Our Race to a Better Exchange Rate

Total distance cycled to date: 3583 km

Flat tires to date: 10 (Jeff - 5, Keenan - 5)

Shortest cycling day to date: 9.65 km

Longest cycling day to date: 161.91 km

Total instant oatmeal packages eaten to date: 154

After spending our first night stuck in Carmel sleeping behind the Safeway in a true homeless fashion, we were fortunate enough to meet our new friend Simone, who not only showed us around town (in a vehicle!), but gave us a place to sleep as well.  It ended up being a great place to get stuck; after being offered our first place to stay, 2 more people offered as well - and, somebody else took us out for dinner.  It was a great town, and we had a lot of fun making new friends there.  

The road situation never really became clear (the website said closed, then open, then closed), so we set off anyway, and made slow progress along the famed Big Sur coastline.  We had heard all about this stretch of highway throughout the US, and we were very excited to be able to ride it in the beautiful weather that we had been experiencing.  Unfortunately, just after leaving Carmel in the sunshine, we became enshrouded in fog, which didn't really lift until we were completely through this renowned area.  We even camped halfway along the coast in the hopes that the fog would lift the next day - however, the only time that we saw the sun was when we reached the peak of one of the large hills along the coast - and then we would plummet back into the fog along the winding, cliff-edged highway.  It was a fun ride nonetheless.

We had been moving pretty slowly these last 2 weeks, but we've finally started to kick it into gear as we get close to the border, for two main reasons.  First, we met another group of 3 cyclists heading from Canada to Argentina.  That's right - we're not the only ones crazy enough to be doing this right now.  We met them along the road, and have leapfrogged each other a few times since.  They're making better progress than us throughout the US, and we've realized that we easily could be doing the same.  We're planning to meet with them in San Diego and have a planning session for Mexico - they are just as unorganized as we are, and don't have any information for across the border.  The second, and most important factor is that we just found out the Canadian/American exchange rate.  We thought the dollar was pretty much on par this whole time.  It is not.  With the 20% premium that we're paying on everything, we've decided that we need to get out of this country.  We're hoping that the peso/Canadian dollar exchange rate will treat us better.  We've started to put together some long days, and it's possible for us to be in San Diego in only 3 more.  

We can't really believe how fast this last section has flown by.  We also can't believe that it's the end of October - if you looked outside here, you wouldn't believe it.  Especially if you're from Canada like us.  It is hot and sunny.  Really hot.  Sometimes it makes us wonder why people ever settled in Canada, when we think back to how October usually feels up there.  

Just a few more days to the border.  We're very excited, and to be honest, a little nervous about the next 3 days of riding through what seems like one giant city, from here to San Diego.  It'll be an adventure - but we have some excellent photocopies of hand-drawn maps, so I'm sure it'll be fine.  Just wait for our next update as we try to sleep in LAX...  

Why we hate raccoons.

Distance cycled to date: 3160 km

Flat tires to date: 10 (Jeff - 5, Keenan - 5)

"Bicycles Prohibited on Freeway" signs that we've cycled past to date: 4

Number of times that somebody told us of highway closures because of wildfires in California: 0

We saw our first raccoon on our very first night in the United States.  It was in a State Park in Washington, and as the sun set, we saw two sets of glowing little eyes scampering across the path.  It was kind of exciting - neither of us had ever seen a raccoon before, and they looked like such cute little animals.  We watched them wander through the campground, and accidently scared one of them up into a tree, and we were entertained watching it - it was like a giant squirrel, climbing the tree, hiding from us.  

Later that night, after we went to bed, we heard some scratching outside - we opened our tent, and there were our cute, furry friends, climbing on a bicycle.  We shouted at them, and scared them off, and they didn't bother us again.  We still maintained our vision of a cute wild animal.  We liked raccoons.  

