Heading Home

We woke up early on Sunday morning and met a friend of ours for breakfast at a great little cafe downtown.  It's apparently pretty famous, but I can't remember the name of that place, either.  (Sorry, I'm 0 for 2 on L.A. food recommendations.)

After breakfast, we headed back to Union Station.  We had a bit of time to kill, so we went over to Olvera Street.  It's a small outdoor bazaar that runs through the oldest part of L.A., although it would be equally at home in Mexico City.

But with no room for food in our bellies, and no room for souvenirs in our luggage, we were quickly heading back to the station.  Union Station is housed in an amazing art deco building, and is one of the many iconic buildings that just screams Hollywood.

And that was it.  That was the last stop before we hopped on the train back home.  We wove our way through the L.A. suburbs, inland farming towns, and finally the Arizona desert.  Around midnight on Saturday, we pulled into the Tucson train depot behind Hotel Congress.  It didn't take us long to rebuild our bikes, strap on our bags, and make the quick ride home.  I don't think that we've ever slept so well.

Another successful adventure.

Destination: L.A.

We pulled into Los Angeles in the late afternoon, although we didn't see the city before nightfall.  It took me a while to find an Amtrak luggage agent who had the power and desire to hear my pleas to keep our bikes overnight at the station.  We were going to be spending the night at a cheap motel near the train station, and the last thing I wanted to do was drag a couple of bike boxes through the alleys of L.A.

We eventually got the luggage issue squared away, although it was kind of a don't ask don't tell situation.  We weren't supposed to leave luggage at the station, but the agent kindly hinted that forgotten luggage was a different story.

So we made our way out onto the street of Los Angeles, and didn't have much trouble finding our motel.  It was an amazing little place.  The Korean-appearning employee at the desk barely spoke English, the signs were all in unrecognizable characters, and the rooms were furnished with striking cherrywood cabinets.  We were in Chinatown!

As soon as we figured where we were, we ran back down to the front desk to get some directions to dinner.  What started out as us asking for the employee's opinion on where we could find some Southeast Asian delicacies quickly devolved into me just asking him to point to food.  I need to learn Korean.

But the place that we found was actually one of the most amazing Chinese restaurants that either one of us had ever been to.  The first thing that we noticed was its size.  Despite having a humble entrance that we easily could have missed, the restaurant was easily 10,000 square feet, divided up into 10 or so rooms the sizeof the average high school class room.  And not only was it big, but it was packed!  Even at 10pm on a Tuesday, every seat in the house was full.  There were small children celebrating birthdays, elderly groups gathering for a quiet dinner, business deals going on all around us, and two white people who looked like they were on a train for the last 10 hours.  The place was more of a community center than a restaurant.

But once the food came out, we knew that we were somewhere special.  The egg rolls (which cost somewhere south of $5) came out by the dozen.  The entree plates were easily the size of basketballs, and the food was spectacular.  We had enough left overs to last us for the next three meals (literally), and couldn't remember the last time we had tasted anything so amazing.  And the check ended up being in the ballpark of $20, which would have been incredible in any city, let alone Los Angeles.

I wish I could remember where that place was (or even its name), but I have the strong feeling that it was a Studio 54-like Nirvana of a Chinese food haven for weary travelers.  If we somehow managed to find our way back the next day, we would have found in its place a creepy butcher shop with three years of filth on the floor.

In which I actually talk about a train ride.

I love trains, and whatever else I said at the beginning of the last post.

But seriously, there's something magical about traveling across the country and being able to use your cell phone (and pocket knife) while you do so.  It's also pretty amazing to be able to walk around freely, and (gasp) even be able to extend your legs in your seat.

But generalities aside, the specifics of this particular train were pretty incredible.  The first thing we noticed was the 110V electrical outlets in every seat.  How cool is that?!

Well, that was the first thing that we noticed when we got to our seats.  The first thing that we noticed at all about the train is that it had an arcade!

We couldn't help but drop our jaws as what appeared to be a fully operation game room.  Delta has nothing on that!  Although, not only was I unwilling to waste a train ride staring at a screen, but I also got sick of early 90s video games sometime around 1992.  I was going to spend my time in the view car!

The views along the California coast are easily some of the best in the world, and Amtrak wisely outfits its trains a couple of cars like the one above.   But note: The photograph above is a little misleading.  Both the other passenger and I were in the car before the train departed, which was against the rules.  Once the train got moving, the car was a pretty happening place to be!

And the view did not dissapont.  The train weaves through dramatic coastal cliffs, abandoned oilfields, and world class beaches.  It also skirts alongside Vandenberg Air Force base, where the early space missions were launched from.  It was a pretty amazing journey, and I can't recommend it enough.  The ride from central California to Los Angeles took about 10 hours.

All Aboard!

