Last night a father Ad (born in Holland) and his two shy kids Hannah and Willem invited me over to their campfire for marshmallows. Ad is a cow farmer in a town just past Chico and grows corn and alfalfa. We talked and ate marshmallows until it got too cold to sit out anymore.

Today’s riding goes down in my “Top Ten Bike Rides List”. I got out of the campground (elevation 6700ft) at about 7am and rode up a wonderful cliff-hugging road to the summit at 8512 feet. On the way up, I spotted a squirrel sitting on the side of the road looking as though it too, was admiring the spectacular views. A guy got out of his car ahead of me and took a few photos as I was climbing. He smiled and thanked me as I passed and said he admired me for what I was doing.

While I was hanging around outside the campground toilets this morning (ok, I admit I try to stand in the most sociable spot in the campground as people go and take their morning piss) the lady that had been camping next to me with her kids exclaimed surprise at how quick I’d packed up camp. She lived down near Vegas with her Polish husband and after hearing my accent said that she and her husband were ready to move overseas to give her kids some culture. When I told her I’d left my job she gave me a “good for you!” and then we bitched about work and work ethics for a while.

I thought today would be a nice casual ride out to the hot springs and I was entertaining the thought of checking out the hippies in the woods. The ride along the main road was bearable, but the turn-off to Big Bend began descending very rapidly into a deep valley. I stopped to decide whether to continue or not as I knew it would be a very long climb out if I went all the way. I decide to push on and finally got to town after several miles of woohooing down beautiful curves through thick forest. I stopped at the only store in town, bought a snickers and used the opportunity to ask the guy behind the counter if there were some free hot springs around.

“Yeah, it’s in the nice white building a block up the street, costs five bucks”

I told him I meant the free hot springs…

He gave a small sigh and hesitated as though he always hated giving away the town’s secret to an out-of-towner;

“Down the road, up the hill for two miles, park on the left and walk down the stream for a mile”.

I thanked him but had already changed my mind about the hot springs when he had mentioned the mile-long walk. I decided to avoid the big climb back and head back to the campgrounds via the shortcut road; a dubious road the park ranger had told me to avoid. Only 24 miles I thought, can’t be too bad. The shortcut road quickly turned from a pleasant paved road into a gravelly, rough, corrugated road and I began making promises to Stef, that I would never take her on another dirt road if she could just survive this one. By the time I got back to my tent I was sore and exhausted and ready for another rest day.

Spent the day at the Burney public library. Spent a lot of the time talking to Connie the librarian who had been to Burnie in Tasmania. Connie had actually retired three years ago but kept getting called back for casual and part time work. However today she was getting laid off due to budgetary cuts so her and her workmates invited me to celebrate with a bottle of champagne. “Probably the only time that you’ll get to drink alcohol in a county building”.

“Camping” in America is strange. Often I’m the only tent in a sea of RV, caravans and buses.