Nowhere Soon: Cycling The Pacific Coast

Posted January 27th, 2010 2 comments

“Where are we going? Where should we go? We don’t really know yet for sure.”

Those are the words of Alex and Meredith, currently cycling the Pacific coastline. Their adventure started in Vancouver and has already taken them into Mexico, with plans to go further south yet. It’s an amazing journey, when you consider that before last October, they’d never taken a trip longer than 20km.

Alex and Meredith document their trip with journal entries, photos and podcasts on their site Nowhere Soon and in a recent post they describe playfully how the bikes are holding up so far:

“There is no doubt that Bichael and Sylvia are great bikes with best intentions, but lately they’ve been struggling. Bichael has been making a mysterious clicking noise that he refuses to reveal the source of. He also recently let a spoke break and popped off his own chain for the first time ever. His shifting is passably, but frankly a little bit lazy and he’s been rattling loose a screw here and there. Sylvia hasn’t exactly been a doll either. Meredith reports that her gear-shifting seems to fluctuate with her mood and her front wheel has recently begun to warp.”

They also describe how they pass the time on their bikes (making up mind games, or rapping about the things they see) and how they think about distance differently after bike travel.

“Biking across the Golden Gate bridge late last week caused a small rupture in my sense of distance. I had propelled myself to the special far-away place. In one way, distance shrunk: I had pedalled to California. But at the same time, distance felt so real: I had watched every single mile and kilometre go by. I had experienced distance in full. Uphill and down.”

The trip is continuing through March.

• Family Bike Tour – 5 People, 1 Bike – Reaches The Pacific
• A wheelie bad day