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REDWOOD GREEN

CRESCENT CITY TO MENDOCINO, CA

THE BARK OF HARBOUR SEA LIONS FADES FROM earshot as we ride past Crescent City limits. Mottled sunlight sparkles through crowns of deep green as I shift Blue Steel into a low gear and dig in for the climb.

Zach pinballs between me and Alisha, all enthusiasm and boyish glee. We had crossed the California-Oregon border earlier in the day, wheeling through farmlands toward Crescent City where we pulled in for a round of diner coffee before tackling the trio of hills that will lead us into the California redwoods. Known as the North Coast or Redwood Empire, this 375-mile stretch of barely populated coastline sits between San Francisco and us.

When the hill shows no sign of a summit, Zach settles, the distance between us stretching out like a fading chord. Why are we doing this again? Already I wish we were back in the diner, surrounded by the buzz of activity and clattering dishware. Maple leaves big as lampshades tumble from above, crumpling under our tires with a satisfying crackle. The groan of hill-weary motorhomes resonates in my chest, and I’m relieved that we’re not the only ones struggling.

Oregon was the state of capes, California, we’re told, the golden state, the land of milk (or marijuana, as we’d soon discover) and honey. With 840 miles of coastline, it’s the third largest state in America, home to one in eight US citizens as well as to redwood groves and Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, plus miles of SoCal surfers’ paradise.

But it is San Francisco that we spend our nights dreaming of, the three of us swept up in its aura, its promise of new experience. Unlike the mill towns and seaside communities of the Pacific Northwest, San Fran is no decimal point on the map but a full-fledged city, a lifestyle, a place we know about from books and rumours and episodes of Full House. Where fearless bike couriers shred one-way streets and aging hippies hawk tie-dye on Haight-Ashbury. Zach has an uncle in San Pablo, just outside of San Francisco, he says we can stay with, and so we ride with anticipation. Every mile marker a step closer to the City by the Bay.

By lunchtime we begin to experience the payoff from strenuous uphills when we arrive in Redwoods State Park, home to some of the tallest and oldest trees on the planet. This is the domain of giants. Redwoods taller than Vancouver’s business-district office towers—a canopy of birdcall boardroom meetings and squirrel executives. Trunks reminiscent of fortress walls edge both sides of the highway, and the scent of decomposing foliage, acrid and tangy, lifts from the understory. We are Lego figures on wheels in this landscape of thousand-year-old evergreens, this forest moon of Endor.

Return of the Jedi was filmed here. My diminishing energy doubles when I realize that we’re pedalling into the same woods where Han, Luke, and Leia were received in the Ewoks’ treetop village. The redwood landscape takes on a sci-fi feel, our quest to reach San Francisco suddenly as crucial to humanity as the Rebel Alliance’s mission to destroy the Death Star’s shield generator.

WHILE IT WAS MY FATHER WHO INTRODUCED ME to sci-fi, my mother was the one who insisted that we go, just she and I, to see A New Hope when it was re-released for the franchise’s 20th anniversary. This was 1997, two years before Jar Jar Binks would become a loathed household name. I’d never seen any of the Star Wars trilogy, didn’t know my mother was even a fan. And I’m not sure why it was just the two of us. Perhaps Alisha wasn’t interested; perhaps Dad had hockey practice.

It wasn’t spur of the moment, either. She set the date, a Friday night. We arrived early to beat the crowds, and the two of us shared a bag of popcorn doused in butter and a Rolo, her favourite candy bar.

I adored every minute of it. From the opening text to Princess Leia’s cinnamon-bun hair rolls, to the Rebels’ final X-wing attack on the Death Star. I was captivated.

“I knew you’d love it,” my mother had said as we shouldered our way through the crowd, out of the cinema and into the parking lot. “I totally called it.”

“How did you know?” I had said, still in a buttery-haze. The afterglow of Luke’s lightsaber was slicing though my thoughts like the car lights stabbing darkness around us.

“I remember how I felt when I first saw it,” she had said. “I knew you’d feel the same.”

It had scared me that she could look inside me so easily, know exactly what I desired. What I craved. Some Jedi mind trick. And still, like the time she painted the house while Alisha and I were away camping with our father, I wondered what I actually knew about her—what were her interests? My father, he was easy to pin down. An open book. He played hockey like an addict, took us to the ski hill nearly every weekend in the winter, and always had some backyard project on the go. My mother, on the other hand, seemed to lack any passion aside from gardening until she quit smoking and became a Canucks fan. She used her cigarette money to buy Pavel Bure jerseys and home game tickets, and made a cake in anticipation of their 1994 Stanley Cup win against the New York Rangers. (We let it sit in the fridge for five days after they lost.) The sad truth is, I’d often assumed my mother was just boring: a woman without interests. A mother.

But after that night she took me to see A New Hope, I was forced to reconsider. I wondered, as we drove home from the theatre, if it was possible that my mother used to be cool. Perhaps I’d misjudged her, and the reason she didn’t seem to do anything had more to do with a forty-hour workweek and chaperoning her two kids around than anything else.

Thinking about my mother now, it strikes me that she’s always been an avid reader, devouring paperback classics and never discouraged, like I’ve been, by the tiny, near illegible font, or the book’s refusal to stay open when you set it down on the table. She still loves those stories, like she loves Star Wars. Perhaps in the imaginations of Charles Dickens and Jane Austen she found freedom, a quiet escape from five a.m. start times and the tedium of motherhood.

THE UPHILL GRIND HINDERS OUR PACE through the park, but at least here we’re afforded the luxury of a substantial shoulder, some assurance we won’t wind up as roadkill. Not today. Vehicles trundle by at a leisurely pace and give us a wide berth. At scenic pullouts we stand among throngs of visitors, ponder park infographics on ecology and warnings about poison oak. The RV people tell us we must be crazy. They pity us, all that sweating and hard work, from their perspective of inhabiting a vehicle so much more convenient.

“But the view from a bike seat is better,” we respond. The freedom to gaze all around and trace the length of a rust-coloured tree trunk until it dissolves into canopy; a soundtrack of scolding Steller’s jays and wind-rustled branches. Our slower pace, I realize, gives us time to take it all in. But the RV people shake their heads, offer a snack or a top-up on water before they return to their insulated vehicles.

We peel off to pitch camp in an ancient grove of redwood titans, undergrowth so thick we wade through it. Fern tips brush Zach’s waist as he heaves deadfall roped in red-tinged vines out of the way to clear space for our tents. As dusk sets in, we spoon yam-lentil curry from the pot and wipe grimy hands on our pants, content. I hang the food fifty paces from camp before we hoist ourselves onto a fallen tree bridge, five feet off the ground.

Adrift in silky darkness we stay awake to talk for hours. Crusty bark scraping against the back of my jeans. Feet swinging in the void. I can still feel the exhilaration as the road ricocheted down from our second summit, a sudden view of sea stacks piercing reckless surf. The cycling has been so tough that we’ve barely managed fifty miles, though what we’ve seen will keep me going for weeks. In a place that draws nearly half a million visitors each year, I recognize how fortunate we are to spend a night alone.

WE CONTINUE SOUTH THROUGH TOWNS with populations lower than their elevations and quaint general stores. Sunny skies lead the way. So far, my assumption that California is synonymous with great weather has held true. We consider another night in the redwoods, but the pull of San Francisco is strong. At every mile marker we cheer. Alisha wants to go swing dancing and I’m anxious to explore the thrift shops; Zach hopes to check out some live music. By nightfall we arrive in Eureka, a city that shares its name with the State of California’s motto: Eureka!

Though Eureka is the largest coastal town between Portland and the Bay Area, the population is still under 30,000. We couchsurf with Mario and Eve, a couple we’ve yet to meet in person, though their online profile states they’re 420-friendly and into music, crafts, and homebrew. They live in a one-storey bungalow in the residential part of town, far into the alphabet of lettered streets where potholes dip deep enough to swallow a tire. On arrival we’re greeted by four people lounging on the living room carpet and, unsurprisingly, the keen odour of cannabis. With neither of our hosts home, we introduce ourselves to Emma, Jer, and a couple whose names I immediately forget. Bejewelled South Indian sarongs adorn the walls, and in the kitchen handfuls of lavender and oregano dry from a line of twine. A couple of cats—one white and fluffy, the other patterned like tiger tiger ice cream—sneak between the half-dozen pumpkins that litter the countertops.

Soon Mario arrives, the cowrie shells in his dreadlocks tinkling as he waltzes us though the grand tour. Mario—a leather worker and chef with an affinity for tie-dye, Bob Marley, and bamboo textiles—hands us a spare key and each our own towel. The luxury of hot water and a towel is almost too much. I haven’t showered since the last time we couchsurfed in Coos Bay, over a week ago. Eve arrives home from college just in time to see the three of us red-faced and beaming in our newfound cleanliness. She stands a good foot taller than Mario, wrapped neck to toe in patterned shawls and skirts.

