No Thru Traffic

29            Days on the Road

6,989      Miles Traveled

9               National Parks Visited

10             States visited

8               Meals at Subway

4               Taco Bell’s I wish I didn’t eat at

2               Whole Onions Consumed

33             Miles Hiked

20            Beers Drank

1               Chains Replaced

1               Dumb accidents

1               Gunfights

22            Nights in a tent

5              Nights on a floor

2              Nights in a bed

2              Oil Changes

1              Times I used the horn to avoid an accident

6              Times I used the horn by accident

13            Showers

4,506     Hits on the website

Well, it’s been quite the journey and I can’t believe that it’s already over. Yesterday I rode the final 100 miles into Beaverton, and home.

It was certainly a bittersweet homecoming.

Since Hearst Castle, I continued my ride up the California coast and headed into San Francisco to meet up with some friends.

Along the way I drove through a smoky Santa Cruz and stumbled across a forest fire and the media frenzy that surrounded it.

After arriving at the UC Berkeley campus where I would be staying with a very gracious Ryan Knutson for the next two nights, I was immediately nostalgic. I know that I just graduated a couple months ago, but it already seemed like I was an outsider on a college campus. The four years of irresponsibility were over. The real world never loomed so near.

From San Francisco I continued along the coast and into the Redwoods where I set up and tore down camp for the last time. Humboldt Redwoods State Park had incredible showers, but I had of course left my towel back in San Francisco. The roads along CA-1 were incredible but the minivans putsing along at half the speed limit were more than a little annoying, so it was nice to get onto 101.

On Tuesday I left the Redwoods and continued into Oregon along the coast. A stopover in Eugene for a night meant that a familiar 100 mile freeway stretch would be my last ride.

And wouldn’t you figure, it wasn’t until I was in Beaverton, less than 5 miles from home, that I was almost run over. A minivan was turning left and crossed my lane without seeing me. A frantic swerve and the luck of the dumb driver finally noticing me and I escaped without a scratch.

Wouldn’t that have been ridiculous?

I got to the coast yesterday via an awesome stretch of CA41 that took me through some windy and beautiful wine country. The weather is already a lot more pleasant. I was even a little chilled for part of the ride.

It feels good to be on the coast and have some curves in the road. It seems like I’ve been nothing but straight desert freeways lately.

I had reservations at San Simeon State Park but I got there much earlier than I planned on. So instead of saving Hearst Castle until today, I saw it yesterday afternoon instead.

I was reluctant to pluck down the $25 fee to see the castle, but I had nothing else to do so I went for it. It came with a bus ride to the castle, a two-hour tour, and a 45 minute IMAX movie on William Randolf Hearst himself. Overall, I’d say it was very worth it. My tourguide was very knowlegable and friendly.

The place was nuts too. To think of the people who he entertained here and the scope of the construction at the time was pretty mind-boggling. He even had a private zoo with zebras, polar bears, and all sorts of other crazy animals.

What a life.

Today I ride through Monterey and into San Francisco where I’ll be staying with Ryan Knutson for a couple nights. By the way, Ryan, a fellow 2009 UO grad just had a story published on the front page of the Wall Street Journal… as an intern! Maybe next year I’ll be touring his mansion instead of Hearst’s…

Doing this trip alone is so different than doing it with Ryan. I don’t have anyone to complain about the heat with, no one to point out fat people on Harleys, no one to talk about how creepy it is to be in a campground completely alone, and I don’t have anyone to spoon peanut butter for lunch with anymore. Oh, and it’s about twice as expensive.

Since we divided just south of Bakersfield, I’ve never been more terrified in my life. I found myself camping completely alone in a campground on Millerton Lake which is just north of Fresno. At first it was kind of cool and I enjoyed camping right on the water, watching the sunset. But after the sun went down and I had to walk the 500 yards in the dark to the bathroom I started to hear all sorts of crazy things. I literally found myself yelling “hello?” into the black abyss as I was convinced something was fiddling with my bike and had caught my scent.

