Seattle to San Francisco Cycle Tour gallery

Soon after returning to the US after years living abroad, I found out that my friend Sarah was going on a big cycle tour from Seattle to San Francisco.

I texted her joking that I was going to join her, and promptly recieved a call from Sarah's mom. Sarah's mom was worried sick about Sarah travelling alone, and insisted that I join her.

I took a bunch of Greyhound busses from Florida to Seattle, connecting the dots between friends along the way. A friend in New Orleans let me borrow their vintage bicycle from the 60's with manual down tube shifters.

After a quick 10 minute reunion on UW campus, we embarked: her on her flashy touring set-up and me on my piece of shit borrowed bike with makeshift kitty litter saddleboxes.

From Seattle, we followed the "Seattle-to-Portland race" route. I rode my first ever century (100 miles in a day) on the 3rd day. This was a real killer, since I had done zero prep for this trip! From Portland, we headed west to highway 101 and stayed on on it until we hit the Golden Gate Bridge.

About 500 miles into the 1000 mile trip, though, my bike died. We found the closest bar and kept the beers coming until we figured out our plan. I told Sarah to go on without me, but she insisted that we stay together. So we boxed up our bikes and mailed them home, went to Goodwill and bought backpacks to replace our saddlebags, and hitchhiked the rest of the way to San Francisco.