“You think they could be pirates?” Alisha asks.

Definitely possible. There’s something about Mario’s bandana and the way Eve saunters down the hall as if she is walking on high seas. The weight of her dark dreadlocks penduluming back and forth. Silver rings like glittering scales under lamplight.

Everyone pitches in for a last-minute feast, digging out ingredients and taking turns at the chopping board. Eve uncorks a bottle and we drink homemade wine from cobalt blue goblets. Alisha and Emma, who turns out to be another couchsurfer, team up to concoct some sort of apple-berry streusel that takes an eternity to bake. Jer knocks out a drum rhythm to a stoned audience while the scent of syrup and sugar wafts from the oven.

“Where are you from again?” I ask Jer. I’m sure he’s told me, but all the pot and indoor humidity have gone to my head.

“Flushing, Michigan,” he says. Busking town to town and crashing sofas when he can. “I met Eve yesterday at the street fair in Arcata,” he says, a town only a few miles north of Eureka. She’d invited him to spend the night.

Jer will leave for a six-month job in Mali in less than a month. Afterwards, he hopes to visit Guinea, Gambia, and Senegal: “I want to learn about the kind of music they make.”

I admire his passion for music. His willingness to hit the road with a handful of bills and hope that the world looks kindly on him. Of all of us, he’s the only one who passes on the weed and liquor.

We sprawl across the living room carpet, a ragtag collection of cyclists, travellers, musicians, and pirates, drinking wine and passing joints that seem to grow out of the floorboards. Zach, Alisha, and I gush about redwoods and coastal scenery, wistful downhills and the double-brightness of setting sight on the sun-glittered seas after your eyes have adjusted to undergrowth. Next morning I wake up at six a.m., a cat snuggled into my shoulder. Windowpanes dewy with condensation from our breath. Jer has already slipped out—he’d arranged an early morning rendezvous with friends passing through who will take him as far as Portland. Emma leaves after breakfast, strapped with her backpack to hitch south.

The three of us pass the day exploring Eureka’s eclectic Victorian architecture, bold colours and spires on every other rooftop a testament to late-1800s prosperity when lumber was king. Under Old Town’s antique street lamps, we cycle past a 1920s art deco theatre and the Pink Lady, a Queen Anne-style Victorian home that resembles a dollhouse of monumental proportions. We stop at the library to check our email, and I look up Hannah, the Swedish woman cycling to South America. She has a blog of awe-inspiring photographs and anecdotes of the road. I’m hit by a surge of envy, but also admiration. I show Alisha.

“You think we’ll meet her?” I say.

“Never know,” she scrolls down the page. “I wish we had photos like these.”

Outside the library, Zach and I pester Alisha about stopping by Lost Coast Brewery for a pint, but she forbids it, reminding us again of our tight budget. We compromise by bringing two-dollar bottles of California red back to Eve and Mario’s.

THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON WE DEPART. Clean, hugged, and prepared to return to our existence on the side of Highway 101. Our route from Eureka will take us inland, through more damp wooded towns until we reach the junction of Highway 1 and Highway 101 at Leggett, where we’ll turn back toward the coast, past Mendocino, Bodega Bay, and into San Francisco.

“I have a friend in Caspar,” Mario says. “Inland from Mendocino. You can stay with him.”

He writes down an address but no phone number. The friend’s name is Ted and he lives in a rundown RV on someone’s property.

“He’ll have a fire going for you guys,” Mario says, handing us a jar of homemade jam for the road.

I wonder how Ted will know what day we’re coming when he doesn’t have a phone. There’s a magic to this vagabond lifestyle that I don’t yet understand.

A breeze buffets our backs and despite our delayed departure we reach Humboldt State Park, part of Redwoods National and State Parks, by late afternoon. The road narrows as it re-enters woods, a fairy tale path lilting south, the terrain flat and effortlessly easy for once. San Francisco is more than a week away, but the pull remains steady, a tractor beam beckoning us closer. Still, we make time to pause at the park’s info centre and climb inside a hollowed-out redwood laid horizontal, the curve of the trunk cradling our aching spines. Back on the road, we begin calling ourselves the Three Musketeers, shout “All for one!” as we race our steeds into combat against imaginary foes, goofy grins as our legs whirl the pedals. I haven’t had this much fun since I was a kid.

