Today we logged the first day over 60 miles we've done in a while. Since Florence, I think. And it was a hard day! We've had longer ones, but somehow today it just felt like we were climbing the whole time. We weren't, clearly, but the 85+ degree whether, the on-and-off headwind (weird), and the fact that the first 60 miles of the day did see a general increase in elevation sure made it feel that way. We're pretty pooped out.
This morning as we rode through Legget, we saw signs for the world-famous drive-through-tree. We coughed up 3 bucks each in order to drive through a really big tree. We're totally suckers. It was cool, I guess, but you walk away feeling like you've kinda been had. Oh well. It was a really cool tree. 21 ft in diameter and 2400 years old. That's an old tree.
We then had a long day of biking mostly uphill, which we shot back down all in the last 10 miles before Ukiah. We dropped like 1000 ft in 5 miles at one point. It was sweet. We arrived tired and hot in Ukiah and grabbed a bite and a beer at the local brewery. The pale ale was great, the nachos were great, and dessert was great. However, the bacon arugula blue cheese pizza, which sounds amazing, was not that good and a total rip-off. If you ever are there, don't get that. I actually had to ask the waitress when she gave us the bill, because the pizza was so much I thought she charged us for the wrong thing. It was awkward.
We got to our couchsurfing house, the home of Marilyn and Jeff. After a few days of roughing it, I feel cleaner than I have in a while. They are both musicians, so we spent a solid hour or more singing duets and being accompanied by Jeff on the piano. It was a lot of fun. Really lovely people. And tomorrow morning we're gonna sing in their church service! We haven't done much singing the last few weeks, so we'll see how it goes.
And, here's a picture of my ridiculous cyclist tan-line. Sam has it too. We look pretty funny.
Only a couple more days of biking left! San Fran here we come! But perhaps a little wine on the way. Oh, by the way our pint count is at 56. Doin' well.
Special Sam Moment of the Day:
We were pretty beat coming into Ukiah today, and apparently when tired Sam loses some motor control. In the course of about 45 minutes, he jarred his foot by hitting a huge bump in the road when he was looking at directions, literally ran straight into the back of a parked car when looking at his phone, and had a very close call with a bush for no apparent reason.
Catching up on comments.
ReplyDeleteI think I remember Poppy telling about redwoods that he drove through when he went on his cross-country drive with a buddy back after he got out of school. The stories are from when we were little, so I could be mistaken, misremembering or poppy was telling tall tales.... about Redwoods.