Limekiln to San Simeon – 43 miles

I sleep about five hours, lie awake for 90 minutes, then fall back asleep for a couple more hours. Thinking back to the elevation profiles I glanced at on my cycling map, I’m pretty certain there are some merciless climbs waiting for me on today’s ride.

“Maybe not,” the optimist in me counters. “Maybe the toughest hills are behind me and today will be a gravy lick.”

But the ride starts ominously. The road out of the campground back up to Highway 1 is like a ladder, and I need to push the bike along, one of the few times on this entire trip that I have to resort to that.

Again the sky is clear and the air is cool. Wisps of fog drift over the coast as the morning sun warms the canyons.

After a half-hour, I come upon a queue of cars stopped at a one-way controlled traffic break. Knowing that the flagman will treat a slow bicycle differently than fast vehicles, I pedal up to the front of the queue and greet him with a wave.

“How’s it going?” he asks. “Where you headed?”

Although the ride has winded me, it has not yet exasperated me, so I’m amenable to chatting. “Today, San Simeon,” I say.

“Oh, yeah. That’s mostly downhill.” I doubt it, but I nod anyway. He smiles. “Hey, you want a water? I got some.” He points at an ice chest by the side of the road.

“No, but thanks for offering.” I point at the logo on his orange vest. “I’ve never heard of Avila Company. You guys do a lot of work on this road?”

“Yeah, we’re pretty big. I’m based in Paso.”

“Robles? That’s a long way from here. You drive out every day?”

“Only when it’s a close job, like this one. Hey, you don’t have all the cool gear that most cyclists have.”

It was only a matter of time until somebody had the candor to mention it. “Well, they know a lot that I don’t. I’m still new at this.”

His walkie-talkie crackles as his colleague at the south end of the break updates him on the northbound queue of cars. “Okay,” he replies into the microphone. “Listen, I got a cyclist up here. I’ll send all the cars first, so wait for him, right?”

“Copy that.”

The northbound cars stream through and the flagman flips his sign from STOP to SLOW. After the last car, I start pedaling. It is gratifying that the universe is taking such good care of me on a narrow, two-lane road several hundred feet above the rocks and surf, so I fist-bump the flagman as I pass. Within seconds I am whistling downhill, eyes riveted to the pavement in front of me and hands riveted to the brake levers.

There is little commerce on this stretch of Highway 1—the last shop I passed was two days ago—so the tiny store, hotel and restaurant at Gorda stand out. I stop for groceries. Multiple signs announce, “No public restrooms. Access with minimum $2 purchase.” I don’t need to use the restroom, but it’s obvious what most passing travelers value Gorda for. On the deck outside the store stands a coin-operated pay phone that charges $2 for three minutes, a lifeline for telephonically desperate motorists in a region where cellular service can be spotty.

Inside the store I pick out a muffin and three bananas.

“Ten-fifty,” says the proprietress, a wisp of a woman who has surely seen travelers of all stripes come through. I hand over the money without flinching, aware of shopkeepers’ economics in this part of the world but nevertheless relieved that I don’t have to buy gasoline here.

“How’s your season going?” I ask. “Better now that the highway is open?”

“Yes, better.”

“That must have been a rough spot for you. How long was it closed?”

“About three and a half years. Yes, it was a tough time indeed—” her voice catches briefly “—for all of us here.”

Outside, I spot a stone bench and have a mid-morning meal of muffin and banana, psyching myself up for the hills that I’m vaguely aware are out there waiting for me. I resume the ride.

At plenty of points along this stretch, The Road toys with people on bicycles.

“Lovely shoreline, isn’t it?” The Road says flirtatiously.

“It is,” I agree. “But you’ve got some hills in store for me, haven’t you?”

“Maybe. See that one off to the left, curving out of sight?”

“Yes.”

“Think you can handle it?”

“No problem.”

“Good. Remember that about an hour from now.”

Sure enough, just south of Gorda and inland are the M-hills. Slowing to 3 or 4 miles per hour, I climb about 700 feet in a mile, dip 500 feet downward in a nerve-racking plunge, then have to claw that 500 feet back again in another mile. With the day warming up, the climbs wear me out. Finally, raw gravity sends me plummeting back to sea level near Ragged Point. In total, it’s four or five of the kind of miles that only crazy people on bikes would travel.