I love trains.  Everything about them, from the turn of the century nostalgia to the fuel efficiency just warms me up.  They're great.  So of course, I was pretty excited that a key feature of this trip was the train ride.  We were gearing up for a ride down the California coast and across the Arizona desert back home to Tucson.  We were like Wyatt Earp in spandex shorts.

Like the rest of Salinas, the train station was fully from another era.  I got, like, a 1930's dustbowl-meets-Gotham City vibe.

We had some time to kill before the train showed up.  For all of its strengths, punctuality is not Amtrak's strong suite.  But it's not really their fault.  In the U.S., freight trains get priority over passenger ones, so we say plenty of mile-long caravans of cargo containers pass by before our train showed up.

But the waiting just made us more excited with we saw the silver and blue locomotive rolling in.

Amtrak has a very interesting history.  As you would expect, train travel peaked around World War I, and quickly declined in the interwar period, as the car became America's preferred method of travel.  Rail travel picked up during World War II, as the military used it for troop transport, and gasoline restrictions encouraged Americans to keep their cars in the garage.

But the surge was short lived, and the death knell of passenger trains came in the 1960s, as the Postal Service switched its cross-country shipments from rails to jets.  It didn't help that the publicly-funded highway system artificially decreased the cost of automobile travel, and the privately-funded rail lines just couldn't compete.

By the late 1960's, the decline of passenger rail travel threatened to bring down the entire railroad industry, and of course no one in the Federal government wanted to see that.  Enter the Rail Passenger Service Act.  It allowed all of the rail companies to unload their passenger responsibilities onto another entity (what would become Amtrak).  Amtrak isn't run by the government.  It is an independent, private corporation that has many shareholders.  A large percentage of the shares are owned by the rail lines that used to run the passenger trains, but the largest shareholder is the U.S. Government.  But government ownership is different than government run.  Just like you and I can own shares in Disney, we don't participate in the day to day operation of the company and we don't pick which movies it produces.  But if we aren't happy with the direction of the company, we can vote to replace the people who do run the day to day operation.  Amtrak is no different.  Congress and the President (and the other shareholders) don't pick the routes or set the prices, but they do appoint the board of directors who are responsible for the overall direction of the company.

Interestingly, there are a lot of parallels (and one important difference) between what was essentially a government-backed bailout of the passenger rail system, and the recent government-backed bailout of the automobile industry.  In each case, the government didn't take over day to day operations, but it did invest a lot of money and receive shares in return.  The government then appointed directors who reshaped the operation into something that would become self sustaining.  However, the important difference is that after the auto industry was rebuilt, the U.S. government sold its shares in the company for a considerable profit.  Conversely, the passenger rail system has never quite turned into a fully self-sustaining operation that could be sold on the private market.  Popular support keep it operational (and keeps the government involved as a shareholder), but the realities of automobile and aviation competition keeps Amtrak from becoming something that could viably be sold on the open market.

Another interesting parallel.  The automobile industry bailout was crafted by democratic president (Obama) and was successful.  The railway bailout was crafted by a Republican president (Nixon) and was not successful.  Success being defined as the shares being purchased and later resold at a profit, with the industry remaining viable afterwards.  I'm wading into dangerous territory here, but I just wanted to point out that one party is supposed to be good with business, but the other party actually pulled it off.

But in all fairness, President Nixon actually designed Amtrak to fail.  The powerful railway companies were no longer interested in passenger rail service, but didn't want to be seen as the bad guys who dropped a popular (albeit unprofitable) operation.  Similarly, President Nixon didn't want to be seen as the president who dropped the ball on saving an American institution.  So he and his advisors devised a third party (Amtrak) that would take over passenger rail service, and eventually fade into oblivion as the money ran out.  But over 40 years later, Amtrak is still kicking (or rather limping along).  There is just enough popular support to maintain government involvement, and just enough profit to make that feasible.

But I was going to talk about a train ride.  I should probably start that over in a new post.

Grapes of Wrath

Salinas, California is an anachronism.  It's not one of those cities that has been neglected since the 1950's, it just is the 1950's.  The city is supported by the farm land that surrounds it, and you definitely get the feeling that the small urban part of the city is set up for nothing else than to provide the farmworkers with some supplies and entertainment whenever they come to town.

Aimee and I arrived in Salinas in the late afternoon, after a two-hour bus ride from Big Sur.  We had already seen Salinas briefly when the train from San Jose dropped us off here to start our ride, but we really didn't see much more than the train station.  We explored the city a bit on our second visit, but were pretty much just stalling until we could check into our hotel room.  We were wiped out.

