Day 28: I survived the racoons
Yes, I am 3 days behind on this journal. Given that I am behind, I am not sure if I should write in the present to maintain the illusion that I am up to date or write in past tense?
I survived the night without any more racoon related incidents. There were some weird creature noises during the night. Makes a good morning camp game of “guess the creature”.
Today’s cycling was over rolling hills. The mileage markers for San Francisco are steadily counting down. Crossing the Bridge into San Francisco feels like the first big milestone of the tour. Should be only a couple of more days.
The routine of daily life on the road has become a habit. There is the waking and the rising, the pack up of camp, the internal debate if it is worth setting up cooking gear to make coffee, the deciding on the destination for the day, the cycling, and stopping for pictures, more cycling, stopping for lunch, hills and yet more cycling, the arrival and setup of camp, the reunion with other tourers or hello to new people, the cooking, the chats, and early bed, and do it all the next day
There are the daily differences of course. For example today the pump for my multi fuel stove broke. There is a piece of rubber at the end of the pump that pushes the air into the bottle. This broke off. I had a spare but couldn’t get the leverage to get the nut off to attach it. Luckily Jullian (the french-canadian) had a pair of pliers which worked.
The second nice deviation from normal was the nice camp host lady called out to us when setting up camp and gave us free wood for a campfire. This is normally 7-10 usd per small bundle. She collects unused wood from other RV campers and gives it to the cyclists. A campfire with the bike tourer gang is always great. Cris demoed some app which shows the constellations visible in the night sky which was cool.
