August 21, 2009
Conclusion
Another successful tour!
43 days, 43 nights.
1 night on a train, 35 nights camping, and 7 nights in motels.
1884 miles (3014 km) on the bike.
101,513 feet (30,762 m) of climbing on the bike.
65 miles (104 km) of hiking.
I soaked in 12 hot springs.
I visited 2 National Parks and 2 National Monuments.
I rode the entire length of the Sierra Nevada range and a portion of the Cascade Range, over 3 volcanoes.
My typical average speed was 9 mph (14.4 km/h). Days that were mostly uphill had an average speed of less than 7 mph (11 km/h). Two days had an average speed of 14 mph (22 km/h) when the route was mostly downhill. I'm a 48 year old turtle and proud of it!
As expected, the weather was very hot in California's Central Valley and east of the Sierra Nevada mountains from Inyokern to Bishop. That's where I stayed in 5 of the 7 motels. The hottest day was 105F (40.5C) in Inyokern. The coolest night was 38F (3C) along the June Lake loop in the eastern Sierra Nevada. But most days and nights were very comfortable. Mosquitoes were bad in only 2 or 3 places.
This year I lost more stuff than in the past. A pair of cycling shorts disappeared from a clothesline in Monterey. I accidentally left behind a clothesline with socks and bike shorts along the Kern river. I accidentally left my Thermarest butt pad behind on the coast in Ventura county.
A few things broke during the tour. Most important was the underseat rack. I used my spare Take-a-Look mirror for most of the trip because I accidentally stepped on the first one. Near the end of the tour the latching mechanism broke on my left rear pannier. And in the middle of the tour I had to mend a leak in my Big Agnes mattress pad. But amazingly, I didn't have a single puncture in my 40mm Schwalbe Marathon tires.
I didn't use my Nokia Internet Tablet as often as expected. Partly because I'm just not in the habit of playing with a computer during a bike tour. There's so many other things to do!
I followed the route exactly as planned except in the Santa Barbara area. I had planned to ride inland through the Solvang valley and up a long ridge in the Santa Ynez mountains to visit Big Caliente and Little Caliente hot springs. But I decided to skip that because it would be very hot there, and because I was so slow going down the coast (11 days from San Francisco to Ventura).
On this tour I took 3 days off for hiking. First was the hike to 11,700 foot Kearsarge pass, the highlight of the tour. Second was hikes from Red's Meadow to Devil's Postpile and Rainbow Falls. Third was the hike to Brokeoff Mountain in Lassen park as an alternate to the closed Lassen Peak trail. The hikes really added to the satisfaction of the tour.
I biked 40 out of 43 days, with an average daily distance of 47 miles (75 km). This tour had much more climbing than my previous two tours. And this was my longest bike tour since a 6-month "practice retirement" tour in 1989.
I started the tour weighing 177 pounds and finished the tour weighing 171 pounds. I lost 6 pounds (2.7 kg) in 6 weeks, not bad.
Overall I was pleased with the scenery on this route. Quite an astounding variety of environments. And I was pleased that my "all tailwinds" route was mostly successful in that regard.
I wish the tour could have started in late May as originally planned. Then the coastal segment would be less crowded, the hot sections would be more pleasant, and the Sierra Nevada mountains would have a mantle of snow. The only other thing I would do differently is include a couple of true rest days somewhere. I did non-trivial biking or hiking every single day of this tour and definitely felt a cumulative exhaustion by the end.
I'll close with a picture that Carl Umland sent to me after the tour. He's the backpacker I met at Red's Meadow who had seen my previous tour journals. Thanks for the picture Carl!
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