Be Prepared

The Boy Scout's motto is "Be Prepared." These two words have come to mean a lot this trip.

In order to be prepared I need to be assured that I have anything I can possibly need for the coming day organized as to be available in the correct order (food and water first in one bag, raingear in another). I like to have enough food and water to last me two days, which is a great deal of supply as I am eating around 4,500 calories per day.

Yesterday morning I left Clearlake, California with the expectation of rain. My gear was packed into bags as well as covered with heavy duty garbage bags, and I had clear glasses on which kept the rain out of my eyes without limiting my vision in the low light. I felt prepared.

I've found that for me personally, I am only ever 92 percent prepared at the maximum. If I spend my entire day thinking about what I packed and what I didn't pack and didn't count on, I will still leave out some 8 percent factor. Usually it isn't too important, but yesterday it was. In those cases, I can only hope that I did everything in my power to reach my 92 percent threshold, and hope that I can improvise for the shortfall.

As I arrived in Middletown, I asked some locals at a restauraunt about the route to Calistoga. I was warned that it was a very and dangerous road with many turns, especially given the day's wet conditions. A Spanish-speaking waitress with whom I had been talking looked horrified that I would ride my bike down the mountain road to Calistoga, and said she would pray for me. This is never a good sign.

The ascent was steep, and almost entirely made up of switchbacks and hairpin turns. As I continued to climb, the rain fell harder and harder. I pressed on because the shoulder on my lane was wide enough to allow for any passing traffic, but I was becoming more and more nervous. Finally, at a hairpin turn just 300 yards ahead, I watched a descending truck with a trailer fly into the left hand lane before crashing into the guardrail, unable to hold the turn. Had it not been for the guard rail, the truck would have gone careening into the valley below. My anxiety was rising.

As I neared the summit, the rain was pouring torrentially. There was a small State Park, the Robert L. Stevenson Park, where the shoulders opened up and allowed hikers to park for the day and hike. There was no campground at this park.

I took a few deep breaths at the top and repeated to myself how I would navigate this road safely. I headed down. After a quarter mile of descent, I judged that it would be unsafe to continue down given the heavy rain, turns, and a trailer I had never used on wet roads. I pulled off and turned around, ascending back to the State Park at the Summit to wait out the storm.

When I got to the Park, I immediately set to work putting up my tent and getting my gear inside. I noticed a great number of signs about car break-ins, warning hikers to carry their valuables with them while hiking. I quickly set up my tent and locked my bike and trailer to a nearby tree. It was 3:30 in the afternoon when I got into my tent, and I wouldn't leave again until 9:00 the next morning. I lay in my sleeping bag for 17 and a half hours.

I thought often about the theft warnings, and I thought about my bike. I had plenty of time to think of these things. When my computer broke off, I had had 6,000 miles on my odometer. I had since done one more season and one more Death Ride, plus weekend rides with my Mom, plus the 330+ miles from the present trip. I estimated my total mileage on Ghostrider to be over 7,000 miles. I figured that if I rode at an average speed of 15 miles per hour for that distance, I had spent about 467 hours on that bike. 20 days straight, day and night. I thought about how sad I would be if it got stolen, and the lengths I would go to get it back. I hated to think about it getting rained on. I love my bike.

I looked out this morning; the air was misty and cold. It was so saturated that if the temperature fell even a few degrees it would start raining again. Still it was much better than the day before, so I packed up and went. The descent was as scary as I had imagined, but as I fell out of the clouds and into the valley, I was happy I had moved when I did.

When I got to Calistoga, I spent the morning doing laundry and re-packing, trying to be prepared again, and trying to get the most out of my 92 percent before I drive to the Bothe-Napa campground this evening.