Category: 2012

Well, another year, another bike trip, another late night packing… I waited way too long to set up the bike blog. But I wouldn’t be a geek if I hadn’t spent an hour and a half making it so updates from my phone would use the GPS to tag the post with my location and update the map 🙂 Also, due to my fancy new phone, BikeBums.com may soon be featuring video posts! I promise I’ll upload a video of me riding along the rim of the Grand Canyon to make y’all jealous!

I was supposed to meet up with Sarah Norr and company at Manjula’s in the city, but I spent too much time poking around. So, I’ll catch the first Bart tomorrow…wish us luck as we try to navigate through Bay to Breakers!

We are  awesome! We successfully navigated bay to breakers, with only one near fatality. we had beautiful weather down the coast. We survived the solar apocalypse. We’re now at pigeon point lighthouse, having ended the day with a delicious max-made curry, pie, and a hot tub!

We’re having a great time! Last night we were hosted once again by the Martins, manjula’s dad and stepmom, in Santa Cruz. They treated us to a feast of homemade chili rellenos and tomales! Now we’re scooting towards Monterrey via watsonville and the elkhorn slough. Sasha and I are starting a new religion based on pie worship. If you accept pie into your life, you will find heaven on earth!

We’re still alive! We’ve survived wind and mountains as we rode down the gorgeous Big sur coast. It was even more awesome than we expected. We’ve continued our gourmet tour of the coast – fresh pasta in monterrey, fancy breakfast at deetjen’s, and last night we feasted on expired Mac and cheese!

Sarah,max,manjula,Sasha,and I all made it to San Luis Obispo fine. We had great weather down the coast, mostly sunny, cool, and mostly great tail winds. Manjula’s friends Sara and Pedro let us camp in their backyard in SLO, which was fun and convenient. Last night we spent wandering around downtown pretending we fit in with all the partying 22 year olds. I was also introduced to froyo by the ounce. Unfortunately, those guys all needed to head north. Now i’m on the train – I should meet up with Rai Sue in about 20 minutes in LA, where we’ll take the train our to Flagstaff – we get in at like 4 am! I just uploaded a bunch of photos, so check out the gallery. See y’all in Arizona!

Rai Sue and I made it to Flagstaff okay, albeit three hours late, which was fine for us since it was 43 degrees when we were supposed to get in at 4am. The delay was caused by the one percent – it would seem you can pay Amtrak to put your own private car on the train, and sometimes those cars break down, delaying everyone else on the train.

Anyway, here we are, heading north to the grand canyon. The weather is perfect – warm sun, cool breeze, clear skies, full heart, can’t lose! We climbed up to 8000 feet through gorgeous pine forests. The elevation change is making us huff and puff a little, but the climb wasn’t too bad since we started at 7000 feet!

Also, big ups to my niece Jennifer who just graduated high school! Congrats!

The Grand Canyon is awesome!!! We camped last night at bedrock city, a Flintstones-themed campground that at first seemed really run down and creepy, but we quickly realized it was run down and awesome! A left over relic from a different era of American tourism that seems to be still hanging on. We woke at 6:30 and had a huge breakfast at Fred (Flintstone)’s cafe for about $13 total. We made it into the park by noon, dodging RVs, helicopters, and elk carcasses along the way.
Luckily, we had the foresight to reserve a campsite, since the campground was full by 11 am. We turned our site into an impromptu hiker/biker site by inviting two groups of Francophile bike tourists to share with us. We spent the rest of the day making root beer floats, bumming in the visitor center, and catching the shuttle out to “the abyss” to have a car free sunset ride along the canyon rim. Btw, the shuttle back from the sunset viewing is similar to catching the 1 California at 7:30 in terms of crowdedness.
Tomorrow, I think we’ll give the Kaibab trail a try. One day down and no one fell in!

Hey everyone. As spectacular as it was,we’ve moved on from the Grand Canyon. Got in a great hike yesterday on the Kaibab trail, more amazing rim cycling, and a ranger talk that barely made any sense. Now we’re heading to the nearest bridge across the Colorado, which is still about 70 miles away across the desert. We’re about to hit a section that has 120 miles between grocery stores, so if you don’t here from us, it’s either because there’s no cell service or we ate each other.

Well, it seems to have warmed up a bit. We’re now at about the lowest elevation of the trip, about 3200 feet, and it has gotten pretty warm, I think pushing 100 degrees. No worries though, we beat the heat by getting up at 6 am and finishing our 60 mile day by around 3 pm. we’ve been rolling through jaw-droppingly beautiful desert landscape – giant cliffs, boulders, mesas in every hue of red, orange, yellow, brown…the photos will not do it justice. The campground we’re at now, lee’s ferry, is especially amazing – a postcard  everywhere you turn. The road into here looks like you’ve been transplanted to mars. Tomorrow we’re getting up at 4 am to hit the road before sunrise.
Rai Sue’s street score tally:
– Someone’s glasses (quickly returned to their grateful owners)
– A fancy sun hat
– A bicycle computer (quickly returned to a very grateful Greg)
– a pair of sunglasses