By telling us your country of residence we are able to provide you with the most relevant travel insurance information.
Please note that not all content is translated or available to residents of all countries. Contact us for full details.
Shares
I don't care how broken your heart is, how much blood and brawn has been wrung from your body-none of that matters when you're plunging down a jagged piece of coastline and the brakes melt away from your overpriced, overworked bike. I was careening somewhere between Mile 500 and the crimson lip of the Golden Gate Bridge, in the midst of a hastily planned bike tour traversing the undeniably idyllic, impossibly craggy West Coast of the U.S. I was hot off the heels of my resignation from a soul-sucking job and wading in the fallout of a breakup that left me with a myriad of emotional neuroses and my ex's cycling gear, which was now haunched on my rapidly decaying, two-wheeled steed. I had everything to pedal away from and nothing to return to. As the salt-pocked ocean breeze jabbed my sun scorched face, I clamped the bullhorn handlebars until my knuckles turned the color of fresh milk. Just a couple weeks ago, this journey was a mere delusion of grandeur, a last-ditch effort to steer my life in the direction of its supposed greatness. I had dreamt of thickets of redwoods and cerulean cliffs and the lullaby of coons and cicadas. The gulf between expectation and reality is dark and deep, though, and I was floundering in open water. Without my rose-colored glasses, it was impossible to ignore the fact that I was one hairpin turn away from becoming a white cross on an open road. I had never pitched a tent outside of my backyard and roadmaps read like ancient hieroglyphs through my wind-burnt eyes. I could barely change a flat tire without pleading to every saint my lapsed Catholic brain could muster. But there is an unexpected beauty that springs from the purgatory that lies between aim and execution. I had forged temporary homes in the bucolic boondocks of Oregon. I wheezed my way up and down the Douglas fir-sheathed roads of Washington. I traded stale jokes and fresh beers with fellow pedal-pushing nomads at campsites. I and I alone brought myself here-to the edge of the Earth that some call Highway 1, ready to become a casualty of my own ambition, to take a turn too sharp, to surrender to the same forces that brought me here. It was the first time I felt anything but broken, as if I tumbled down the road and back into myself.