Day 63 - Samuel P. Taylor to Oakland (November 25)

Blue Heron on Richardson Bay

Today's ride was pleasant and uneventful. I have learned that it is possible to go on a short weekender in the Bay Area. Just ride to Samuel P. Taylor State Park, pitch a tent, pay the nominal hiker/biker fee ($3), take a hot shower ($1.50 for 10 minutes), make some 'smores, and drink a beer. Then wake up the next morning and ride home. Very civilized, yet roughing it at the same time.

Today there were very high tides. Part of my route took me over a bike path that runs through an arm of Richardson Bay. The tide was so high that it flooded on the bike path. Many of the recreational cyclists that were using the bike path didn't want to get their expensive ($2,000+) bikes wet. I can understand that, but it wasn't really a concern for me because my bike had pretty much been ridden in rain each day in Vietnam. Just lube the chain after the ride and I am ready for the next ride.

North End Golden Gate.

I crossed over the Golden Gate Bridge. Coming around a tower, I wasn't paying attention because I was looking at my bike and I almost ran someone over. Fortunately she was friendly and she just treated the incident like I was crazy. She had a point.

Because it was lunch time, I decided to stop in Fort Mason and get take out from the Greens Restaurant. I wish I could end each day's riding with this type of food. From here, I rolled along the Embarcadero to the BART station and caught a train to Oakland.

Ride Wrap Up

So how was the trip? It was an experience. Would I do it again? You bet.

From the Rockies to Connecticut and Maine to Vietnam, I had such a variety of experiences this summer and fall. What they had in common is that I was on my bike. But they were worlds apart. The dry Rockies are very different from the wooded East Coast. The mountains are not as high in the East Coast. The East Coast is much greener that the Rockies. But the Rockies, with the exception of the National Parks, are empty. I enjoyed the wide open spaces and the solitude.

The East Coast has many people and places. You can't go far before you enter another town. I enjoyed the woods and lakes of the East Coast. I especially enjoyed the coastline of Maine.

But of all the travelling, Vietnam was by far the most different. It was ten times more green than Maine, 20 times flatter than the Rockies, and 15 times more populated than the East Coast of the United States. However, Vietnam was 100% safer for riding as bikes are very common in Vietnam.

At the end of my trip, after I landed in San Francisco, I chose to ride BART home. I had to reassemble my bike in the BART station. The BART station agent proved helpful as he walked over and said, "Hey buddy, you can't lean that bike box there."

I replied, "Okay, but where can I throw away the bike box?"

The agent said, "You will have to throw it outside the BART station."

Really? I thought. You mean, I will have to drag my suitcase, bike, and a cardboard box all outside. Instead, I asked, "can I break down and cut up the box here and dispose of it in a BART garbage can?"

He answered by grunting. How interesting, in America, I have to tear apart a perfectly good bike box so I can dispose of it, while in Vietnam, I would save the bike box so someone could reuse it or so I could sell it to someone.

In Vietnam, I bought a suitcase so I could easily place my luggage on the plane. I had a 2-bag limit to the amount of luggage I could bring, so I bought a large suitcase. On my flight to Vietnam, I actually checked 4 bags - my bike box and three panniers; I brought 2 bags - my handlebar bag and another pannier with me as carryon luggage. In San Francisco, I was not charged for being over the bag limit or for a bike, but in Vietnam (for my return trip to S.F.), I did not exceed the number of bags, but they did charge me for the oversized bike box.

Bike and New Suitcase Back in Oakland.

I found this great mosquito repellant while in Vietnam. It's manufactured by Jumbo. It has a vial of mosquito repellant that is vaporized from the top of a porous tube. Capillary action brings the repellant to the top of the tube where it is vaporized. The continuous vaporizing of the repellant forms gradient which pushes the repellant from inside the vial to the top of the tube.

Although I still saw one or two mosquitos while using this, I think it was generally useful.

Jumbo Mosquito Repellant.

Flying Home...Seoul Korea (November 6)

Flying east across the international dateline really extends the day. I can catch a plane in Saigon at 1:00 a.m. I awake in Soeul at 8:00 a.m. In the afternoon, I hop on a plane and still arrive in the City at 10:00 a.m. How? The international dateline. I am flying towards the begining of a new day...

From 8:00 a.m. until the afternoon, my layover in Seoul lasted 10 hours. Because I had planned on seeing Seoul during my layover, I bought a Lonely Planet Seoul guidebook. As with other international airports, the Seoul airport was located about 45 miles from downtown. This created a problem. How could I get to downtown Seoul, see the sights, eat some food, and get back to my plane in time? I could take the subway, but as far as I could tell, I would have to catch a bus to get to the subway station. The bus plus the subway ride might take 2 hours one-way. This would take at least four of my ten hours.

To complicate travel matters further, Seoul has a weird street numbering convention. They number the buildings sequentially based on when a given building was built. So number 17 on a street might be next to number 245. Additionally, the streets don't have their names posted on street signs. So if I were to explore Seoul myself, it seems as though I would likely get lost.

