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Coming out of Fort Bragg, I saw an even better Chinese buffet right next to an appropriate hotel.  A natural food store was on that block too.  I see shit like that every time.  At the end of a day, it’s hard to ride around and scope out the whole town for good spots.  You pretty much just want to get off the bike and into a shower and some food.

I took a scenic route through Mendocino this morning instead of plugging for miles down the 1 because I knew it was going to be a fairly short day and I don’t want to just concentrate on miles.  It is a beautiful spot, nice houses and seascapes, but shit, how many “Art Glass” craft shops do we really need?  On the whole, it was much cheesier than I expected.  On either side of town, there were stylish bed and breakfast places with pricey restaurants.  Probably a good weekend getaway if you are really trying to impress.

A hill after a little creek called Elk Gulch is, according to my guidebook, the steepest grade on the Pacific Coast tour.  I was at a little store just before I knew I was going to hit it and I asked a guy riding a cool old BMW motorcycle if he wanted to trade for the next few miles.  He knew the spot and said I’d probably have to walk up it. It was pretty steep, actually, but I rode it out.  I dunno if you can see in the pic.  I’m near the top and the car isn’t.

This is the cool creek thing you see when you get up there.

Kind of boring, but I haven’t been taking so many pics lately.  This one is better:

An old friend once asked, “why don’t they have a union for people who don’t want to work?”  Another said, “slackers of the world unite… tomorrow.”  I just asked “what would Ted do?”

Is it just me, or does it seem like Newman’s Own is branching out into almost everything?

Here are some cool pink flowers because I am sensitive and artistic.

I think Frank Sinatra called Sinead O’Connor this on Saturday Night Live:

These are a bunch of quails.  When they hang out together, it’s called a covey.  I saw a lot of animals today.  Some were alive.  I was close to a couple fawns and hung out with a bunch of noisy birds.  My sister is ambivalent about birds.  Actually, she hates them, but she calls it ambivalence to seem less like a grouch.

The scenery was beautiful and the terrain difficult again today.  I didn’t take pictures of every beautiful seascape or cove.  Mostly just places where I stopped to pee.  I do that a lot, though.

The night in the hotel was good for my body.  My sores seem better and I kind of had my legs back.  On the best of days, I am not at all fast.  In fact I’m pretty slow.  A few times I tried to really let it out on the big cog on some of the rollers.  It works a little but I realized how much drag the panniers cause.  I could feel the boxy fronts catching the wind like a piece of plywood in a wind tunnel.  No big deal, though.  If speed was the goal, this certainly isn’t the way you’d do it.  As I mentioned before, most riders do pretty short days along this stretch of the coast because of the hilly terrain.  I got into Manchester Beach camp ground pretty early and finally had a chance to just screw around and run some errands on my bike.  I made a grocery run into town with my bike unloaded.  I had forgotten what that was like.  I was flying.  Maybe I won’t quit riding when this is done.

While I was typing this up, another southbound rider showed up.  Slightly older guy, made it here from the Canadian border in 12 days.  I think that’s pretty fast but he says he is having trouble with the hilly coast.  Also, we were both a little surprised that the coastal fog never burned off today.  It’s pretty cold already but the camp host was actually on duty for a change so I’ll have a fire tonight.  Also some brown rice, salsa (my secret to camp cooking– just throw some salsa into anything and it’s seasoned) and Mexican squash.  I’m pretty stoked.

Here’s the track: