Day's run - 41.3
Total elapsed miles - 1248.4
Time in saddle - 2:57
Average for day - 13.9 mph
Max for day - 27.4
July 21, 1961 - Woke up at 5:45 A.M. Ate rest of bread and honey and started out at 6:30. A thick fog turned to a real drizzle and I got pretty wet and muddy. Rode some freeways near Oxnard and Ventura. Came throug Malibu (lunch there) and Sta. Monica. Met kid on bike in Malibu who directed me to Compton. Got to Bill and Dianah's at 3:45. Waited 10 minutes and Dianah came in. Bill working swing shift. Be home at midnite. Will let them take my gear in and ride home in A.M. Sure is good to be home. Must get in touch with Marylou. Made 91 miles.
No 1961 diary entry for July 22. Ride home of about 90 minutes was uneventful.
Bill was (and still is) my older brother, by two years and three months. He was married, living and working in Compton when, before the Watts riots of 1965, it was still racially mixed and offered factory jobs, and his wife Dianah was expecting their first child.
July 8, 2011 - Went to sleep early and awoke early in our hotel on Ventura Blvd., in the San Fernando Valley, about 30 minutes from yesterday's end point. Stopped for breakfast at a old cafe on Topanga Canyon Road and launched the final day's ride at 8:15.
1: Chandler the skateboarder Westport, CA
2. A roadside attraction, Humbug Mt., OR
3. An Adventure Cycling-recommended alternate route, north of Crescent City, CA
4. Old road, new road, south of Garberville
4. Drive-through redwood, Leggett CA
5. Bob's cousin Cathy's, Mill Valley CA
6. On Golden Gate Bridge
7. Bixby Bridge and ascent, Big Sur, CA
8. Morro Bay and Rock, CA
9. Homecoming, Long Beach, CA, day 19, July 8, 2011
10. Wheel dipping, Alamitos Bay, Long Beach, CA, July 8, 2011
Made good progress with a slight, quartering, head wind along beachfront or on-beach bike paths through Santa Monica, Venice (that bohemian beachfront community where, among its other claims to fame, The Doors got their start), Manhattan Beach and Redondo Beach, for the first 20 miles, then turned inland on urban boulevards to approach Long Beach, passing behind the hilly Palos Verdes Peninsula, for the next, final 21. Rendezvous'ed with Bob across the street from my old high school, about half a mile from my 1961 home, at 11:40, and met again a few minutes later in front of that home, where Bob filmed my arrival on his video camera.
I rang the doorbell and was greeted by a pleasant, silver-haired lady with a walker, the mother of the female half of the owner couple, who were away. The lady gave me a look at the front rooms of the house, which had not only been well maintained but remodeled and enlarged since my residence there, which ended in the summer of 1964. The present owners had been living there since 1975. I gave the lady one of my cards with my blog address on it and she said that she would certainly let her daughter and son-in-law know of my call. Took the official, still, arrival photo which, with the 1961 photo, like bookends, will enclose the volumes of the last 50 years of my life.
Afterwords
What happened to me: I rested, recuperated, ate a lot, rode some and raced on Sunday mornings for the rest of the summer of 1961. I drove the family Studebaker up to Van Nuys several times to see Marylou, but the distance and the attraction of new, local social and recreational opportunites (I was learning to surf!) put the relationship under strain and I broke it off before school started. The only evidence of our acquaintance, other than my 1961 journal, is a high school graduation card from her to me dated June 1962 (she was a year behind me), in a parental family album.
One day in early November, I was sitting at the dining room table doing a reading assignment when the dull throbbing I had been feeling under my coccyx for the previous several weeks drew my attention. I gently touched the area. It felt spongy. I pressed a little harder and a moment later my fingers were bathed in a rush of hot fluid. "Mother," I said. "I have a problem."
I was diagnosed the next day with a pilonidal cyst, a kind of impacted hairball commonly known to soldiers as a Jeep-seat cyst. Typically suffered by men with ample body hair, it was, in my case, the direct result of many days of irregular bathing, friction, and, clearly, pressure from that unpadded, warped leather bicycle seat. My grandfather had been right and I should have listened!
Within a few days I underwent surgery, which consisted of the removal of a quarter-orange-sized wedge of your body with the wound left open and allowed to heal from the bottom by granulation. Needless to say, I rode little in immediately-following months, and it wasn't until the summer of 1964 that I attempted a ride of any distance, and I had to be driven back from my destination because of bleeding and discomfort.