We got up early the next day, since our train to Los Angeles departed around 9 or so.  We stumbled into a little diner as we looked around for some breakfast.  It was a fantastic little place that looked like it fell out of the cold war era.  But as a reflection of who does most of the farming in America, all of the items were Mexican food.  We were pleasantly surprised when the server brought us a tray of chips and salsa.  In a diner.  At 7 am.  This was our kind of diner.

Back in the Saddle

Now that our legs had thoroughly recovered from the staircase of a road that we took to Big Sur, it was time to get back on the bikes.

But this is a pretty misleading photo.  We were only riding a few hundred yards to the main road outside the campground.

We had to make it back into Salinas that afternoon for our train ride back home, and since it took us two and a half days to get from Salinas to Big Sur, we were going to have to take the bus back if we were going to have any chance of catching our train.  The area has a pretty impressive public transportation system, and there was a bus that made the rounds through the Big Sur campgrounds and went all the way back to Monterrey.  We made arrangements to catch another bus there to Salinas

While we were waiting for the bus, Aimee told me about a guy that she had just seen in the camp gift shop.  Apparently he was returning a whole vienna sausage.  Aimee thought, "who returns a sausage"?  And before she could finish her story, she interrupted herself and pointed out, "that's him, that's him!"  I turned to see a 30-something guy in a hooded sweatshirt walking towards the same bus stop that we were at.

We exchanged some polite small talk, but it didn't take him much time to go into a remarkably long-winded story about how he got in a fight with his wife while they were camping in the same park that we were.  From the sound of things, this was hardly their first fight.  But as far as the wife was concerned, this was their last.  While he was out hiking, she packed up all of their stuff (including his wallet), and hit the road without him.  He came back to find an empty campsite, no money, no cell phone, and no ID.  The only thing left was a vienna sausage that he had previously bought from the camp gift shop for dinner that night.  When Aimee encountered him, he was attempting to return it without a receipt to muster up some bus money.

By this point Aimee and I were doing everything we could to keep our jaws from hitting the floor.  We couldn't believe that this was really happening, and that he was telling this to a couple of strangers at the bus stop!

About thirty or forty minutes into his story, a silver minivan came down the road.  He squinted at it, and said, "Is that? Yeah, that's...  Yep, that's my wife.  Nice talking with you guys!"  We got the distinct feeling that this was a monthly occurrence.  He leaned against the van and talked with his wife for a while outside of our earshot.  I felt a little bad taking this photo, but only a little bad.  This was too good of a story.

Whatever he told her worked.  He got into the van and they drove off like nothing happened.

And I made a note to always take my wallet on hikes.

-M

Lazy day

Thursday was a pretty casual day for us (and that's saying something).  We woke up sometime between noon and, well, noon.  We lounged around the campsite for quite a while, and poked around some of the more interesting trees nearby.

We went for a quick hike, but it was almost out of guilt.  We thought it would be a crime to lounge around the campsite all day.

But the hike was quick, and we were back napping at the campsite in no time.  We actually had to re-check in, since the hiker-biker campsite in Big Sur had a two-day limit.  But we were in no rush to leave, so we checked in under Aimee's name, and said that our friend Myles Stone was checking out.

We spent the afternoon reading and hanging out around the campsite.

Aimee's smile may or may not have anything to do with why the bottle of vodka was almost empty.

-M

The Morning After

We woke up on Wednesday engaged.  That was a new feeling.

Our first order of business was to call Aimee's parents.  But that was easier said than done.  We were camping deep in the forest, and even California forests don't have particularly good cell reception.  So we hiked up to the highest point in the extensive trail network around the campsite.  We did manage to get enough signal to make the call, and the view wasn't too bad either.

As I mentioned, the trail network around the campsite was pretty amazing, and the hike up to the overlook was one of three hikes that we made that day alone.

Since this was our first full day in the campsite, we made a little exploratory hike around the park.  The first thing we came to was a slice of one of the many giant redwoods that Big Sur is famous for.

A closer look at those blue arrows show that they're pointing out the tree rings that were formed during important events in world history.  And these trees are so large (and therefore so old) that the inner rings were formed an incredibly long time ago.

They're a bit hard to read, but the left most arrow reads "1215 - Magna Carta Signed".  The others say "1271 - Marco Polo in China" and "1347 - Black Plague Devastates Europe".  That's amazing!  This tree was already hundreds of years old during the plague!  Nature really is incredible, and we were pretty impressed with the California Parks Department's efforts to show how awe-inspiring these trees really are.

The other hike was to a nice little waterfall just outside the campground.  You may be able to see it in the background.

-M

The one about the ring

Ok. School has been a pretty good excuse for not finishing up the bike trip stories. But if I wait any longer to write this one, Aimee's mom is going to kick me out of the family before I'm even in it.

By this point, many of you know that Aimee's left hand has a little extra decoration on it these days. I may have had something to do with that. And by the way, if you didn't know, don't be offended. I actually only told two or three people (Aimee being one of them), and then I let the news spread through the grapevine.

