Author: Michael Durham

This will be our last post.  We have made it to Santa Barbara, one of our favorite places.  This piece of coast between San Simeon and Santa Barbara represents all the beauty that California is known for, without the chaos that California is also known for.  I think this is best described by a sign… Continue reading Southern California; Last Post

We are heading into Central California wine country the next two days.  Since Jan and I don’t know a lot about wines, we streamed the movie Sideways to educate us so we wouldn’t commit a faux pas.  All I learned was to not disrespect another man’s Pinot. We decided to take a back road to… Continue reading San Simeon to Pismo Beach

Pictured above is the San Simeon pier. it’s a rest day today, so I will start with some morning thoughts.  In preparation for our ride, I bought Apple watches for both Jan and I.  The primary reason was so we would always have a communication device with us if we got separated.  It also could… Continue reading San Simeon Rest Day

The picture above shows the Ragged Point Inn, our home for the night, up the cliff in the trees.  It was a great view from there but no cell service or WiFi.  The guy who checked us in mumbled something about using a land mine, but that didn’t sound like a good idea. Jan and… Continue reading Big Sur to San Simeon

This morning at breakfast, we decided that we were going to have to modify our eating habits as we were no longer burning an extra 3000 calories each day.  Breakfast was probably the meal that was most different than our normal day to day.  On the ride we found that we really had to load… Continue reading Monterey to Big Sur

I have decided to continue to blog the rest of the way, or until the whistle blower next to me testifies to Congress that my blog stresses out adolescent girls (and older women). We started out the 2nd phase of the trip with SAG+ support.  That’s where the SAG vehicle not only carries the gear,… Continue reading Novato to Monterey

We capped off the self-propelled part of the trip by walking across the Golden Gate Bridge.  It was about a two mile hike with incredible views the entire way.  That is truly a magnificent piece of engineering.  There is a fair amount of exposure (height) on the shared path for walkers and bikers going both… Continue reading Still in Novato

Here we are standing in North San Francisco Bay Area with Mount Tamalpais in the background.  Mount Tam, along with Crested Butte, CO are known as two birthplaces of mountain biking in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Jan is wearing her new athletic gear.  Saw the orthopedic specialist today and on a relative basis,… Continue reading Novato rest day

Things started out well, with a beautiful morning in Bodega Bay. Then on the ride we ran into 300 hundred Harley riders celebrating our arrival. Then after taking a final rest break to check navigation to our friends Tom and Judy outside of SF, Jan’s tire hit a ridge in the road as she was… Continue reading Bodega Bay to Novato

I learned this morning that those flowers that I highlighted on yesterday’s blog are called ‘Naked Ladies’ – Aka amaryllis belladonna.  If you don’t believe me Google “ naked ladies”.  Wait!  I just tried that and it doesn’t bring up pictures so flowers. Google instead “amaryllis belladonna”.  I apologize to anyone that was offended by… Continue reading Gualala to Bodega Bay, CA