Seattle to San Francisco Bicycle Tour

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Seattle to San Francisco

Introduction

The Pacific Coast

In the late summer of 2000, I toured the Pacific Coast of the United States from Seattle to San Francisco. This was a solo self-contained tour.

I had planned to do this tour 1998 with my friend Dave Baumgartner. I cancelled that trip in order to accept a job offer. It was a decision I later regretted. My current job allowed me two weeks vacation time with two floating holidays. After some careful calculations I decided that by combining my vacation, floating holidays and the Labor Day holiday, I would have just enough time for the Pacific Coast Trip. It would require an aggressive but do-able pace.

Tom sitting in a redwood log
Tom Swenson

I found a dirt-cheap "open jaws" airfare on the Internet from Providence, RI to Seattle and returning to Providence from San Francisco.

The flights went smoothly. I noticed a thick brown haze when we flew over Montana and Idaho from all the fires. The plane finally descended through thick cloud cover into rain. How Seattle like. All three pieces of my luggage were the first to arrive on the baggage carousel. That was a first for me. I'm usually the last to get my bags.

I took an airport van to a nearby motel where I spent the next 3 hours assembling my bike. Next I walked with the bike case to a pack and ship place I researched ahead of time on the 'Net. They didn't have a box big enough for my case. I had no choice but to have them slap a UPS label on it and send it on it's way to a B&B in San Francisco. If UPS trashed my case, they would not be liable. It was not a comforting thought.

I came back to the motel and took the bike out for a short test ride. Everything was perfect. I didn't even have to adjust the derailuers.

Oregon Coast Bike Route Sign

I created this tour report directly from the daily emails that I sent to my friends, family, and the touring list at phred.org. I used a Sharp TM-20 PocketMail device to write the email at the end of each touring day. I transmitted the messages from a pay phone the following morning. I corrected the original text for spelling and grammar. Notes in blue Italics like this are additional comments I added while preparing the text for the web.

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Continue to Day 1

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Seattle to San Francisco Contents