The return to sea level also heralds a county change, from Monterey to San Luis Obispo (SLO), as the squiggly road straightens and flattens out. The hardest pedaling is behind me and the mountains and thick forests give way to vast, grassy hills that roll on for miles, tan and waterless under cloudless skies. Cattle dot the landscape in small herds of a dozen or two head. The shoulder magically broadens from negligible and forbidding to eight feet wide and welcoming. Best of all, a strong tailwind propels me southward comfortably, past Point Sierra Nevada and the Piedras Blancas Northern Elephant Seal Rookery, a series of long beaches populated at the water’s edge by basking elephant seals.

The state makes it easy to observe the seals, which naturally array themselves perpendicular to the shoreline. A large parking lot, graphic explainers and wooden benches encourage passersby to stop and see what the wildlife is up to.

“Nice,” say my thighs. “Now, can we get back on the road and take advantage of that booming tailwind? We can use the break.”

“Very well,” I reply, remounting the bike and pulling back onto the road. But a few minutes later, another irresistible photo opp presents itself: barely visible in a dense, green patch on the crest of a hill is Hearst San Simeon State Historical Monument, or Hearst Castle.

I pass familiar landmarks across the highway from Hearst Castle Road, including the pier, the thickly forested Donnay Point and the beach parking lot where I was cited for doing a doughnut in my sports car, back when I knew what to do with a compliant accelerator pedal. But the seat of my pants won’t allow me to stop for nostalgia now, eager as it is to get off the bike and celebrate the end of the hard work. I roll into Hearst San Simeon State Park, where a volunteer in the kiosk greets me enthusiastically. I head for the unoccupied hike-and-bike, pitch my tent, take a needed shower and then rest.

After an REI cook-it-in-a-pouch pasta dinner, it’s time to revel in having put behind me the part of the bike tour I most dreaded: the stretch from Monterey to San Simeon. I’ve made it through that stretch in one piece, my limbs all operate as before, the bike still functions reasonably well and I’ve seen things I’d never have seen from an automobile.

Remember the one about the guy who keeps hitting himself in the head with a hammer because it feels so good when he stops? A long ride is in that same category. However, the only thing more difficult would be to stay home and not go at all.

And as I drift off to sleep, I’m already forgetting how difficult it has been.

New Brighton to Monterey – 43 miles

I welcome the return of cloudy skies. Sunday morning traffic through Aptos is light and hills are few as The Road takes me on its 40-mile crescent around Monterey Bay.

Today’s leg is brought to me by agriculture, notably by hundreds of acres of strawberry fields forever, starting from Manresa Uplands State Beach to well past the Pajaro River.

Artichokes abound as well, nearing the point of harvest.

The bike route makes a detour to keep me away from Watsonville and Castroville, sending me instead along eerily quiet roads, their asphalt beaten by generations of tractors and agricultural machinery.

The detour is meant to shave off a couple of miles, but the end of the day’s ride begins to feel farther and farther away, and even the change from Santa Cruz into Monterey County doesn’t make me feel any closer. I rejoin thunderous, two-lane traffic on Highway 1 through Moss Landing to reach Del Monte Boulevard and the Monterey Bay Coastal Recreation Trail.

The trail is a triumph of rails-to-trails planning, stretching 18 miles from Castroville in the north to Pacific Grove in the south, over the Southern Pacific railroad tracks that used to serve Cannery Row. Today it is a priceless urban asset, accommodating joggers, cyclists, pedestrians and young families.

Well thought-out though the trail may be, I manage a wrong turn on it and spend more time studying the map than pedaling. Worse yet, an afternoon tailwind has turned into a strong crosswind, less vexing than a headwind but equally unwelcome when you’ve lost your way and are already doubting The Road’s benign indifference. The mile markers for Monterey don’t help; they never appear often enough and when they do, they don’t count down fast enough. It’s Nature’s way of reminding me how far 43 miles really is.

Eventually, signs for Monterey’s tourist attractions appear, and my mood improves. So much so, that I pause for a selfie at a tiny pop-up protest on the outskirts of town.

I’ve planned a two-night stay in a Monterey hotel on the inland side of the peninsula. My nephew treats me to dinner at a Mexican restaurant and schools me on the personal trainer’s approach to balanced nutrition for physically hellacious endeavors like the one on which I’ve embarked.

“Fats and proteins, Uncle John. Your body makes energy from those. That’s what you’re gonna need to get through this.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“May I have your beans, then?”

“Sorry. I need them. I’ll order another side for you, though.”

Later, in my hotel room on Munras Avenue, I look forward to catching up on sleep and functioning more or less normally for a day and a half. I also intend to give my legs a break the next day.

Nevertheless, I intend to take the excursion that every visit to the Monterey Peninsula should include—especially when cyclists get to take it at no cost.

