Reasons 3038 - 3177

After our the previous, full day of torrential rain we were really thankful that we only had to ride twenty miles to our next host. In the town of Ukiah there is only one Warm Showers host. An incredible group of young, hospitable hippies live together in a large, communal home they call Spring House.

Our main contact, Jen is an active cycling advocate in the community. She organizes community bike rides for the town on every first Friday of the month. We were fortunate enough to participate in November’s ride which ended in a house concert at Spring House. Something particularly amazing about the band that played, Clan Dyken is that they literally tour by bicycle with all their amps, drums, guitars and other sound equipment. When they’re on the road they can actually set up anywhere, because they bring along bicycle-powered generators and ask volunteers to power their equipment. They are an inspiration. And, as if that isn’t amazing enough, they sound great.

Oooh, there's a party in there.

Clan Dyken is very peaceful, yet lively and entertaining.

Lots of dancing and laughing.

Collin just chilled while I got right in the middle of the little dance-fest.

Another thrill for us in Ukiah was visiting Dave’s Bike Shop where we received extraordinary service. The guys there were exceptionally friendly and helpful. Both Collin and I had to replace our middle cog in the front and our cassettes in the back. For the most part we’ve been riding big hills nearly everyday since we left. All that climbing meant that we chewed through a whole lot of the cog teeth in our drive-trains.

Dave, Ginny and Me.

Anyway, the bike shop owner, Dave was kind enough to invite us over for dinner. His wife, Ginny made a fantastic meatball pasta dinner. The two of them are both avid cyclists who have ridden imperial double centuries together. For those of you who aren’t completely in with the cyclist jargon, a century just means a distance of one hundred. So, an imperial century is one hundred miles. That means that this crazy couple has biked two hundred miles in one day. That’s a little more than 321 kilometers. Our visit with Dave and Ginny was so quality. They are both fantastic storytellers and the four of us laughed an awful lot together.

After a couple great days in Ukiah we continued on through some incredibly beautiful wine country to Healdsburg where we stopped for lunch at The Wurst. The two of us ate the best bratwurst of my life while laughing at tipsy tourists wandering the streets of downtown Healdsburg from one wine tasting to another.

Wine country.

Pat, Ken, Me and Collin.

A huge embroidery of a French painting that Ken did.

That evening we stopped in Santa Rosa at the home of Ken and Pat of Warm Showers. The pair own a beautiful, Japanese-inspired house high up in the hills of the city. Ken is in his late sixties and still cycle-touring. We both shared our own GoPro videos and admired each other’s dramatic descents down mountain passes. We had some healthy philosophical discussion with Pat, and then she was kind enough to combine two of my favourite passions in one activity. Pat introduced me to the movie American Flyers which wraps cycling and Kevin Costner into one entertaining package. Needless to say, we really loved the movie.

The next day would be one of our most exciting as we approached a significant milestone in the tour, crossing the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco.