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Ten days ago, I was riding with my friend Jose to Coronado City, and on our way there we were talking about how much we've been sucking on the bike these past few weeks, and how much we needed to get away from all these racing thing...
Somewhere in the middle of our depressing talk, Jose joked saying, "why don't we just start riding to San Francisco tomorrow morning?"... And I said: " Damm!, that would be coool huh??". Then we both said: "Lets goO!". A trip up north riding our bikes, and carrying a 7-10 pound backpack all the way with everything we needed.. We didn't plan it, so both of us were gonna head up there with a very short amount of money, and everything else was just gonna be planned "on the GO".
DAY 1 - CHULA VISTA - NEW PORT BEACH 175 kms
Our first day started at Jose's house in Chula Vista. Everything looked smoothed and motivating until Jose crashed riding through some rail road trucks near downtown and rolled straight into a parked car. It was pretty funny, but kind of depressing to start that way. Luckily nothing serious and we kept riding along until Solana Beach were there is this awesome coffee place called Java Cafe. Seriously.. the best bagels in the world there!. Then we kinda plan where we were going for the next few miles, and kept going...
Our next stop was in Oceanside. In such a beautiful day, is most likely to see very attractive women in bikini, so yeah.. for sure stopping here. Then we rolled towards camp pedleton and the navy base. By now we've been riding against a straight headwind for some good hours, and running out of energy. Our backpacks feeling heavy, and praying for a sign that says food around !.
After riding for about an hour with very little energy, we finally arrived to San Clemente, and ate a surfer burrito, which is pretty much what a carne asada burrito has + like ten more ingredients all in a super fat tortilla!. The perfect final touch, and the fuel we needed to get to orange county !.
DAY 2 - NEW PORT BEACH - VENTURA 180kms
Our second day started a little sore. Carrying a backpack for such long rides kind of sucks at first, but once you do like 100 miles on it, it kind of becomes part of your body!, and you get totally used to it... Anyway, today's plan was to ride all the PCH, and get to see all the beautiful beaches on the way. We pass through Seal, Huntington, Redondo Beach, Long Beach, Manhatan, and the very best VENICE BEACH !!!!. YESS!!! I remember it from the days I used to see Pacific Blue, and Baywatch!!. Our ride was becoming amazing getting to see all these places, and since all of them were nice, we were stopping a lot!!! But.. We didn't really care much about wasting time hanging around, but it was still important that we made it to Ventura since it was the only place were we had a place to spend the night at.
As we rode through Venice beach, there were some big dark clouds looking heavy behind the mountains. From a sunny day, now it was becoming a cold windy,and rainy one!. We had to ride in cold rain the last hour of our ride which felt brutal with not much energy!. It got us all wet and cold feeling miserable... When we got to Oxnard, it was already 7 pm!. We had been riding all day, and we were really hungry with not much money, and very tired!. And it was still 15 more miles until Ventura. We weren't gonna make it like that for sure!. So we stopped at the first restaurant we saw in Oxnard, and ate as much as we could!. The couple that was eating next to us saw our faces, and heard some phone conversations, and paid for our dinner without even saying anything!. Wow!!!!. Thank you! I bet we looked like SHIT!
It's not OVER!. We still needed to get to Ventura!. Somehow we found a ride by one of the waitress from the restaurant, after vacuuming the restaurant floor on Lycra for her!. hahaha. But then as we got closer to Ventura, I got a call from my friend Eric Bennet saying that his Grandmother had a stroke that night, and that they had to go to Santa Barbara to the hospital and spend the night there. We were going to spend the night at his place, but that happened, and plans changed... Hope his Grandma is fine though. But now.. We had nowhere to go, but a couple of dollars and our bikes, and at 10 pm after being on the bike all day, feeling cold, and dirty, there's not much you want to do but shower or sleep. SO....
We saw an LA Fitness gym across the street from where our waitress left us, and I thought maybe we could pretend that we just moved here, and get like a guest pass for the night, and shower there!. And yes!, it worked really well!. The next two hours we were at the gym getting on the hot tub, showering, and cleaning ourselves!!!. By 12 pm we had nowhere to stay, and we were tying to figure what to do. Meanwhile we went to this 24 hour Donut place to see if we could just go through the night there eating donuts.. But... It didn't worked out too well, and the owner kicked us out since we were using more chairs than we should...(see slide show for explanation)
Night finished in a very cheap motel somewhere in Ventura...
DAY 3 - VENTURA - SANTA BARBARA 100 kms
Third day... Here we go!. Yahoooo!. Hmm... Not really.. we're kind of tired, and our legs feel screwed up. Headwind still hitting us strong, and not really moving too fast. Our next stop was supposed to be San Luis Obispo, but giving the way we were feeling we could only make it to Santa Barbara, since we also got lost like twice, and weren't feeling super to keep rolling more.
After a few hours of sitting down in a Jack in the Box trying to decide if we should keep riding or stop here, my friend Katherine Hamilton hooked us up with a room at a nice motel in Santa Barbara, and thanks to her we were able to take it easy today, and just chill at the motel like pro riders ona trip hehe, and drink to that!
DAY 4 - SANTA BARBARA - GROVER BEACH 175 kms
The day that ended our trip... It all looked smooth from the start again. Nice weather, empty roads, and everything just looking plain beautiful. We couldn't help it, and rode on a happy mood :), until we got to Santa Maria were we got kicked out of the highway and were told we had to ride 15 miles west again all the way to the pch, before thinking of riding further north!.
So yeah.. Off we go, and now we have been riding for 7 hours, and we are very hungry and tired, and all we want to do is get to San Luis Obispo. The next sign we see says it still 30 miles away, and we are in a town called Grover Beach, and it was getting dark. Since we were not making enough ground each day to be in San Francisco by Friday, we decided we could just ride the train there, and have fun the rest of the weekend up there before heading back to SD...
But... We found out in Grover Beach, that there is no train that goes to San Francisco, and the only way t go was to get in a BUS, and then do the same on the way back, and that's were we just called it, and said.. Oh well, it's been fun, and it's been a cool trip, but we only have enough money to get a ride on the train back home and buy some food... No money for a motel. So we had to figure out somewhere to spend the night with 10 dollars...
And we did... The train station! with a few beers was working well with all the clothing we could find to cover ourselves, until Jose had the first hypotermia attack, and woke me up telling me that we should spend our small budget on a motel. I wasn't really sure what was going on, because I was half froze and half slept, so I just said yes, and followed Jose to wherever he was going, and woke up the next day on a warm motel!
The next day, Jose lost his wallet while putting his bike on the train, and none of us had money now, so it was a long day of starvation with no food in our tummies from 7 am until 4 pm... Only a couple of cookies, and chips from some friends we made on the train, but that was pretty much it...
And that's how are small random trip ended...
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