When I am asked how long I've been riding, I say, honestly, "fifty years," or "since 1960." However, my riding was sporadic over the years following my recovery: while assigned abroad I rode with frequency only in France, where I bought a new Gitane Criterium road bike, in Suriname and in Venezuela, where a group of riders would block off on-ramps to and, in effect, commandeer a stretch of urban freeway for our Sunday-morning riding pleasure, me on a Legnano road bike. Following my permanent return to the U.S. in 1990, I have ridden regularly and frequently, averaging about 4,000 miles a year over the last 17 years, and I plan to keep riding as long as I am physically able to do so. I don't have any present plans for multi-day, long-distance rides, but if I ever do it one, it will be fully supported.
What happened to the bike: In the fall of 1964, in a moment of weakness and in an effort to mend a relationship with a former roommate with whom I had broken on bad terms, I loaned him my Schwinn Continental to use while he was car-less. When a couple of months had passed, I called him and asked for it back. When I got no results, I called again, and again nothing happened. Then, one morning in the winter of 1965 I opened the door of my small Seal Beach apartment, and saw, to my horror, the wreckage of my bike on the doorstep. Judging from the extent of the damage, I could only conclude that it had been run over, possibly more than once, by a heavy motor vehicle.
Lessons learned:
Ride light, as light as possible. I felt a mix of admiration and pity for all the riders I saw on their Surleys with 40 pounds or so of camping gear. Sean had started with a trailer and sent it home very early in his ride. If the expense of having a personal SAG driver is prohibitive (see below entry on the topic), then at least consider riding in a group and pooling resources for a support vehicle and, possibly, sharing driving responsibilities.
Plan your route with prevailing winds in mind. I can not and probably never will understand why I saw so many riders traveling up the West Coast, into the teeth of a stiff, steady, afternoon nor'wester. As I said earlier, suicide would be an acceptable option for me, but if I had in fact been forced to ride S-N, it would likely have both taken most of the pleasure out of the experience and added at least three days to my itinerary. There's nothing like covering thirty to forty miles in the last two hours of the day, joyously spinning on the big chain ring, watching those tenths of miles roll onto your cycloputer at a rate of one every twenty seconds or less, with the wind at your back and the road rising to meet you, as that old Irish blessing goes.
If you are not put off by expense and can find the right driver, go with a personal SAG vehicle. Admittedly, it would be hard to find a driver like old and faithful friend Bob, who had the time, has a supportive wife, enjoys driving, has a good sense of direction and orientation, is patient, can entertain himelf in sometimes monotonous country for six to seven hours a day and has the sense of humor to put of with mine for four non-stop weeks, but there are spouses, partners and friends who may meet the criteria. As for expenses, well... by the time I get back to Croaker I will have put 8,000 miles on the Jeep Liberty. At 20 miles per gallon, that's 400 gallons of regular at about $3.80 per gallon - you do the math. As for lodging, our trip to and from the Coast and the ride meant about about 22 nights in adequate to rather nice, but never luxurious, motels at an average of something over $100 per, including tax As for camping, I can't really say how much you would save, even if you always found room in a state park or commercial campground, but several of the self-supported riders I met, including Sean, who provided the term, admitted to "stealth" camping, much like I did in 1961.
Respect motor vehicles, but do not fear them. True, an encounter with a gas-drinking monster can end your ride, your riding days or your life, but life is about accommodating risk. I stayed as far to the right as I could, often ending the day with vegetation stains on my right jersey sleeve, and taking full advantage of the hundreds of miles of dedicated bike lanes or wide, smooth shoulders on freeways, which you can ride on out West if there are no alternatives available. I don't think I was deliberately buzzed by a motor vehicle during my trip, but some vehciles, for some reason often large RVs with "dinghy" in tow, passed a bit closer than seemed necessary. On the other hand, RVs and semis passing at freeway speed bring with them a helpful, if brief, draft. Adventure Cycling recommended early starts to beat traffic on some stretches of the ride, but my attitude was "the more traffic the merrier." I'm not riding in traffic, but to the right of it, and the more there is, the slower it goes.
And so, gentle readers, thus concludes my Half-Century Ride and my account of it. Thank you for your attention and support. Williamsburg Area Bicyclists and other local riders are invited to attend my planned slide show and presentation at a regular monthly meeting this fall or winter.
