Crush the coast – Stage 4
Gold Beach, OR to Orick, CA – 97.7 miles – 5,712ft – 6hrs 24 mins
A bit of coast, a bit of farmland, a bit of the redwoods. Stage 4 has something for everyone, as long as they like those things. Fueled by the previous nights' greasy pizza (and maybe a slice of room temp morning pizza) we took off, took it easy, took lots of photos. The fog was insane, the views were insane, some of us were starting to go insane with joy. As we rolled in to the redwoods at the end of the day I was reminded of the previous year when I did the ride solo. As I hit the woods I was listening to an old Grandaddy song in which a corporate off-site trip to the woods led to the employees going crazy with nature and giving up on all the modern conveniences of life, returning to the woods their ancestors came from. That sounded all right to me, right then and right there, with the evening mist and the spray from my friends' wheels slightly obscuring my view of the giant trees. In that moment I never wanted to go back to anywhere else.