So we really should back up a bit for this one. Let's start this story in mid-summer, when I really started to wrap my head around getting married. I was on the Hopi reservation, and I had plenty of time to think about it. But deciding that I wanted to get married was only the beginning. I didn't (and really still don't) know anything about rings, where I should buy one, or which finger they even go on. Thank you, Wikipedia.

I searched for a local jeweler online, since I didn't want to buy a diamond at the mall, and I didn't want to subsidize another assault rifle in Sierra Leone. I settled on a little place in downtown Tucson that has been owned by the same family for over 50 years. The current owner is the nephew of the founder, and is a semi-retired high school teacher. I walked into the shop, and as soon as I told him that I wasn't there for a watch battery, he took me to the engagement ring section. I picked a simple white gold ring with a 28 carat diamond (sorry, no photos available; you'll just have to take my word for it).

Now we can fast forward to the day before the bike trip. I had just picked up the diamond, and I was terrified. It was--without question--the most expensive thing that I have ever walked out of a store with. I had to hide it for 12 hours in a place where Aimee wouldn't find it, but I still could. And that's harder than you'd think. I settled on my sock drawer (I know, a little lacking in originality, but effective).

The next morning, I packed the ring (still wrapped in a sock) in my backpack. And for the next four days, that backpack became the most important object in my world. I guarded it like I was the guy with the nuclear codes handcuffed to my wrist. I think that the back pack was out of my sight for maybe a combined seven seconds on the entire trip. In fact, our ride down to Big Sur would probably have taken half the time, if I didn't need to check the ring three times after every stop. We'd stop for water or food, and then I'd check for the ring, get on my bike, check for the ring, ride ten feet, check for the ring, get to our next stop, and repeat.

I had been planning on giving the ring to Aimee the day after we arrived in Big Sur. I was imagining a sunset, a beach, and a bottle of wine (which I was happy to substitute with the Tito's vodka that we brought with us). But as we rode into Big Sur, I saw the beach transform into a redwood forest. My plan was shot!

Well, not really. I still had the ring, and Aimee had no idea (which was actually a pretty big deal, since I've never been known as a particularly good secret keeper). I figured that I'd just play it by ear, and ask the question whenever it felt right. But I didn't even make it to the end of that day.

After the day's long bike ride, Aimee and I were exhausted. We had just gotten back from a nice dinner at the camp lodge with a couple of campmates that we had met back in Monterey. The sun had barely gone down thirty minutes earlier, and we were already getting ready for bed (Tito's vodka makes an excellent mouthwash).

So there we were, lying in our sleeping bags and talking about the world. It didn't take long for our relationship to come up. We were talking about how it was working out nicely, and we were really happy with where it was going. Then I said, "hang on a second, I have something for you." Of course, "a second" turned into about a minute and a half as I fumbled around the tent trying to find my backpack, and then unwrapping the pair of socks that held the ring.

It was pretty dark in the tent, and I didn't say what I was doing. I just put the ring in her hand, and let her feel what it was. She didn't have to examine it for very long before an "Oh my God!" popped out. I looked up at her and said, "Aimee, I'd like to marry you."

She's still considering it.

-M

I'll huff and I'll puff, but Aimee will be fine, because her bike has gears

Aimee and I realized on Tuesday that if we stayed in Monterey for one more day, we would never leave. So we packed up our gear and got back on the road. But I had wised up this time, and rigged up a few bags for Aimee to put on her bike. However, we were headed into a rural area, so we had to add groceries to our load (including a bottle of vodka and some bloody mary mix). I think my load went from 150 lbs. to a scant 149 lbs.

[Did I tell you that I broke a spoke? I think that I forgot that story in the earlier posts (raccoons were more interesting). So, yeah, the reason that my wheel was a wobbly taco was because the weight was too much for it to handle. But I made a quick trip (or three) to a Monterey bike shop, and got that puppy squared away.]

And off we went...

Our destination was Big Sur, and the coastline between there and Monterey has some of the most spectacular scenery on the planet.

As you can see in the photo above, the road hugs the coastline for the entire stretch. We rode along the Pacific Coast Highway the entire way, and shared the road with meandering vacationers and painfully lucky locals. The cars cruised along at no more than 45 miles per hour, and there was plenty of space along the shoulder. Since no one was in a rush, the car drivers were very bike-consiencious, and gave us plenty of room. In fact, we talked with a lot of them at the many scenic pull-offs, and they were all really supportive of us (even though several of them couldn't understand why anyone would want to attempt those cliff climbs on two wheels.).

But since this was a still a vacation, and definitely not a race, we took plenty of stops.

Around hour four, we started getting a little loopy.

