Day 1 Day 0

A strange thing when something long anticipated suddenly becomes reality. Of course we have always known that the start would not be a starting line sunshine, thousands of cheering spectators and a gunshot to mark the beginning of our journey but we had expected a more clear line between “now we have not started yet” and “now we have started”.

Yesterday we took our two bike travel cases to Transgroup Worldwide Logistics. They will send them to New York. Afterwards we unloaded our bicycles in San Francisco Airport’s rental car return and rode the 20 kms back to our hotel. I had my first puncture after about 5 kms and halfway into San Francisco Troels hit a hole in the road. I had not bothered ro bring a spare tube nor a pump, so Troels earned his new name as “El Mecanico”, because he had. We were lucky that we had San Francisco’s primary Trek dealership just around rhe corner from our hotel, so we could buy a new tyre and replish our stock of spare tubes and even out the disc on one of the bikes which had been bent in transport.

Back in our hotel room we started to plan our Friday departure with a fresh weather forecast and our different maps. The Golden Gate Bridge would propably be covered in morning fog. In addition hereto we came in doubt whether we were allowed to cross the Petaluma River on route 37 or if we had to go all the way up to Petaluma to cross. Instead we consulted Google, bilemap.net and our Garmins and concluded that we should roll down to the Ferry Terminal and take the boat to Vallejo.

Wheel dip in the Pacific

We were then suddenly in a rush to go and make the ceremonial wheel dip in the Pacific Ocean which by our definintion encompassed the outer parts of the San Francisco Bay.

Wearing our two different company jerseys

If you sense a bit of disappointment it is right but at the SF Ferry Terminal I was reminded (No. 6 reason to go on a bicke trip. No. 1-5 will follow in a later post) exactly why we are doing this. A guy sitting on a bench started to talk to talk to me. I suspected that he was one of the many homeless you see in San Francisco. He asked a lot about the bikes, where we were headed and so on. He quickly calculated that New York in around 30 days would mean 100 miles a day. Then he got up and pulled up his phone to show me his steel horse. Which was a little more sturdy bike type with a small trailer for his loudspeaker. It turned out that Reginal, as he introduced himself, lived in SF, but toured on a large part of his life with his trumpet. After several tours up and down the west coast, he was now planning to cross the country to New York, though his buddy on the bench made a facial impression indicating that New Yorkers are very nose in the sky people. Finally Reginald turned on his loudspeaker and dug up his trumpet and blew us a farewell and good luck serenade. This was a reminder to me, what this tour is about. Maybe it is not the grand vistas but the small perks like these that will be remembered. When you squeeze all the must see sites and instagramable places into a short vacation. I will now remember Reginald forever and I was even rewarded for my positive attitude by getting my Golden Gate moment in the afternoon.

From Vallejo we criss crossed our way up to Folsom along Interstate but never on the highway. Lunch in Davis – wonderful small University town and much of the trip on excellent bike paths – where one place north of Sacramento we found our Petite Golden Gate along the American River Bike Trail. We might see more of American River since it runs its source is Mountain Meadow lake towards Lake Tahoe, where we are headed tomorrow.

I will probably burden you with more statistics the coming days. Today just the remark that Garmin’s GPC is magnificent. Though Troels’ sometimes recommended another route than mine it always found back on track and recommended some very traffic poor trails and roads. We did around 100 miles or 160 k today.

By the way Troels is active on Instagram with bikingusa2019 and I am to be found at andersstj now and then.