Otto and I are in Bodega Bay, enjoying our thanksgiving meal (see below) and we are doing great. We have come almost halfway in a day and a half- so we are a little ahead of schedual. This is a good thing because we are getting tired. My knee is letting me know it exists, and Otto’s Achilles tendon is acting up.

We have gained a healty respect for gravity and the speed it can pull a bike downhill, as well as how long some of the hills are along this coastline. If all goes well, we should make San Francisco by Saturday morning!

We will update again later, Happy Thanksgiving!

Biking the coast with Jason was an incredible way to finish up the summer, and even though it cost more than I had planned, it is something I would do again in a second. I got to know him better then ever, and after starting off college with him as my roommate, this was the perfect end.

We both hit our lows and realized that we could keep going, even if it meant eating Raman and beans for dinner. The highs were the most natural, endorphin powered highs I have ever felt. After struggling uphill for hours, the feeling of cresting the top with an endless view of the Pacific Ocean rimmed by jagged cliffs covered in rolling fog is one that I will never forget. The silent pause at the top was always followed by a rush as we tipped our bikes forward and pointed the front wheel down, racing towards the bottom at up to 50 mph.

Once we made it out of the mountains, we had a few days of nice, flat, country biking before we hit the cities. City biking is dangerous, stressful, and bumpy. But it is also interesting because of how many people you run into. (Literally, only once, and he hit me.)

Right now I am struggling to acclimate back into real life. I am only in town for a month, so it is a strange feeling. Until yesterday I had not driven a car in almost a month, and had only ridden in one twice. I can go to the store and buy whatever I want right now, which is a strange feeling. I have to make a decent amount of money soon, and I am trying to sell my car. All of which take time, and a different kind of energy than I am used to. I have found that I began regulating my time to living in the most basic sense. When biking, it was all about water, food, energy, and where are we staying, how do we get there. In the middle of the desert at Burningman, it was water, shade, water, food. Don’t move to much during the day or you will get heat stroke. My body went from 8,000+ calories a day while biking to less than 1500 in the heat. Now that I am back, I slept for 13 hours last night, and woke up feeling a little lost, as if I should have something to physically occupy my time all day. Downtime is not something I am used to.

Other than the physical changes (I am tan, lean, and very bearded) I now find myself to be more outgoing than I ever have been before. People are simply people, they all have their problems, concerns, and joys. They all also want to interact with others, they just don’t know how to do it all the time. If you can make their life interesting for a second, they appreciate it. it also makes your day worthwhile. Traveling is not about places, it is about the people that make those places unique. You can find these people everywhere, even at home.

My next trip is a simple one up the East coast to see my friends again before I head to Asia. ]]> http://www.benhanna.com/2007/09/04/back-on-the-east-coast/feed/ 0 http://www.benhanna.com/2007/08/24/jasons-wrap-up/ http://www.benhanna.com/2007/08/24/jasons-wrap-up/#comments Fri, 24 Aug 2007 22:56:01 +0000 Ben Hanna http://www.benhanna.com/blog/?p=83 Jason: Well after 12 days and over 450 miles covered the biking has officially concluded in LA. We could have pushed on through the city to complete an 80 mile day yesterday and then really pushed it today to make up the 150 we lacked to the border (HA!) but this felt like a good time to finish. The rest of the coast would have been endless city biking, which as you all know generally only affords us significant problems. In short, city biking (with a loading down bike at least) is miserable. So we coasted the final 30 miles into Santa Monica yesterday to Eliz’s place and felt good about how far we had come. The song of the day was “Xxplosive” by Dr. Dre, in light of rollin down the PCH through LA. Veronica, you might have to explain to the others about Dre’s hood!

We just dropped our bikes off at REI to be shipped back to the east coast and Ben will be leaving tomorrow to go to burning man. Now we can relax a little and think back on the whole trip. A few things that I will take away from it.

You let go of the little things that usually drive you crazy. For one, I currently have a beard. A really nappy one with a half grown mustache. Gross, but I decided to just see how long I could stand it.