Fast forward to the present.  Having more and more encounters with "cute" raccoons, they have slowly driven any sort of compassion towards their species out of us.  The last few nights, camping with the raccoons have been some of our worst experiences yet.  We had been warned, north of San Francisco, that one campground was notorious for its vicious raccoons.  We still hadn't yet developed this strong of a hatred for them, but we took the warnings somewhat seriously, and like the rest of the campers sharing our site, we put our pannier with most of the food in a "raccoon-proof" wooden locker.  Not long after falling asleep, we awoke to hear a nasty scratching, scraping, hissing and growling.  I was frozen in the tent at first, almost certain it was a bear.  No small animal could be making that much noise.  However, as time passed and I lay there in silence, listening, I finally worked up the courage to open the tent and look outside - I turned on my headlamp, and peered out the tent vestibule.  It was like a scene from Jurassic Park, with the hoards of velociraptors circling a piece of prey.  An army of raccoons had descended upon our locker, and by this time, had already forced it open, and were ripping apart bags of food from one of the closed bags within it. 

I was furious.  The sight of those raccoons, eating our food, was too much.  I yelled, I tried to pick up something to throw at them, but they didn't care.  They glanced at me, their beady glowing eyes staring at me with pure evil, and then turned back to their free meal.  I grabbed the slingshot that we had kept close by, in case of an emergency like this, and frantically tried to pick up some rocks to fire at them.  By this time, Jeff woke up and looked out of the tent, and seeing me, standing in only my white underwear and biking shoes, with a slingshot in hand knew instantly that the raccoons had come out.  He jumped into action as well, and we tried to scare them off, but they would hardly move.  We found enough rocks, each of us frantically running around under the moonlight scraping up rocks from the ground to use as ammunition.  Eventually we found enough, and we fired and fired at those raccoons.  They knew no fear, nor pain, and it took what seemed like forever to fight them off, back into the woods.  

We locked everything up again, as tight as we could, and went back to bed, knowing that we had no choice but to let them come again, and just hope that our bags would withhold their assault.  We lay in our tent for hours, trying to sleep, but only hearing their hissing, growling, and scratching.  It was hard to bear, laying there doing nothing, knowing that they were getting into not only our food, but everybody else's as well.  But we couldn't sit outside shooting at them all night long.  They just persisted.  

In the morning, we surveyed the damage along with the other 3 campers at our site.  We got off the easiest, with our solid weather-proof Ortlieb's (although they still managed to get 4 packages of instant oatmeal, some pasta, and most remarkably - a container of cream cheese out of our closed dry-bag).  The others that packed their food in garbage bags were not nearly as lucky, with almost everything destroyed.  Garbage was strewn everywhere, and dirty little pawprints were found on nearly everything.

From that day on, we couldn't look at a raccoon the same way.  The last few nights have been bad, but we have learned our lesson.  Last night they managed to grab my backpack and drag it for about 30 metres before we were able to pick them off with the slingshot.  We're becoming better marksmen everyday, and never go to bed without a pile of rocks within reach.

At the moment, we're in Carmel-by-the-Sea, a 9 km ride from where we started this morning.  We thought it would be a beautiful day for our scenic ride past Big Sur on the central coast of California - but we got as far as this before seeing the giant sign flashing the message "Highway 1 Closed".  It seems that there's a wildfire where we had planned to camp tonight, and the highway is closed.  An alternate route would take us an extra 3 or 4 days of cycling, so for now, we're sitting tight, waiting for a chance to go.  It's a beautiful day outside though, so we might make a trip to the beach and relax, without any guilt about not getting enough km's today.  What can you do?  We just hope that the raccoons won't be out again tonight...

Enjoying Sunshine in California

Total distance cycled to date: 2933 km

Flat tires to date: 9 (Jeff - 4, Keenan - 5)

Most cyclists we've shared a campsite with for one night: 17

Number of days with California sunshine: 10

Days on the road to date: 47

After finishing our last post telling you all how often we check our email, we finally have internet access, 9 days later.  But what a great 9 days they have been.  We finally found the California sunshine, and have enjoyed an incredible time biking along a beautiful coastline.  Before emerging on the coast, we rode our bikes along the Avenue of the Giants, getting a chance to really appreciate the enormity of the Redwoods.  We enjoyed cycling through scenic byways with little traffic, and just had a lot of fun biking through the forest.  It's a neat place.

