We said good bye to our wonderful host Shannon and headed out on our bikes towards Half Moon Bay. This involved going back towards San Francisco as Silicon Valley is separated by a ridge of mountains from the coast. We found a good bike route online and followed it North on good bike lanes. At our first stop for coffee for Katherine, we met a Japanese women and her son and had a nice chat. She had toured on her bicycle in Hokkaido, Japan, and was interested in our trip. Hokkaido is one of the most northern island of Japan and is similar to Canada in terms of terrain, climate, and population density. She recommended touring in Hokkaido to us and wished us a safe journey.
As we climbed up a gentle incline our cell phone rang. We pulled off to the side of the road under a conveniently located tree. The call was from Karen Mair of CBC Radio PEI. It was an interview which we had planned for today. It started to all of a sudden rain quite heavily, but we stayed very dry under the cover of the tree. It was well timed and we were quite lucky! We were not sure how it would go as it was our first ever radio interview but Karen made us feel very comfortable. Thank you Karen, we had a great time chatting with you!
We followed our bike route until we came across a detour due to a bridge construction. After getting back on the route, we met a couple runners who we had a great chat with. They thought Hwy 92 might be a good choice to cut to Half Moon Bay. We had looked at the road and found out online that it was not a recommended cycling route, but the runners said compared to what we were going to face at “Devil’s Slide” it might be the lesser of two evils. This meant that since the bridge was out, we would have to back track through the painful detour. We decided to continue North along the scenic bike path and go through Devil’s Slide. Since it’s on the actual Pacific Coast Bike Route, we thought ‘how bad could it be?”.
We eventually made it back to the coast through moderate traffic. The headwind we had been facing all day was now a tail wind as we were headed south. Traffic was surprisingly heavy, likely due to the upcoming Thanksgiving long weekend.
The wind off the coast was incredibly strong, and there were sections where we were blasted with sand from the beach. Not what we want in our drive chain but we didn’t have much of a say with mother nature.
The climb upto Devil’s slide was very exciting. There was literally no shoulder on a two lane road, and traffic was moderate and was travelling quite fast. We couldn’t believe that this was an actual bike route! All they had was a bike symbol off the road to warn drivers of cyclists, but it was so far off the road I don’t think most people would have even noticed it. Even Katherine didn’t see it! There were some bends where I did not feel comfortable with the traffic zooming up behind us with no shoulder and no where to go. We had a couple encouraging honks which really pushed us through it.
We eventually managed to make it to the top. There was a car parked off on a turnout and the guy gave us the thumbs up and very encouraging words. We noticed that they were actually building a massive tunnel through the entire hill that would by-pass Devil’s Slide entirely, but it was not quite finished yet.
We had thought the worst was over when we made it to the top, but little did we know that the worst was yet to come. We cycled down the two lane road with no shoulder, using our breaks very frequently. The wind off the coast was unbelievably strong, and it was pushing us all over the road. Thankfully traffic was fairly light by this point, and when there was traffic they slowed down behind us to a reasonable pace. At certain sections we pulled off to the side to let traffic pass. The worst section was between two cliffs, where I could tell the wind was going to be rough as I witnessed a plastic bag being whipped around in a circle in the air eternally. The wind was so strong going through there that it created a vacuum effect sucking everything through it. I had stopped right before the entrance to let traffic pass, and I could hardly stand there as the wind tried to suck me through. After the traffic passed I wobbled back on my bike as I was sucked right through the two cliffs. It was an unbelievable thrill that I would not want to repeat anytime soon. Definitely an experience that a person driving a car would not understand as they watched us being blown all over the place by the wind. This was by far the most exciting and treacherous cycling we had ever done on our entire trip as for the first time we were at complete mercy to the wind.
Once we survived Devil’s Slide, the rest of the way to the campground was a piece of cake with a huge wide shoulder. The wind blew so strongly behind us that we managed to average over 30km/hour without pedalling! It felt as if we were on electric bikes as we zoomed by farmers who just watched us pass by with no pedalling and no effort. We got on a beautiful bike path which took us straight to our campground. It was at a beautiful location by the water, but the wind was so strong that pitching a tent in the open was not going to be a wise option. While Katherine cooked behind the shower building, I managed to find one of the very few sheltered spots behind a shrub. If it wasn’t for the shrub I am not sure what would have happened to our tent. After we set up camp, another touring cyclist, Alex, arrived. It turned out he was from Quebec and was headed south from Vancouver. He managed to set up his tent behind a tree, with some challenges. He almost lost his sleeping mat as it flew 50m away!
We had dinner with Alex by the side of the shower building. By this time the sun had quickly set and it was pitch black outside. A couple people camping in RVs walked by. One felt sorry for us and asked if we were doing okay, while the other mentioned it was sad that this was the only sheltered spot we could find. Although we may have looked to be in a pretty dire situation, we were well sheltered and had a great time chatting with Alex. Both our tents were also in the only other sheltered places at the hiker/biker site (one behind a tree, the other behind a shrub! 🙂 ) They were not going to be flying away anytime soon although we did have to check up on them a couple times just to be sure.
We had another California State Park luke warm shower and quickly headed to our tent. After about an hour later, the wind surprisingly died down while we were in our tent. We turned on the walkie-talkie to get the weather, to find out that the entire area was under a frost warning. It was going to be a cold night so we bundled up for the evening.
Trip Around The World 
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