Have you done or do you remember your 1st Off-Road Adventure?

“Adventure” and “Bikepacking” are getting more popular words in this world now.

I’ve been bikepacking in Europe traveling across from Berlin to Portugal with my Hunter Coffee Bike Tourer before, but it was mostly On-Road.

Now, I’m more interested in Off-Road Bikepacking in the wildness. Although it’s nice to see the new world and people on the road, it’s great to have camping experience without electronic and tap water, and feel the beautiful nature vibes in the wildness without civilization.

It was a couple of years ago… I still remember clearly and want to remember this excitement of my 1st Off-Road Adventure.

The beginning of this adventure、it was one of my bike girl friends, Leah’s text message.

She asked me directly,「Do you wanna go adventure with us？」

Since I just moved to Santa Cruz for SimWorks USA at that time and spent most of the time for working and never get to go out so much. So, ‘Adventure’ was a magic word and could not help myself thinking about going outside with them together. I was definitely super stoked!

Moreover, it was my first off-road bikepacking tour especially without Rick who has a self-reliance mind. I always depend on Rick, so that I really needed to prepare everything by myself for this trip.

This is my 26” Off-Road Coffee Adventure Tourer I built for the adventure!

I really wished I could use Porcelain Rocket Basic Series for this trip… but we didn’t even have and produced this basic series at all at that time though.

It was only 2 days bikepakcing trip, but also it was my first time off-road experience, never rode mountain bike at all and I had no idea what to prepare. Only I knew was that I was in charge of a coffee stand girl, so I pack my favorite cutie enamel metalware pot and a glass dripper. To tell you the truth, everyone was against the pot and the glass dripper saying, “NO NO NO NO, you CAN’T take it with you… so I had to leave them behind me and I had to pack as much light as I could. We don’t bring things we don’t really need.

Since we were going to be on Off-Road trip, so I tried to manage to pack all the things without hanging around and making any sounds.

The first day, everything was freaking exciting. We packed our bikes, gears, and three of ourselves in a car in the morning, and drove down to the South about 2 hours on the coast from Santa Cruz to Big Sur.

We started pretty slow, it was already past noon when we got to park our car at the bottom of Big Sur. We started climbing on Nacimiento Road from the coast and rode on the steep pavement for a while..

They said, “Let’s ride slowly”. However, these two FreshAir Hunter CX riders were not in my definition of “Slow” at all.

Our goal on the first day was catching sunset at the top of Cone Peak Trail. I was not sure how far was 6 “miles” on the off-road ..

We left our bikes and hiked up on the Cone Peak Trail to chase the sunset.

We barely made it before dark and could see the sunset and cloud sea from the almost top of Cone Peak Trail. Ridge camping means catching sunrises and sunsets…

California wintertime bliss..

I only ate a boiled egg, bacon, and oatmeal for the breakfast in the next morning. After that, up and down off-road forever. 15 miles of roller coaster ride on South Coast Ridge Road was a punisher. The route was hard as hell as following these 2 fast riders. I started having hunger knock and could not see 2 riders ahead anymore then I finally started pushing my bike for a while. I was almost lost myself somewhere I never know when this roller coaster would end. I even felt like I might have been left alone and ended up on camping on the side of the road by myself at that night and almost gave up on this trip and would never catch up with them anymore. However, I didn’t even know where I was, so I only and simply needed to go forward as much as possible.

Luckily, they waited for me and we found a nice lunch view spot. Now, my speciality and genuine coffee was going to be spot lighted and it always makes me happy though.

Riding on Los Burros Road was wild. 8 miles of screaming downhill to the coast at the end just blew all mind..

At last, we rode on this down hill toward the ocean with this scenic view.
California Dreamin’ on such a winters day…

It was such perfect weather. It was warm, clear, no haze and didn’t realize it was January.

I will never forget this first time Off-Road Bikepacking very hard tour. We rode about 20~30 miles each day. I googled out the elevation of Cone Peak and it was 5155ft / 1571m. If I confront this agony trip, I would get lost and it would take more days to finish. I was able to complete this mission since I had friends around me who drunk coffee with me, and spent time with such a beautiful scenery and excitement all together. It was worth for me to go to hard adventure trip though.

You don’t have to pedal so fast and try to be a hard core biker. You just ride to look for something amazing in the nature and stop for a while and take pictures of them, then if you are getting hungry, you eat something. This is something that everybody can enjoy if you have curious for everything and has minds that will never give up. Because, this little Japanese girl was also able to do that so. I bet, anyone can have such a wonderful moments for Off-Road Bikepacking tour.

No agony, no memories.

If there is a star on your adventure, then it should have goal at the end. Because we are always able to feel the fulfillment at the end of our journey, so that it makes you get on the next travel.

Since this bikepacking tour, Kyle started handmade bikebag maker called, Outershell Adventure and Leah now has a baby. Everyone moves on to the next road.

Thanks to Leah and Kyle and Ventana Wilderness National Park for sharing and making my first Off-Road Bikepacking Adventure happen.

I’m glad that I didn’t bring my favorite coffee pot with me on that trip though!

Photos and words by Rie Sawada