LIFE/DEATH

SAN FRANCISCO TO BIG SUR, CA

ALISHA AND I FLEE SAN PABLO AT FIRST LIGHT to catch the BART train south to where we’d abandoned our journey less than twelve hours before. Our touring bicycles elicit curious glances, the train sardined with commuters, even at this early hour. We disembark in Daly City, freed from the circuitous suburbs that had tangled us up yesterday. I step from the platform with a sense of relief, a sudden looseness in my gait. Ten minutes later we merge with Highway 1 southbound. Back on track.

San Francisco marks the border between California’s North and Central Coasts. From here out, sleepy redwood towns will be replaced with affluence and bustle, humming college communities and busy boardwalks. But there is still one final beacon of rugged wilderness ahead: Big Sur, a ninety-mile stretch of coastline where the Santa Lucia Mountains tumble into blue Pacific, home to California’s southernmost stand of redwoods. Alisha and I hope for one last encounter with giants before we succumb to the chaos of Southern California.

Scouting places to stay is our major concern. It’s going to become harder to pitch camp unnoticed as the coast becomes increasingly populated. While there’s still couchsurfing, intermittent access to a computer makes communication with potential hosts a challenge. Earlier in the trip, Alisha and I had discussed the possibility of asking permission to set up our tent on people’s lawns. While I’m not thrilled about going door-to-door, it might come to that.

I’M STILL BECOMING FAMILIAR WITH THE TOE CLIPS. While they weren’t to blame for my wipeout on the trolley tracks yesterday—I didn’t have my feet clipped at the time—I don’t trust them. As we pedal toward Devil’s Slide, the treacherous stretch of highway Zach’s uncle and his wife had warned us of just days before, I wonder how I’ll cope if I need to hop off my bicycle quickly again—what if, this time, I can’t dislodge my feet? I don’t want to end up in the same situation as my mother.

Soon, Alisha and I begin to climb, our tires driven to the very edge of the asphalt by the river of vehicles. Walled in by rock and tree on both sides, I focus my attention on the span of road immediately in front of my tires. Alisha rides ahead. I wait for the familiar rush of relief and excitement when we reach the summit, but it doesn’t come. Vehicles continue to barrel past as the rocky cliffs of Devil’s Slide promontory fall dramatically away to our right. We pick up pace on the downhill straightaway, riding the white line between traffic and the guardrail. This isn’t good. Not safe. I conjure up possible outcomes of a wrong move: slam into the guardrail, pitch over the cliff, or collide into the back of Alisha and send us both into traffic. Again, I think of my mother’s accident. Imagine myself sprawled on the pavement, ankles locked into toe clips as a shin twists away from my foot.

Suddenly Alisha’s back tire cuts into my vision. She’s stopping—why is she stopping? My fingers snap at the brake levers. Nothing. A truck closes in on us, the entire width of the lane eaten up by its looming dimensions. Words leap through my head: ankle, break, collision, car. As my tire makes contact with hers, I scream.

Just as fast as I close in, the space between us lengthens. The truck swerves wide across the double yellow line to pass. I realize my hands are on the brakes, the brakes slowing me down. Why hadn’t they worked a second ago? No time to think. Alisha signals a turnoff at the next gravel pullout.

“Why did you slam on your brakes?” I demand. “I had nowhere to go.”

“Why were you following so close?” she says.

The fact is, I wasn’t paying attention. Too stuck in my own head to notice I had been creeping in behind.

My calves are twitchy, electric. The balls of my heels dance like stringed marionettes atop gravel. I need to sit. We lean our bicycles against the guardrail and kneel on a patch of barren earth overlooking the drop. Alisha swallows hard. What are we doing on this road?

“I’m sorry,” I say, throat-choked. “It’s not your fault.”

“There’s no shoulder,” she says. “We can’t keep up with traffic and there’s nowhere to go.”

Why hadn’t we listened to the warnings—what wayward desire has pushed us to this extremity?

“We need to take the lane,” she announces.

I nod. “Give me a minute.”

Behind us, Devil’s Slide promontory rises from frothing sea, the stark orange-brown rock topped with scrub and tufts of stunted trees. Cliffs diminish in height as the highway rounds the curve of Half Moon Bay. I listen for surge but hear nothing over the screaming wind. I don’t want to get back on my bicycle. Even the mad hustle of San Francisco is preferable to this deathtrap highway.