"We're almost there...we're almost there..." We weren't almost there. The last few miles were especially brutal. This was partly because they were a constant climb, but also because every turn we made was supposed to reveal our campsite, but it was just one stab in the chest after another as we realized that it was only a gas station, a cafe, or a total mirage.

But we did eventually make it to Big Sur. We were thrilled to be on two feet, and couldn't wait for a drink. So we vomited the contents of our bags all over the closest picnic table.

It was good to be there.

-M

A hot tub, some Pirate's Booty, and a bottle of wine

I know. Not a bad day, right?

Still sore from our ride from Salinas (and looking at another doosie of a ride the next day), Aimee and I set out on Monday to find a hot tub. Unfortunately, our $5 a night campsite did not come with many amenities, so we'd have to go into town to find one. We figured that the Monterey Marriott would be our best bet. We had cased the joint the day before, and it looked like it had the best combination of high quality and low security.

Like any experienced crasher knows, the first step is to look like you belong there. So Aimee and I changed into our finest camping clothes (the ones with the least holes in them), and casually strolled into the main entrance. Smiling at the bell hop, we made our way to the staircase. We changed into our bathing suits on the second floor, and hopped in the elevator to find where they kept the pool.

As it turns out, the hotel did have a hot tub, but it was kept behind a guests-only locked door. But no worries, we've faced this problem before. Generally, our approach is to gracefully slip in behind a legitimate guest, but on this particular afternoon, there was no one to be found. So Aimee and I walked the perimeter of the pool, looking for any open gates, scalable fences, or other security lapses. But there were none to be had. We were running out of ideas, but we were very far from quitting. I considered making a well-spent donation to a housekeeper's pocket, but the one that I asked didn't jump at the bait. Maybe he didn't get where I was going with my hints, or maybe Monterey housekeepers are just out of my league. I'm betting the latter.

But just as we were starting to get desperate, I made one more pass by the front entrance. To my surprise, one of the hotel guests had just swiped his key card. "Hello, fine sir. How about that Dow Jones index? You know, the one that was listed in the USA Today that the hotel provides for all of its guests, of which I am definitely one."

I was thrilled, and my sore legs were even more so. Now to get Aimee in. I walked to the back of the pool fence to signal to Aimee that I was in (signal: a shit-eating grin). After walking back to the front to let her in, the two of us made our way to the hot tub, and melted our sorry excuses for troubles away.

Newly refreshed, we headed back into the city to find ourselves some dinner. We walked past several overpriced (but undoubtedly delicious) seafood restaurants, and headed straight to the inimitable Trader Joe's. We decided on a bag of Pirate's Booty for dinner, and a bottle of their finest wine for desert. And by finest, I of course mean Charles Shaw.

With dinner in hand, we headed down to the Monterey docks. They had supported a vibrant fishing economy until recently, but have been converted into a nice tourist destination over the last twenty years.

And we hadn't even opened up the wine, yet! Or maybe we had.

-M

Monterey Bay

We woke up on Sunday after a pretty great night of camp-sleep. We were absolutely exhausted after the previous day's ride (and the bottle of wine we put back between the two of us), so the half-inch of foam that we were sleeping on was about a half-inch more than we needed.

On the "agenda" for the day was a visit to Monterey Bay's world-class aquarium. It lived up to every bit of its reputation, and then some. The building that it's housed in used to be the famous Portola sardine cannery, and the brick interior and industrial feel were left essentially untouched. Looking back, I'm kind of bummed that I didn't take any photos of the lobby, but it really showcases the aestetic. But that's ok, it'll just give you an excuse to see it yourself!

We started the day by strolling through the giant mammal tanks, and saw some seals, sea otters, and other large sea animals. It was pretty incredible, but the real attraction was the walk-through tanks of small fish. The aquarium has all kinds of aquatic life on display, and their real artistry comes in creating true-to-life exhibits.

Believe me, it was even more hypnotizing live. After a long day of walking through the aquarium, Aimee and I both fell asleep on a bench near this tank (for almost an hour)!

The aquarium co-habitates several different types of (friendly) species in each tank, which has the dual effect of creating a more captivating exhibits, and also providing a more realistic environment for the animals. In fact, I think that this is what makes Monterey Bay the only aquarium that I've really enjoyed. Anyone who has visited SeaWorld knows that dolphins kept in solitary confinement don't have the same spark as those in the wild. Conversely, the Monterey Bay Aquarium is clearly concerned about the well-being of their animals. It is much more than just an animal display center.

The aquarium is one of the world's leaders in ocean conservation research, and essentially created the movement. Its Seafood Watch program creates the eat/avoid rankings that make their way into newspaper and magazine stories about which fish are good to eat at any given time. For instance, us Southwesterners can safely (for us and for the ocean) eat US farmed Tilapia, but we should avoid its Asian farmed cousin. You can find an easy-to-use list for your region of the country here. If you have a phone that is smarter than the average toaster oven (mine need not apply) you can download a seafood app at that website, too.

