Village Well Ride Day 26 & 27: How Lucky We Are to Be Here

Point Arena, CA to Bodega Bay, CA

As we make our way south, we’re noticing obvious changes in landscape and climate. We’ve left the towering redwoods and entered California ranch country, where we watch the wind creating waves in both the ocean and the fields of grass. Fortunately for us, that wind is nearly always a tailwind, running north to south. All the books and blogs on cycling the coast are emphatic on this point: go southbound! Northbound riders are facing a much, much more difficult task, as the wind on the coast nearly always blows from the north.

An interesting feature of riding with a tailwind is that unless you’re consciously thinking about it, you don’t even know it’s there. The air just feels calm, as if there’s no wind at all. You can look to the side and see wind rippling across the grass fields and whipping the trees into a frenzy, but you usually can’t feel it as it helps you along. But it most definitely is helping you. Spend 10 minutes riding into a 30 mph headwind, and you immediately appreciate the strength of air in motion, as it hammers against every pedal stride and slowly wears on your energy reserves and will.

Like a lot of things, wind is something people notice only when it’s no longer helping them. When it’s there and it works with us, we take it for granted and accept its help. When it’s not there or is actively working against us, we feel the pain acutely. The metaphor could be extended to all sorts of arenas: education, wealth, housing, medical care, etc. We should not lose sight of how lucky we are to be here on the coast, taking several weeks to experience the world by bicycle. It’s the sort of luxury that most people on the planet simply don’t have.

But we are, of course, still vulnerable to mechanical failure. A broken shifter cable limited our progress yesterday, but it’s fixed now and we should be on the edge of San Francisco by the end of the day.

Donate now to help us reach our goal of $75,000 to build a village medical clinic in Majok Goi, South Sudan: https://www.gemsdevelopment.org/2022-clinic-project