“If we can just make it to Half Moon Bay,” I reason, “the road will probably widen and we’ll be out of this mess.”

I check my brakes but can’t find anything amiss. It must have just been a case of pushing them past their limits. I don’t put my feet back in the toe clips though. When Alisha and I ride out again, we take the lane. Right out in the middle where no one can miss us, or pass us. I ride ahead, one eye on Alisha in my side-view mirror. Drivers lay on their horns but we refuse to yield. Not until we reach a pullout where we can safely let the string of cars pass. Try to ignore the glares. The sudden acceleration of tires minces my ears. My legs begin to dance again.

“Highways are for cars!” someone yells in passing.

I swallow, check in with Alisha. We ride out once more, centre of the lane.

The terrain levels a few miles on. Alisha and I break for a second breakfast in Half Moon Bay, in a park overlooking the wide arc of surf. Red-green succulents and low, dried-out scrub bush carpet the top of the bluffs. It’s a Buy Nothing Day, so we snack on yogurt and granola from our panniers, no coffee. Sitting cross-legged under the warm, overcast sky, my nerves settle.

AS A KID, I WAS ALWAYS GETTING SCRAPED UP. Six stitches from a dog nip or a run-in with a wooden beam. The horse bite that may or may not have happened to me. Nothing serious, though. Nothing that would qualify as a near-death experience.

But snowboarding two years ago, I had a long moment of panic going over an off-trail drop. I froze, fifteen feet in the air. Caged in by powdery Douglas firs without a stitch of clearing to land on. By luck or muscle memory, I wedged my board down between two trees and cut my speed with a few sharp turns. Regained control. When I re-emerged on a familiar run, I gulped at how stupid I’d been to take the jump, alone, without checking the landing first.

Going off-trail is a risk, but also something I’d done so often, I’d forgotten the stakes. I still remember the sun reflecting off snow, transforming the fresh powder to glittering tinsel, the sky a pale sheet of blue overhead. It didn’t seem that injury, let alone death, were even possibilities. But after that day, I’d never view the winter landscape so passively again.

Now, I wonder how my father and Brent managed Devil’s Slide, but then remember that they stopped the cycle portion of their journey in San Francisco, never venturing this far down the coast. A connection between my father’s hang-gliding injury that almost left him paralyzed, so many years ago, and our close call on Devil’s Slide dawns on me. The hair’s width of chance that shifts an outcome between the unthinkable and safety. Things could have turned out much worse, for my father, and for us.

WE END THE DAY IN DAVENPORT, a small coastal community dominated by a cement plant. Despite our harrowing experience, Alisha and I log over sixty miles—an impressive day. It’s as if we’re determined to put both San Francisco and the incident on Devil’s Slide as far behind us as possible.

After twenty frustrating minutes of searching for a spot to stealth camp, we decide to try our luck at lawn camping. A tidy-looking corner house with a small, unfenced fruit orchard is our first choice. We lean Blue Steel and Mrs. Bicycle against a telephone pole, finger-comb our helmet hair.

“What if they say no?” I ask.

“Then we’ll try another place,” says Alisha. “We have nothing to lose.”

A woman in a pale pink sweater answers the door. “Yes?”

“Hi!”

I want to run. This was a bad idea.

“My name’s Alisha, and this is Meaghan.” Alisha’s voice calm, confident.

“Your name is really Alisha?” asks the woman, her cheeks and chin petalled pink to match her sweater. “My name is Alisha, too!”

Alisha the Second stands barefoot, barely five-foot, strawberry blonde hair curling wisps around an apple-blossom face. We learn later that her name is spelled Alicia.

“We’re too tired to go on cycling and can’t find anywhere to camp,” explains Alisha. “Do you think we could set up in your orchard for the night?”

Alicia blinks at us.

“This probably seems strange to you,” I say, “but I promise we’re not weirdos.”

Alicia still looks confused. “Where will you pee?” she asks.

We hadn’t thought that far ahead.

“The gas station?” I offer. It’s only a few blocks away.

“Sure, you can camp here,” she agrees. “But why don’t you come in first so I can get to know you. I’d feel more comfortable. You two hungry?”

“We’re always hungry,” I say.