Half Moon Bay to Costanoa (Pescadero) – 29 miles

It is a short ride today, with only one tough climb, near San Gregorio. Skies remain overcast, with occasional drizzle—ideal for riding—and a strong tailwind pushing me up gentle slopes.

There is plenty of forest on this stretch, and plenty of long, broad fields on both sides of the highway. There is also a remarkable variety of commonplace but somehow significant things I wish my memory could permanently photograph: the endless road border of wildflowers (mustard, thistles and a dozen others I can’t identify but would probably call “weeds” if they were in my yard), the occasional military installation marked by U.S. flags and huge antennas, the ad-hoc roadside memorials to the faithful departed, the deltas where coastal creeks both wide and narrow merge with the ocean, the beach scenes and rugged cliffs.

I stop at the side of the road for a mid-morning meal when along rides a couple my age, catching up to me from behind. Cyclist camaraderie prompts them to pause their ride, and we chew the fat for a while.

Mind you, I’m riding out of some kind of misguided allegiance to an item on a bucket list; but unlike me, this couple rides because they revel in it. 

“We live in Alaska,” they tell me, “and we’ve ridden the ALCAN Highway, through the Yukon and British Columbia to Vancouver. This time we’re riding from Seattle to San Diego.”

They also breathlessly describe their cycling trips to Minnesota and Wisconsin, where mosquitoes are more of a problem than hills are. After a few minutes of their enthusiastic tales, they rise, remount their bikes and resume the road. I feel inspired but in sudden need of a nap.

Along this stretch near Pescadero there are few towns and even fewer campgrounds. Just inland from Año Nuevo State Reserve is Costanoa, a glamping (glamour-camping) resort surrounded by tall forests of pine and eucalyptus, with a dedicated area for pitching tents.

By early afternoon, the north wind that was so welcome while I was riding has become a cold, gusty nuisance in the campground, and I just can’t get warm. By early evening, the tent area around me is filled with young families huddled in blankets, the children making smores over the fire.

It’s reassuring to think that AI will never replace any of that. Probably.

Costanoa to New Brighton (Santa Cruz) – 34 miles

The north wind persists deep into the night. I listen as it charges up from the shore, rattles through acres of eucalyptus branches and leaves, then finally spills into Costanoa. In the morning, heavy fog drifts up from the coast, but early dawn light glows behind the hills to the east.

The youngest campers wake first. Their parents follow groggily, and the campground comes slowly to life. I wolf down a breakfast of oatmeal and banana, strike camp, load up the bike and resume the route to the south.

The brisk north wind persists, and on this Saturday morning, clutches of cyclists are plying Highway 1. Like me, the southbounders enjoy a 15-to-20-naut tailwind:

The northbounders, well, not so much. Those without panniers on their bike are recreational cyclists, probably from the Santa Cruz area, out for exercise. They know what they’re in for, so they curl themselves over the handlebars and contend with the elements. But the heavily loaded northbounders have either not gotten the memo about prevailing north winds or have chosen to ignore it; they are long-distance traveling up the coast straight into the wind. I appreciate their lot but am glad I do not share in it.

Every change of county is a milestone, however small. By mid-morning the sky has cleared and I have crossed the county line from San Mateo into Santa Cruz.

The easy ride prompts me to notice yet more things I wish I could remember permanently: large ponds and reservoirs randomly located on either side of the highway, bird songs (when the absence of passing vehicles allows me to hear them), offshore rock formations sculpted and beaten by millennia of tides and swell, volleys of Spanish-language conversation I pick up among people working in the fields and farm buildings.

I don’t recall ever having been in Santa Cruz, but I immediately see what all the fuss is about. A well-marked bike path starts on West Cliff Drive then hugs the cliff as it passes the lighthouse, the Municipal Wharf, the Beach Boardwalk and the Giant Dipper roller coaster. The whole place looks like weekend fun for thousands of people, even though the afternoon sun is prodding temperatures into the seventies and cycling is beginning to feel like real work.

But by the time I reach the campground at New Brighton State Beach, I’ve long since exited the fun zone of Santa Cruz. I have traversed the town of Twin Lakes and gotten lost near Capitola Beach, so I’ll have to wait for a future visit to properly enjoy Santa Cruz.

Besides, the bike wants attention.

“Kinda taking me for granted, aren’t you?” it asks.

“Whaddya mean?”

“Have you looked at my front tire lately?”

I look. No tread left. “I’ll get another year out of it,” I say with a shrug.

“Yeah, but maybe I won’t. It’s a pothole away from blowing out. And what about my brake pads? You think they’ll make it through all the hills on this trip?”

“Hope so.”

