REST DAY IN MENDOCINO & RENEWING AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE

DAY 34

SATURDAY 7 MAY 2016

MANCHESTER TO MENDOCINO

1120 - 1540

50.16 km (31.17 miles)
Av.Speed: 15.1 km/h (9.8 mph)
Max. Speed: 60.6 km/h (37.7 mph)
Time On Bike: 3h 18m 16s

The unofficial 3:1 schedule for me on this tour has been for 1 day of rest for every 3 days of riding.

Since San Francisco, this has stretched to 5 days and with the amount of hill climbing to negotiate each day, my legs have been feeling just a little on the heavy side.

Mendocino was the next targeted rest stop with a view to an ugly monster known as Leggett Hill, which is approaching within days.

Leggett is the much feted 2000 ft climb just north of Fort Bragg, which is well-known as the highest point on the entire Pacific Coast.

I'm not exactly looking forward to it and the last thing I need is to be half-cooked before taking it on.

By current calculations, the big day will be Tuesday and I would ideally like to be well-rested, which will allow me Sunday as a day to gather myself.

Monday looks like being a short 20-mile trundle to MacKerricher Beach and then for the big one on Tuesday.

At this rate, I should be hitting the Oregon border in about a week before heading onto Portland, which will kind of be the next contact with civilisation, so to speak.....

RUSSIAN GULCH BEACH, MENDOCINO

MENDOCINO VILLAGE @ DUSK

PATTERSON'S PUB, MENDOCINO

TIM BRIDGMAN

I was both pleased and surprised to come across Tim Bridgman again today.

My hill-climbing strategy so far has meant that if it 's getting too much, I stop and rest.

And if the hill is too steep, I get off and push.

I've done plenty of both so far and there's likely more to come.

So there I was, halfway up a steady grade just south of Elk today and having a bit of a blow.

Coming up behind me, I noticed, was another touring cyclist - the first I'd seen for days in either direction, by the way - and upon closer inspection, I realised it was Tim.

I had met Tim on my very first night on the road in Malibu, when both of us had been shafted for nearly USD$50 to pitch out tents on rock-hard gravel in an RV park (granted, with nice views of the Malibu coastline), but both fairly disillusioned with the general state of affairs.

So to run into each other by chance almost exactly a month later was a little uncanny.

In fact, I knew I'd only been about a day behind Tim all the way to Monterey but after this, with my detour to the national parks and unable to follow Tim's blog due to lack of recent updates, I'd lost track and assumed he was probably a good couple of weeks up the way.

Not so apparently.

Whilst we've enjoyed different journeys to date, we're both still upright and heading in the same direction.

Should you not have read some of my earlier posts, I have made mention of Tim's epic adventure which began back in 2012 in Norway and has brought him thus far to northern California.

It has been a trip and three-quarters by any standards and was also blighted by unbelievable tragedy in 2014 when his wife was killed in Bolivia after being hit by a car.

One hell of a story indeed and as I've said before, all credit to Tim for continuing in the face of such adversity!