Big Sur, big adventures

This post is from a newsletter I sent out while cycling from Canada to Mexico in 2017

Hello friends,

After a longer stay than planned in mighty San Francisco, I got back on the road, guilty of feeling a little comfortable having now spent almost 2 months on the road. Perhaps I was asking for trouble?

My route took me south along Halfmoon Bay, past longboarders surfing lazily off the boardwalk in Santa Cruz and inland over fields full of brussel sprouts and pungent celery, through to Monterey. So far, so easy.

Then finally into Big Sur, a cycling dream for so long. Hills rose up out of nowhere and suddenly the highway was etched into cliffs which fell away steeply into an ocean alive with sea-lions, pelicans and whales spy-hopping in the sunset. My eyes were so busy that I forgot all about my legs, cruising up over headlands and down through canyons like a member of US Postal circa 1999.

Then, at the most remote point of the trip so far, Mitch’s first mechanical meltdown: a snapped derailleur cable, relegating me to my heaviest gear on some very steep terrain. After an hour trying to find a solution without a spare cable, enter a man with a van. Dreadlocks, beard, flower power shirt, no shoes. “Y’all need a ride?” A heaven-sent lift back the way I’d come, to a bike shop in Monterey. “Barefoot Adam,” as he’s known, is hard of hearing so he did the talking, reciting Zen proverbs and his own poetry, describing “time portals” and “the cosmos”. Time travel indeed: an hour to drive what had taken me a day and a half to cycle.

With Mitch restored to peak physical condition, I got to pedal Big Sur for a second time, once again on my way to the biggest adventure of all: a landslide involving 5 million cubic yards of earth which buried the road in May. Officially the road is closed but tales of intrepid cyclists crossing the area under cover of dark to avoid a $2000 fine had travelled up and down the Pacific Coast Highway for weeks and I had no inclination to follow a steep inland detour.

I caught up with Marge, one of the French hooligans with whom I’d cycled into San Francisco, and a new friend, Viktoria from Russia, waiting in a cafe 100 metres from the road closure. We watched the guards and workers leave as darkness fell, then snuck through the barrier, wheeling our heavy bikes down a switchback dirt track across the landslide. Spotting lights further into the construction site, we hid behind a digger for a while, but when we heard a slow crescendo of tumbling rocks somewhere high above us, we decided a hefty fine would be preferable to being buried alive. In the end, the lone worker in his tractor just wished us a slightly resigned “safe travels girls” and we soon found tarmac again, whooping and hollering as we cycled 10 vehicle-free miles of route 1 beneath a starry sky.

I’m now in San Luis Obispo having a little pause before I get into the suburban riding of Southern California, San Diego starting to feel awfully close.

Love, Elishka