Today was a big day for our team; we hit the West Coast for the first time during our ride! It was a momentous moment for our team being able to see the Pacific Ocean for the first time after spending months on the bike. It’s great to see how far we’ve come as a team. We started from the Atlantic Ocean on the East Coast, but more accurately, a lake in the surrounding area, since we didn’t have direct access to the ocean, then we hit a marsh in Arcata Bay a couple of days prior, to now, meeting the Pacific Ocean! We had many great stops along the way today to get to the coast, including our ride out of the Redwoods and getting a little bit dizzy!
quote of the day
“In two and a quarter miles, turn around.”
ride overview
Mileage: 91.7 Miles
Elevation: 6,960 ft.
Points of Interest: Shrine Drive Thru Tree, The Redwoods, Daily Grind, Confusion Hill, Pacific Ocean
Ride Dedication: Roman Huchko
tales of the trail
Riding out of the Redwoods today, the team stopped by the Shrine Drive-Thru Tree to ride our bikes through a Redwood tree! We spent a solid amount of time in this area, adding an extra 3 miles to our ride today due to the number of times we looped around to drive through the gigantic tree! It was a blast! We also took this time to explore the area, admiring wooden statues and entering tree-house-like structures. It felt like an amusement park, but for bikes! After our little adventure, some groups stopped at the Daily Grind nearby for some coffee, and there, we met Kiwi the pug! Kiwi was adorable and loved a good butt scratch, heading to whoever would pet her the longest.
We were on the highway once again today, along with some busy roads with narrower shoulders. But all of the amazing locations we visited today made it worth it! After our ride out of the Redwoods, we had a rest stop at Confusion Hill! Confusion Hill is an attraction that includes something called the “gravity hose”. This structure gives visitors optical illusions, similar to the perspective on a gravity hill, it made us all dizzy! Another interesting fact we learned about this attraction was that it has a strong association with the animated show, Gravity Falls. Confusion Hill actually heavily inspired aspects of the Gravity Falls show!
After getting all dizzy, the team hit the road again, but this time, constantly on our toes as we were on narrower roads and cars were inching right past us! After the busy roads, we had a climb, and right after, we had one of the windiest descents of the ride! Every couple of seconds, there would be a curve, turn, switchback; it involved a lot of technicality, and it was a spectacular descent to play around with countersteering on the bike and enjoy the forestry. Soon after finishing the descent, the team reached the West Coast for the first time! It was a highlight of the trip, being able to see the Pacific Ocean for the first time after biking for 74 days! The team stopped at the first pull-off to take pictures with the ocean in the background to commemorate the beginning of the end. Reaching the West Coast was a massive step for our team, and everyone was so excited and proud of one another for reaching it this far. Soon after, the team pulled off at a beach to get some much-needed pictures with the sunset on the West Coast; taking the iconic, “bike-above-the-head while facing the sunset” picture, which our team would see at the end of every team meeting during the school year!
After admiring the sunset and the Pacific Ocean, the team finally reached our stayover for the night at the Mendocino Coast Parks and Rec Center. There, we were greeted by our hosts with a warm smile and given a BBQ donation for dinner! It was delicious, and sleeping in a gymnastics area was amazing, as we didn’t have to set up sleeping pads, as the cushioned padding was satisfactory for our team to sleep on. Thank you to the Mendocino Coast Parks and Rec Center for their hospitality and eagerness to host and meet our team!
THE Iconic Beach Photo (ft. Sofia)
cyclist’s corner
Today’s Riders: Yuncong Geng and Sofia Sivilotti