Category: California

Woke to the 6am alarm to find it had dropped to 39 degrees, our first below-40 reading in a long time. And a decent breeze remained, but making breakfast (soft-boiled eggs, toasted bagels with cream cheese, and coffee) wasn’t too bad, bundled up in all my layers, and with the sun coming up. The ride…

We were able to get out into the shared kitchen, masks-on, cook up some breakfast, and get sealed back into our room before our phlegm-hacking neighbors had woken up (we also saw a third guest depart wearing her mask, which she hadn’t had on when we briefly saw her the day before). We didn’t have…

WarmShowers is a wonderful network of generous people, willing to host touring cyclists like us, in or around their homes. But one of my apprehensions preventing us from taking advantage of it more often (beyond that basic “taking advantage” feeling) is the structural imbalance inherent in the network. Generally, bike tourers ride, and are looking…

We’d decided to take the offshoot to visit the Danish-themed town of Solvang, found ourselves a WarmShowers host there, and even plotted a good idea of a route back out. So the only thing left to do was decide how to get there: the empty but probably-bumpy and no-shoulder farm road, or the busy, smooth-shouldered…

We’d had a couple evenings lately that had started out slightly damp, but then dried out by morning. No such luck here, as this clear-sky condensation was heavy enough to be dripping inside our tent by the time we woke up. I just ate breakfast standing, while Rett ate in the relatively-dry and slightly-warmer tent.…