PowerCycle

11/13 Sure its Friday the 13th but today was anything but unlucky. I arrived in San Diego after a short 40 mile ride from camp. What a cool city! The harbor area was beautiful and I rode at a snails pace along the sidewalk that runs alongside the bay. That is until I saw the sign that said no bicycles–then it was back on the road. I was trying to head to Chula Vista which is where my laptop awaited me at the UPS Store. BTW, the cities here are all tied together like back in Florida or up in Los Angeles. I made it downtown but for some reason I thought I had to cross over on a bridge that looked a lot like I-5. After a minute or two I saw a parked police car with a couple officers inside getting ready to pull away. I rode up and asked which way would be best to get to where I was going. That’s when I heard, “Scott! Scott!”.

Turning around I was thrilled to see Shannon screaming across the road on a pair of roller blades! We’d met just over two months ago back up in Washington state. She was on her way down to San Diego from Vancouver riding with her friend Tommy. Tommy ended up having to end the trip a little early but Shannon pressed on and finished up her tour last week. I told the officers I was all set and quickly accepted the offer to hang out and have a beer at her place which was only a couple blocks from there. Small world huh? She was just down there dropping off a resume–I’m still amazed that I even ran into her.

Shannon and her roommate (and cousin) Siobhan offered to let me crash there which I gratefully accepted. Also met her friend Brenna who came over for some roller blading. There was still enough time for me to run over and get my laptop so I unloaded my bags and set off for the 10 mile ride to the UPS Store. When I got there I handed over my license and told the guy there was a package for me. He went into the back and came out a couple minutes later… empty handed. He said the package wasn’t there! WTF. I told him it had to be there because FedEx (and their awesome customer service) called me twice to tell me it was delivered. He went in the back again and once more came back to tell me it wasn’t there. I told him to go look again. He found it. His life was very close to ending early. I stuffed the box into my empty pannier and rode back to Shannon’s. 20 miles round trip to get that thing. Got back, plugged it in and was thrilled to see that the keyboard, including the broken F1 key, had been completely replaced. They wiped the hard drive but I had backups (multiple) so that didn’t matter too much. At least I can finally work on my website again.

That night we all ended up going out to a bar and drinking beer like it was going out of style. After that it was over to their friend’s place for some hot tub lounging. Not sure how it happened but I also joined in with the guys on seeing who could make the biggest splash diving into the (61 F) pool.

GPX Track