The first thing I noticed was that my bike felt heavy. Not heavy in the sense that I was on a heavy bike. I wasn't. I was on my ultra light race bike. The heavy sensation was that of adding 25 lbs. of camping gear and snacks to my ultra light race bike. It was heavy in weird places, and felt both oddly foreign yet familiar to my touch, like a seasoned lover wearing a wig and playing a role.

Following the sliver thin western edge of the continent south, I would find myself staring off into the great abyss of the Pacific Ocean, trying to imagine the other worlds that lay beyond its vast expanse. Traveling across terrain under ones own impetus and exposed to the world changes perspectives. It's the great cliché of bike touring. Travel by bike shows us what is truly there, and necessarily requires complete immersion in the environment through which we pass.

Day three things got interesting. A long descent into a military base greeted us first thing in the morning, and once we had a solid three hours under our belts we stopped to consult the maps. Option A was legit, long and probably very nice. Option B was questionable. Being the type of fellows Carl and I are, we went with Option B. I can't really say exactly where we went, but there was a lot of fence hopping, ducking for cover, high ridge line "roads" that haven't seen humans in a long time and an eventual Mach speed descent back into civilization. 

After drifting off to sleep early that night, I was awoken a few hours later by Carl bolting to the bathroom and ejecting whatever was left of his cheese burger, plus some other stuff, out of his mouth. It wasn't a pleasant night. 

The next day we headed out on a route that the Rangers had described as "brushy", and soon became aware of what that meant. After passing through an old quicksilver mine, the route became much less traveled, and very overgrown. Luckily most of it was poison oak and stuff with thorns, so there’s that. I decided to approach the situation in full high speed attack, reasoning the oak and thorns couldn't touch a moving target. Carl chose the graceful ballet method, dancing and diving away from any and all plant matter along the route. Neither of us got Poison Oak rash, so both seemed affective.

Carl's friend Jay owns a house in Ojai, with a pool, so the decision was made to stop there for the day. Stripping naked in the driveway we washed the remaining poison oak contamination from our belonging and headed for the pool. We soon found Jays hover board, and spent most of the afternoon trading off lounge chairs for smooth glides to the fridge for more beer.

Scouring the maps I found a faint line dotted through the Angeles Crest National forest labeled as the Rincon Truck Trail. By my quick fingers measurements we could ride about 90 miles and camp by a creek before a final days push of 40 miles to get things finished off.

The Starbucks at 4pm on a rainy Thursday afternoon in Tujunga, CA is a surprisingly happening place. Carl consumed his only caffeinated drink of the entire trip, we made sure our flashy lights where charged up and began an urban assault across the metropolis of Los Angeles.

I felt the tug of the familiar state, but wanted to cling to the feelings of wildness that had permeated me during the journey. We did some wheelies across the finish line, then broke out the last of our food stores and the jet boil and made some lunch.

Those minutes spent on the curb, sharing a bag of freeze-dried cherry chocolate moose with a close friend where the best of the trip. It was in that moment that the enormity and surreal beauty of the trip set in.  We rode form my house to the stupid race, and it was awesome.