Right now I'm at the KOA in Crescent City, California, and it's the nicest KOA I've ever been in. My site is in among the redwoods, away from the RVs, and there's no one else in any of the tent sites around me. I felt the surroundings and the new state warranted a campfire, so there's one of those crackling and sparking to my left. My laundry is done, my tummy is full of massive pasta with beef sauce, and when I'm done here I'll repair to my tent in anticipation of a good night's rest.

The day didn't start out very well...every so often, the impact and consequences of several years' worth of half-life in the shadows of avoidance and alcohol will overwhelm me, and then it's usually time to find a place not too close to other campers so they won't catch me being all weepy and tragic-like. The morning itself didn't brighten my mood, either. Overcast and foggy, like me.

So the first several miles of today's 25 weren't terribly inspiring, except in the negative sense, with thoughts about where the next larger city would be, and whether I'd be able to rent a minivan there. Eventually, the Training took over: today, I was pedaling to Crescent City. Do that, worry about the other stuff later.

Then, I crossed the border into California. By all rights there really shouldn't be that much of a difference between a few miles north or south of the border, but within half an hour, the fog was clearing and I was cycling through fields of lilies. There was sun enough to charge the laptop and the cell phone at the same time, but I wasn't out on the road long enough to get a full charge on the computer, so this will be short as the battery is waning.

Tomorrow, 30+ miles to somewhere near Klamath. The ride will take me through Crescent City, and then later on there will be a mammoth 1,600-foot climb.* But I've had pasta! So I should be OK. It will be a long day, but that's my road.

And now: welcome to California, where the signs are frickin' huge.

*It turned out to be only 1,160 feet...I transposed the six and negated the one, or something. But still.

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What I most love about big climbs along the coast is that, once I've done my bit and I'm zipping down the other side of the mountain, there's usually a good stretch of road where it looks like I'll be flying straight into the ocean. Today's plunge was a particularly good one, inspiring Crush-like screams of "Righteous! Righteous" and cackles of maniacal speed demon laughter as gravity gave me some props and sent me hurtling towards the sea. The climb itself was arduous, of course, with narrow to no shoulder, but I pedaled in the cool of towering redwoods.

I managed to secure a new flag in Crescent City, taller even than my antenna mast, and I took to reaching behind me and pulling on the pole so that it waved back and forth, whenever traffic was coming up behind me. It gets dark beneath those giant trees, and I knew from watching other cyclists ahead of me that I'd be hard to see. It seems as though my flag-waggling actually prompted some cars and even trucks to switch into the uphill passing lane, giving me plenty of room. And even if the waggling had nothing to do with it, it made me feel better, so I shall continue doing it.

I'm at an RV park in Klamath, now, undistinguished, but run by nice folks, with WiFi and a flat place for my tent. Tomorrow there will be a 35-mile run to my first California State Park, at Patrick's Point. I'm looking forward to it...KOAs and RV parks are fine, but expensive, and I tend not to encounter other cyclists there. Here, though, there is a Russian man camping with his family, who was so impressed with my rig and my journey that he brought his somewhat embarrased son over, so that he too would be impressed and perhaps engage in similar feats of daring-do. "Two thousand miles!" he exclaimed when I told him what my final mileage would be. He poked his son in the shoulder. "Two thousand!" To me, he added, "You are number one man to me, you understand?" There's something about a thick Russian accent that I just love...somewhere between the lilt of Italian and the crunch of German, there are the rolled "r"s and tubular "o"s of that Slavic tongue.

I think I'm finally getting back into the groove, especially now that I've done the first big climb, and found it much less torturous than I feared it might be, and much more pleasant than certain Kentucky mountains. My legs hurt, but they're in good shape, with big melons of muscle clinging loosely to their bones. It's strange to have space between my thighs, space that was formerly taken up by extra flabby bits. The knees ache a bit, but not too badly. And now I can easily contemplate 35-mile jaunts, instead of 15- or 20-mile hops, even with the climbs. The air is cool, the sea sparkles, and the redwoods beckon!

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Some of you who have been paying too much attention to me for too long may have noticed a repeating pattern on this trip: lousy mornings moodwise, followed by decent or even great days of riding.

