Yo Yo Yobst !

75 miles to Pigeon Point

For years I have wanted to stay the night in the Pigeon Point lighthouse on the coast near Pesacdora. I am not one of those strange people that love lighthouses and decorate my house with them (though I do secretly admire their dedication to all manifestations of lighthouses). I just like this one. Pigeon Point lighthouse was my standard answer to “what should we do for my birthday?”

I even had reservations for my birthday one year. I was thrilled until my boyfriend at the time decided to cancel the reservations without telling me. Apparently he thought I would enjoy an underground party more. I didn’t. Our relationship followed the reservations – canceled.

This summer I called the lighthouse and found a free Saturday in august – last Saturday – so I rented a house that sleeps 15. The kicker for the trip…biking 55 miles to get there!

I’ve gotten incredibly addicted to road biking and this was my first overnight biking trip and the longest I’ve rode – 125 miles in total. 9 of us gathered in the panhandle on Saturday morning and slowly fixed bikes, trued wheels, rode home for forgotten arm warmers and eventually around noon, we took off towards the sea and highway 1. The weather was amazing – a rare summer day in SF (though this summer we’ve had a lot of them!). The sky was clear and the air was warm. The shimmering pacific whispering seductively from the west “hey look over here – something shiney!”

The stars aligned for the ride – devils slide opened one day before the trip and Steph and Lyla jumped in for their first road ride – 55 miles! They rocked it and I hope both of them are going to become biking partners for me. JD rocked a mountain bike with big tires and a front shock. For those who don’t ride…..that’s hard. Chris rode a rented bike that was dwarfed by his 6’5’’ mass.

We wound through the mountains, down the coast, too close to cars in devils slide, smiled on the downhills, and sweated through the climbs. The last 10 miles of rolling hills seemed to roll much higher than they should in the hot sun at 3 pm. I pushed around each bend hoping to catch a glimpse of the lighthouse. 5 cliff bars later….Pigeon Point rose from the distance.

We trickled into the hostel for a few hours, stripped down and swam in the warm pacific. Seriously, the water was warmer than I’ve ever felt it here. Global warming is not so bad Biking home 75 miles in salty shorts is bad.

We tore through our food, hit the hot tub , laughed a lot and basked in the fading pink sunlight.

The next morning I got my hand slapped for the crew using the hot tub after hours…oops. We loaded the gear in the mini-van and cars and 7 of us hit the road. We decided on the inland route for variety and to hit some climbs early in the ride. Little did we know we would hit so many climbs for so long. The ride was stunning – through country winding roads and redwood forests, small tourist towns, and sketchy old vans. We climbed for over an hour – trucking along at 7 miles an hour. For a hyper person like me, biking helps me relax and gives me time to be alone and think. I hardly ever do that – I’m always meeting people to do this or that or working on myriad projects. Even now I sit on BART and write this…. Climbing really relaxes me – I love the rhythmic cadence of pedaling around and around and around at the same pace. The world moves slowly and deliberately with each turn of my pedal.

Eventually I turned to Aphrodite and Busta Rythmes to power me up the hill and they worked well. Chris’s rental busted a spoke and a few of us hung out down at the San Gregorio General Store . What a great find –like a national park store – it was the swiss army knife of stores. Over here you have a bar, and back there you have tea kettles, and those 2 guys are the band. You can buy crystal dolphins, salmon jerky, a flattened penny, and of course a lighthouse magnet. I questioned a few big trucks about transporting the broken bike ‘over the hill’ towards the peninsula but no one there was going over any hill.

Eventually we got the bike working and headed on another serious climb that ended with lunch al Alice’s in Woodside. Cyclists and motorcyclist share the wooden picnic tables and rebuild energy with burgers and calamari on fries (isn’t one fried thing enough)?

After lunch we hit another seriously huge long climb and then tore down the other side at 40 mph. That’s another reason I like biking –it’s fun to go really fast on a ultra light bike – especially after hours of work to get to the top of the hill. The cars like it too and a string of rice rockets and corvettes drove by way to close – reminding me that biker was killed there a few weeks earlier. I had so much adrenaline by the time I reached the bottom of the hill, I could have road another 50 miles. And that is exactly what we did – rode another 50 some miles to SF. By the time we got to Milbrae it was dark and cold and foggy. I almost gave up and took BART but the crew kept me going and I’m so glad they did. I was so elated with happiness and pride when we arrived in golden gate park after 75 miles, a few freeway crossing, and a belly full of various energy bars.

Next up – a century in September.