.  I met three jovial Swiss cyclists who were riding from Vancouver to Chile; an Australian living in Vancouver and working in the film industry who was riding to LA for a meeting with his agent; a completely loopy Canadian who was riding to somewhere obscure in California to see his sister; a gigantic Dane who had already ridden halfway around the world - in fact, a reasonable cross-section of the crazies who are out there pedalling the planet.  I'm proud and happy to be numbered among them.

San Francisco turned out be - a city.  I'm not generally keen on cities, and this one didn't offer many surprises.  It featured triumphal architecture, hideous traffic, lots of American flags (ho hum), squadrons of homeless people, urine smells on every corner (the "rest rooms" in every restaurant were "out of order"), brand name shops that are the same all over the world, a spectacular bridge that was shrouded in fog and utterly clogged with traffic, a harbour that might have been spectacular if the fog had lifted long enough for me to see it, cable cars that might have been fun to ride if the queues had been less than half a mile long, milling crowds of people who were mostly tourists from somewhere else, a total lack of affordable accommodation that left me in an expensive motel room that smelled like an ashtray,  and generally very little that tempted me to stay.  I'd spent three months traversing this amazing continent with its wide open spaces and spectacular mountains, and I wasn't about to be seduced by an overpopulated mound of concrete.  We have plenty of them in Australia.

I spent a day wandering the streets of this city, avoiding the tourist traps and seeking the genuine essence of the place.  Here's what I found.

• For some reason, San Francisco seems to be a magnet for the homeless and desperate. Panhandling is rife.
• Groups of mainly black men hang around on street corners doing absolutely nothing except smoking - not even talking.  They often manage to look menacing.  It appears to be something they cultivate, perhaps as a response to racism.
• A huge proportion of people smoke here - especially young people.  You can still smoke in cafes and restaurants.  Cigarettes are relatively cheap.
• There's always a siren wailing in the next street somewhere.
• The police officers look sullen and cranky.  Another cultivated look?  At least two thirds of them are seriously overweight or obese.  Their patrol cars are all straight out of the Blues Brothers movie.
• The wide, grid patterned streets and 19th century triumphalist architecture remind me of Melbourne, and Belfast.
• There are more tourists here than locals.
• There's a fabulous farmers' market in the square outside the Civic Centre, selling mostly organic produce.  No matter where you wander in San Francisco, or which streets you turn down, you always end up back here.  I accidentally rediscovered the place about eight times.
• The fog and drizzle (fizzle?) are pervasive and depressing - and the wind is cold.  If this is summer, I'd hate to be here in winter.  
• There are actually some independently owned cafes here, unlike most of the US, which has totally surrendered to the fast food franchises and character-free malls that Clive James calls "the abattoirs of the human soul".
• You can buy decent coffee in San Francisco, although the tasteless, watery, brown stuff that passes for coffee elsewhere in the US is also available if you want it.  The Americans attempt to disguise the taste of this stuff by adding things like artificial hazelnut flavoured powdered creamer.  It just adds insult to injury. 
• You can also get decent pizza here, which doesn't resemble the bland, cheese-smothered slabs of blubber you might get in Kansas or Missouri.  A slice the size of a baby's blanket is about five dollars, and will fill you up for three days.
• Micro-brew beers are ubiquitous, and fabulous.  Every corner store sells beer and wine.
• The BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) train is a brilliant way to get around.  It's fast, efficient, clean, and - expensive.  
• The timber suburban houses in the "middling" suburbs are attractive - mostly painted in pastel colours and dotting the hillsides like miniature Mediterranean villas.

Although my stay in San Francisco was brief and the weather was unkind, I did get a strong sense that this is a place with a unique identity.  A place where, provided you had sufficient money, you could have a life.

Why anyone would want to visit Alcatraz - that hideously ugly pile of crap on an already ugly rock in the middle of an otherwise quite attractive harbour - totally escapes me.  I'm one hundred percent certain that it would simply be another piece of Disneyfied Americana.  This country is massively endowed with natural wonders and cultural marvels.  You really don't need to visit the crappy stuff and pay ridiculous amounts of money to experience the ritual trivialisation of history and culture.

