307 miles today, but it felt a lot longer, mostly due to toren­tial rain, cold, and even a lit­tle snow just north of Lay­tonville, CA. Yikes. Wait­ing this morn­ing in the hotel in Eureka, I real­ized that I hate doing noth­ing. I could have spent the day in Eureka and avoided all the unpleas­ant­ness, but I was already rest­less in the 20 min­utes I waited, and felt ener­gized when i got on the road. Every­thing went fine except that my gloves were soaked by 60 min­utes in, and get­ting cold. I stopped in Gar­berville for gas, and bought a pair of cot­ton gloves and ‘Marigolds’, you know, big rub­ber kitchen gloves. used those for the next 40 miles, but it was the cold­est 40 miles of the day. up to 1800ft. above sea level, and I actu­ally saw a few snowflakes going over Rat­tlesnake Sum­mit. Got to Lay­tonville, had cof­fee and lunch and thawed my hands out: they never got numb, just painful.

Two cold and weary bik­ers are inside get­ting warm

I also used the lit­tle local ‘free ads’ paper to help dry my gloves out, by rip­ping up the pages and stuff­ing the gloves full, wait­ing 15 min­utes, rinse repeat. Got them somwwhat dry. Got back on the road and felt good. but soon it became obvi­ous that the gloves are get­ting colder faster than the heated grips can heat them. So I stop in Ukiah and pull into a Honda dealer; not open. there’s another gent there com­plain­ing of the same thing. Turns out he’s a cop from eureka, and a big fan of the Fly­ing Spaghetti Mon­ster!  yay for ran­domly met friends! but no gloves will be had  there today. Down the road I find a sur­plus store, where I score a pair of ladies ski gloves, size large, gore­tex, for $35. I call them my Tom Rob­bins sig­na­ture mod­els, as the thumbs are longer than any I’ve ever seen. In any case, the offer­ing of $35 must have been big enough for the gods as I only had about 35 min­utes of rain the rest of the day.

gor­geous views like this were everywhere…

The rest of the trip was grey and blus­tery, some blue sky, and gusty winds.

your obe­di­ent scribe, at some famous bridge

Espe­cially on the point above the Golden Gate bridge. just about blew the hel­met over, sit­ting on the ground! yikes. And I had to get back in the groove of CA free­way rid­ing: leave no space and go 80mph! riiight!

another 30 miles of really pretty light Bay Area traf­fic, and I’m safely landed with my friend Mark in San Car­los. A hot shower and some chill time, and now it’s time for din­ner. see ya tomorrow!

black­dog