Alicia’s home is modest but tidy, a circular layout that forms a loop between the entranceway, kitchen, and living room. Framed photographs of family members and Christian kitsch—the shepherd Jesus, Mary glowing piously—decorate the walls. Alicia fixes us a snack while my sister and I settle in at the kitchen table. Seated, I suddenly need to pee. Do I ask? Minutes ago, I told Alicia that we would pee at the gas station.

“You know,” Alicia says, setting down a cracker and cheese plate, “you two could sleep in the guest room.”

“The orchard is fine,” I say. “We don’t want to inconvenience you.”

But she continues as though she hadn’t heard. “My husband and I never use it. The bed is small, but you could fit. Have a look.”

The guestroom better resembles a closet than a bedroom, the mattress narrower than our tent. A crucifix hangs above the dresser, over wildflower wallpaper. Alicia steps around storage boxes, stacking and tidying, clearing a path. I can barely concentrate, my spandex waistline knifing into my gut.

With Alicia’s back to us, I spell out my situation to Alisha.

“I have to go too,” she confides.

Soon a path has been cleared and it looks like we’ll be sleeping indoors. As Alicia walks past with an armload of winter coats destined for a closet, I muster the courage to ask permission for the washroom. Again, her brow muddles in confusion.

“Bathroom,” Alisha corrects my Canadian tongue. “She wants to use the bathroom.”

“Of course!” Alicia says, dropping the coats to grab hold of my arm and usher me down the hallway.

Over mashed potatoes and pork chops, spinach salad for Alisha, we get to know our impromptu hostess. Alicia opens up easily, eager to answer questions we have about the local area. She had been working as a housekeeper in Santa Cruz, ten miles to the south, until six weeks ago when she injured her back.

“But my husband earns a good salary,” Alicia explains. “I don’t need to work, I just like having something to do until Steve comes home.”

Alicia looks around thirty. She married at eighteen.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she says. “That I married too young. That I did it because of my religious family. But I’m happy.”

Unfortunately, Alicia’s husband, Steve, doesn’t know we’re here. When he arrives home from work, Alicia hides us in the garage so that she can explain why a couple of Canadians are crashing on the guest bed.

“Do you think she’s asking his permission?” I say, stretching my legs on the cool cement of the garage floor while we wait for the verdict.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” says Alisha.

And it is. Steve appears to be a decent guy, not as chatty as Alicia and a bit stiff. Hoping to get an early night, my sister and I shuffle off to bed while Alicia prepares supper for Steve. But once he goes to sleep, Alicia knocks on our door, bowl of popcorn cradled in one arm. She seems to have other plans—a girls’ night of gossip and fingernail painting.

“Do you like dancing?” Alicia asks. “Santa Cruz has some great reggae clubs.”

“Do you go with Steve?” I ask.

“Steve doesn’t like dancing, or reggae,” she admits. “I go with my girlfriends.”

Her face glows as she narrates nights out with friends, the fun of crowding onto a sweaty dance floor. In her enthusiasm, she overlooks our drooping eyelids and barely stifled yawns. It’s midnight by the time we manage to excuse ourselves and crowd into the kid-sized bed.

Alicia sends us off the next morning with a pancake breakfast and a bag of orchard apples. Steve has already left for work. We take photos on her front steps, our ruddy faces alongside Alicia in her pink sweater over pyjamas.

“Just get me from the waist up,” she says. “I don’t want people seeing me in my bedclothes.”

We promise to email her photos next time we run into an Internet connection, and cruise an easy ten miles into Santa Cruz in high spirits, the near-disaster at Devil’s Slide eclipsed by our good fortune in meeting Alicia. We decide that lawn camping could be the way to go as we continue south.

“If someone says no, we just roll on over to the next house,” Alisha says.

And if we’re lucky, we might find ourselves waking up to hot breakfast.

MY MOTHER REALIZED SHE WOULD NEVER ACHIEVE her dream of a career in horticulture once she became pregnant with her first child—me. She was thirty and while staying on with SuperValu wasn’t what she had in mind, the early-morning starts allowed her to be home by lunchtime, the benefit package comprehensive enough to pay for the orthodontist fees and the braces her daughters would both eventually need.

Not long after my sister was born, SuperValu closed its doors in BC. The timing was especially poor, as my father had recently quit his post at BC Tel to start up his own telecommunications company, establishing our imitation wood-panelled rec room as headquarters.

