Objurium posted:

*big tour post sorry in advance*

Buddy and I did a slightly different version of our coast tour from last year, this time taking a train up from LA to SLO before riding through Big Sur up to Aptos, then bombing back down. ~550mi in 6 days or so all told.

I didn't train for this ride like the one I did last year, and truthfully my volume has been in the shitter for the past few months as I get into running and climbing, so I was a bit nervous about being able to keep up, but after a few days you kind of slip into that groove where you feel invincible.

I didn't bring a full sleep system in the name of trying to save weight, and predictably it created issues. I figured I could get away with shorts and a woobie at night, but alas when that mist sops into your poo poo at night along the coast, it gets cold fast.
We had a final supply stop in Cambria - a place who's combination of apothecaries and punisher skull pickups kind of make it feel like the last redoubt of conservative wiccan PTA mom thought.



The coast was as beautiful as ever - with mottled greys, rust and jade tones all fighting for dominance over the lazy, diffused sun. The area is nothing if not dreamlike, and lends itself well to the sort of voyage within that usually presents itself on bike tours as the hours and miles march on. We stopped at a favorite nameless blackstone beach and found a huge piece of abalone, a vertebrae from what I'm assuming is some kind of sea mammal, and a washed up DJI Mavic drone that had clearly drowned and been in the ocean for quite some time. We extracted it's corroded SD card because it felt dangerous.





The ride up through Big Sur flew by with relatively few stops, covering the 197mi from San Louis Abispo to Aptos in 2 days. We were treated to one of the most beautiful sunsets I've ever seen in the agricultural corridor between Monterey and Santa Cruz - watercolors spilling out of the sun bathing the endless crop fields in a surreal glow.





I pushed myself probably harder than I ever have on a bicycle before over the last 20 miles to get to a pizzeria before they closed, judiciously destroying an entire pie on my own like a true gluttonous dirtbag.

Day 3 had us mostly running errands on the way back from Aptos to Monterey, staging us for the next two days back down the coat through Big Sur, with our notable stop being perhaps the most overwhelmingly Central-Californian surplus store possible.





We eventually settled on nabbing a hiker biker spot in Veteran's Memorial Park in Monterey, where our sleep was interrupted by a tweaker couple having an argument in the campground next to us that was largely unintelligible outside of when the woman gruffly raised her voice and said "well the only reason I'm even here is because I fell off them steps, you know that!", a phrase who's true meaning shall haunt me til the end of my days. The fog rolled in thick at night but I was still able to get some fun night timelapses going.

https://i.imgur.com/GgcAK6h.mp4

We dropped down through 17mi drive, which is slightly out of the way but adds a beautiful (if soggy) coastal run to the morning that ultimately gets you to Carmel. It seems like a shame that some rear end in a top hat saw this incredible stretch of coastline and then was allowed to build a golf course over most of it.





Our next big deviation off Hwy 1 would be taking Coast Road where it intersects at Bixby Bridge, which proved to be a tour highlight. It's a good amount of climbing on reasonable condition dirt that winds its way through some absolutely gorgeous old-growth red woods and Bay Trees, and it offered a welcome reprieve to the long boring stretch of the 1 where its open and flat between Carmel and Andrew Molerra. Excellent atmosphere for goblin-ing.







Our climb ultimately spat us out at a vista at the apex of the valley as clouds from the coast rolled straight up the draw. The descent got a little sketchy in places, with a few rock gardens making for a more technical descent than I'm used to, but it wasn't anything unmanageable, and we ultimately reconnected with the 1 about 30 miles above Kirk Creek - our target for the night.





Refuled after a food stop in Gorda, we raced along the 1's cliffsides to get to camp before the sun sank into the sea.



https://i.imgur.com/HzjCuMZ.mp4

We stupidly didn't lock our food that night, and racoons raided our poo poo - thankfully only really destroying our supply of tortillas and not causing any actual damage to our framebags, but it meant that we were without food for our planned morning climb up Ferguson Nacimiento, right across the street from Kirk Creek. Another pretty steep climb over ~7 miles with lots of debris that's probably super fun descending if you're comfortable smashing out down dangerous routes, but I kept it relatively chill in the name of safety after eating poo poo hard at the beginning of the year. Still some pretty views even if the fog bank blocked what's supposed to be sightlines of the coast on the descent.



Necrobike looking ratchet as gently caress:







We shot down to Moro Bay for another very wet evening, and had another long boring day across more open agricultural land between MB and Gaviota beach the following day, staging us for a final 30mi run to Santa Barbara and the train home on day 6.

What struck me the most about the entire journey was how much "bigger" the meditative state of touring feels after beginning to cultivate an actual mindfulness meditation practice since my first tour this time last year. It feels very tangibly like the ability to accept suffering in the saddle on very long days is a gateway to an orientation of consciousness that feels expansive, and I get a lot of really good thinking done in that space. It's nice to see the fruits of the gardens we cultivate, or whatever, and I'd love to talk to anyone that's in a similar position. Some real neat stuff happens there.