I have to admit that the bike is the unsung hero of this adventure. It’s a touring bike I bought in a pawn shop for $250 about ten years ago. I bought it mostly because it has 27 speeds, and I’m easily impressed by large numbers like 27. The bike is not poorly made at all, but I’ve worn it down. I’m not fastidious about maintaining it, and now it’s something of a heap, a relic, a blunderbuss on wheels, a mechanical picture you’re supposed to find ten things wrong in. Plus, it’s as slow as the seven-year itch. Especially when I’m on it.

It’s not the bike’s fault that I don’t feel sentimental about it; it’s my fault. In unguarded moments I sometimes cast a fond glance in its direction and think about the thousands of miles I’ve racked up on it. But at the core, I regard it as little more than a soulless frame and tires that connect the determination in my head with Planet Earth.

Somehow, it knows.

“I’d run better if you took care of me.”

“I see. Is that why you’ve been slipping gears? And dumping your chain just when a hill gets serious?”

“My chain’s a mess.”

“But I cleaned, tuned and lubed the whole power train before we left.”

“That was a hundred twenty miles ago. Look at it now.”

I flip the bike onto its back and wipe a section of the chain with a rag; the rag comes away pitch black with road dust and old oil. Even I know that’s not right, so I invest the entire rag in wiping down the chain, then apply some light oil to it. But it’s a palliative measure; after all, I can’t deep-clean a bike chain in the middle of a trip.

“Sorry,” I say. “I’ll do better when we get home.”

“Hope so,” the bike sighs.

Then, the counseling session at an end, I turn my attention to the ocean soundscape and splendid afternoon views of the coast from the cliffs near the hike-and-bike.

Monterey to Big Sur – 31 miles

“Very well,” says The Road. “Up to this point we’ve just been playing parlor games. Now we shall see what we shall see.”

Fair enough. I know from occasional glances at the elevation profiles in my cycling map that a number of sharp, steep climbs await me and my thighs in the coming days. Preferring real-time exhaustion to forward-looking dread, I have avoided studying those profiles too closely.

And in fact, it turns out that the first punishing hill starts just outside my hotel and rises 500 feet in less than a mile, up Munras, Soledad and Viejo Roads to a dizzying traffic circle that leads to Highway 1 southbound. Panting madly along Viejo, I encounter a road crew setting up for the day. The flagman sees me crawling along at 3 miles a damn’ hour and, in a moment of start-the-shift-with-a-smile good humor, raises his SLOW sign and gestures at it in mock warning. He and his colleagues chatter briefly in Spanish then laugh, which makes me laugh. Eventually, I reach the crest.

Carmel-by-the-Sea has the reputation for being beautiful, but I’m too busy careening down the other side of the hill at 30 miles a damn’ hour in the morning commute to notice. Past the Carmel River and into Carmel Highlands, fewer cars are on the highway.

Mostly, vehicles respect me on this stretch, even more than I would were I the one behind the wheel. In some kind of tacit deference to cyclists, the drivers give me noticeably wide berth, crossing the median stripe with their left-side tires—I can plainly hear the center rumble strip at work—and often crossing entirely into the oncoming lane. I appreciate that, for there is no bike lane and rarely more than a foot of shoulder for me to occupy.

The skies are cloudy but still dry, and the air is cool. No wind. Fog shrouds the hills behind Garrapata State Park, where I stop for a mid-morning bite and, like Huck Finn gratefully returning to the Mississippi, celebrate my return from urban Monterey to the genuine Cabrillo Highway ride.

While sitting by the road, I hear a couple speaking French as they hike back up the path from the beach to their car. We exchange nods when they pass me.

“Did you enjoy the view?” I ask, resisting the temptation to chat with them in their language.

“Yes,” replies the woman, “it’s quite a show, isn’t it?”

I’ve found that the beauty of places like Utah and the California coast resonates differently with French-speaking people than with, say, German or Spanish speakers. Or maybe French speakers have a way of expressing awe that is just closer to the surface. The couple return to their car and drive on.

It’s hard to overstate the significance of traveling by bike—or by any conveyance with wheels, for that matter—in this part of the world. Following disastrous rains several years ago, parts of Highway 1 between Carmel and San Simeon have been closed due to landslides, and the stretch has been open to through traffic for only the past few months. The killer hills, the microscopic shoulder and the years-long closure are all facets of a single reality: Highway 1 is a road where Nature does not want one, especially not on this leg. Like any forbidden fruit, it’s all the more appealing, and riding here feels all the more rewarding.

Later in the morning I reach Bixby Bridge, where northbound and southbound tourists converge for photo opps. I’m a tourist, so why should I be any different from them?