Having come to the realization that I've spent my entire life mistaking states of body for states of mind, I've set about identifying those substances which affect my physiology to the point that it upsets what is, apparently, my very sensitive mental equilibrium. It started with the big one (alcohol), followed by a confirmation that marijuana is as much of an anxiety-producing plant as it's ever been for me. Then, after waking up one morning in Port Orford with the thrum in my chest following a cheese and cracker meal the previous evening, I deduced that tyramine, a compound metabolized by MAO which is involved in noradrenaline displacement, was having a negative impact on my neurochemistry. It's found in fermented things like cheese, wine, beer, and certain cured meats. Thus: I have discovered that the beer and pepperoni pizza diet on which I subsisted while living in Queens several years ago was not only making me fat, it was in fact a devil's brew of bad things for my brain: alcohol, to reward the neural pathways for making me miserable with excessive fight-or-flight responses, in a form associated with high tyramine levels; pepperoni, also laden with tyramine; and cheese, with even more tyramine.

All of these things were, of course, among my favorite foodstuffs. I sought them out, again and again, unaware that what I was eating was having such a damaging effect on my neurochemistry and, thus, my mood.

All of which is prelude to telling you that today's ride was a very good one, and I think it might have had something to do with the Snickers bar I ate yesterday immediately after I stopped riding for the day.

This morning, I woke up with just the barest spurt of my usual "Waugh!" anxiety, and then...I was in a good mood. Unusual. So, I thought about what I did differently yesterday, and what I came up with was that candy bar, eaten within 15 minutes of getting off the trike, when my body was looking for sugars to stuff into my muscles. In other words, I gave it a blast of simple carbs during the crucial recovery period, and it may...I say may, because I'm just guessing...have affected my morning blood sugar levels.

It'd be great to have a blood glucose meter so I could compare those levels to my perceived mood, but all I've got on hand is good old-fashioned Natural Philosophy: try it, see what happens. So, today, I had another Snickers bar within that 15-minute window, and I'll see how I feel in the morning. I may have queered the experiment, though: I had another bar after dinner, and shortly thereafter I felt my mood shift in tandem with certain physical symptoms, one of which is a sort of "rushing" that I can actually hear in my ears. That passed, and my mood has elevated a bit, but the better experiment would have been to stick with just the one bar. And, for added verisimilitude, four Nutter Butter cookies, which were given to me by my campsite neighbors last night.

Still, I think I might be on to something here: if there is some quirk of my metabolism that causes my blood sugar to plummet while I sleep, and if there is a correlation between my blood sugar and my various tempestuous moods, than I may be able to devise a nutritional solution to my out of whack physiology which, in turn, will allow me to more effectively manage my psyche.

Of course, this could all be self-delusional bullshit, but I won't know until I try.

Today was a long 35 miles with one big climb and a few smaller ones, ending at Patrick's Point State Park, my first park in the California system. I didn't pick the nicest site for myself because some thoughtful day users had parked cars in the others, and I was too tired to go find their owners and make them move. But the site is good enough, and at $3 plus $1 for a private, coin-op shower, as good a value as the Oregon parks. Unfortunately, there aren't as many of these parks within my 35-mile daily range, so there will be more KOAs and RV parks on this leg. But that's fine, too. It's still camping, and it's better and cheaper than, say, grabbing a motel in some burnt-out Kentucky mining town.

The highlight of the day was an excursion off of 101 along the Newton B. Drury Parkway, which took me up an 800-foot climb and then on a long, eight-mile downhill through Prairie Creek Redwood State Park, where my tripod took the picture of me in front of a felled tree thicker than I am tall. In general, though, pictures really can't do the place justice. The trees are too tall and too numerous, the air too quiet and the undergrowth too rich for that. Similarly, the elk in the photos I took are indistinct brown splotches, not much like wildlife at all.

However, this wretched can of dented beans photographs just fine. There are two known bears in the park, and while there are food lockers at many of the sites, mine doesn't have one. The lowest branches are around forty feet up, and so I had to tie my fifty-foot length of new spiffy Dyneema bear line to my fifty-foot length of old and busted bear line. My usual method involves tying the line to the red food bag and then tossing it up and over the branch. The red food bag is a small stuff sack with breakfast items in it, like Top Ramen, and teabags. After my first attempt failed, I realized that more tries would powder my noodles. The tent stake rock (there's one in every campsite) was too heavy and would have doubtless landed on my head, killing me. So Bush's Secret Family Recipe was pressed into service, several times,and performed its task selflessly and well. My food bag now hangs in the dark some forty feet overhead, out of the reach of questing bears and 'coons. But I'll probably have to eat those beans for breakfast tomorrow, before the botulism gets a foothold.

Tomorrow is a rest day, because my cells are demanding it, and because I can hear surf, which usually means there's a beach of some sort nearby. Looming in the future: Leggett Hill. A 2,000 foot monstrosity in the middle of a 28-mile run to the coast. Probably not until Friday, but I feel like I need to start resting up for it now.

