1derful (USA Day 126)

I don’t understand why, in the great state of California, whose climate is supposed to be tropical, I woke up shivering. This is quite frankly scandalous and I want a refund.

Standish-Hickey was far too cold for us, so we shivered our way to Leggett, only a mile up the road, to grab a coffee and some microwave-warmed pastries, and defrost in a patch of sun. Another mile out of our way would have been one of the many drive-thru-trees that tourists so love, but the idea made me rather angry: if a tree gets old enough, say, two thousand years, then an enterprising American will bulldoze through the middle of it, build a road, because you know Americans can’t enjoy a thing unless you’re allowed to drive through the middle of it, and wait for it to die a couple of decades later. So you’ll be surprised to read that we didn’t visit this tree, neither did we pay fifteen dollars to ride through it. We had plenty of other places to ride that didn’t involve the death of ancient trees.

One such place was Highway 1, a quieter, more scenic road that will take us all the way to San Francisco. For the first half of the day we climbed steeply through our final redwood forest, descended steeply, climbed again, descended again, then burst out onto the coast for the first time in three days, to spend the rest of the ride climbing in and out of gorgeous coves, over headlands and down again, making an elevation map like an echocardiogram. With far fewer towns, far less traffic and far less shoulder detritus, the experience was altogether different from our coastal riding on the 101, and much more pleasurable.

A rainstorm that had spent the morning chasing us finally caught us outside Fort Bragg. We scrambled to throw on our waterproofs and rode, squinting, into the largest town we’ll see until San Francisco, but with all the shops and services on offer, our eyes were set firmly upon an ice cream parlour on the main street serving mushroom flavour. Joined by Don, a friendly Canadian chap who we kept on passing and eventually decided it’d be more economical for both of our waving arms to just ride alongside, we stepped inside and had great big scoops of the fungilicious delight while the rain poured down outside. Honestly, as ambitious flavours go I think this wasn’t so great: the mushroom was hidden away so as not to upset the eater, to the point where I probably wouldn’t have guessed what it was supposed to be. Not like the barmy tastes of Salt and Straw in Portland. Let’s go back there.

We arrived in Mendocino, to sleep in the water tower owned by our host. He assured us that the water planned to stay firmly at the top, and not come dripping rudely down at any point, so we slept well and dryly. More hills tomorrow, and the possibility of whales on the forecast. That’d be swell.