Some hitherto undisclosed gems from the TransAmerica tour


In Chester, Illinois, we camped at the Eagles Lodge, a kind of patriotic social club - part workers' club, part masonic-style lodge - where people gather to eat, drink and reinforce their mythological national identities.  The evening's raffle featured two prizes: a Browning pump action shotgun,

and ..... a case of hard liquor.  What a perfect combination.  Only in America!

Signs outside churches provided me with many moments of pure joy.  I've featured a number of these in the blog.  Here are a couple that deserved to be included but slipped through the net.

Hmmm!  I guess this means there must have been some progenitorial action at the crucifixion??????  Kind of changes one's perception of the event.

I mentioned these intriguing folks in the Idaho chapter of the blog, but it happened to be one of those periods when I had "lost" my camera somewhere in the depths of my panniers, so I took the photo with my iPhone and forgot to include it.  Here it is in all its glory.  This is possibly the most confusing piece of religious illogicality I've ever encountered.  I'm open to your informed interpretation, but my poor brain quails at the task of unravelling this.  My understanding is that Jehovah is, in fact, an Anglicisation of the Hebrew, Yahweh.  Here, though, they're clearly two different beings.  One is the saviour: the other is the Devil - and Jesus is the Devil's son.  Is this a Christian sect, or an Anti-Christian sect?  Do they know?  Do they care?  Does it matter?  For me, the most bizarre thing is that is that this mob adopted a 2 mile stretch of the highway, undertaking to clean up the litter and maintain the signage.  Why?  By what stretch of the imagination could they conclude that cleaning up the roadside - in the face of approaching Armageddon - was a meaningful thing to do?  I give up.

Cute critters were definitely a feature too.  I came across hundreds of these little turtles, and rescued lots of them from the roadway.  Those that were crushed by cars and trucks were tragically exploded across the road.  I pay tribute here to the legions of squashed turtles, squirrels, raccoons, opossums, chipmunks, groundhogs, prairie dogs, gophers, deer, salamanders, snakes .....  If you think there's a lot of roadkill on Australian roads, come to America.  Of course, the beauty of travelling on a bike is, you don't just see this slaughter: you get to smell it too.

American patriotism both baffles and terrifies me.  A hideously bad mural like this, in western Kansas, tempts me to laugh, or gag.  But this is a palpable, genuine, undeniable part of American life.  It's real.  They're not faking.  As a school kid, it seemed funny - ridiculous - to ask for a minute's silence on Remembrance Day.  You could request an hour from most Americans in the cause of patriotism, and they'd give it.  What does this say?  I'm not sure.

This is a vast country, about the same size as Australia, but with 300 million people compared to our 22 million.  In the interior, I imbibed a sense of its vastness, and loved it.  The open spaces spoke to me in the way the emptiness of Australia speaks to me.  I couldn't be a Dutchman, or a Belgian, or a German, although there are people from these countries whom I understand and love.  I need this space.  It's part of my,  er .... mythological national identity.

Another thing that endears me to America is the prevalence of seriously bad taste.  A place where this is not only tolerated but celebrated can't be all bad.  This particular example, photographed in Wyoming, was just a few miles from the memorialised site of a "battle" - in fact, a massacre of native people, mostly women and children, by settlers - presented on the signboards and pamphlets produced by the local "Historical Society" with a complete lack of self-conscousness, irony,  or awareness of anything other than  pioneer virtue and antiquarian interest.  What a country!  This almost approaches Australian levels of denial and hypocrisy around the slaughter and demonisation of Indigenous people.

Dramatis personae

Without a doubt, the best part of this fabulous trip was meeting and riding with so many great people -   people unhinged enough to think it was a good idea to cycle across a continent.  Jessica Bell from Gainesville, Florida.  Teacher, grad student, smart, funny person, tough and dogged cyclist.





























