Fort Bragg, California, July 11

The last two days driving up the coast have been sensational, a real learning experience for me as I'm now really learning how to handle curves, the road winds back and forth, up and down, endlessly. I spent the first night in a campsite on the coast near Morro, Montana del Oro, when I arrived it was full but there was no one on duty so I cruised around the campsite till I found a likely looking couple, one car, a small tent, and I asked them if they would mind adopting me for the night, Jim and Sarah were delighted so I set up the tent, drove the quarter mile to the beach, practice on gravel, getting better, sat and had tea watching the gulls watching me, then ate dinner which was the other half of the sandwich I bought for lunch, I'm reading the latest Wednesday Next novel, as always totally obscure, then at dusk back to the camp site, I had bought a bottle of 9% microbrew and drank that as darkness fell, slept like a log.

Jim used to run a window installation company, always had headaches then one day he fell into a coma, he had a benign tumour, they took the top of his skull off, removed the tumour, several weeks later he came to and over the next six or so years slowly recovered most of his memory, sad to say he ran his company into the ground, his wife divorced him which he felt was not what the original agreement was about, namely, to look after him, he is remarried, very cheerful, loses the occasional word or memory, so what is new? Now, like most of us, his knees are going and he will have surgery in a few months. I made a pot of tea for breakfast and he was happy to share it, so generous. Then back on the bike, a long, long day, scenery really indescribable, through San Francisco alongside another tourer, he was on a BMW, a very clean route runs over the Golden Gate bridge, stopped for a rest and photos, put two quarters into the machine and it jammed, no worry, then on to the John Muir Woods with the huge, huge, California redwoods, theoldest about a thousand years old, wow, and just reaching up into the sky.

No camping so went on a really hairy mountain road to find a teeny state park with a deserted campsite, buried in the woods, they must be a rainforest as everything was mossy and soaked, height about five thousand feet, I guess, and I damn near froze. Met a string theorist in the parking lot, he spends his summers driving around the with his five kids, they've been doing it for years and have an old US map with all their routes marked on it, the map was just covered. He is from Durham, which is North Carolina, then it turned out the two coeds in the next campsite were also from NC, Wilmington, we were entertained by the coincidence.

Then back on the road, another lovely day, the countryside is pastorial, forests, fields, cattle, sheep, in the plains next to the coast, then the mountains reach back and we wind our way up and down the hills. tons of cyclists, all going south, I met a girl at breakfast yesterday, she has been on the road for three weeks, started in Norfolk, Oregon, and will make San Diego in another two, she looked fit and brown and ate two breakfasts, just like that, obviously the way to lose weight. Now time to get back on Leslie, she is running superbly, about thirty or forty miles to my target campsite, hope it is not full.

Regards to all,

Phil Edmonds
Enroute across the USA