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Thursday, June 22: DONE! Yup, we made it to the Pacific coast today. And the way we did it was just how I envisioned it - well save for about 2 miles of pavement at the very end. But wow, what a amazing day. Our tracks was just stellar and the day was beautiful because it went for hellhole hot in Eukiah to cool and balmy on the Pacific coast just south of Mendocino. 


Here’s how the day unfolded. Got up at a gnarly 4:30 AM to prep for today’s ride, what I figured to be at least 5-6 hrs in the saddle with 5-6K of climbing to finish this thing out. And the problem was that the forecast for Ukiah today was 108 degrees, so I worried, what with my predilection to folding in the heat, that such an itinerary coupled with the heat would just crush me. So we’d decided to get our earliest start of the trip in hopes of getting a big chunk of climbing out of the way early in the morning. 


Anyway, got up and out of the motel at 5:30 AM, and at our end point from yesterday in time for a 5:50 start on Low Gap Rd. I started ahead of Dave because the guy ALWAYS catches me. Just made sense to get a good jump and go for it. Now I’ve a confession to make before I go any further… I bought some wine yesterday at the Parducci Winery to give my sister…and Dave and I polished off one of those bottles and one of my cheaper bottles last night. That in addition to eating at the 10,000 Buddhist place, and then at a Mexican restaurant last night. So between all that food and all the wine we drank, well, we were not quite in cycling shape in the morning. I felt downright crapass. Dave, for the first time in the trip wasn’t his normal self. 


See we sat around the pool yesterday late afternoon in the 105-degree heat sipping wine and talking cycling and adventure. Felt wonderful at the time. But man, getting up and knowing you have a 50-plus mile ride ahead of you, on gravel, with nearly 6K of climbing - that had me a bit scared of the potential ramifications. So as I said, I started off probably about 15 minutes ahead of Dave. The climbing began right out of the parking lot, and I knew it would be a long, long, climb. The asphalt lasted about a mile and then the gravel began, and it just did this gradual up into the foothills for mile after twisting, turning mile. 


So like about 30 min into the climb - no Dave. Forty min in - no Dave. And I was beginning to wonder if the dude had a mechanical or something. Usually he’d pass me within about 10-15 min. Finally, after nearly 45 min on my own Dave pulled up to me and muttered something about how he was feeling like shit. Poop or not, the dude was by me like I was a doorstop! And we climbed, and climbed, and climbed up Low Gap Rd. Now I timed this puppy and it took me 1:14 hrs to top out. But that didn’t mean the climbing was over. Nope, once up on the ridge we had this undulating track that was chock full of power climbs. 


The beauty of this climb though was the fact that we climbed it almost completely in the shade due to our early start. Sun really never crested over the mts to hit us directly, and then when we did hit the top, it was completely enshrouded in foliage. That alone clipped some 10-20 degrees away from the temp. So we’d just meander on the ridge top for miles, climbing, descending, twisting and turning. Really that Low Gap track was really awesome, with zero traffic. Yea, it went from one-lane gravel to mostly dirt that was generally jeep track. The road seemed to go on forever. And it was towards the end of the track that I began to have issues with my Garmin download, a route I created on Ride With GPS and then downloaded onto Dave’s and my Gramins. I began getting these goofy commands about turning this way and that off of Low Gap rd. Finally, with Dave way ahead of me, I had this command to take a hard right at a jcn. There was a primitive house along the track with the track splitting to an easy right and a hard right. 


The arrow on my Garmin indicated hard right. And I stopped to really kind of access the directions. Unfortunately I did NOT have a paper map with me, so I just sat there deliberating for a minute. Finally went with the hard right as the GPS indicated. The other track, the easy right, looked like it was part of the property of the primitive house. Took the hard right, went down to a gate, and there was some asphalt road that the Garmin indicated I take a left. Looked for Dave’s tire tracks off the dirt track - nothing. But I took the turn nonetheless. 


Started riding in a western direction so I figured I was still good with the route, and then, about 5 min later my GPS started telling me to do a U-Turn, that I was off route. That got me feeling really confident about my situation. And then when I went to just the regular map on the GPS, it told me the name of the road I was on, and I had NO idea what the hell it was. Had a good picture in my mind about our route and the roads we’d be on, but THAT road was nowhere in the memory banks. I finally turned around and headed back to that jcn. Went back under the gate, back to the primitive house.


Then I heard this chainsaw, so I went up to the fencing at the primitive house and saw a guy coming around the corner of the house. Shouted out to him a question about Low Gap Rd., and he told me to continue on the soft right. That’s what I did and within about 1/4 mile I saw Dave’s tire tracks. So by that time my GPS was just acting like a disoriented robot, telling me to take these nonexistent tracks. I basically just turned it off in my mind and continued to ride the track by sight. After about 30 min Dave rolled back down the track to find out what had happened to me. We were both pretty relieved. 