South of the Little Sur River, Point Sur juts into the ocean. The volcanic rock now anchors a California state park that features a 130-year-old lighthouse.

Apart from the toxic shock of the morning’s initial climb, it’s not a tough day on the bike. I coast on the downhills, take breaks for food, water and selfies, stop for road work, watch the river flow alongside the highway and finally hem and haw for twenty minutes over the kind of sandwich to buy at the General Store in the town of Big Sur.

At Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park, the unoccupied hike-and-bike is ensconced in a grove of towering redwoods.

The sun peeks only intermittently through the coastal fog, but even if there were more sunlight, little of it would make it to ground through the thick boughs, foliage and tree trunks. I sit at a picnic table, dawdling the afternoon away, when another cyclist walks his bike onto the site.

“Can you find a spot?” I call jokingly.

“Hope so,” he replies. “Not really mobbed, is it?”

Once he has settled in, we have a meal together. Gil starts a new job as a sales engineer for a technology company next week and is savoring the break with a four-day cycling loop starting and ending in Monterey. Like me, he has weathered the bruising climb earlier in the day; unlike me, he has the advantages of youth, low gears, strong legs and mountain-biking experience to fend off exhaustion.

“How far south are you going?” I ask.

“Tomorrow I’ll go to Limekiln,” he says.

“Me too.”

“Yeah. That’s mostly downhill. Then the next day I’ll cut inland, up over the hills—about four or five thousand feet high—then back north through King City, Greenfield and Carmel Valley Road. Eventually, to Monterey.”

I blanch. There’s no disgrace in a ride like mine, but other people’s extremes certainly put it in perspective.

“Have you ridden Highway 1 much?” he asks.

I tell him about my crash-and-burn a couple of years ago coming out of Muir Beach.

“Oh, you mean on Shoreline Highway? I used to ride that on weekends when I lived in The City, but always downhill. I wouldn’t climb that on a bet. It’s a beast. I can see why you bonked. I’ve bonked like that plenty of times, mostly on mountain trails.”

I feel the color come back into my cheeks, and a frisson of confraternity with dedicated cyclists like Gil. I guess bonk happens to us all.

San Simeon to Morro Bay – 23 miles

I hear the moisture in the tent before I see it: condensate on the rain fly where the cold, wet ocean air has found the warmth I’ve generated inside the tent, such that water droplets are landing on the floor. Still, it’s because of fog, not rain.

While eating breakfast and striking camp, I hum The Rolling Stones’ “This Could Be the Last Time.” I can’t think of anyplace else I want to cycle-tour after this trip—least of all Minnesota or the ALCAN Highway—so this could indeed be the last time I do this.

I ride past the campground kiosk upon exiting and see the same friendly volunteer who checked me in the day before. He wishes me bon voyage.

“Thanks.”

“You looked pretty haggard when you rolled in here yesterday. Where are you headed today?”

“Morro Bay.”

“Oh, yeah,” he says with a dismissive wave of his hand. “You should be in for an easier ride today. That’s mostly downhill.”

I marvel at how many people in this part of the world say that. But in this case, I have a strong hunch it skews toward the truth.

On the road I see signs for Cambria, a town I have never visited. A reliable source has told me that couples visit Cambria when their marriage is in trouble. I don’t fit that visitor profile, but the town strikes me as the optimal place to wait out the morning gray with a hot chocolate.

I miss the west turn for Cambria’s Moonstone Beach, and the part of town east of the highway seems more attractive anyway, so I turn left at the light and find a cafe. They serve good, Mexican hot chocolate, conscientiously prepared by one of the Spanish-speaking owners. I sit sipping it, trying to read the faces of passing couples for signs of marital tension. Or, if they’ve been here a while, for signs of renewed optimism. I see neither and decide my attention is better applied to my cycling map.

Customers in flannel shirts and work boots enter the cafe and order in Spanish, and while I understand only snatches of their conversation, I’m glad to be within earshot of them. This ride has confirmed my hunch that in California, the language of construction—maybe of all infrastructure—is Spanish. A quartet of tradesmen sit near me conversing in Spanish; when I beg their pardon in English to ask for directions out of town, they graciously switch languages and tell me the way.

The wind propels me past small farms near Harmony, then off Highway 1 and onto Ocean Avenue in Cayucos, where I buy take-away lunch from a sandwich shop. A half-hour later I ring the doorbell at the home of friends in Morro Bay, and I’m done for the day.

Relaxed company, long conversations, the backdrop of Morro Rock, a home-cooked meal and even a Dodger game on a big-screen TV ensue, then a night in a comfortable bed.

No tent.