“When Safeway offered me a position as a cake decorator,” she’d told me, “I had no choice but to say yes.”

She was qualified, and with the ranks of recently laid off SuperValu employees looking for employment, she didn’t know when another opportunity would come her way. Her chances of landing a job in horticulture with a starting salary close to what she was earning as a veteran baker were slim. Safeway offered security—a safe way forward.

So my mother decorated cakes and filled our yard with the gardens she had given up hope of creating professionally. While my father’s business floundered, she planted English roses alongside the deck, purple columbines and black-eyed-Susans against the house. In the sunniest part of the yard, she grew vegetables, everything from long English cucumbers to dinosaur kale. While Alisha and I romped in the pool, our mother watered the gardens in her straw sunhat and thin-at-the-seams black swimsuit, the garden hose snaking behind her. It never occurred to me to wonder why she knew the Latin name for every herb and flower that she planted, never mentioning her years spent studying horticulture. I only found out around the time I graduated from high school, and even then, it was my father who told me.

SANTA CRUZ IS OUR SAN FRANCISCO—the mythical place I’d actually been conjuring every time I heard the word California. A bike path spits us out on a tree-lined downtown boulevard alive with students, vagrants, dropout punks, and nine-to-fivers. We soak it in: bicycles whizzing past historic buildings, the clock tower, curbside clusters of students mowing through pizza-by-the-slice and panhandlers sparing for change. Environmental bumper stickers read Don’t Log Our Redwood Forests, Coexist, There is no Planet B.

Outside a Safeway, we intercept an untouched container of sevenlayer dip en route to the dumpster.

“Seal’s been broken,” explains the clerk. “We can’t sell it.”

“We won’t tell anyone where we got it,” I say, nabbing the container before the clerk changes his mind.

We dash inside to grab a bag of tortilla chips, and then head toward a bench to people-watch. A man in a feathered cap marches down the street shouting, “Free cake!” and we wave him over to trade seven-layer dip and chips for Black Forest cake. A gathering of transients and college students soon encircles our bicycles.

“Free cake and chips!” we holler, jamming sweet icing into our mouths with fingers.

“You girls bike all the way from Canada?” someone asks.

“Heck yes!”

High fives all around.

Suddenly, we’re living the tangerine-tinted California dream. A guy in a vest bedecked with rock band patches sits down on the curb and begins to play a ukulele. The instrument case gapes like an open clamshell next to him and passersby drop change, more often weed, inside. Some of these folks have hitched from as far as New York. A woman with symmetrical nose piercings and a rose tattoo on the inside of her wrist hails from Texas. But why Santa Cruz? Is it the Mediterranean weather? An underlying acceptance of the weird and wonderful? All I know is that I want to stick around to find out.

The question is where. The Texan woman and her two pals are crashing on someone’s living room floor. The guy in the feathered cap, a music student at the university, suggests we try for one of the nearby beaches—“But don’t camp at the popular spots or the cops will hassle you.”

After our lunch party breaks up, we continue to ask around. Alisha and I hardly walk a block without receiving a comment on our touring gear or the Canada patches emblazoned on the sides of our panniers. A café owner suggests we try the stand of redwoods near the university campus; a chatty panhandler offers to show us the way to his beach camp spot, so long as we don’t go around telling people where it is.

But ultimately, we find a place to stay by striking up a conversation with another cyclist who happens to favour the same yellow panniers as Alisha. He’s locking his bicycle to a street pole, head down in concentration as he fiddles with the combination.

“Nice panniers,” I say.

He looks up, making the connection between the matching gear.

“Thanks,” he says. “They’re great in the rain, aren’t they?”

He looks around fifty, hair more salt than pepper. Red plaid shirt tucked in at the waist and rolled up at the sleeves. He introduces himself as Jim, jots his address and phone number down, and invites us to spend the night at his place.

“What else should we do while we’re in Santa Cruz?” I ask.

“There’s the boardwalk amusement park,” he says. “But I bet you’d enjoy yourselves more at the Anarchist Bike Church.”

“Anarchist Bike Church?” I imagine rusty bicycle frames and wheel rims knit together with brake cables, a chapel of castoff parts where grease-bibbed mechanics offer salvation.

“We need to go there,” Alisha says.