But despite its amazing conservation programs, the aquarium's best feature is just being a cool place to visit! Where else can you find a sea dragon?

Don't see it?  Take a closer look.

Pretty jaw-dropping, aren't they?! They look like real life cartoons.

After thoroughly enjoying the aquarium, Aimee and I headed back to the campsite. And before I get too far along with the stories, I should probably show you where we lived for three days last month.

You probably noticed all of the other bikes in the background. We were hardly the only cyclists there, and this was no coincidence. California has a very well developed network of "hiker-biker" campsites that charge a scant $5-6 for the night. There are no reservations needed, and they never fill up. It was a lifesaver throughout the trip, since the central coast campsites that we were staying at fill up months in advance. If there wasn't a dedicated space reserved for bikers, we would have been sleeping on the street.

Anyway, these hiker-biker sites really brought out an interesting crowd. Aimee described them perfectly as the "hostels of camping". There was an eclectic mix of semi-homeless adventurers, professors on sabbatical, trustafarians living off of the land (and a thousand dollars of dad's money per month), weekend warriors, and college kids on vacation. It was a lot of fun to meet all of them. The first two people that we met at the campsite were Richard and Moses. Richard was from Munich, and Moses was from the Holy Land Seattle. They had met up on the trail a few days ago, after realizing that they had planned an identical Vancouver-to-Tijuana bike trip. (Surprisingly, that itinerary wasn't too uncommon.) We swapped stories of how our rides were going, and we talked about the real lives that we all had put on hold. It came out that Moses was having some bike problems, so before he took off, I put my years of bike shop experience to use. That's right; I, Myles Joseph Stone, fixed Moses' derailleur. Eat your heart out, Pharaoh.

-M

When Nature Attacks

Our second day in Monterey was equally as stress-free as the one before it, but the night between them was kind of ridiculous. It gets its own post.

Exhausted from another active day, we went to bed around 10pm on Sunday. I was deeply asleep within minutes, as was Aimee. But around midnight, I had a very vivid dream of animals sniffing around the tent. I thought nothing of it, but I was abruptly jarred out of sleep by something along the lines of, "Oh my God, Myles. What is that?!"

Never one to come to rash judgements, I shrugged my shoulders and promptly fell right back to sleep.

"No, Myles. Really."

Now she had my attention. And she was right, there was definitely something poking around the outside of our tent. The next few thoughts came thorough my head at about mach 7, but I think that they were something along the line of:

"We're in California. Yellowstone is in California. Yellowstone has bears. BEARS!!!"

Aimee, in a somewhat panicked tone, asked what we should do next. I thought back to all those other times that I was within five feet from a bear... I had nothing. Shaking the tent seemed reasonable, since tasty humans don't shake tents, only the untasty ones do that.

At one point, Aimee reached for the inner tent zipper. Apparently, she wanted to shake the outside part of the tent, but I was taking considerable solace in that extra millimeter of mesh between us, and whatever was eating our food. So I tried to mask my terror with an artificially lowered voice, and said, "No. The tent needs to stay closed." And that was the end of that.

When we no longer heard movement outside of the tent, I grabbed my overpowered flashlight, unzipped the tent, and kissed Aimee goodbye. I scanned the area, and listened for animals, as if I would have been able to hear anything over the sound of my own heartbeat. But I did eventually spot the intruder. It was not a bear. It was a tiny, piece-of-shit raccoon eating my Clif bar. My Clif bar. (Aimee is convinced that it was a male raccoon, since her Luna bars were left untouched.) I was pissed, but still a little shaky from the abrupt wake up. So I asked Aimee for my knife, since I had apparently turned into Crocodile Dundee in my sleep. I could use a new raccoon hat, mate.

But, alas, the raccoon ran off before I could figure out what to do. But not before eating a decent amount of our camp food, and our pizza left-overs from the night before. (Oh yeah, some jackass left his pizza left-overs right outside of his tent, and got pretty lucky that it only attracted a raccoon.)

Once the considerable amount of adrenaline started to leave my blood stream, I realized that I was sitting on a pretty nasty belly ache (again, probably due to the pizza). And since none of my vacations are complete without massive diarrhea, I grabbed our TP and headed for the latrine.

Newly refreshed, I headed back to the tent, and fell asleep surprisingly quickly. But even the slightest noises woke me up throughout the night. At one point, I accosted our poor neighbor when I heard him going through his stuff around 1am. Again, I grabbed my flashlight, quietly opened the tent, and jumped out at him (with an embarrassingly loud "Ah-ha!").

Him: "I...uh...err...I was just getting out my glasses.