Ryan Anderson.  Smart, fit, funny Geordie with a lust for life that makes you realise that it's all about NOW! - and Newcastle United.  In the course of the trip, Ryan discovered he has an uncanny ability to break spokes - anywhere, anytime.

Sieman: Belgian political science student.  Powerful rider, delightfully eccentric, crossing America on a smaller budget than most of us would want to cross the street.

Cooper Hanning.  Cool, instinctively social democratic, compassionate, sensible man from Minnosota - of impeccable Swedish descent, impressive physical prowess, fundamental decency and instinctive friendliness.

Eli.  Only rode with him for two days. Joyously free spirit from upstate New York.  His love of life is infectious, and he chooses to navigate it without a roadmap.

Wim Verheyen.  Flemish bon vivant, cyclist extraordinaire, generous human spirit.  His wit and irony helped to enrich my experience of America.  A man worth communing with.

Joe Meyer (aka Jeremiah).  Why take a ferry across the Ohio River when you can swim it?  Who cares if you almost get swept downstream to the Gulf of Mexico!  This episode neatly illustrates Joe's approach to life.

Stefaan Vermeulen - our Belgian / American "tour guide and booking agent", who's been everywhere before and always phones ahead to book a campsite.  His idea of moving house from Durham, North Carolina to Portland, Oregon was to send his stuff by truck and travel there himself on a bicycle.

These were my companions at various times and for significant sections of the tour.  There were others who came and went, but this was the core of the "Transam Team" that crossed the Rockies together and shared the highs and lows, the laughs, the drinks, the broken spokes and flat tyres, the gruelling climbs,  suicidal descents, murderous trucks and RVs, blistering heat and bitter chills that make up a transcontinental bicycle tour. It was a pleasure and a privilege to travel with them.  We've exchanged email addresses, so it's only a matter of time before someone comes up with a totally ridiculous idea for another tour.  I can't wait.

So that's it for America - for now.  I was scrolling through my photos for the one iconic image that sums up the place, and this one comes pretty close, for me anyway.

Redwoods and Sea Fog

The five remaining members of the Intrepid TransAm Team cruised into Florence, Oregon in fine style.  Actually, that's not true: it's just the way it was supposed to be.    Jessica had a flat tyre two miles out, then, when we stopped in a confused bunch at an intersection without any idea of how to get to the Pacific Ocean, she gently bumped into Wim's bike.  Being clipped in to her pedals and unable to get a foot out in time to brace herself, she fell over sideways in a very ungraceful manner on the roadway.  We then discovered we still had five miles to ride to the beach.  When we finally arrived, Jessica's mother, who had flown out from Florida with her partner for the occasion, met us with two bottles of champagne in the carpark.

The beach turned out to be an unappealing expanse of grey sand bordering an equally unappealing expanse of grey, freezing ocean.  The wind was bitterly cold.  Nevertheless, two insane Belgians and one Geordie (the name implies insanity) decided to swim.  Jessica and I sipped champagne and
huddled in our jackets while they pretended to enjoy themselves, leaping about in what, just a little way north of here, is called the Arctic Ocean.


The next morning we had a farewell breakfast in a cafe in the Old Town area - the only attractive part of a town completely choked by shopping malls and used car lots and bisected by the constantly busy US 101.  While the others headed for Portland, and their various routes home, I threaded my way between the trucks and RVs, alone on the scary Highway 101, heading south for San Francisco.  I was already missing the camaraderie, the support, the company of these great people.

The Oregon coast is rugged and beautiful, with thousands of rocky islets dotting the bays and river mouths.   The towns are mostly small and spread out, but the through traffic on 101 is relentless.  Log trucks and giant motor homes shot past constantly, buffeting me with their backdrafts and, especially in the narrow sections, threatening to blow me off the road.  The riding was not fun.  It's hard to enjoy yourself when you're having a near-death experience every five minutes or so.

