Escape to Pigeon Point

The first thing I did once I got settled in the bay post-Burning Man was buy a bicycle. The hazy cloud of Burning Man idleness lingered quite a while after the event itself was finished. My broken netbook presently in repairs didn’t help matters much, but neither did my desire to do nothing more than walk around Berkeley barefoot, eat almond croissants daily and read books about Greek mythology instead of looking for a job. I needed something to jolt me awake, something fast and intense.

I decided to pick a point on the map, cycle to it in a day, then cycle back the next day. Realizing very quickly that spinning my finger and thrusting it at the map was landing me in parts of the state with more meth labs than cheap hotels, I instead decided to limit myself to finishing some place with a hostel, narrowing it down to three plausible locations. After eliminating those places booked up until July with recession-era honeymooners, I settled on one spot – Pigeon Point Lighthouse Hostel, 55 miles south of San Francisco.

I started out bright and early on Monday, October the 8^th, from a friend’s place in San Francisco. Put my shiny new black panniers on, packed them up, and got ready to ride by 8:26 AM (after successfully resisting an almond croissant pitstop). After riding down 19^th Avenue onto California Highway 1 for around 15 minutes, I was out of San Francisco and on the road.

Highway 1 makes California biking a breeze. The shoulders are wide, the scenery beautiful, and the highway itself is neither dangerous nor congested. But I didn’t know this as I was leaving San Francisco. And the first thing I hit was a roaring 3-4 lane highway jam-packed with cars speeding by so fast my bike shook underneath me. I cursed everyone who told me how nice Highway 1 is, cursed the cars who couldn’t hear me, and cursed myself for not just biking to a hostel at Fisherman’s Wharf.

And to top things off, I discovered that my lane was rapidly becoming… no longer a lane. Bordered by two converging 3-lane highways of cars all going at max speed, I soon saw my shoulder taper off into nothing – or, more specifically, into a grisly bike-and-several-cars pileup. I stopped for a moment. Two moments. Three. About 78 moments later, there came a momentary lull in the flood of these automotive phalanxes, just enough time for me to scramble awkwardly all over my bike and myself to get to the other side, praying I don’t trip in front of the white Subaru rapidly coming around the bend…

The rest of the morning was relatively problem-free and extremely picturesque, as the 1 follows, for almost its whole length, the cliffs above the California shoreline. I arrived in Half Moon Bay a half an hour under schedule at 12 PM, and stopped for butternut squash soup at a downtown restaurant. Congratulating myself on my good job, I figured I could take it leisurely from here on out, and arrive at the lighthouse by 4 PM just in time to grab dinner and use their hot tub.

So, soon after, when I followed a detour sign that led nowhere and popped me out by the beach, I struck up a conversation with another confused-looking dreadlocked biker nearby, “You following the detour sign too?” “Yea… crap.” He offered me some homemade jerky and explained that his load, which piled up and spilled over the front and back sides of his bicycle, was for a tour from Canada to Mexico, whereupon he would sell his cheapo hybrid bike and backpack further on down into Latin America. He was 55 days into his journey. I sat on my nice new bike and listened to his story. He asked me how far I had gone. “Uhh, from San Francisco. Since earlier today.”

After he introduced himself as Jono and told me he was riding down to Santa Cruz we agreed to ride together, though he was fatigued from a hangover and had just woken up a half an hour ago. I didn’t mind – I figured even with my afternoon laziness and the soup in my belly, I’d be able to beat this under-the-weather veteran at his own sport.

Within moments, I was scrambling. As, I think, is typical of any two guys who bike together, every increase in speed on the part of one appears – unconsciously, at least – as a challenge to the other’s cycling prowess. And soon, even if neither biker wishes it, they are pedaling as fast as they possibly can. After about 45 minutes of this, while I was convinced that he hadn’t broken a sweat, he turned to me and said, “Damn, you are kicking my ass.” Whereupon I realized we were kicking our own asses.

We made it to Pescadero, near Pigeon Point way under schedule, around 3 PM, largely thanks to our mutual one-upmanship. Moments after I saw the sign, I noticed Jono stopped on the side of the road up ahead (he had long since beat me) and I pulled over. “There’s a beached whale, here!” he told me. I had heard about this days ago but couldn’t imagine it would still be down there when I arrived. But lo and behold.

We made fun of a mother and daughter who were posing in front of the whale “Smile for the picture, honey!” then proceeded to take our own callous snapshots in front of the hulking, dead mass. The smell, however, was atrocious – somewhere between rotting chicken and rotting fish. It was difficult to stick around long, though we made sure to scope out every angle of the 91-foot long beast and the stillborn white baby whale who was floating nearby the mother. We were not so intrepid as one spectator, who made a point to touch every angle he could find of both the mama whale and the baby.

Sufficiently brightened by the reality that we were both not dead whales and didn’t stink as bad as them, we set out for Pigeon Point. He said goodbye and continued down to Santa Cruz, his final destination. I lounged around the hostel, glad to be finished with my ride. But as I sniffed the air I noticed a hint of dead whale in the air. I asked one of the hostel residents if they smelled it as well. They didn’t. Then I realized – it was in clothes, my hair and my shoes, especially, for contact with the air and water the whale was bobbing in. And I had no other pair of shoes for my two night stay at the hostel

Then I thought of Jono and realized it could be far worse. Wherever you are, Jono, I hope that load of yours doesn’t smell too bad.