"Oh, uh, sorry. I was...you know...there was this raccoon...uh, never mind."

-M

One train, two bikes, still one set of bags

[Woah.  School started out pretty ferociously.  But I'm back.]

We woke up on Saturday to a lovely breakfast of watery coffee and packaged danishes. But even that tastes pretty good on vacation. We had a train to catch in about an hour (and a ton of gear to get to the station), so we asked the hotel clerk if we could take the free shuttle.  However, she wasn't crazy about sending the airport shuttle to the train station for us, so we had to take a cab. It was no small task to cram all of our gear (and two boxed bikes) into the back of a minivan, but it all worked out just fine.  (Although I'm pretty sure he took a couple extra detours to charge his own informal boxed bike charge.

We got to the station a little bit behind schedule, but it doesn't take long to check in for a train ride. The porters took our bikes, and it felt nice to know that this would be the last time that we'd have to check them for a week.

With the boxes out of the way, we headed for the platform. We were definitely excited to get on our bikes, even though I was starting to realize what I had gotten myself into with all of our gear. I wasn't so much worried about the difficulty, but I was more than a little concerned that my bike would crack in half.

The train pulled in after only a few minutes of waiting, and we hopped on for a pleasant ride to Salinas.  I'm a huge fan of Amtrak, but I'll save the gushing until I write about our much longer trip back to Tucson.

We pulled into Salinas around noon on Saturday (which was also Aimee's birthday).  But since I had to take our bikes down to nearly nothing in order to fit them on the plane, it took about an hour to get everything ready for the ride.

Now for a quick exercise.  Take a look at these two bikes, and see if you can spot all of the differences.

If you look carefully, you'll see that only one of these bikes has multiple gears.  And it isn't the one carrying a small child over the back wheel.  Oh boy.

While compiling a list of all the things I won't bring on the next trip, I mounted the bags on my bike, and we took off for Monterey.

I'll be honest, the first half of the ride was a little dicey.  My back wheel was developing a pretty nasty wobble, and I wasn't sure if we were going to make it to the next pay phone, let alone the next city.    The second half of the ride was no less dicey, but as we got closer to Monterey, I was more and more confident that I'd be able to carry my bike the rest of the way.

As we made our way to the coast, I started to feel a lot better.  That was partly because we could finally see Monterey, but probably more because it's impossible to be stressed out on a bike ride along the coast.

We pulled into Monterey around dinner time.  It took us a bit longer than it should have to find the campsite, but the city was nice to explore.  We eventually asked a gas station attendant where the site was, and he pointed to a gnarly hill that we had spent the afternoon trying to avoid.  All I could think about was my back wheel.  Even though I was way past worrying about it, the wheel was toast.  It was wobbling so bad that it hit the side of my bike every time it went around.  This had the same effect as squeezing the brakes (hard) every other second, and kept my max speed to something just slightly faster than walking backwards.

So, with 150 pounds pulling me backwards, and my tire-frame brake firing every second, we made our way up a textbook Northern California cliff.  It was maybe a mile, tops, but that mile felt like it was 80% of the effort we out in that day.  There were a few false starts (a community park on the hill cruelly resembled a campsite, but it was only there to taunt us), but we made it!

And what better way to celebrate than by heading right back down that hill!  But we didn't bring the bikes this time.  We left our gear at the campsite, bought a bottle of wine, and walked around the former fishing village.

This is going to be a great trip!

-M

Planes, Trains and Bicyclemobiles

Fresh off the reservation, I've got another vacation epic. I just can't help myself.

Aimee and I have been planning a medium-haul bike adventure for about a year, and we finally had the chance to go for it last week. There were no shortage of stories on this trip (as if there ever are with us), and I wrote them all down in a paper journal. I'll be uploading them to the blog over the next few days.

The first step of any adventure is to pick a place. For this one, Aimee and I were thinking of Northern California, since the scenery is beautiful, and it would be a great escape from the desert summer. We actually first though of Napa, but we nixed that idea as soon as we saw that the campsites there were more expensive than any hotel that either one of us had ever stayed at.

With Napa out of the picture, we thought of Monterey, a nice coastal town that I had visited with a friend several years ago. It's just South of San Jose, and it's where the Silicon Valley millionaires go to pretend that they're commercial fishers or professional sailors. It's beautiful, and it has a nice public campground just outside of the city. It looked perfect! (And aside from a little cloud cover and a nasty climb to the campsite, it was!)

So with a destination in mind and a date set, we packed our bags. Or should I say, we packed my bags. I couldn't bring myself to bolt a rack to Aimee's superlight carbon-fiber bike frame, so I vollunteered to carry all of our gear on my bike. Holy crap, was that a bad idea. But I didn't know it at the time, so I went along with the plan, and put everything we would need into a couple of borrowed panniers (thanks, Dean)!