After climbing a few long winding hills we made a fast, brake-burning decent and emerged along an amazing coastline, with a much-appreciated tailwind.  The coast in California has been amazing so far.  I don't know that we have enough adjectives to describe how nice it's been.  Day after day we've followed Highway 1 along the coast, clinging to cliffs (often with no shoulder), and climbed and descended so much that at the end of the day our trip climb looks as if we're back in the Rockies.  It's been tiring, but it's hard to complain when the scenery around us is so beautiful.

Over the past couple of weeks we've ran into quite a few cyclists making their way down the coast.  After the massive storm in Oregon we had thought that we would have fallen behind so many of the bikers that we had met.  It turned out, however, that nobody made any progress during those days, with everybody that we met finding a motel room to weather out the storm indoors.  So, we ended up running into so many people again, and with the limited campgrounds available the closer we got to San Francisco, we all ended up cycling to the same daily destinations.  It became like "The Amazing Race", with most of us in teams of two, riding off each morning from the same starting point, and eventually meeting up that night at the checkpoint to camp out.  We would exchange stories from the day, and usually build a campfire to share.  We had a great time with all these really cool cyclists, and we're hoping to be able to stay in touch with everybody.  Jim, one of the cyclists that we met, has a website we should share: www.bigdummyproject.com.  He's a great guy, with a cool story.  He was once 420 lbs, had diabetes, but decided to do something to change his life.  Now, he's biking across America raising money for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.  Check it out.  He mentioned us a few times in his blog, so we thought it's about time to do the same.

Tuesday afternoon we made our way through the suburbs of Marin County, eventually making our way to the San Francisco Bay.  After navigating through residential streets, following bike signs and many helpful cyclists and motorists, we eventually caught sight of the blue ocean, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the city of San Francisco in the distance.  It was a spectacular sight, and it really felt amazing to reach this milestone.  We know we still have a very long way to go - but we have to say, we do feel great about riding our bikes from our house to San Francisco.

We know we didn't finish a whole state, but we thought we'd give Northern California their own photo album.  We just saw too many miles of amazing sights.  Check them out here.  Also, if you're on Facebook and haven't joined our group yet ("Keenan and Jeff's - ride for HOPE"), we've been trying to update that with a few more photos that we haven't put on our online album.  A little behind the scenes look at ride for HOPE. 

Thanks for following us along, and thank you to everybody who has emailed us this past week.  We'll do our best to get on those replies.  It's so encouraging to hear from so many of you - thank you so much.  Feel free to keep them coming!  We love to hear from you!

Oregon - We like the people, but not the weather

Distance cycled to date: 2439 km

Flat tires to date: 8 (Jeff - 4, Keenan - 4)

Pictures taken to date: 1595

Home-cooked meals eaten in Oregon: 7

We can now check another state off the list.  We made it to California!  Finally.  There were 3 or 4 days where we were sure we'd make it past the border, but something always came up.  However, the weather finally died down, and we jumped on the opportunity and made our escape into sunny California - only to find that it's not so sunny.  

We had a great time in Oregon.  Even with the terrible weather, it's pretty surprising that we got through that whole state already.  It seemed like we spent all our time just hanging out at people's houses and hardly biking at all.  When we finally did get on the road, we spent our days biking along the beautiful coastline, and found ourselves repeatedly telling each other how beautiful it would be if it weren't so foggy/windy/rainy.  Although we seem to complain about the weather a lot, we have to admit we did have a few sunny days - one and a half riding days, and we took full advantage of them, drying out everything, and taking more than enough pictures to make up for the days we couldn't take out the camera.  

We've got many good memories from Oregon - most of them aren't even bicycle related.  From hiding from the weather in Cannon Beach in public restrooms where we spent the afternoon with fellow cyclists, to a beautiful hike to Cape Lookout on one of our sunny days, to a final hike down to Cape Sebastion before leaving the state, where we were able to see the full power of the sea against the rocks after the storm.  We met a lot of great people, and had a lot of fun.  