We find ourselves camped in another redwood grove where we collect wild grapes to add to our oatmeal for breakfast. Come morning, everything gleams in a diamond dust of precipitation. Zach complains about an itch in his groin, but thinks it’s just a saddle sore.

“I’ve had them before,” he says.

Alisha and I cringe.

There are few places to stop so when we come to Garberville, a medium-sized town, we roll into the grocery store for produce from the discount bin. We bump into Emma—Eve and Mario’s other couchsurfing guest—in the checkout aisle.

“I’m looking for work,” she explains. This town of less than a thousand is thick with people like her, early-20s backpackers in peasant skirts or grungy cargo pants, seeking under-the-table employment as trimmers at one of the backwoods grow operations.

On a curb ledge outside the grocery store, the four of us share cups of coffee and spread spoonfuls of Mario’s jam onto bagels.

“How do you get hired?” I ask.

“I’ve been asking around,” says Emma. “But it’s easier if you know someone.”

Cannabis is a major industry of Northern California, where the population is low and the climate is right. Most of America is supplied by Humboldt, Mendocino, and Trinity Counties: the Emerald Triangle of California green. Personal plants are legal with a prescription, but industrial-scale operations violate federal law.

“Growers get away with it because cannabis has become a mainstay enterprise,” Mario had said.

After hardships in the timber and fishing industries, the authorities are reluctant to crack down on anything that bolsters the economy. The sheer number of growers also overwhelms law enforcement agencies. While busts are made, operators who keep a low profile slip under the radar.

“What do you think?” I say to Alisha, after we’ve waved goodbye to Emma for the second time. “We could earn some cash trimming.” I picture the stack of bills in my wallet after a few weeks of work. We wouldn’t have to worry about money at all.

“Not worth the risk,” she says, her response automatic, like a bank receipt spat out of an ATM. “You know what happens to Canadians who break the law in America?”

“You go to jail?”

She nods. “And get blacklisted. You’d be lucky to cross the border again in this lifetime. Think about it: Most international flights stop over in America.”

She’s right, of course. But as we pedal away from Garberville, I feel my opportunity to continue south with Zach slipping away.

LEGGETT HILL LOOMS AHEAD. The town of Leggett marks where the route forks, with Highway 101 sweeping inland and the Shoreline Highway mounting Leggett Hill before plummeting to the Pacific Coast. Mapped out, the Shoreline Highway resembles a pre-schooler’s squiggle, a convulsion of twists. Caspar, where Mario’s friend Ted lives, is another fifty miles down that switch-backing highway.

Leggett consists of a post office, gas station, and elementary school in a sinuous valley. Less than a hundred people, though thousands visit the world-famous drive-through tree, which is exactly what it sounds like—you pay a fee to drive through a tree. We’ve already spent our daily budget on groceries in Garberville, and besides, none of us would be caught dead doing something so undeniably touristy. Whether to stay or keep moving is the big question.

“If we push on,” I say, “we’ll get the hill over with tonight.”

Zach, however, wants to stay in Leggett. He’s been moody, the tingle in his groin escalated to a full-blown rash. Five o’clock sunbeams splash off the corrugated metal rooftops of farm outbuildings; distant fields look inviting. But still, I convince Alisha and Zach that we should continue over the hill.

The road narrows to a thread as we leave the valley, every approaching vehicle setting us on edge. Our guidebook claims that it is less than four miles to the summit, but once we hit the grade it’s apparent that we’re spent. Legs gone rubbery and backs worn-out. Dusk settles in and all we see are trees. Trunks like the slender bars of a prisoner’s cell bleeding darker around every turn.

Another few minutes and Alisha calls it. “Tomorrow,” she says, “when we’re fresh.”

We scout a place to camp. To our left, scree crumbles a few hundred feet into Hollow Tree Creek; to our right, the slope climbs into King Mountain Range. I’m reminded of the night in Washington when we were trying to make it to Cannon Beach and ended up camped at a summit, surrounded by rifle casings. This time, we don’t make it as far as the summit. In an act of desperation, the three of us roll our bikes down the scree until we reach a narrow plateau. All night I imagine the tent slipping, setting loose an avalanche of rubble as we spiral down the cliff side.

We leave the next morning in half-light, without breakfast, not enough water to boil oats. Aside from an occasional gravel track branching from the main road, there’s little to see other than the wide swath of trees, sword ferns that spring from the bank like feathery sea anemones. A sign documents a grade of nine percent.

