We slept in a little today after 2 long days in a row. We had oatmeal and the bagel that I toasted at the hotel yesterday along with some yogurt left over from the hotel too. We didn't get on the road until 8:30 or 9. As we were coming down the hill from the church, we found 2 touring cyclists riding along the road. They had stayed at the campground we passed last night. We stopped to fill up on H20 and talked with them for a minute or two. They continued on while we were still getting ready to go. A short while later, we passed them since they stopped for some groceries at a little grocery store. We rode through a few more areas with redwoods all around us this morning. It is just so magical riding through those areas! They eventually caught up to us and we had a nice group to ride with. The one guy, Fred is from Quebec, and is riding from Portland to San Francisco and the other guy, Loic, is from France and is currently on a world tour. Loic rode from France to Japan and then flew into Vancouver and is now heading south to Ushuaia, Argentina before heading to Northern Africa. It is amazing that he gets to have so much time off of work (3yrs) and will have a job waiting for him when he gets back. Just a short while after we started to ride with them, we went through a construction area where the 2 lanes of traffic going our direction were knocked down to one- and there was no more shoulder. There was a cop nearby and he came over the loudspeaker and told us to go ahead and he will follow us- with his lights on even. We had our own personal escort- that's never happened before. It was great to be able to ride through without having to worry about an impatient person in a car trying to squeeze past us. When we were through, the police officer came over the loud speaker again and said "have a good ride" and waved. He was so nice. The weather today was pretty cloudy, no sunshine. We had a pretty long hill before we reached Gaberville. All three of the guys were waiting at the top for me... sometimes I wish I wasn't so slow, but then again they are all just really fast. We all stopped in town to pick up some groceries and Loic and Fred had their lunch break there since they already had 12 more miles than we did. We continued on pretty sure that we would end up seeing them again since we were all going the same way. As we were riding, the sun came out; just in time to do quite a bit more climbing! We met a kid who had just graduated high school and was on a bike tour for a couple months and was now heading north along the coast. After talking with him, we passed a few neat things: a house made from a single log, "the legacy of bigfoot," and the neatest tree house ever- made inside one of the giant redwoods. Even though we didn't go inside, it looked pretty neat. On one of the smaller steeper hills, my chain derailed for the first time in a long time. Luckily I was able to unclip so I didn't fall over. Since Gaberville, we rode for about 20 miles before stopping in Leggett for lunch. The last 15 miles seemed to take forever, and the last 10 were a real challenge for some reason because I was getting really hungry and starting to get "shakey" like I do when I don't eat enough. I felt like I just had no energy to go, but somehow I made it, just like I always do. We enjoyed some pasta with tomato sauce and Italian bread that we bought when we stopped for groceries. It was a nice change of pace from ride or mac and cheese. As we were sitting there eating our lunch, a couple of touring cyclists (there were a few in the area because they all stayed at the same campground last night) stopped at the campground across the street for the night. We saw Loic and Fred pull in too, but we were pretty sure they had planned on riding further today. After lunch I was feeling up to speed again and ready to tackle the big climb I knew we had ahead of us. After making our turn off the 101 onto the 1, the traffic instantly dropped off and less than a mile in, the climb started. Four miles up at a 7% grade. It was such an amazing climb- nice and winding, with virtually no cars (a great improvement from the 101!). We climbed for about and hour and 15 minutes or so before reaching the top (Joe waited for me a few times on the way up). For some reason, it kind of reminded me of a couple of the climbs we did in western SD. We were just surrounded by trees as we rode the switchbacks and curvy rodes along the side of the mountain. It was so enjoyable- especially since my knees were feeling better than earlier in the day. It was a pretty long, chilly descent- especially as it was drawing closer to being dark. We flew down the windy, switchback filled road and it eventually flattened out a little. Even after we reached the "bottom" we still had a slight downhill for a while. The sun was going down right as we were drawing close to our planned stopping point miles wise. At one point we came across a little picnic area where we saw a little campfire. It was Fred and Loic- we knew we'd see them again! Even though we were a couple miles short of our goal for the day, we wanted to camp with them, so we stopped there for the night (near the little "town" of Rockport). Since they were having a campfire- we told them about how we got a ticket for having one just to warn them in case there was a fire ban that we didn't know about. Luckily everything worked out fine and no one came by for the rest of the night. Since Joey and I had such a late lunch, we were still pretty full. Instead of making dinner, we decided to just snack on the rest of our bread. I also ate the last 2 of my Fuggie'O cookies that I had from Canada. Oh how I am going to miss those- it's such a shame they don't sell them in the US! We enjoyed sitting by the warm fire for a while and chatting. It was a pretty chilly night, so we all went to bed pretty early since the warmest place to be was in our sleeping bags. Joe and I rode 54.40 miles today.
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