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November 12th 2008
Published: November 12th 2008
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Sharon:

We're sitting here in a library in Langunitas (or something like that) TWENTY MILES from the Golden Gate! Thought we'd write a quick update - to let you know that we're still alive and kicking! The last few weeks (or however long it's been since the last blog) have been phenomenal. We finished cycling the beautiful Oregon coast, crossed into California, and cycled alongside thousand year old redwoods, over spectacular cliffside coastline, through cattle pastures in sage covered tundra, along deeply shaded roads lined with eucalyptus trees, and past rows and rows of grapes in the Sonoma Valley. We've had incredible sunshine and desert-like intense heat, dense veils of fog, heavy down pours, and everything in between (no snow though - take that Alberta!). Not only that, but we've spent many of our nights camped with other cyclists headed the same direction - Dan from Washington, Fred from Texas, Devian from California, Mike and Max from Australia, and Buckeye the homeless man from Ohio cycling south for the winter (he was a story all by himself but I promised I'd keep this short). We spent the night at the home of an amazingly generous man, Mike, that we met on a bike path in Arcata - he spoiled us rotten with clean laundry, showers with warm, dry fluffy towels, hot dinnner, icecream, fresh baked cinnamon buns, pancakes - the list goes on! We've both replaced our rear wheels after broken spokes started to unleash their wrath on the whole set-up. We've spent at least three days cycling not at all or very little on account of the huge down pours of rain we ran into in northern California. One day the driving rain forced us into a seedy Motel 6, one day we spent in the teepee of another cyclist at the campsite (complete with woodstove), and one day we set up our soaking wet tent and slept the dampness away all afternoon. We spent one night camped in the back yard of a bikeshop in Crescent City, where some tom cats created new problems for our poor tent... We've camped in the ditch right along the San Andreas fault (no earthquakes) - an amazing spot behind the trees right along the ocean. Just the other day we ended up about 40 miles inland, when my rear sprocket set fell off in the middle of the day, ball bearings all over the highway. We stuck up our thumb and Christina and Theo picked us up, took us home (to their amazingly cool house in Santa Rosa), fed us superb vegan feasts, got us to a bike shop to replace the sprocket set, and we watched Benny and June together. People are amazing - I really can't believe how many incredible people we've had the pleasure of meeting.

There are many more adventures where that came from and I promise we'll write a full blog in San Francisco! We can't wait to cross over the Golden Gate Bridge - and we've arranged to camp in a hiker-biker site in the park overlooking it (for free!).

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