When we finally arrive at the summit we rejoice, prepared to enjoy a well-deserved downhill run to the coast. But after a brief descent the road swerves uphill again—there are two humps on this camel’s back. Had we travelled onward the night before, we would never have made it. Why had I insisted on continuing? I suppose I’d hoped to reach the coast. Already imagining the craggy shoreline and salt on my tongue.

The descent from the final peak is a heart-slamming spin, every muscle taut as I bank into curves. We round a bend and suddenly what feels like the entire breadth of the Pacific Ocean opens up: the Lost Coast, the most remote and undeveloped of California’s shoreline. This, I realize, is why I had pushed on. Slate-grey cliffs intersect a frothy sea. People must come here to disappear.

AS A KID, I WAS ALWAYS RUNNING OFF to embark on missions in the woods with Alisha or with my stupid, happy mutt, Sam. Time took on a different meaning when I entered the salmon-berry underbrush, the bog of immense skunk plants with serving-platter leaves and lightning-bolt yellow blooms. The three hours between the final bell and dinner morphed into an eternity where I could disappear into that other realm.

At ten, I went so far as to ask Santa to send me on a quest. On Christmas Eve, I revealed to my parents the letter I’d written to Santa. They sat me down between the two of them on the dog-haired sofa and told me that Santa didn’t exist—neither did these fantasy worlds that I was reading about. My dream to have a Tolkien adventure wasn’t going to come true. I may have recognized the difference between fact and fantasy by that point, though part of me still secretly hoped that talking beasts and sword fights existed in this world as well.

After Christmas, something shifted. I turned eleven. Friends were starting to wear bras, get their periods. While I still disappeared into the woods, the games I played were more true-to-life—hide-and-seek—or more practical—trail building with my father. The other worlds that I’d previously sensed as real as this one faded into the shadows.

But here, on the Pacific Coast, I’ve finally found my quest. The one I dreamed about as a child. Both epic and challenging, each day filled with hardship and quiet reward as we inch closer to Cabo San Lucas.

AFTER LEGGETT HILL WE DISCOVER a new kind of strenuous in the sharp, sail-like hills that carve up the coast. The highway mimics a spaghetti noodle flung down the shoreline. Smooth rocks glisten like slick-backed seals in the rolling surf below, a sickle of beach sharpening to a point when it reaches headlands. The landscape off-kilter, side-swept spruce and the ripple of golden beach grass in an omnipresent breeze.

Everything is timber-built in the roadside town of Westport, ten miles south of Leggett Hill. We refill our water bottles and stop for ice cream cookie sandwiches at a café constructed entirely from shingles. A retro Pepsi sign advertises home-baked pies. Once we are over the hill, the climate turns suddenly dryer, front yards boasting leather-leafed shrubs and whorls of flowers that I’d like to ask my mother the names of. Succulents like pale green balloons creep among rocks on the side of the highway. Ice plants, we’re told by a woman outside the café. Invasive species.

WE RIDE INTO TED’S PLACE in rural Caspar after dark. Mario’s directions take us inland south of Fort Bragg—another twenty miles past Westport—along backcountry roads barely illuminated by our trio of headlamps. There’s a fire going, just as Mario had promised. Ted tells us to pitch camp wherever we like and pours hoppy, amber beer from a gallon jug before lighting up a joint. The outhouse, he says, is just down the trail. Take a light.

“You can shower at Abby’s place in the morning,” he says. “She’s the landowner. Judy and Allan will want to meet you guys, too.”

Abby, a widow in her early-seventies, owns the three-acre property where a couple named Judy and Allan rent a cottage. Ted, a long-time friend of Judy and Allan, has some sort of work-exchange agreement to park his motorhome in the far back corner of the lot. In addition to swapping yard work for rent, he trades fish for wild game, gathers mushrooms and berries, and tends a bountiful garden. Bread, beer, and coffee come from the store, paid for with money he earns from selling sculptures at the local art co-op. Mushrooms, we learn, are his specialty. And like so many others in the Emerald Triangle, Ted earns a bit on the side from trimming.

“Lousy work,” he says, shaking his head. “Long hours, and hard on your hands. But the money is too good to turn down.”

I rig our tents while Alisha and Zach settle in by the blaze with ingredients for a late supper. Silhouettes of tree trunks like cigars pitch upright in the glooming dark behind us. Alisha has been sharing her recipes, having Zach do the prep work that I used to do. He is a keen student, full of enthusiastic questions and new ideas for flavour combinations.