With the gear in our bags, and the bikes boxed up, I had nothing to do put pace the hallway until Aimee got home from work. I was pretty excited for this one.

But she did get home eventually, and we headed off to the airport for a late night flight to San Jose. There weren't any major hang-ups at the airport--other than the $100 boxed bike charges--so Aimee and I headed to the bar and got a couple of pre-vacation airport beers. They always taste so good. Which was nice, since they cost almost as much as our fight.

Sometime after 10pm, we landed in the San Jose airport. We hung around the baggage claim area until the baggage handlers carted up the oversized gear. I'm used to seeing golf clubs and animal crates come up that way, but it was all bicycles and surf boards that night. This is California, after all.

My next task was to call the hotel and arrange for a shuttle. Things seemed to be going well, but I didn't have a very good phone connection, and the guy on the other end had a pretty thick Vietnamese accent. I could have sworn he said that he'd pick us up at 10:45. Around midnight, I thought that something might be off. So I called back, and someone else picked up the line and sent over a shuttle right away!

The hotel was a very pleasant, very generic airport inn, and we slept well. It would be our last bed for a week.

-M

Home

Yes, the trip is over, but I don't think that I've ever had a more interesting drive home.

I woke up Saturday morning to the soothing sounds of traditional Hopi music on KUYI. (I'm pretty glad that they're streaming online, because I'm going miss them, too!) I packed up the car and I hit the road. I drove right past the volleyball court that I played on a few weeks ago, and coincidentally, there was another tournament going on. I played in a few games the night before, but I told my team that I'd be a no show on Saturday. I just had to rip the band-aid off and go home! But in one last attempt to keep me on the rez, KUYI switched over to Car Talk just as I was driving out of their broadcast range. Of all the shows that they could have played!

I hadn't driven for more than an hour before I came to my first stop. Even though I was set on going home that day, I wasn't quite ready to give up the scenery cold turkey. So I pulled off the road into the Little Painted Desert, and it was well worth the stop. The surreal moonscape of the park is unlike anything that I had seen before.

Pretty nice, huh?

The next stop was a great piece of Route 66 Americana. It was the privately managed Meteor Crater. It's exactly what it sounds like, a giant crater that was formed by an equally giant meteor 50,000 years ago. I saw some signs on the freeway, and the attraction seemed too cool to miss. It was well worth the initially-surprising $15 entrance fee, especially since the fee also included a free cookie (with purchase) from the Subway inside the visitor's center.

The site itself was pretty incredible, but the visitor's center (and the visitors, themselves) was the real attraction. The center--complete with museum and RV park--has the utilitarian-deco feel of a Hoover Dam reject plan.

Walking into the museum was like walking into the 1950s. The first thing that you see is the Apollo test capsule that NASA astronauts used during their practice runs in the crater. Gravity aside, the crater was apparently great practice for moon landings.

And inside the museum, you can purchase your very own squished-penny trinket. You can also take your photo at the base of the crater...sort of.

Care to buy some Meteor Crater playing cards? How about some alien ice cream? Don't worry, they've got you covered.

And here's my favorite: you can by crater dust (aka dirt) for $11.95. Genius.

In addition to all of it's tacky charm, the museum was actually pretty informative. I learned that the 100,000 ton meteor was traveling at 26,000 miles per hour, and the impact site generated the explosive power of 20 million tons of TNT. For comparison, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima was the equivalent of 15 thousand tons of TNT.

As I was pulling out from the crater site, I noticed some ruins off in the distance.

I drove down the dirt trail to get a better look.

I don't know anything about them, but I love that you can drive down a random dirt road in Arizona, and have a pretty decent chance of seeing some stone building ruins.

My next stop was the awe-inspiring Walnut Canyon. It has one of the highest concentrations of cliff dwellings on the planet, and is managed by the Natural Park Service. This meant that the entrance fee was much lower, but I had no opportunity to purchase a Cliff Dweller Barbie doll.

Even without the dwellings, the canyon would be an attraction in itself. It is a large, green separation in the earth's crust, and has striking rock faces that were carved out by ancient oceans.

Looking closer, you can see some homes carved out of the canyon wall.

The canyon also features a short hiking trail that lets you walk through a few selected dwellings. Ancient model homes, if you will...

Walking though the neighborhood, my forehead didn't stand a chance.

The last stop of the trip was Montezuma's Castle. It is an incorrectly named four-story housing structure that had nothing to do with the Mayan king. It was actually inhabited by the Sinagua people (the ancestors of many Hopis), and was extremely well preserved by the overhanging cliff.

After visiting Montezuma's Castle, I returned to the car and headed back to Tucson.

Just like the drive up to the reservation, the drive home showed me how interesting this state is. It's good to live here. And it's good to be home.