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It may seem to some, if not many, although probably not most and certainly not all, that I am excessively preoccupied with my own states of mind. Or, perhaps, the word is obsessed. Some might even detect a certain whining in my various expressions of mental dissatisfaction. To those, I would suggest that "whining" involves much in the way of expression and little in the way of action. What I am engaged in is a process whereby I might wrest control of my self from my corpus. Further, there are those of a flakier, New Ageish pseudo-Eastern bent who would tell me that the mind-body dichotomy I am engaged in exploring is illusory at best. To which, I reply, drink a bottle of vodka, will yourself to remain sober, and we shall discuss the issue.

The point of the exercise, then, is to reclaim some measure of control over what has been a caroming sort of life, not so much directionless as overly directed by the vagaries of neurochemistry, many of which, I will admit, have at their root some component of developmental trauma. External experience has a lasting impact on the physical pathways of the brain, but such impacts are exacerbated, reinforced, and made permanent by subsequent behavioral choices, particularly when those choices involve substances and or foodstuffs that act in particular ways in the body.

So, while I meander here on these pages about cheese and alcohol and all of these external agents that have affected a seemingly hapless me, it is always with the knowledge that many of these external agents required my cooperation to have their way with me, so it's not as though I'm seeking a solution that doesn't require effort on my part. (There were, of course, certain agents that neither required nor had my consent, but I'll address those elsewhere). While I'm experimenting with new ways of dealing with my body as a way of tending to my self, I am also seeking out new experiences, in new environments, as a way of breaking out of the well-trod pathways that have, until now, defined my life.

This, then, more than bad foodstuffs or alcohol or anything else, lies at the root of my anxious mornings, my bouts of anxiety, and all of the other swings of mood and affect that have been such plagues to me. The behaviors I engaged in were responses to as well as causes of misery, and those seminal negative experiences must be dealt with as well as the resultant behavioral patterns.

This, then, is my state of mind as I look out over landscapes of moon-drawn saltwater patiently wearing away the stone of Patrick's Point. It's not particularly poetic or even poignant when I describe it with such clinical language, but these are just rational words I use to describe the sense of movement within my soul, as ossified layers of distress yellow, crack, and fall away.

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Video from my Patrick's Point campsite.

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Sort of a pffft nondescript 25 miles today, under mostly overcast skies. Which is fitting, I suppose, because I've ended up at a nondescript campground. The KOA in Eureka is nothing at all like the fine and wooded KOA in Crescent City: a storm hosting 107 mile-per-hour winds blew through in December of 2005, and took down 105 trees. The place looks like a parking lot now, well-populated with newly-planted saplings. It's sad, really...it will never be what it was.

I doubt that the trees, had they not already been weakened by pine beetles and managed to stay upright in the storm, would've improved the place terribly much...the sites are crowded together, and while one site next to me is empty, the other is occupied by a family of British extraction who erected a tent fit for dirigible building, a vast three-lobed affair that has a garage, an upper story, and a pool out back. It'll be a Benadryl and earplug night, I think.

But there's laundry, and WiFi, and a mostly flat place for the tent, so it'll do. I'd really like to make it to Weott tomorrow, and get in some real redwoods camping, but that's 57 miles with climbs, well out of my range. So I'll be pedaling forty miles to Stafford, with a stopover at the post office in Loleta to pick up a replacement part for my ultralight cot (that part being the fabric that makes the cot a cot).

It's strange to be able to see the end of the road. Five weeks, maybe six, and I'll be in Santa Barbara. I can barely imagine it. I've grown accustomed to the dichotomies of my life on the road: toting high technology, yet sleeping in forests; homeless, yet always sheltered. There are many things about this journey that I'll miss. Some, of course, I won't miss at all, but it's the positive experiences that will, sooner or later, compel me to take to the road again.

There are certainly things I'd do differently. Touring with technology is its own game with its own rewards, but it does leave me feeling tethered to stuff, the expensive toys that I feel I must guard or have on my person at all times. When I do this again, it will either be sans tech or (more likely) with better, smaller, lighter tech that is less obtrusive and more easily looked after. And by God, I'll be in better shape before I go, next time. That's certainly a lesson that only needs to be taught once.

Still: I won't focus too much on this road's end, not yet. There are still many miles to travel, many hills to climb. It's certainly been a different journey than I anticipated, at least in the literal sense of rubber on the asphalt and rotations of the pedals. The intangible journey, though...that's shaping up much as I thought it might: difficult, with interior climbs and descents that dwarf those of the external route. Some of those interior challenges have been directly related to the physical effort of moving from place to place, but most have not.

That's what I signed up for. I don't regret a single moment.

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