Ted brings to mind Beorn, the enormous bear-man skin-changer that Thorin and Company meet after their escape from the goblin caves in the Misty Mountains. His living quarters smell of moss and pine needles, seat cushions moist like a newt’s aquarium. I scrutinize his beard, thick and dark and lustrous. As we eat around the fire, he rolls up the sleeves of an earth-toned sweater and shares the location of choice fishing spots, explains which months are prime for collecting mushrooms.

“Mushrooms are great in anything,” he says. “You can add them to soup, pasta. Or just fry’em with butter.”

By the time supper is over I’m tired enough for sleep, but we stay up. I’ve missed the crackle of a fire. The way flame tips mince the air. Like our hosts in Eureka, Ted’s existence feels so different from my own. I’m compelled to find out more about how he’s sculpted this life for himself, one that relies more on trade, bargaining, and craft than money. Mid-conversation, a scarecrowish, hooded figure materializes from the darkness. He introduces himself as Allan, pulls up a stump and cracks a beer. Moustache tendrils conceal the rim of the can when he sips.

“You guys should check out Mendo tomorrow,” he says. Mendocino, known affectionately as Mendo by locals, lies a few miles to the south. “There’ll be something going on for Halloween, for sure.”

“Halloween is tomorrow?” I ask. In our haste to reach San Fran, I’d entirely forgotten that the end of the month was fast-approaching.

We decide to stick around for another day. At the very least, it will give Zach’s rash a chance to clear before we make the final push into San Francisco.

MENDOCINO HAS A MEDITERRANEAN CLIMATE—not too hot in summer, rarely chilly in winter, perpetually bloused in fog. Today: sunny and clear. A perfect day for a picnic. Halloween festivities won’t begin until dusk, so we buy bagels and splurge on a six-pack, glean wild-growing kale for a salad from the side of the roadway, and haul everything down to a beach that we christen Pirate’s Cove. We unbutton our shirts and recline like merfolk on driftwood logs that resemble remnants of a washed-up ship, enjoying our afternoon beer buzz. The tide surges through a rock archway as gulls vault great arcs overhead.

After lunch, we wander Mendocino. At first glance, downtown could be a movie set, its Main Street of nostalgically painted art shops and restaurants perched over the sea. But a closer look reveals eccentricity—driftwood sculptures and meadowed front yards. The scent of California green wafts up every block or so and flowers blossom all around, waves of petunias and silken amber poppies. I’m glad to have escaped Surrey, where all but the evergreens are now dying off before winter.

We find Ted, Allan, and Judy at the block party in the town square around sunset. Half the crowd is in costume, the other half, with long hair and tie-dyed everything, must be hippies. Allan has transformed into a mysterious puppeteer with an aristocrat top hat and a marionette named Broomhilda; Judy, his partner, a medieval maiden with her long blonde hair braided down to her waist. Wearing a cap made from an enormous mushroom exoskeleton—something I hadn’t even known existed—Ted now looks less like Beorn and more like Radagast, the forest wizard.

Judy and Allan are leather workers: she does hats and he makes boots. Judy also crafts tiny fairy dioramas in her spare time. They sell their wares at Renaissance Fairs across the country. It’s clear that these people from Caspar do not inhabit the same reality as most of us. I wonder how they crossed over from the workaday world: Were they always like this, or did the laid-back atmosphere of Northern California transform them into the quirky, highly individualized people standing in front of me today? And how can I find a way to live with minimal cash flow in a beautiful climate? I suppose I’m already doing it, though it’s difficult to think of cycle touring as real life. I’ll have to go back sometime, and what will I do when I return? I’m no leather worker or sculptor; I have no craft to ply. I can’t see myself living out of a motorhome, either.

Alisha and I have tummy aches from the sum of our indulgences—beer and ice cream, not surprisingly, turn out to be a poor pairing. But the celebration is worth sticking around for. Performers spiral down silk banners and fly between trapezes at a mini-circus. Later, a folk band takes the stage and we dance, upset stomachs and all. The entire town must be here, pirate children pursuing each other down alleyways, while parents groove in the crowd. The scene reminds me of a wedding, minus the bride and groom.

Back on Ted’s lawn we crash, beyond tired from the sun and booze, and all the festivities. We’ve already tapped into the California dream, and San Francisco still lies ahead.

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