Saturday, November 20, 2010

Day 14. Short Hops

Crescent City did not have what it takes to make me hang around. Even though it was cold, and wet and generally very horrible today I still felt compelled to head on out of town. I had two possible options depending on just how bad the weather got. Either head about 20 miles down the road to Klamath or, if the rain ceased, head on to Trinidad, a little further down the coast.



I left Crescent City thinking that maybe it wouldn't be so bad today if it wasn't too hilly. It didn't look that bad on google earth, and I was pretty sure I'd done the worst of the hill climbs in Washington and Oregon. From now on I'll be doing a little more extensive research on such subjects, as the climb out of Crescent City was probably the longest continuos climb I have done yet. From starting at sea level, right by the coast, an hour later I found myself still climbing in amongst the clouds. I knew from various discussions yesterday that I was heading into the Redwood forest region of California, but I had no idea it would go so high!

Added to the climb, the temperature had dropped massively from yesterday. In fact everybody I have spoken to today have said it's about 10 degrees colder than it normally is. Throw in some ice cold pacific rain and it was definitely the coldest day of the journey so far.

It quickly became apparent that it was not really the day for a long ride, so I opted to do the short hop to Klamath. Klamath is a tiny little place, with not much bar a Subway and petrol station, but with the weather forecast the same for today, tomorrow and Monday, I've a feeling the next few days are going to be a number of short hops, rather than 5 hour cycles. That suits me, as although today was really due to be a rest day, a couple of hours on the bike keeps the legs fresh, without over doing it too much. Only 20.21 miles on the speedo, but once again, that's fine for a freezing cold rest day!



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