The Anarchist Bike Church is not actually a bike church, but a bike collective—similar to the one I visited on Vancouver Island—and it’s not called the Anarchist Bike Church, but simply Bike Church. The space is housed in a low, meandering teal building known as the Anarchist Collective.

Adjacent to the Bike Church is the Anarchist Bookstore, serving up fair trade coffee, tea, and radical literature. A calendar of events lists a busy schedule of classes in everything from bike building, forest ecosystem monitoring, to birth attendant basics, all free—“rooted in a gift economy outside the stream of commerce.” We page through feminist zines in the bookshop, buy a cup of locally roasted coffee, and head outside to join the milling crowd on the parking lot converted to patio.

“Did you girls cycle all the way from Canada?”

I turn to see a pair of guys around our age drinking tallboys of beer beside fixed-gear bicycles. We introduce ourselves to Damian and Tim, Bike Church regulars and students at UC Santa Cruz.

“So you’re heading through Big Sur soon?” Damian asks. He’s lean, wearing a green windbreaker and jean shorts. The cycling muscles on his thighs pop from the bone. “Man, are you going to be blown away.”

Damian and Tim tell us more about the Anarchist Collective and chat about their past bike tours that span the map from New York to Portland.

I grin, light-headed. Intoxicated despite the fact that I’ve only been drinking coffee. This is it: We’ve found our people. We are accepted. The sky burns into sunset and we should be pedalling to Jim’s, but I’m hesitant to part ways.

“If you’re still around tomorrow and want to chill, give me a call,” Damian says, writing down his number.

With the assurance that decent people have our back, Alisha and I pedal away, elated, bike lights blink-blinking crimson behind us.

No lights on at Jim’s place, though the unassuming one-level is hemmed by lush garden. There’s no answer when we knock, either, so we cross the street to a house with Tibetan prayer flags in the windows to borrow their phone and call his cell.

A man in Thai fisherman trousers and an airy cotton shirt answers the door.

“Namaste,” he says, bowing his smooth head toward us. His voice is deep and low, resonating in the entranceway. Heat radiates from inside.

“Namaste,” we respond.

“Does Jim live across the street?” I ask.

“Yes,” he says, looking directly at us. The man is gigantic, taller than the doorframe.

“Can we borrow your phone to call him?” I say.

“Yes,” he says. “Come in.”

The entranceway expands into an open studio to our right, a single black yoga mat facing the window and spider plants webbed toward the ceiling. My face burns hot with the sudden increase in temperature.

“How do you know Jim?” asks the man after he returns with the cordless.

“We met him on the street this afternoon,” Alisha says.

“I see.”

I dial Jim’s number but get the machine.

“Would you like some tea?” asks the man. “Good for digestion.”

But just then Jim’s bicycle pulls up. We say goodbye and walk across the street, the mystical yogi watching us like a giant Siamese cat through the front window.

Jim acts surprised to see us again, only half-present as he shows us where to park our bicycles in the garage. Jim’s wife is out of town at a conference; their children, around our age, off to college. We set up in his son’s old room.

“Sorry, I’m not myself today,” he apologizes.

We learn that Jim plays fiddle in a local band and works as manager of the university research farm. Alisha’s eyes light up when we hear this news—I know her agrarian heart has missed contact with the soil since she hit the road. I listen as she and Jim discuss innovations in permaculture, the effects of soil salinity on crop yields. Alisha describes life at the Ecovillage and her proposed Master’s research; Jim offers to show us around the farm before we leave town.

“Maybe we can see if Damian wants to meet afterward,” I suggest, remembering the scrap of paper in my back pocket, the electric buzz of being accepted into the fold of similar-minded individuals outside the Anarchist Bike Church earlier that night.

Alisha and I make chickpea curry and beet salad for dinner, while Jim speaks with his wife on the phone in their bedroom. More than half an hour later, Jim returns, distant again. He excuses himself for bed before the dishes are cleared. Alisha and I tidy the kitchen and stay up a while longer to drink mint tea and flip through Jim’s glossy coffee table books about Yosemite and Redwoods national parks.

THE THREE OF US RIDE OUT toward the university the following morning. Jim had suggested that Alisha and I leave our gear in the garage, and I revel in the lightness of riding without panniers. Jim pedals at a good clip and we follow behind, delighted to have someone else take the navigational reins for once. A bus towing a flatbed of bicycles passes us on the climb to the university.