As we moved along on Low Gap we could feel these wonderful cool pockets of air, which told me we were getting closer and closer to the ocean. Not only that but the redwood forest we started seeing along the track was just spectacular. I mean most of these were what I’d call juveniles, but damn, they were so big around, and towering so high into the sky that they were astounding. Yup, we knew we were out of the hot box of the basin and nearly the cooler coastal environment. Man, just riding past all these elegant giants was amazing. What a way to finish the trip. 


Continued on Low Gap and just climbed and descended ad infinitum. Seemed like the track was endless. After what seemed to be 25-30 miles of riding this track, we eventually popped out on an asphalt road, Comptche-Ukaih Rd. And we’d only cycled 17 miles! That took us about 3 hrs what with my directional gaff. Did a bit of climbing on the asphalt, then stopped for a quickie lunch stop, then continued on to the small hamlet of Comptche. This I knew for sure was where we’d have to make a left onto Flynn’s Creek Rd, but this time both of our Garmin failed to tell us to turn. Actually Dave almost rode by this primitive intersection. 


I’d told Judy earlier that morning to meet Dave and I at the bottom of Flynn’s Creek Rd. down at the Rt 128 jcn., which was about 8 miles south of Comptche. So with both of our GPS’s spitting out wrong info, we did the left and rode the asphalt south. Had a good bit of power climbing and partial descending to get down to near sea level. Met Judy with a solid 5 hours of saddle time in by then. So at this point we were about 11 miles from the Pacific via Rt 128 which is asphalt and busy. 


I’d programed the Gamin’s with a final gravel route west, Navarro Ridge Rd., but again, this failed to come up on the turn by turn screen. I even turned my Garmin off, then turned it back on, chose the route and it popped up, telling me we were on Low Gap Rd. That was it, something was corrupt with that route or download, or whatever. So I went on manual (I’m using a Topo US 24K chip that covers NV and CA) and bang, Navarro Ridge Rd pops up no more than 100 yards away from the van. So we decided to take the harder route to the coast via Navarro Ridge instead of finishing on asphalt 128. 


So we told Judy to meet us at the jcn. of 128 and Navarro Ridge out on the coast. Then up we climbed, for about 3-4 miles and 1200 feet up onto the ridge. This track was just stellar, more of a jeep track that was cut right down into the earthen floor, where the thing was a good 4-6 feet deep down into the earth. The foliage on this track was again the massive redwood trees and all these lesser trees had the mosses hanging from them, indicating the foggy, cool environment we were entering. This track was just spectacular to ride, despite the fact that we were climbing our butt’s off for several miles.


Rolled up and down and up and down once we got on top of the ridge. The temp by that time couldn’t have been more than like 78-80 - and dropping with each mile we pedaled west! Gradually civilization finally began to appear on the track, and then with about 2 miles to go the track turned to a small 2-lane asphalt country road. That’s when we could see the Pacific Ocean off to our left, and then straight in front of us. Dave did some movie footage of me riding no-handed with a smile on my face that was wider than wider than a pizza pan. By then the temp was downright chilly, what with me wearing a cycling tank. Had to be about 60-some degrees as we descended down to the ocean. Ended up at the jcn. of Navarro Ridge and Highway 1 on the Pacific Ocean. Dave and I did the man hug thing, then Judy and I exchanged a kiss. We did it. 


Loaded our gear and headed straightaway for Mendocino, which was about 8 miles north of our ending location. Once there we parked the van amidst a sea of tourist vehicles parked along one of the main thoroughfares in the town, and ventured out to find a place to eat lunch. Found an awesome spot where we were on a open balcony overlooking the ocean and had an amazing lunch. I think we were all on cloud nine, knowing we were done and we could just relax and smell the roses. After lunch we hit a gourmet chocolate shop for some “Tree Bark”, then got a room at the Little River Inn. Again, the wow factor just knocked us out. We splurged and got this amazing room that has a porch that overlooks the ocean, which is only about 100 yards away. Our view off the porch was of rocky outcrops and sea stacks being battered by the Pacific Ocean. 


Next up was our ride down to the beach, about 3 minutes away and visible from our porch, where we did finish shots and movies of me and Dave doing the tire dip in the ocean, and then of both of us doing a full submergence in the cold Pacific. THAT spelled the official end of American Dirt. Went back to the room and sat on the porch drinking the second bottle of wine I’d bought for my sis (Kim, I’m buying you more wine today on our drive down towards San Fran), and then we did some dinner at the Inn. 


And so ended an epic day. Again, I can’t tell you how much this particular part of the trip, after all the issues that plagued me last summer, has meant to me. It’s kind of told me that I have a very important part of my life back. Also have to thank Judy and Dave for everything they’ve done for me to make this happen. I’ll do a little prologue on all this tomorrow. So until then, I hope all you guys continue to chase your dreams.