But I lived. And the next night I had some company in the campground which made it much more enjoyable.

Part of the reason that Ryan and I split ways was because I really wanted to hike to the top of Half-Dome in Yosemite National Park. I had been there and heard of the hike almost two months prior and had been looking forward to the challenge since then. It’s a 10-12 hour, 16 mile hike up a total elevation gain of almost 5,000 feet.

Since I was camped about two hours south of the trailhead, I had to get up at 4:00am in order to start the hike at 6:00am and be done well before dark. But of course, since I assumed that every breath was my last while sleeping alone in Millerton, I slept through my alarm the next morning.

Very, very disappointing.

So I ended up hiking to the top of Nevada Falls instead, which is an earlier stop on the same trail to the top. It was grueling, too. Almost 2,000 feet of elevation gain in about a 7 mile round-trip hike. My legs were pretty tired at the end of it, meaning that the hike to half-dome may have been more than I could have handled anyway.

Nah, I totally could have done it.

Beautiful day though, and an awesome hike.

Before this trip, I had only spent a few hours in Los Angeles and had seen virtually nothing. I wasn’t impressed.

Well this time around I spent about three whole days there. But I still feel like I’ve seen barely anything. And I still wasn’t that impressed.

Our gracious host, Eric Sugihara affectionately known as Sugi, was awesome. For the second time this trip we had someone welcome us in to their lives with open arms. It was so nice to see a familiar face and spend some time catching up. Sugi is a smart cookie too and started med school this week. So of course he had a box of human bones sitting in the living room. What, you mean not everyone uses a box of human bones as a coaster?

Apparently if he loses or breaks something it will cost him thousands of dollars to replace.

So naturally I touched them all. Who else besides mass-murderes, and medical students can say they’ve held a human skull? Well I can now, and I’m not sure that I liked it very much at all.

Anyway, about LA…

We went to the beach and it was awesome, of course. It was everything I imagined the beach in LA would be like. Except for the thick layer of smog. The smog was everywhere and you couldn’t even see the hills around the city. Disgusting.

Ryan’s weak coolant system on his bike meant that the terrible LA traffic made his bike cry antifreeze again. He says it happens to every CBR, but I didn’t see any others on the side of the road with us…

That is until we started lane-splitting. Which was so nerve-racking and awesome. I felt like I was Top Gun and every parked car on the freeway was a tower that I ruthlessly buzzed.

We then spent a fortune on soda and pizza at Six Flags with another good friend, Rico. They drinks were so expensive that these girls literally stuck their heads in the trash so they could recover discarded cups. We instantly regretted our decisions to pay.

I’d show you more photos but all I seemed to capture was a photo of us getting ripped off at a locker where my camera sat most of the day.

Oh, and this picture, of course. Rico loved the roller coasters.

This is something that we forgot to mention that’s worth bringing up.

On our way from the Grand Canyon to Los Angeles we found ourselves in the vast expanse that are the deserts of Arizona. Our one solace was going to be this small stretch of scenic road that would supposedly lead us to a ghost town – a sight that has eluded us our entire trip. Well without us planning on it, we stumbled upon a stretch of historic Route 66. Our road trip was now complete.

After getting lost on our way and nearly crashing again on a terrible gravel road, we found ourselves on a stretch of backcountry road that was paved in the original asphalt from the Route’s heyday. It was terribly bumpy and narrow and awesome. When we stopped to grab a picture, a local Harley rider told us that this particular stretch of road was known as Blood Canyon or something like that because of how treacherous it was for the drivers back in the day. There are still rusty heaps of metal on the canyon floor where the crashed cars were never recovered.

It’s a very weird feeling to travel on the original road, asphalt and all, that once connected east to west. What a journey that must have been, back when the Route was just opened.

The ghost town turned out to be nothing but a couple of foundations so we blew right by them.

Just a few bends beyond we stumbled upon Oatman – a tourist-trap of a town in the middle of nowhere.

The big draw of Oatman is the wild Donkey’s that roam the streets nudging you with their snouts until you feed them. They left Ryan pretty much alone though, I think they could sense his vegetarianism and their was a silent mutual respect that resulted.