“That’s the bike shuttle,” Jim explains. “It runs between downtown and campus.”

Similar to San Francisco, bike-friendly Santa Cruz boasts a comprehensive network of downtown and connecting bicycle routes. Cycling is a viable method of transportation. In comparison, bike lanes in Surrey are few and far between, respected by drivers about as much as a five-year-old’s chalk drawing. I wonder what it will take to change attitudes back home.

From shadowy trees the campus emerges, a smattering of 1960s brick buildings alongside modern facilities with floor-to-ceiling windows. It really is a university in the woods, bordered by meadows and protected stands of redwood. The mascot is Sammy the Slug, and residence includes a camper park where students live in RVs and share a communal kitchen and lounge space. I’m envious of these young people, strolling sun-dappled pathways in T-shirts on a mild November day. UC Santa Cruz is a world away from Simon Fraser University, the concrete fortress at the pinnacle of Burnaby Mountain.

We dismount when we reach a clearing of fields with low farm buildings.

“Jim!” calls a woman. “I didn’t think you were coming in today.”

Jim introduces us as we lock our bikes outside the farm office, explaining that he wanted to show us around before we left town. The woman nods gravely as we take our leave, Jim leading the way into the fields as he outlines their system for crop rotation. Once again, Alisha and Jim are chatting excitedly about garden matters. They seem to have adopted another language, one that I don’t follow. I walk a few feet behind, satisfied just to be outside on a sunny day, content that Alisha can have this opportunity to speak with someone on the same wavelength.

A man with a hay-textured beard and jeans rolled into his gumboots approaches Jim as we near the end of our tour.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” he says, placing a hand on Jim’s shoulder.

“Thanks,” Jim says.

“If there’s anything I can do.”

Jim nods.

Sorry for your loss? I glance toward Alisha, but she’s looking straight ahead, pretending that nothing has happened. A minute later we’re back at the bicycles.

“My brother just died,” says Jim, turning to face us in the shade of the building. “He committed suicide. Yesterday.”

I feel the breath slow in the back of my throat.

“He lives across the country. Haven’t seen him for years.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I say. But my words feel phony. Sorry—sorry is what you say after accidently stepping on someone’s heel in the checkout line. It’s not the right word, but it’s the only one I know.

“My wife offered to come home early,” he continues. “But it didn’t make sense for her to travel all that way and miss out on the conference.”

Jim no longer has a brother. I think about my sister, how inseparable we’ve become these couple of months, rarely more than a hundred feet apart. I lean in and give Jim a hug.

“I’m sorry,” I say again.

Alisha hugs Jim as well.

“Thanks,” he says. “I apologize for not saying anything yesterday. I guess I needed to pretend things were normal for a few hours.”

From the corner of the clearing, a V of Canada geese approaches, wings thrumming soundless against the cloud-streamer sky.

“I think I’ll stick around to take care of some paperwork,” Jim says.

He gives us a key so that we can pick up our panniers later.

My desire to meet up with Damian vanishes. All I can think about is Jim and his brother, how devastated I would feel in his position. What if our close call at Devil’s Slide had turned fatal? My body recoils as I relive the events of that morning, two days ago. I should never have been following so close. I wonder if the wringing in my stomach is in any way similar to the distanced anguish our mother feels, not knowing where we sleep at night, aware that anything could go wrong.

“What do you want to do?” I ask Alisha. We’ve spent the afternoon walking the boardwalk, watching the slippery, seal-like bodies of wetsuit-clad surfers ride the waves close to shore. We’ll need to hit the pavement soon if we want to cash in on the remaining hours of sunlight.

“Jim needs someone,” Alisha says.

I agree it doesn’t feel right to leave. I have no understanding of what Jim is going through, but my intuition tells me that a person in his situation shouldn’t be alone. And so after a pit stop at the grocery store, we return to Jim’s house, let ourselves in, and begin cooking dinner. Jim walks in just as the sky oranges into sunset.

“Can you do something with these?” he says, tossing a bread bag of earth-crusted carrots on the table. “Add them to the salad, maybe?”

In that moment, I know our decision to stay was the correct one. While we eat, I consider asking Jim if he wants to talk about what happened, but I fear unsettling this semblance of normalcy the three of us have slipped into. Instead, we discuss Jim’s hiking trips with his wife in Yosemite, long days in the mountains, and the joy of heading out on the open road, city lights paling behind you. Alisha and I are on an entirely different journey than Jim, but I feel as though there’s a reason we met him.