Now that we're in California, we're getting more and more excited about reaching warmer weather and hopefully even getting some sunshine!  Despite thinking that we left the fall and winter behind, we've realized that it's very difficult to get a tan in the Pacific Northwest.  We're ready for some sun (we're ready to dry out our shoes).  And we're very excited about all the new varieties of fast food chains that we're hoping to come across.  We've made decent progress so far - we're not really ahead of schedule, but definitely not behind schedule either.  We're just trucking along, plugging away...  all that kind of stuff.  

Two states down, one very big one to go.  Not to mention all those other countries below.  

By the way - feel free to email us at jeffandkeenan@rideforhope.ca.  We really do enjoy hearing back from everybody.  Anybody.  We get to check our email maybe more often than you'd guess, and we very rarely have anything in our inbox.  Don't be shy to send us an email, or even a comment.  

As we always do when we leave a place, we updated our photo album.  Take a look - we think we did alright this time.  Even with all that bad weather, Oregon's still a pretty beautiful place.

Tsumani Season in Southern Oregon?

The last two days have been two of the most difficult that we've faced. The weather has been just brutal - there's no other way to describe it. We've had to change our plans every day, cutting back our plans for the day because of the weather.

Yesterday was an awful day. The rain, the wind, the flat tire; everything combined just made it pretty tough. We thought it couldn't get too much harder here in the US. Well, today sent us a surprise, and it was worse. It passed the point of frustrating, and just became comical. The wind has been gale force - today we had 30-50 mph winds along the south coast of Oregon. It had the power to just stop you in your tracks when it hit you head on, and almost knocked us over on a few occasions when it hit us from the side. I don't even want to get into the bridge crossing. We stopped in Gold Beach, our planned destination for yesterday. We were advised by almost everybody entering the grocery store that we loitered around to get a room in town for the night. Watching the debris blowing across the parking lot, we had to agree that we couldn't go any further today.

We found the public library to pass a few hours indoors, and while we were counting down the hours until they would kick us out, we met Steve, who had seen our bikes outside. He had done some cycle touring himself, and knowing just how difficult this weather is invited us to his house for dinner and a dry, warm place to sleep. These are the kinds of days that make this trip so amazing. It has been so difficult, so trying - and so rewarding. We are about to enjoy some fresh homemade pasta before spending a dry night indoors - a thought that never would have seemed possible earlier today. Canada to Argentina by bicycle - every day is an adventure.

A Day in Our Lives

Some of you may wonder what we actually do all day.  I know that I sometimes wonder.  It's crazy how a day can just disappear.  So, we took the time to record everything that we do, in detail, to give you all a chance to see just how a somewhat typical day of cycle touring goes.  It's quite the glamourous lifestyle, as I'm sure you'll see.  

October 1st, 2008

6:30 am - alarm goes off, but decide it's still too dark, and re-set alarm

6:45 am - alarm goes off again, and this time wake up and start quickly packing up sleeping bag, and everything inside the tent, hurrying to get out of the tent to go to the bathroom

7:00 am - get out of the tent, go to the bathroom, and start packing up camp.  Eat breakfast of:

• 2 packets of oatmeal (320 calories)
• 1 honeybun pastry (220 calories)
• 1 oatmeal creme pie (170 calories)
• 2 fudge cookies (160 calories)

8:10 am - leave campground, and begin biking

8:30 am - 8.01 km - stop to take off sweater and biking tights

8:47 am - 13.05 km - stop at top of hill for a water break, and eat a granola bar (100 calories)

9:02 am - 17.57 km - stop for water

9:08 am - 18.95 km - stop to take a picture

9:21 am - 21.47 km - stop at the top of a big hill to go to the bathroom, and eat a cookie (80 calories) and take a drink of water.

9:38 am - 27.03 km - stop for a drink of water after a big downhill.  Compare scary stories of hitting drainage grates with logging trucks passing us.

9:53 am - 31.84 km - enter town of Reedsport.  Stop at Safeway and go in to buy some groceries.

