Eric's Bike Adventure 1995
![[Eric and his bike]](images/log3/washburne-eric.jpg)
This year, I needed to get out. I realized a couple things about where I am in life, and while reflecting on where I am, discovered that I had never really spent any long period of time by myself, and that all the "big things" I've done have always been with somebody else. Somebody else doing the planning, somebody else in control.
I needed to prove to myself that I could plan, prepare, and execute something by myself; to prove that I'm not just a shadow of the people around me. I needed the time to get "out of context", time to think about who I am, and what I'm doing with my life.
The answer?
I needed to do something by myself. I went on a bike ride. Alone. A trip of self discovery. Totally crazy, especially since I'd never done any bike touring before. Heck, I hadn't even ridden my bike fully loaded until the day before I left for my ride! I didn't know if I would be able to pull it off.
Bicycling may be the best thing I have done for myself in a long time. I got my current bike in the spring of '94, and have gotten in probably better shape than I had ever been before that in my whole life. And that was before the trip. But, I had been doing enough to get my lungs in shape, for my body to want to exercise, and enough to start working on better eating habits. So, biking has been making me happy, so why not just bike for my whole vacation?
So, I got a bus ticket from San Francisco to Portland, Oregon, and decided I would ride home, camping along the way, taking as long as it took.
I started in Portland, and took Oregon Highway 99W and then switched to Oregon Highway 18 in McMinnville. Headed out to the coast on 18, ending up at US Highway 101 in Lincoln City. After that, head south! Highway 101 is the route until well into California, where I kept along the coast down California Highway 1. I then followed 1 until Olema (next to Point Reyes Station), for a non-highway route to get to the Golden Gate Bridge. Once across the bridge, I headed down the bay side of the peninsula, and ended up back home.
All in all, pretty straightforward. Most of the route followed the route described in the Bicycling the Pacific Coast book by Tom Kirkendall and Vicky Spring. This is the bible for this bike route -- almost all the people riding the pacific coast have a copy of this book with them. Armed with that book, some Oregon cycling maps, and eventually an Adventure Cycling map of the Northern California coast route, the route was covered. Check out the References for details about these maps and books.
The trip log is my travelogue and all my pictures that I took along the trip. If I had to do it again, I'd bring a lot more film, since I didn't take pictures of even half of the interesting things I saw.
The trip log is split into many sections, for faster loading of each page. There are quite a few pictures. If you are connected at slow speed, you may want to turn off autoload of images.
Before I left, I needed to figure out when to tell my boss that I'd be back. So, I made my trip itinerary. I didn't expect to be religious about it, but it was good to plan, so that I knew the trip would be do-able in the time I gave myself.
I brought a huge pile of stuff with me. I brought a "self-contained" touring load, including full camping and camp cooking gear, a bike repair kit, and loads of other stuff.
Check out the complete equipment list for all the details.
Check out the references used to prepare for this trip. This includes maps, general touring guides, and route books; pretty much anything that was useful to help prepare the route or get me psyched up for the trip.