PowerCycle

This will be my first post using my iTouch. The EEEPC netbook has been shipped back for repairs. I’ll probably never see it again since I’ll be in Mexico by the time they get it fixed and getting it delivered there will be a challange.

So I went ahead and booked a flight to Florida so I can visit family and friends. I’ll be there from the 1st until the 9th. A friend is keeping my bike in storage for me while I’m gone so that’s covered. It’s going to be great seeing everyone again.

Been hanging out with Jen while in Hermosa. Last night we had a great time at the local hangout, the North End Bar & Grill. Good food and lots of people dressed up for Halloween.

Speaking of Halloween, it looks like I’ll be picking up a cheap costume and heading to a party tonight. I’ll be sure to post lots of pictures of my outfit. Not.

10/28 Spent the last 2 days riding along the coast on either the 101 or the PCH. Traffic is very heavy at times but I still see the big trucks moving over a little when they whiz by. Since this is also a very popular bicycle route the shoulders are nice and wide and there is almost no debris on it. As far as seeing other riders its been pretty quiet. A lot of spandex-laden speed racers go whizzing by and I always nod or wave but 90% of them are jerks and don’t wave back.

One spandex guy was getting a little crazy with some drifting on a very flat, straight section of road. With his buddy driving, he rode within inches of the back bumper as fast as he could. When I caught up to where they’d stopped down the road the guy on the bike said he got up to 58 mph.

A minor highlight a couple days ago was riding through the University of Santa Barbra campus. My GPS did a great job of routing me along the maze of bike paths so amazingly I didn’t get lost. There were a million bikes and a whole lot of beautiful California girls to admire.

Spent last night at Carpinteria Beach State Park. This place was a mess. First of all they don’t let you check-in to the hike/bike site until 4pm. Even better, you have to be out by 9am! And they charge $10 to top it off. I ended up getting there at 3pm, so not having anything better to do I rode a couple blocks over the pub/brewery. That ended up being a mistake. The beer was great, the people I talked to awesome but I may have posted at least 1 drunken Facebook update and 24 hours later I still feel a little woozy. Back at camp a couple hours later I set up my tent and lay down. Didn’t even eat dinner. At midnight I think I ate an entire bag of Fig Newton cookies. Sleep was tough because there are train tracks about 100 yards away and some guy in a tent 50 feet away coughed every minute until I finally fell asleep (with ear plugs in whichI hate wearing). Needless to say getting up at 8am was tough but at least I didn’t have a headache.

On the way out of Carpinteria I stopped and had breakfast at the Worker Bee cafe. Great place. The owners were really friendly and they did a great job decorating the store with more bee parafinalia than I’ve even seen.

Tonight I’m at Leo Carrillo State Park CG. $7 with pay showers. No other bikers here except one guy but I think he lives here. There’s a younger guy/girl who hitchhiked up here to camp for a couple days. The guy, David, just invited me over for some barbequed chicken which I gratefully accepted. The hike/bike area isn’t too bad though. I wish every State Park had thing set up like this place– water/bathrooms close by and semi-private camp areas.

Get to see some old friends in the LA area but I’m going to be a day early. Might have to motel it tomorrow night. It’ll be great to see people I know. Its been about 4 months now.

GPX Track

10/26 Great ride today. Put a few more miles on than I have for a while and I’m glad I did. It was another hot one and I was tempted to stop at 50 miles with some other tourists I met on the road today. I pushed on though and arrived here at the State Park. Unfortunately it was closed. I rode in anyway and spotted 2 other cyclists. They said the camp hosts, who were in an RV nearby, said they could stay–the CG only being closed to cars/RVs. As it turns out they are lettiing me stay here at no charge (normally $10), there are free (hot) showers, potable water and a great section of beach that I checked out after setting up camp.

A couple of the other riders I mentioned were talking about staying here but I think they wound up staying back in town at mile 50. One of the guys, John, is riding down from Vancouver and then through Baja so I might end up riding with him. Not sure though.

Finally saw some wildlife today but now that I’m 270mm-less its hard to get close ups. In fairness though, the 3 things I saw were in and out of the trees so getting a shot would have been difficult. I’m not sure what they were but they might have been ring-tailed foxes. Is that even an animal? If it’s not it should be.

A couple days ago I forgot to mention something that happens all the time and it makes this trip a lot more meaningful. A fairly significant number of people I’ve met all end up recanting some memory they have of being somewhere like Alaska, that they used to ride bicycles on tour or just that they really want to go to some of the places I’ve been lucky to see or want to go myself. A short and funny example of this was when I met Brooke and Ranmey a few nights ago. After talking for a while I’d mentioned wanting to go to New Zealand. Well it turns out that both Brooke and Ranmey were there in the same tiny little town at the same time. This was about 5 years ago and they just realized they were both there now. How cool is that?

GPX Track

10/25 Riding south from Big Sur was tough. It’s not terribly hot but the sun is very intense so the climbing up and down hills for two of the last three days was brutal. Amazing views along the coast as always. The number of little towns is picking up again so I’ve been able to eat a little better (OK, more; not better). Things got a lot better on day 2.5. The hills finally tapered off and I actually rode on a flat, straight section of road for the first time in as long as I can remember.

Met some really cool people at some of the campgrounds. At one of the places the normal campsites were full which was surprising considering its getting late in the season. The park host stopped over with 2 girls wanting to know if they could camp in the hike/bike area. I didn’t have a problem with it so that’s how I met Brooke and Jessica. Jessica is engaged to Jeff (for a while now ). Brooke and Ranmey are friends. We hung out and talked over some beer and some incredible homemade zucchini bread. That started day 1 of not getting enough sleep though. A crying baby woke me up at 4am and there was no getting back to sleep.

The next day I ran into Rasa at a cafe stuck right out in the middle of no where. This is where I paid the most ever for a coffee, $5.60. Why you ask? Because sometimes I’m stupid. Anyway, Rasa was there with her dad and their friend Jeff. We were all talking outside in the patio area when her dad started telling me about this thing called Scalar Resonance Technology. Basically there are these tiny chips you can get that emit frequencies that protect the human nervous system from man-made EMFs (radios/cell phones). Being in contact with these chips apparently gets you back in sync with earth’s electromagnetic field. So I’m standing there listening to him explain all this to me when he asks if he can prove it works. I’m pretty skeptical but I’d just paid $5.60 for coffee so rational thought was long gone for me. So he tells me to stand with my feet together, back straight. Then he stands next to me and pushes down into my hand that was cupped next to my side. Of course I tip over toward him with hardly any effort on his part. Now he gives me the chip to hold. I stand the same way and he pushes down again. I swear he pushed as hard as he could and he couldn’t move me. I actually felt like my back was being supported by medal braces. Needless to say I was impressed.

Rasa offered to hook me up with one of the chips since she lived close to where I was camping that night. Not being able to tip over is a good thing for me so I said sure. My cell was dead so she was actually nice enough to swing by the CG and hang out. She even brought some firewood (and some great wine). Another biker was there, Kees, and we tried the test on him (without telling him what we were doing or what would happen). Same thing happened to him (I was the one pushing him and he wouldn’t budge). Kees, BTW, is the first cyclist I’ve met that rode the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route. It’s an 80% unpaved trail system that extends from Canada to Mexico. It took him 8 weeks I think he said. Awesome.

That night barking dogs woke me up at 4am followed by someone running a lawnmower at 5am. Maybe tonight I’ll get some sleep.

CNN’s new homepage looks like crap too. Could they use a little more red?

GPX Track