After dinner a woman with springy dark hair and a syrupy voice drops by for band rehearsal. Alisha and I eavesdrop from the kitchen table as she and Jim roll through their repertoire in the living room, Jim plucking the fiddle as she sings. They play soulful music, bold and twangy, unselfconscious. I let my imagination dance off the notes, falling with foot stomps and winging up with the sweetness of their melodies. Beside me, Alisha grins. Sleepy-tired, but content.

After breakfast the following morning, Jim offers us handfuls of mini organic chocolate bars left over from Halloween.

“Remember,” Jim says, “if you find yourselves in trouble, call me.”

As we roll out of the driveway, I turn back to see him. Hands on his hips, a strained grin. Plaid shirt rolled up at the sleeves. The thread running between us already tugging at my chest.

AFTER OUR TIME IN SANTA CRUZ, my legs are eager to move. Our couchsurfing hosts in Monterey, forty-five miles down the coast, expect us around dinner, about the time Jim’s wife should arrive home. Despite Santa Cruz’s excellent bike network, we waste nearly an hour navigating our way back to Highway 1, getting turned around a stone’s throw from the highway by a wire fence and a gully. By late morning we’re back on track, the wind hustling us onward as we chase the slow curve of the bay. We veer onto dusty backroads, past ranches and acres of farmland, the sour stink of fertilizer and cow dung heavy in the breeze. Twice we stop to snack on handfuls of trail mix and apples from Alicia the Second’s orchard. Ten miles north of our destination we merge with the ranks of cyclists, rollerbladers, and joggers on a paved path threading through coastal sand dunes toward the heart of Old Monterey.

With a few hours before we check in with our couchsurfing hosts, we park our bicycles and wander the waterfront. The streets are clean in Monterey. Every avenue lined with old-fashioned street lamps and cream-coloured buildings with red tile roofs. No trash, panhandlers, or pizza-eating students in the middle of the boulevard—nothing at all like Santa Cruz. Tourists armed with not-to-actual-scale visitor maps and cash-filled wallets emerge from ice cream parlours and Cannery Row souvenir shops, the smell of waffle cones and fudge replacing that of sardines and labourers’ sweat.

Our couchsurfing hosts, Dave and Julie, a pair of college students who share a shoebox basement suite with a beautiful, deaf Golden Retriever, treat Alisha and me to a meal we can’t afford.

“We get it,” says Julia. “Dave and I backpacked in New Zealand and Australia. We know things can be tight. Let us treat you.”

Since we’re headed for Baja, they suggest we go to their favourite Mexican restaurant, a funky, packed-in place decorated with bright ceramics and neon beer signs. The menu, in its mash-up of Spanish and English, intimidates me. I’d been intending to pursue my study of Spanish—I picked up a phrasebook in San Francisco—but so far I’ve only skimmed reviews on the back cover. Alisha, who studied Spanish as part of an undergrad language requirement, orders on my behalf: We split a plate of vegetarian enchiladas topped with chili sauce and grated cheddar, a pint of Tecate to share. Even with someone else covering the bill, we can’t seem to escape our frugality.

Luckily, the plate is enormous, half a glass of beer enough for me to turn chatty. I step into the nipped night air thankful and satisfied, the spotless streets of Monterey glimmering under shushed moonlight.

WE RIDE OUT FOR BIG SUR EARLY the following morning, detouring first along 17-Mile Drive, a famously scenic stretch of road winding along the windswept headlands of the Monterey Peninsula. The shoulder is luxurious, wide enough to be its own lane, and smooth as polished pine. Saturday morning riders stream by in logoed spandex.

At Carmel-by-the-Sea we merge back onto Highway 1, our spell of serenity swept away in four-lane traffic. I distract myself by peering down every gated driveway in hopes of spying some television celebrity. Carmel-by-the-Sea has a long-standing history as a haven for artists, writers, and reclusive celebrities; in the 1980s, Clint Eastwood did a stint as mayor. After a few miles, the residences begin to taper out and ahead, the San Lucia Mountains pitch into turbulent Pacific. My blood pumps faster as I realize that this, finally, is the Big Sur coastline—“the Big South.”