Oh, and they closed down the street for a gunfight.

Pretty cool stretch of road. Unbearably hot, but cool.

Well the time has come to go our seperate ways. I have stretched my budget as thin as it will go so its time fore me to head back home.  Alex has gone to Yosemite N.P and I went up to San Fran to stay with Joey Mucha.  I became nostalgic as soon as we parted ways, thinking back to the days when we swam in the river off Lolo Pass, or our evening pasta dinners. Its been a great trip so far and I am sad that it is coming to an end for me. Its like middle school graduation all over again. We have spent over 20 days together and its sad that it has to come to an end.  It was a good last day together at 6 Flags amusement park. We met up with Rico and shared $13 dollar sodas as we blacked out from the excessive amounts sugar and rollercoasters.  I headed towards S.F after a final feast with Alex at Chipotle where we shared our uneasyness of going at it alone.

I arrived in S.F at about 9 and met up with Joey. We played some Skiball and chatted about our lives since college. He lives in an awesome apartment somewhere in downtown S.F. If I knew anything about this city I could tell you what area, but I dont, so you will never know. And yes I did say Skiball. Joey has a 13ft original Skiball machine in his apartment.  And yes he is ranked 2nd in the nation just behind Ocean who I found out is not only the best Skiball player in America but also the champion of air guitar.

www.williamocean.com

Going 90 for 6 hours across the Arizona, Nevada and California desert makes for a hot day. Rows of billboards that line both sides of the road become exciting when there is nothing else to look at besides sand.  My previous knowledge of the desert comes solely from Warner Bro’s cartoons so I am cautious of the imminent danger of a cop car parked behind every billboard.  There was no surprise when the landscape scrolled along beside us in its reddish haze and I half expected to peer down and see a purple Roadrunner keeping up with me.

The original plan was to make our way to Las Vegas and partake in what every young male does in the city of sin.  See Cher and Bette Midler live on the strip.  The entire trip we have only been able to contain our excitement for these shows by sidetracking ourselves with natures splendors.  While on our way to Vegas we stopped for lunch in Bullhead city to escape the heat and eat a lunch fit for kings. While chatting over Taco Bell Alex looked up prices for Cher and Midler in Vegas and we soon realized our dreams were pipe.  Green Mario pipes without the coins.  We decided to redirect our route straight to L.A to visit our good friend Sugi. Who is now Sugi Howser M.D. living in a fresh pad in East LA. Sugi is the hostess with the mostess giving us ice cream in various bowls made of tropical fruit and providing us places to sleep right under the ceiling fan.

Earlier today Sugi took us down to Huntington and Newport Beach which was amazing. We spent the day like so many others before us, playing nude beach volleyball and eating ice cream in the Southern California sun.

-Ryan

I’d love to share many more photos from the last few days, but my cell phone is way too slow. So here’s one from the Grand Canyon.

From Mesa Verde we had a terrible trek through the desert to get to our next destination: the Grand Canyon.

Along the way I wanted to see Monument Valley. The hope was to gather a pack of inspired bikers to follow us on our journey, only to turn around to them in Monument Valley and tell them we wanted to go home. Forest Gump would have been proud.

Instead though, we had a van full of European tourists gawking at the sights. Only because he does this all the time, not because they were cute, Ryan did a fiery burnout and flawlessly transitioned into a wheelie while blasting Born to be Wild. He wanted to show them what America was really about.

I meanwhile sputtered behind him, my clutch or transmission, or clutch cable slowly failing resulted in another slip out of second and into neutral. I think they liked my show better.

A windy and sand stormy hell followed. Our paint loved it, I’m sure.

The worst day of riding yet, by far. At least it followed the best day – yesterday.

Now we are in the Grand Canyon – somehow sleeping in a $12 site that was open when we arrived at 7:00pm.

Tomorrow (Saturday) is a day through desert hell again, on to Las Vegas.

I’d update while there, but, well you know… what happens in Vegas…