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.