The terrain is the best kind of hilly, the type where you can ride the momentum from one peak to the next with minimal exertion. We roll along the top of the bluffs, sandwiched between blue sea, green hills, pale sky. A tail wind helps. While the incandescent sun shines bright, distant headlands remain indistinct in the mist. Toward this mystery we pedal, the landscape revealing itself one foot of pavement at a time.

Yellow diamonds remind drivers to watch out for bikers and no one honks at us for holding up the lane. I glance between the sharp eroding wall to our left and the long wash of surf on our right. Every bay, every craggy inlet with a parking garage-sized beach imbued with a sort of magic. At viewpoints people ask to take our picture. I imagine these photos in coffee-table albums, our hair forever wind-whipped and wild, sunlight dancing off our sweat-glistening thighs.

SOMETIME AFTER BIXBY CREEK BRIDGE, mid-afternoon, we begin to leapfrog another pair of cyclists. We don’t spot them for a while, and I wonder if they’ve pulled out ahead of us for good. Then we see their figures hunched over a flat in a pullout as we round a corner. We pedal over to check that they’ve got it covered, and at last meet Gordon and Juan.

“Where are you guys riding today?” asks Gordon. He’s bearded and burly. Everything from his bike frame to his clip-in shoes top of the line.

“We haven’t figured that out yet,” I say.

“Usually we just ride until sunset and find somewhere to camp,” says Alisha, casually. “Sometimes people invite us in.”

“We’ve got a couple of campsites reserved at Pfeiffer State Park,” says Gordon. “You could join us. We have tamales.”

“There are a few more cyclists, and the support van,” says Juan.

“And the wives,” adds Gordon.

They give us their campsite number and pedal into the mist.

“Gordon’s cute,” I say.

“If you like lumberjacks,” says Alisha.

“What are tamales?”

“A Mexican dish—corn husks stuffed with filling.”

The campground at Pfeiffer State Park is noisy with generators and family barbeques. A completely different kind of camping than the roughing it we’ve become used to. In a stroke of luck we find Juan, Gordon, and the rest of their party on our first loop. They’ve set up by the creek, semi-circled by a grove of lean redwoods.

“You made it!” cheers a blonde woman.

“This is my wife, Cindy,” says Juan.

The picnic table features a magnificent spread of chili, tortilla chips, tamales, and powdered mini-donuts. The cooler is tetrised with Corona and fruit juice.

“The joy of assisted touring,” says Gordon.

But it’s the espresso machine in the back of the van that impresses us the most.

By now, the rest of the group has migrated from the fire to meet us. I recognize some as cyclists who passed us earlier, but I’m disappointed to learn that while Gordon doesn’t have a wife, he has a girlfriend: an athletic-looking woman with cat-eye glasses and khaki capri pants with many specialized pockets.

“How do you all know each other?” I ask.

“We all work at REI,” says Gordon.

REI—Recreation Equipment, Inc.—is the American equivalent of the Canadian outdoor retailer MEC. Gordon explains that it’s common for the staff to organize weekend trips together. The REI crew includes outdoor enthusiasts of all sorts, from rock climbers to river kayakers, backcountry skiers, and of course, cyclists. Yet again, we’ve found ourselves among people we connect with.

“Grab a plate,” says Cindy, waving a lime-wedged Corona bottle in the direction of the picnic-table feast. “It’s all-you-can-eat!”

Alisha and I pass the evening as honorary members of the REI crew. Around the campfire, they deliberate the merits and drawbacks of cutting-edge outdoor gear with the seriousness other people reserve for debating politics and religion. Everyone has a misadventure to share. Alisha and I relate our harrowing experience on Devil’s Slide, and to my surprise, I feel better afterward. Putting the story into words transcends the fear—it’s easy to forget how close we came to the edge now that some time has passed.

As we stake the tent, I realize that this is the first time we’ve actually slept outside since the night prior to San Francisco. Alisha and I have been on a run of good fortune, surfing waves of serendipity from one town to the next. Crossing paths with the right people at just the right time.

“Like those nudist hippies said,” says Alisha, “the Universe provides. You just have to pay attention to what it’s offering.”

Pay attention. Not paying attention is what had gotten me—us—in trouble on Devil’s Slide. Conversely, could a discerning eye have something to do with our turn of fortune? Or is it simply good luck?