She had no money to speak of, no training and - most importantly - no bike. But that didn’t stop Fay Warrilow from taking off for Vancouver for a 1,200-mile cycle ride down the US Pacific coast AS AN example of the dangers of agreeing to things before you’ve thought them through, finding yourself in a lakeside hostel in Vancouver with two cartoonists, a prospective architect and a stagehand, limbering up for a 1,200 mile bike ride down the US Pacific coast must come pretty close to ideal.
I say ‘limbering up’, but I also found myself reflecting on my preparations for the trip, which consisted of: doing very little exercise during the previous month, spending all my travelling money in London before I left and - crucially - not buying a bike.
I had a cycle helmet. Now I was wondering if I should have brought some more kit.
It should have been a disaster. In fact, it was amazing. Travelling down America’s west coast, which runs through the states of Washington, Oregon and California, is a great way to sample some of the country’s strange and varied cultural quirks while constantly having your breath taken away by the natural landscape, which, like the people, is big.
And once you have a bike (I bought one in Vancouver), there can’t be a better way to do it than cycling. The scenery is gorgeous: we sped down cliffside roads and through ancient redwood forests, swam in mountain pools and camped in woody glades with the added savour of knowing that we were getting fit and not paying for petrol. It’s not cheap to get to America but once you’re there, cycling and camping are a very reasonable way to see the place.
Of course, there are downsides to everything - including, in this case, the physical strain, the weather’s whims and the fact you’re on roads for most of the way. It’s not everyone’s cup of holiday tea.
And not everyone is going to be willing or able to take a month out of their life to ride a bike down America. But the path is well-worn and breaks down easily into whatever length you want to take on. The bit we did, down Vancouver Island into the US through Washington, Oregon and halfway through California, took just over three weeks of cycling. That’s around 60 miles a day, which, with a few days off here and there, is a comfortable distance for any adult in good health.
It’s not just the scenery that makes it. Away from the RVs, in the special hike and bike sections of the national parks, you meet all sorts of people. There are the laid-back weekend trippers like Richard, a sweet bookseller in his mid-50s who looked like Robin Williams and had been told by his colleagues at the bookstore that he should go to Alcoholics Anonymous. He started cycling instead of drinking and was much happier for it.
There are ultra-fit, serious cyclists like Daniel, a Frenchman with cleats (see below) who caught up with us, then effortlessly overtook us to carry on racing himself down the whole coast.Then there are people like Bill, a Vietnam vet with a droopy moustache who had pitched his tent permanently at one of the first sites we got to. He presented us with a pile of heart-shaped pebbles he had collected and told us war stories seen not only through the mists of time but clearly through a fog of hallucinogens. We could hear him shouting in his sleep.
Actually, that probably sounds a bit off-putting - what I mean is that there are lots of characters to meet. The pitches are structured so that you can keep yourself to yourself when you feel like it, but cyclists are a pretty sociable lot and there’s a community feeling which is a bit unfamiliar to the 21st century Brit.
In fact, virtually every American we met seemed sociable and charming, even in the deepest NRA-belonging, Bush-voting heartlands of Washington - so that was one stereotype out of the window.
I had plenty more in reserve, though, and some of them were true. You can eat a lot if you want to (which I did, including a 1lb burger in one diner).
But while it’s easy to spot the truth in Morgan Spurlock’s hamburger-munching odyssey around the US’s fattest cities, it means so many different things to be American, even in the space of the three states we visited, that it’s difficult to come up with any overarching rules for the people themselves.
The twenty- and thirty-something artists and computer whizzkids - ‘digerati’ - who inhabit what’s left of San Francisco’s counterculture couldn’t be further away from the rifle-wielding lumberjacks further north, but they are all one nation, under God. Which is sort of the point of the motto, really.
It’s difficult not to love the US when you’re cycling through it. The scenery’s great, the people are great, the sun is shining, the highways generally have big safe shoulders (though watch out for the logging trucks) and you’re getting fit. Plus it’s fairly cheap once you’re there. You are moving under your own steam, and the hiker/biker sites cost only about $10/$20 per night.
The sites have campfire facilities so you can buy some fresh salmon or steak or whatever and barbecue it for dinner. If you fancy a night under a ceiling, there are comfy round log cabins called yurts in many parks (book in advance) and B&Bs along the way.
And if you don’t have a good bike already, you can also save money and hassle by buying one there. North American brands such as Cannondale and Specialized are cheaper in the US (make sure you get your tax-back form stamped). We finished our trip by taking a Green Tortoise bus into the Nevada Desert for the Burning Man Festival… but that’s another story. Why go cycling? For one thing, it makes your holiday last longer. Those weeks were much longer than the weeks seemed when I got back. In fact, it took precisely eight times as long to come up with a printable account of the trip as it took to do it.
Not printable in the sense of expletive-free (although, come to think of it, there were a few choice words going up some of the hills). Just in the sense of something which wasn’t stuffed with adjectives like ‘majestic’ and ‘breathtaking’.
Although it’s not even easy now because… well, that coastline really is majestically, breathtakingly beautiful. America is such a big and bizarre experience that you need a bit of distance to express anything of it - like backing away from a scene to get it all in your camera lens. And photos never completely capture what it was like to be there.
Thinking about it, I do know what made me do it. The trip left me short of money and limping (I fell off right at the end while trying to negotiate San Francisco’s tram-tracks after a couple of celebratory drinks) but it also left me with a clearer view of things back home. That is one of the other things cycling is good for.
I suppose it was part of a gap summer, a pause between different stages of life. Some people might well say that gap time at the age of 28 is self-indulgent - certainly, I couldn’t really afford it and the time you spend doing one thing is always time you forfeit on something else. But it was great. And life’s short and I do sort of think that my mum’s right and it’s the things you don’t do that you really regret… isn’t it?
Article posted on 31st March, 2007 - 12.00am
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