Most summer days in these parts start with a damp, drizzly fog rolling in from the sea.  Usually, this lifts by lunchtime and the afternoons are sunny with a cool breeze from the north - a convenient tailwind for a southbound cyclist.  Some days it doesn't lift, and the whole day is gloomy and damp, with low visibility on the narrow, hilly roads - especially on the crests and peaks.  It was on a typically foggy morning, on one of my detours away from US101 on a scenic parkway, that I had my first encounter with the giant Coastal Redwoods.  I rounded a bend and there they were, looming out of the fog - spooky and awe-inspiring.  For the next couple of hours I rolled silently along the quiet road, just gaping at these fabulous trees.  They are the tallest living things on Earth, and they can live for 2,000 years.  They have existed here in these moist, misty coastal hills for 20 million years, and have survived climate change, volcanic upheavals and massive movements of the Earth in this volatile geological region. In the last century and a half they have been decimated by logging, and - believe it or not - they are still being logged!  Is there no limit to the rapacity and greed of human beings?  Once back on Highway 101, I noticed that the squadrons of log trucks that were passing me all carried the carcases of magnificent Redwoods, destined to become building timber.  It literally made me cry.

I wasn't alone for long though: on day three, I met Jeff, an Australian who lives in Vancouver and works as a set designer in the film industry.  He was cycling from BC down to Los Angeles, where he had an appointment with his agent.  I'm not sure whether he always cycles 1000 miles to attend appointments.  We rode together and chatted for the rest of the day, then shared a Chinese meal, a bottle of wine and a motel room in Crescent City that night.

While the coastal scenery remained much the same, crossing the California state line ushered in a whole new cultural landscape.  Rambling, ranch-style homes appeared immediately, as did roadside fruit stalls, alternative - looking people with unconventional clothes and hairstyles, VW Kombi vans, shop signs in Spanish as well as English, organic food shops and even more traffic.  The weather didn't improve much.  Some afternoons the fog lifted around three or four o'clock and the day finished with weak but welcome sunshine and a chilly breeze.  Other days it stayed foggy until dusk.

I camped in state parks and forest  campgrounds, and met a succession of other riders battling the traffic up or down the Pacific Coast.  Three jovial Swiss men were riding from Vancouver to Chile.  A Canadian was riding from Vancouver to somewhere in Northern California to visit his sister.  A hulking Dane was completing a half circumnavigation of the globe on his bike.  He had started in China, tracked through Southeast Asia, and cycled against relentless headwinds from Darwin to Brisbane.  He was a tough man, physically and mentally.

Six days after leaving Florence, I reached the urban fringe of San Francisco.  One last night of camping in a state forest reserve, and I packed my tent up for the last time. I stopped on the waterfront in Sausalito to photograph the Golden Gate and Alcatraz across the bay, but the fog obscured most of the city and the wind was freezing.  And this is summer.  Eventually, I climbed the last of a long succession of steep, winding hills and rode on to the bike path across the bridge itself.  Welcome to San Francisco.  Coming the other way across the bridge were thousands of pedestrians and hundreds of cyclists.  Threading my way through them amidst the roar of the traffic and the shuddering vibration of the bridge was a serious strain, but it didn't diminish the sense of achievement and, yes, pride, that I had pedalled my bike all the way from Washington DC - close on 5,000 miles. 

Must have taken a wrong turn somewhere!

I had intended to spend several days in SF, rekaxing and taking in the sights, but the hostels were all booked out, there was nowhere within 20 miles to camp, and I ended up in a downtown motel room that smelt like an ashtray, had cigarette burns on the furniture, mould in the shower, and cost $75 a night.  I rang Qantas to find out when I could get a flight, and the choice was the very next day or a week hence.  I decided to bolt for home.

I'll post one more blog entry for the journey, with some reflections on the ride and impressions gained from my one day walking around San Francisco.  For now, it's quite nice to have the bike packed up in a box, and not to be riding for a while.