Wow… if I didn’t mess up on the count we have been on the road for exactly 10 weeks. Our last night in a tent for a while wasn’t the best with the thunderous sound of the waves crashing on the beach, a distant foghorn blasting every 4 seconds and one of our fellow bikers on the site shouting out in his sleep occasionally.
We crawled out of a dew-wet tent into a cold dark morning. We skipped breakfast so that we could get on the road as early as possible, but by the time we were packed up our neighbours were up too so ended up chatting with them until the sun was high enough to provide a little warmth.
The initial section of the ride was through the beach park, having to push the bikes around locked park gates as it was before the 8am opening time.
The first half of the 30 miles to the Golden Gate Bridge followed the hard shoulder of Highway 1, which had been formally designated a cycle track. The road was reasonable flat, the wind was still behind us and the thought of being close out our final destination the miles passed by in surprisingly quick succession.
We stopped at the sight of a car park and portaloo enough miles into the day’s cycle for the morning milk intake to be demanding release and a few biscuits are required to fuel the next few miles.
While munching on biscuits a chap on an electric bike accompanied by two balls of fluff called Scout and Truffles pulled up to ask where we were heading. Tim’s wife isn’t into cycling, so due to dodgy knees and a love for the outdoors he treated himself to an electric mountain bike that he uses to take his dogs out to explore the local countryside.
By the time we were at the junction that Highway 1 became a freeway and required us to bugger off and find another way into San Francisco we had been on the road for less than two hours and were in danger of crossing the Golden Gate Bridge before noon.
Trying to cross the road to get off Highway 1 added almost 15 minutes to the cycle. When Skyline Drive, the only alternative road to Highway 1 available to us, seemed to head for the heavens at the angle of a skiing black run we realised we may not cross the bridge in the mid-afternoon after all. We made it to the top without stopping, albeit at the pace of an injured snail. We even managed to embarrass a young chap on a race bike that gave up less than halfway up, with him pretending he wasn’t planning to go up after all the moment he saw us passing.
We took a few minutes break at the top to make sure our brakes were functioning before daring the decent. As we headed down the hill a couple on a tandem, with a recumbent seat in the front and a normal seat at the back, were coming up the hill over the other side. Deborah was already enjoying the freewheel to stop, but I pulled over for a minute. I didn’t get their names as we chatted from opposite sides of the road, but they were from France and were cycling from Canada to Chile, having already been on the road for 6 months and planning to be cycling for another year, putting our wee cycle into perspective.
UPDATE: In February 2020, just over two months after this encounter we went out and bought one of these awesome machines, a HASE Pino Tour, ours with Rohloff gears, with the intention of it being our round the world tour bike! đŸ™‚
We turned off Skyline Drive onto the Great Highway, following the coast road with its spectacular beaches and dunes toward San Francisco.
Rather than continuing around the road, we pulled off the road at Lands End Lookout. Many years ago I had walked the wooded trails through this park and remembered it offers a particularly stunning first sight of the Golden Gate Bridge. While taking in the scenery we chatted to a couple, Tony and Helen, for a while about our journey, what we had learned from the experience and what we had planned next.
With time ticking on we headed along the trail when rounding a bend there it was, the magnificence of the Golden Gate Bridge in all its glory, it’s red structure contrasting beautifully with the blue sky.
We pulled over at a viewpoint to take a photo when a chap came over and asked if we would like him to take a photo of the two of us, which we did. Fred gave us a short history lesson of the scene in front of us while we talked about our trip, before another couple turned up, which was prompt to end our conversation so that he could offer to take their photo and give them the same history lesson. Come to think of it, when we turned up, Fred had just finished giving the same history lesson to another couple. A very nice chap that clearly is proud of his local area.
As we continued further along the trail a sign with a cycle with a cross through it made it clear we weren’t welcome. We dismounted and pushed the bikes instead, but soon realised that the sign wasn’t for the safety of pedestrians, but more that there was no way that even pushing would a cyclist be able to make it up the steps cut into the hillside that lay before us. Retracing our steps we rejoined the cycle track, cutting through Lincoln Park Golf Course to rejoin the road.
With the Golden Gate Bridge in view, we continued along El Camino Del Mar toward Presidio. Just as we were entering Presido, following a bike track along a quiet road, with 3.6 miles to our final destination, the viewpoint at the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge, Deborah’s front tyre deflated with a noise a snake would have been proud of.
We pulled over and Deborah got to work. The hole in the inner-tube was a few millimetres long with an equally big hole in the tyre, although no foreign object that we could find that might have caused it. With the tyre back up to pressure using our last inner-tube, we pushed on to the Golden Gate Bridge Welcome Centre.
The west side of the bridge was closed, so cyclists were forced onto the east side to contend for space with pedestrians. While the path has lane markings, splitting the limited space equally between cyclists and pedestrians, with so many tourists on the bridge taking photos, both on bikes and on foot, we almost crashed in sight of the finish line a few times during that last crazy mile.
Eventually, we made it unscathed and without any pending lawsuit to the Golden Gate Bridge View Vista Point, which while a mouthful was also the official end of our 70-day adventure, through eight states (nine if we count stepping into Indiana on our first day) while cycling approximately 3200 miles (5,150 km).
We celebrated with leftover bread from yesterday, warm water and a few remaining crisp crumbs. We took photos, had photos taken of us and chatted to a few people interested in what could possibly motivate anyone to make such a journey when we could have used a car instead.
As a fitting end to our journey, we talked to a young couple, Josh and Courtney. They had cycled across the bridge on their unladen bikes, but in a couple of weeks, their bikes would be packed up ready for their first bike tour, to Peru.
It was a strange feeling to be at the end of such an adventure. We never thought about how we would feel at the end, but it wasn’t a feeling of jubilation or achievement as you might have expected. It was the end of something that neither of us wanted to end, so the feeling sweeping over us was more of sadness. We were at the end of our journey, surrounded by more people and more noise than we had experienced in 70 days and felt a little deflated and lost.
We spent less than 30 minutes at the vista, by which time it was close to 2pm. With the Marriott Union Square and a comfy bed less than 6 miles away we headed off back across the bridge and on into the city.
JOB DONE… TIME TO PLAN THE NEXT ONE!!