A couple days after Christmas, I went on my usual bike ride in the East Bay Hills and reflected on 2011. There was as glaring gap in the year’s activitides — I had forgone an epic bike tour! With four days left in the year, it was decided — I was going to load up my bicycle and ride like mad for Los Angeles.
Luckily, my friend Dan — visiting home from grad school — dropped by that afternoon. This past summer, he biked from San Francisco to LA using the Adventure Cycling Association’s map of the Pacific Coast route. His plan was to be on the road two weeks. When Dan called me six days later, I asked, “Where are you?”
“Oh, I’m in LA,” he said, with typical élan.
The story was, he ran into a chick in a Big Sur campground. She was riding down Hwy 1 going as fast and light as she could — and she was cold, hungry and miserable. Dan cooked her a big meal and they joined forces for the rest of the trip — her on a carbon bike, him on a fully loaded Surly. They rode over a hundred miles each day!
Dan walked me through the route, shook his head at me a couple times, and I left the next day riding Darth Vader.
Flaming Bike 
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