The Bay Area, A Few Days of Rest AND Whats With Nor Cal Anyway?

We've arrived in Mill Valley, and, last night, when it looked as if we would be over-spending on an econo lodge on the side of Highway 101 in Marin County we connected with Brian Thysell, whom I met while working for OPI years ago. Not only did we get to go out to a great place in Mill Valley for dinner, Brian invited us to stay at his place - for multiple days. He even threw in his car to sweeten the deal. So here we are, saved from a wicked fate by the kindness of yet another friend.

We took most of day to rest and re-hab and will be going out to dinner tonight with some old family friends from my adolescent years and then tomorrow into the city where we hope to connect with Sean Lawson who is in town for the weekend. Some more people to visit with over the next few days makes this a very different type of experience than last week, when we were rolling through Northern CA on 1 feeling like the world was an empty place indeed (which leads us to "Whats With Nor Cal Anyway? If anyone knows, let us know).

We plan on riding through San Fran on Sunday morning and making our way to Santa Cruz by Monday, where I've arranged a visit at UCSC to look at graduate school opps there.

The last few days of riding were great, though 1 is a bit stressful with its minimal shoulders. Fortunately there isn't much traffic. I finally got my next surf in at Bodega Bay - the first since Crescent City. We saw so few surfers all along hwy 1 and I was fearful to get in the water alone after hearing all of the local shark stories. That, combined with an almost complete lack of swell kept me out of the water until we passed North Salmon Beach. I made Christine stop, even though we'd only ridden about 20 miles that day. Such are the wages of biking with a surfboard. We've turned off the coast now, but will start to hit some spots around Pacifica.

We are continuing to try to make arrangements for our next leg into Mexico. If anyone has any sailing friends we are trying to figure out how to communicate with the sailing world and get onto a boat out of San Diego as crew. It would be great to know the right listservs to hit or the right place to post flyers. If anyone ahs any contacts let us know.

We still have our cell phone until Oct 13. If any of you get a hankering to call we would love to chat. 360 808 1103.