Exiting the plane, I was told that I had the option of getting a free hotel room or a free tour of Seoul. I opted for the free tour instead of trying to find my way around Seoul by myself.

As I went through customs, there were a group of 4 of us who wanted to go on the tour. Some other passengers had told me that to find the tour desk, I had to go the first floor and walk to door A. So, I tried to lead the group of us to door A. The problem was that we were all tired and not all of us were sure that we were going in the right direction. Door A happened to be at the other end of the airport, so it was a long walk. But eventually we made it and we were wisked away towards Seoul.

Ann (her anglicized name) told us about our itinerary - see the Presidential Palace (Blue House), visit a pagoda (Jogyesa), and see an ancient palace (Changdeokgung - The Palace of Illustrious Virtue). We also would be fed, but drinks were on us. Ann then ran us through some basic Korean - hello, thank you, good bye. I was too tired to pick up any words. One last thing - we also stopped to do some shopping. I didn't need to buy any more kitsch, but I did find a French bakery!

After the bakery, the group of us went to a "Korean" restaurant. Here I was, the only person not originally from Asia, eating kimchee and an assortment of other pickled items. The remainder of the group were Vietnamese. They were American, but at the restaurant, the group only spoke Vietnamese. I wished I had spent more time learning the language while in Vietnam.

The Blue House (Cheongwadae) - The Presidential Palace

The Colors of Fall in Seoul

Fall Colors on Bugaksan

The One Pillar Gate of the Jogyesa Pagoda

Daewongjun Hall of the Pogoda

400+ year old Pagoda Tree

The Blog Author in Front of Daewongjun Hall.

The Jongo Tower (Insadong District)

Changdeokgung - The Palace of Illustrious Virtue (Gwanghwamun District)

Palace Grounds and Wall

The Throne Inside the Palace

Rest Day - Da Lat (October 31)

Halloween

Scattered Clouds! No Rain!

Le Dai Hanh (Nguyen Thi Minh Khai in Background).

Today was spent planning for my trip to Saigon. I didn't do much today. I walked around the city and stopped at the V-cafe, where I talked politics with the owner and a pair from Australia. Eventually the Australians were so drunk that the conversation ended. I was told that the city had built a new water and wastewater treatment plant with the assistance of international aid organizations.

The "Eiffel Tower" of Da Lat.

My next trip was a walk around the main lake in Da Lat, Xuan Hu'o'ng. It was like walking around Lake Merrit in Oakland, except without the sulphur smell. It was very pleasant. Many people were walking around the lake and a few were jogging.

Cho Da Lat (Market)

Xuan Hu'o'ng

I stopped along the way at the Flower Gardens.

Entrance Ticket

Flower Garden Entrance Gate.

After the flower gardens, I continued around the lake and headed back to my hotel. Walking towards my hotel, a student at the language school joined me.

The Second Set of Blue Rooms that I saw in the Entire Country.

Swan Boats in the Back Pond.

Back at the hotel, I sat with a group of women in the Peace Cafe. All three were travelling through Vietnam, but they were travelling separately. Their ages were between 18 and 34. The youngest one had been to Vietnam three times, having come to Vietnam from Australian early in High School. She really loved Vietnam.

Another of the women was a journalist for the Associated Press who had scooped a story about the flammability of the underwear used by U.S. soldiers in Iraq during the cold winter months.

The last woman was an expat, originally from San Francisco, living in Barcellona.

New North Portland - A Chance to Feed the Cows (September 18/19)

After the mishap on Day 46, I will stop at my Cousin's farm for a few days. I am finishing my bike tour. It is over for now. I will travel in the East Coast for a few days before heading home to the San Francisco Bay Area.

I spent two days at my cousin, Gabe's, farm - Cold Spring Ranch - in North New Portland, Maine. Yes, it seems strange that a kid from Berkeley, California would choose to farm, let alone farm in Maine, but that's what's happening. He sells good Beef, natural Beef, that would be considered organic.

View of the house and barn from the stream that leads to the nearby lake.

The cows following us through to the next pasture. Gabe led them, I wasn't too comfortable with the cows because of the flies. Oh the flies!

Here's Gabe waiting for the last cows. They have just entered a new pasture and the grass is nice. So they don't travel very fast, stopping frequently to sample the new grass. They might be saying ",Oh boy! Oh boy! New grass!" In Gabe's hand is a bucket of grass cube treats for the cows. The cows are generally clueless about what is in Gabe's hand, but if you feed the first cow, the rest of the cows will follow. That first cow, by the way, is named "Donut" for it's love of fatty, fluffy pastries, with a hole in the middle.

Do the cows destroy the Dutch Elm? No, in fact, the Dutch Elm is doing just fine. It is separated from the other trees and seems healthy. The leaves don't seem wilty and yellow.

Gabe has wonderful farm that he is bringing it back to its former glory. I like it's classic Maine farm look. The house and the barn form an "L", the house is painted white, the grass is moved around the house, there is a small vegetable garden near the house. Classic.

Sunbleached white farmhouse walls.

The neighbor from "Procrastination Camp" stopped by to pick up some of Gabe's beef that he had purchased. I commented that the weather was wonderful. It had been foggy in the valley in the morning, but after the fog burned off it was 70 degrees and there was a light breeze. The neighbor said it would get better in a couple of weeks. How better could it get? Do the dancing wood nymphs and wild turkeys come out in a couple of weeks?

The farmhouse - front side.

Farmhouse - backside.

A Pause in Boulder (August 13 - 27)

As I looked up at the sun setting, as the last fires of the day glow across the first (or is the second) Flatiron, I couldn't help but think that my stop in Boulder was a nice vacation from my bike tour vacation. Actually, my tour is not a vacation; it is travel, which is a completely different beast from "vacation."

So what I have done during the vacation in Boulder? There was the catching up with old friends from U.C. Berkeley and the Team-In-Training days in San Francisco. This was the best part of the stop in Boulder. There was the good cooking - the good cooking of newly-made friends. Spending the night in a spacious and completely empty (except for me and the dog) house in the mountains above Boulder was exciting, though not in a horror film sort of way. I think I saw Tyler Hamilton sipping tea at his house when I awoke that morning.

Boulder was an escape. An escape from reality. Boulder is a place where the rest of the world seems to fade away. It is an escape from the hectic hustle and bustle of the U.S. Boulder is in an outdoor mecca. It is a liberal-minded college town. It is a place that composts the plastic spoon that you just ate off of (of couse the plastic spoon is made out of a compostable-plastic). But everyone needs an escape from the escape sometimes.

During one of my days in Boulder, my host, Stephen, and Stephen's friend, Keith, planned a "day off" from Boulder. We tried to relive National Lampoon's Vacation - sort of. We escaed from the bubble by making a pilgrimage to Water World where we slid on the waterslides all day long. My personal favorite was the standing wave pool which was populated by wave pool grommets. I, by the way, had no skill at the wave pool. After Water World, we had a game of kickball followed by a screening of "Vacation, The Movie.

Another great thing about Boulder are the bike paths. Even in a place like Boulder, which is populated by professional bicyclists, it is still nice to get away from the cars. Boulder's bike path system allows cyclists to keep far away from the cars - a good thing as far as I am concerned. So I spent a large part of the two weeks in Boulder traveling to friends houses and to downtown via the bike paths.

This pause in Boulder also gave me a chance to catch up on some reading - The Nation, Catfish and Mandela, and The Road. All good reading material when traveling by bike. And I had the chance to see a movie at the Red Rocks ampitheatre - how about Wedding Crashers preceeded by an actual wedding ceremony and a U2 cover band?

The pause also gave me a chance to reflect on my trip and to remember the good times (for example bag pipers near the Beartooth Mountains) and bad times (reinflating my back tire 15 times while riding in Rawlins, WY). Mostly, I reflected on the bikers. Such beautiful music...

Day 10/11 - West Glacier to Missoula (July 9/10)

Hammer time.

These two days blurred together. My goal was to get to Missoula as quick as possible to catch a flight. I actually arrived a day early which gave me a chance to rest and fix my bike.

The ride was rolling hills through national forest land. Nice country. I wouldn’t mind visiting again.

Swan Lake

Campsite at Swan Lake Store

On the first of the two days of riding, I stopped at Flathead Lake for lunch and discovered that one of my rear Ortlieb panniers had come apart. This was disturbing because I had just purchased them 3 weeks earlier. I fixed the pannier and went on my way. Finishing my ride on the first day, I camped behind the Swan Lake Trading Post and Campground.

On the second day, nothing much remarkable happened, except that ride was long and it was 90 degrees when I arrived in Missoula. The last 10 miles coming into Missoula were nice as I rode next to the famous Blackfoot River. I enjoyed watching the tubers rafting down the river. This reminded of me when I was young and used to tube down the Upper Truckee River near Lake Tahoe. Also, some of the female tubers were topless.

Old farmhouses before entering Missoula

I had one potential mishap riding into Missoula. On Highway 83 just before the Junction with Highway 200, the road was narrow. I passed a bike tourist with a poorly strapped-down load riding a mountain bike with a wobbly out-of-true back tire. Riding down a hill, a bunch of pickup trucks gathered behind me. They individually passed me as traffic started to drive up the hill from in the other direction. Because the road was narrow, this meant that the traffic in my direction would have to pass carefully. The last pickup truck started to pass. Just as it did, vehicles passed in the other direction on the other side of the road. This last pickup truck drove dangerously - it blew its horn and swerved towards me. I held the handlebars steady and wasn't bumped off of the road, but I my heart was pumping and I was irritated that this truck decided to pass me this way.

Day 10 - West Glacier to Swan Lake - 71 miles

Day 11 - Swan Lake to Missoula - 115 miles