10:20 am - 31.84 km - exit Safeway with groceries, put on sweater, and begin eating lunch on bench outside of it, which was:

• 8 slices of 5 seed bread (960 calories)
• 2 servings of deli turkey breast (140 calories)
• 1 bottle Powerade (240 calories)
• 1 fudge cookie (80 calories)

11:14 am - 31.84 km - finish eating lunch, and pack up bikes with the rest of the groceries.

11:30 am - 37.32 km - stop to take off sweater again, drink water and go to the bathroom

11:50 am - 42.91 km - stop to take some pictures and drink water

11:53 am - 43.17 km - stop to go the the bathroom

12:04 pm - 44.49 km - stop for water after a very steep uphill

12:10 pm - 45.36 km - stop at viewpoint, drink water

12:41 pm - 56.84 km - stop for water and a granola bar (100 calories)

1:04 pm - 62.05 km - stop to tie shoe

1:22 pm - 69.41 km - stop at viewpoint before bridge to take pictures, go to the bathroom, and eat a granola bar (100 calories) and oatmeal creme pie (170 calories).

1:36 pm - 69.41 km - finally leave after eating

2:00 pm - 75.76 km - stop at a 7-11 to fill our water bottles.  There is no washroom to do it in.

2:08 pm - 75.95 km - stop at a pharmacy and fill water bottles, and eat a granola bar (100 calories)

2:18 pm - 75.95 km - leave from pharmacy 

2:29 pm - 77.30 km - stop to check map.  Turn around.

2:34 pm - 78.68 km - stop to check map again. It's all good this time.

3:16 pm - 91.61 km - stop for 2nd lunch, which is:

• 2 onion bagels (600 calories)
• 1 serving deli turkey (50 calories)
• 5 slices of raisin bread (300 calories)
• 1 "cosmic brownie" (280 calories)

3:59 pm - 91.61 km - leave from 2nd lunch

4:09 pm - 93.55 km - stop after very steep uphill

4:26 pm - 102.55 km - stop for water after long hill

5:02 pm - 109.67 km - stop for water

5:14 pm - 112.70 km - stop for pictures

5:45 pm - 123.72 km - arrive at Bullards Beach State Park campground

5:50 pm - start unpacking, sent up tent, eat yoghurt (170 calories)

6:20 pm - go for shower

6:50 pm - get back from shower, set up clotheline, start eating supper, which is:

• onion bagel (300 calories)
• the rest of the turkey (20 calories)
• 5 slices of raisin bread (300 calories)
• yoghurt (170 calories)
• 5 fudge cookies (400 calories)
• carrots (50 calories?)
• cucumbers (20 calories?)
• brownie (140 calories)
• mixed nuts (60 calories?)

7:50 pm - keep eating, get out maps to start planning California

8:30 pm - start packing up everything in the dark, go to brush teeth, use washroom

9:05 pm - get into tent and start writing in journal for the day

9:27 pm - lights out.  Get ready for a similar day tomorrow.

Total distance for day - 123.72 km

Average riding speed - 21.61 km/h

Total elevation gain - 1107 m

Total calories consumed - 5900

It would be nice to say that's an average day, but to be more honest, that's a pretty good model day.  We knew we were on the clock all day, recording everything, so it made our breaks all a little bit shorter.  Looking over the numbers, it's pretty crazy to see how often we stop to go to the bathroom.  That one's just surprising.  We maybe ate a little more than usual this day, but not much.  We're usually over 5000 calories.  We don't always shower every day, but we try to take advantage of that whenever we have the option.  And we don't always ride that long, but try to whenever we can.

Today, if we kept the statistics, it would have been a completely different story.  We've faced an incredible headwind all day, terrible rain, and poor shoulders.  We are in a public library now, soaking wet and cold.  During the heaviest bout of rain, I got a flat tire.  Days like yesterday are fun.  Days like today, are not.  But, we just keep going, every day.

Now you've had a good look at our day.  In detail.  That's life for us on the road.  It's a pretty fun life...