I’ve stopped to see Kim, and then made it home!
After leaving the Ivey’s I started down Highway 1, and followed it for a long ways. It was exactly the kind of road that is a whole lot of fun on a bike, and a pleasant challenge to ride. However, after an hour of so, it starts to get to be a bit much, and the slow speeds I could maintain while doing 160 degree turns with a 20 foot radius suggested that it was going to take a very long time to get home. So, I decided to cut over to 101 and take a more direct route the rest of the way.
However, it turned out that the next road over was about 60 miles away. This was no problem, except that I reached a part of 1 that is carved into the edge of a set of very high cliffs. I’m slightly afraid of heights. Normally, this isn’t an issue, even when riding along roads with very sharp and drop offs that are a couple of hundred feet. However, some of these cliffs dropped for what seemed more like a couple of thousand feet. The roads were twisty but reasonable and the speed of traffic was slow. Unfortunately, my fear of heights kicked in about half way through. I kept riding, but not well, and was really, really tense. It was worse because I had no idea how long this would keep going (and it did keep going 20-30 more miles), and there was now where to stop that wasn’t right up against the cliff edge. I really didn’t have much I could but just grit my way through.
Of course, I did just that, and there was no real issue. Still, it had really gotten to me. When we did come down, I pulled into the first stop off (which had a mere 100 foot drop to the ocean) to relax. Almost instantly, I started getting cramps in my arms from holding onto the bike so tightly.
Not too long after that, I pulled over to 101 and followed it down. The GPS routed me around San Francisco on 580 to 880, which meant that I took the Bay Bridge for the first time ever. This is the double decker bridge, which is unfortunately also very far off the water. That made it a bit uncomfortable after the recent cliffside experience.
Otherwise, it was just a quick ride down. No issues other than the only really heavy traffic I’d run into this entire trip. Being back in California, I could lane split again, and got to try it with the new bike. One mixed blessing for this bike is that it’s air cooled, which means that sitting still for too long can overheat it. This is exactly the reason that lane splitting was made legal, so I was taking advantage of the law for the intended reason for the first time ever.
Anyway, I’m home! I’ve partially unpacked, and washed the bike, but haven’t done the other things I was hoping to do today. Hopefully, I’ll do a full breakdown of expenses from this trip soon and see just how much it cost and what that money was spent on. When I do, I plan to post that here.
Take care all!