I have come to realize that getting lost is inevitable so you can either let it annoy you or just make the best of things. Often you will find a cool restaurant, shop, or bum to talk to.

When you travel on a bike (or travel in an uncommon way, removing most of the luxuries) you meet a much more diverse array of people. “Pretty cool, and a little crazy” is the easiest way to put it. That’s the kind of people we met. People in cars thought we were nuts, grown men who had done our trip before practically shed a tear sharing the experience with us, and the bums that we often camped with usually had good advice for us. A very real perspective that common travelers didn’t have. We met very few people our same age, as we figured that most either were now at work, looking for work, or back at school. We were fortunate enough to be at option D. None of the above.

I appreciate all of you taking an interest in our little adventure, your thoughts and prayers got us through some sketchy times. Thanks mom and dad for understanding, even though you probably though it was crazy to do this. In 5 years maybe we can get a group to do the east coast tour!?!? To close, as Confucius say, “Man who bike in front of car may get tired, but man who bike behind car get exhausted.”

-Ben’s wrap up to come…

Last campfire. Hotdogs for dinner, and the day on the beach. We are in Los angeles county, and will get to santa monica tomorrow.

This time I had two spares, but they were short stem, and I need long stem.. When I bought them, I told the guy I needed long stem, and he gave me one long stem and one short stem. I didn’t even think to check that both boxes were the same. We are in a city though, and there is a bike shop a mile back that Jason has gone off to get two more spare tubes…

The song for yesterday would have been “New Shoes” by Paolo Nutini, inlight of Ben’s bike being fixed and us getting back on the road (although this song could have been for the numerous times we came across problems and then got back on track). I whole-heartedly regret not having a song in mind to honor Fred, our shorter friend of yesterday who was awesome. I also regret not getting a picture taken with him so you all could believe how unbelievable he was.

For today I’m breakin the rules again and making the whole Bob Marley “Legends” album the song(s) for today because we will be cruisin through beach town after beach town now and its just swell.

An hour later we were in Santa Barbara. It was beautiful. While we were stopped outside of a bike shop, which didn’t open for another two hours, we saw the crazyest thing yet. I heard Jason say “Look at this guy…oh no… Oh no, he saw us” then from across the intersection “HEY! HEY! WHERE ARE YOU GUYS COMING FROM?” I turned and saw a midget with a huge pot belly wearing only tiny, tiny bike shorts on a midget sized bike pulling a child trailer with nothing in it. He pulled up to us, and we realized he was missing all eight front teeth. He was nice, and when he found out we were from the south, we had a new best friend. He was originaly from New Orleans and that made us practically kin. Well we struck it up with Fred, and he ended up taking us on a tour of the city. He knew every bum, and many of the attractive women as well. Everyone knew, and liked him too. He works in a bike shop, and his side business is called “Leprakon Bike Shine.” I don’t know if that is how it is spelled, but that is how he spelled it. He let us know that we could get a free meal at the homeless shelter at 11:30 because we kind of look -well- homeless…

Side note: We saw Faye Dunaway… She knew Fred. I had no idea who she was.

Anyway, got the bike fixed for $150 and three hours of work and we were on the way out of Santa Barbara. We got to Carpinteria and spent the afternoon on the beach and doing laundry at the laundry mat.

Tomorrow we ride for 40 miles, then get to LA and santa monica to stay with Eliz until saturday when we will head back to san fran.

Jason says he will post later, he is about to shower.

It is not really cheating when wildfires close down the roads you are supposed to take… At least that is what we are telling ourselves. We are not to happy about being on the bus from Lompoc to Santa Barbara, but we don’t really have a choice. My bike won’t shift, and we need o keep moving down to a city with a shop big enough to fix it.

Anyway, because I can’t very well cross hills right now, and the forest fires have closed the highway we are supposed to take, pushing us to an additional 50 mile route, we are taking a bus to Santa Barbara where we will find out if this accident was a trip ender or if it can be fixed.