“The Henry Miller” is a bike trip that I did solo in late April and early May of 2025. I had always wanted to do this ride and get down to the Henry Miller Library along Highway 1, past Big Sur. The trip was encouraged along by a website page https://www.bestcoastbiking.com/san-francisco-to-big-sur. This website has the maps and itinerary. I followed the maps more of less but instead of Big Basin Redwoods State Park on the first night I stopped by my friend’s place in Boulder Creek. Julie, the sister of a high school buddy and her husband Al were great to get to know and hang out with. Thanks for the awesome dinner!
“The language of society is conformity; the language of the individual is freedom. Life will continue to be hell as long as the people who make up the world shut their eyes to reality. Switching from one ideology to another is a useless game. Each and every one of us is unique, and must be recognized as such. The least we can say about ourselves is that we are American, or French, or whatever the case may be. We are first of all human beings, different one from another, obliged to live together, to stew in the same pot.”
– Henry Miller from “Stand Still Like the Hummingbird”
Some of the riding highlights are the first day’s climb out of Woodside up the Old Honda Road. This is 2000 feet straight up an old wagon trail through the redwoods. More bikers than cars do this maniacally climb. Once you reach Skyline Blvd you take a sip of water and have to climb another thousand feet. Light traffic and a good route when the coast is fogged in. Very wild with many nature preserves.
The traffic from Boulder Creek to Santa Cruz is a bit nasty no matter what route you go. Highway 9 for a lot of it with a few backroad detours. Once in Santa Cruz the bike paths are many.
New Brighton State Park in Capitola south of Santa Cruz is a very good park for both bikes and campers. Killer bike camp spot. There are some premier ocean-side camp sites on top of the hill. Would some day be nice to reserve that for car camping.
Biking through the farms of Watsonville is fun as you are definitely in farm land. It is interesting to see where the food comes from and take in the climate. Acres and acres of strawberries that go on forever as far as the eye can see. A lot of lettuce and broccoli this time of year. People hard at work picking and farming. One lettuce-picking crew far from the main road flew a huge Mexican flag and were blasting mariachi music out of a converted school bus.
When you hit Moss Landing there is about 10 miles of dreadful highway shoulder riding which is never fun. The highways in this part of Monterey County are pretty bad. Two lane roads where they need four. Traffic gets backed up with people just trying to get to work. It would be brilliant if there was a dedicated bike path all the way from Santa Cruz to Monterey.
In Monterrey I camped in a spot the bestcoastbiking.com recommended, Veteran’s Park which is up a hill from the wharf. It worked out fine but next time I would get a hotel.
Day three headed down the coast. Checked out Carmel Mission Basilica, started up by Captain Gaspar de Portola and Franciscan Father Junípero Serra. Portola and Serra are the names of streets, schools and shopping malls throughout California. Serra spent most of his life in pain from probably an infected insect bite. Thank science for modern medicine and antibiotics.
It is fun to be around a classic place like Carmel Mission Basilica, where the bones have a presence and seem to talk though the floor boards. Cool paintings like Leon Trousset’s 1887 Father Juniper Serra’s First Mass. Everything looks so orderly. The ship in the harbor. Native Indians looking on in the shadows. I then rode down Highway 1 to Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park with strong tail winds. The further you rode, the less the cars.
Day four had a fun ride to the The Henry Miller Memorial Library and hung out with the locals while the foot traffic rolled in, stopped for five minutes then got back in their cars and moved on. In our family are a few Henry Miller classics, one, a signed version of the banned “Tropic of Cancer.” The book was printed in Mexico to avoid the authorities. The books where definitely my father’s. Henry Miller was a great writer and thinker and lived an amazing life. One of the inspirations for the ride is that Henry Miller liked to ride bicycles. He did not care for cars. In his late fifties he moved to Big Sur.
“After a time, habituated to so many hours a day on my bike, I became less and less interested in my friends. My wheel had now become my one and only friend. I could rely on it, which is more than I could say about my buddies.”
– Henry Miller from “My Bike and Other Friends”
Julia Pfeiffer State Park (let’s just call it Julia) is an 11 mile ride down the coast from the other Pfeiffer Park. At one time there were many Pfeiffer’s down this way and according to the bulletins the women obviously kept things together. Ranching and massive honey farms. Julia has great trails and waterfalls where the fallen redwoods wrap around other redwoods by streams in an obscene orgy of interactions. Much to explore.
On a Monday morning I left early and headed north. The traffic was light. There were clear skies and no wind. To Carmel, then along the coast to Monterey. Up a coast bikeway that runs along the beach, golf courses and opulent ocean mansions and then over to the scrappy Salinas Amtrak Station. The northbound Coast Starlight leaves every day at six-thirteen pm. I caught the train right on time.
Also see:
William Finnegan’s – Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life is a memoir. It is mostly a true story of a life where the common thread is surfing. Finnegan grew up in Southern California and Hawaii and at one point when he was just a grom the waves were not far from his family’s humble house near Diamond Head, Hawaii. He took to surfing at a very early age and though he does not admit it, became a big wave surfer, riding huge waves on the North Shore of Oahu, Ocean Beach in San Francisco, discovering a wave in Fiji and later in life, Portugal. When he was a young teenager he began to experience the power of the ocean.
