On this spring's bicycle tour of the central California coast from the San Francisco area to Santa Barbara, I really fell in love with the Pacific coast. The mountains, the sea… what more could you want?
Upon realizing that there was, in fact, more of the coast yet unseen, I felt irresistibly compelled to bicycle the complementary part of the Pacific coast: from the Canadian border to the San Francisco bay area.
(What about the parts south of Santa Barbara? you might interject. Even on the approach to Santa Barbara this spring one could that all the beachfront south of there would be very developed and very little fun to bike.)
So, without having a real plan, I booked a flight to Seattle as a commitment mechanism for myself.
Alaska Air charges only the usual overweight bag fee ($50) for taking a boxed bike (and I picked up a cardboard box for free from an Amtrak station)— a pretty good deal.