How we bike

A few comments about how we bike! This is our first touring trip, quite a bit more of a bicycling adventure than our usual bike-to-Wayzata-for-dinner excursions. Even our backpacking experience is helpful but not quite the same. A few fun details about the biking part if this trip, or as we've experienced it so far...

- Hills. Hard to train for them in Minnesota, and we definately went pretty quickly into the fire based on where we started this trip. I'd be curious to hear how a "real biker" with more experience would find some of these climbs. We have sort of gotten better at them after a week, but still ended up walking some on the longer and steeper ones. In our lowest gear biking we could go between 4 to 5 mph up the longer and steeper hills. Walking and pushing the bikes isn't that much slower- 2.8 mph. The downhill is a nice reward, but overall hilly areas still end up being quite a bit slower. Yesterdays 22 miles in the hills was about 4 hours of biking, and the 18 miles on the flatter approach to town was about 2 hours including water and snack breaks.

- Pack loading confessions. We started with roughly equal packs, but Jodi's office conditioning couldn't keep up with Chris's landscaping conditioning (and we all know he's some sort of adventure strong-man). Chivalry (and loving compassionate husbands) are not gone: Chris took a bunch of Jodi's pack weight half-way through the 57 mile day into Santa Cruz, and has kept most of it until now. Flatter land ahead, and stronger legs underneath, we'll probably give some back to Jodi tomorrow.

- Daylight. It gets dark here early this time of year, at 5 o'clock or so. This makes it a little bit trickier to cover the miles in daylight, and factoring in whether we'll make fast time or not can be a little tricky in working through a days plan. So far we've been able to avoid biking in the dark by headlamp, and we're trying to avoid it the whole trip if we can.

- Biking Fanny Feelings. Yeah, bike seats just aren't as comfy as a plush BarcaLounger. Maybe if you are someone who bikes every day all season long you get your rear end conditioned for it, but we aren't there yet. The good news is that day 4 isn't much worse than day 2, and, well, hey - we didn't expect to be comfortable the whole time.

- Favorites so far. Chris: The first day in the Big Sur area, when it was sunny and we had a full day of georgeous views, topped off with
rolling into our camping site in the redwoods with giant warm burritos
in our bag from the store we passed on our way in. Jodi: The ride
down Devils Slide area (that wasn't as scary as the guidebook made it
out to be), which led stright into the cute Montara lighthouse hostel
just as the sun was setting.

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