Views coming into San Diego

Jodi heading downhill about 20 miles into the ride today.

Jodi's aunts drove up and got our bike bags for us and brought them
back so we could go faster and "the guys" wouldn't have to wait for us
quite so much. So we got to ride 42 miles today without all our stuff.

Totally amazing what a difference it was. I way underestimated the
effect of carrying the weight in those bags. Hills we would have
labored up in our easiest gear, we powered up in a medium gear. We
could cruise the flats at 16-18 mph without working too hard. I never
felt like I was killing myself.

I'd say the bags slow you down/increase your workload by 30-40%. The
more you're hauling, the worse it gets very quickly. I think it would
have taken 90 more minutes to get here if we had our bags on.

If we did this again there's a few things we could leave behind I
guess (nerf football, deck of cards), but not a lot. We met a couple
biking from Anchorage to Argentina. They bought and carried ten days
of food at a time. They had a bigger tent than we had. I'm sure
overall they were carrying slightly more weight.

What we've learned is that the bags basically slow you down 5-7 mph,
or more when it's hilly, and there's nothing you can do about it. The
Anchorage couple were planning 50 mile days for California, and they
were already very fit from ten weeks of biking. 60 miles with bags
feels like 100 without. Not a big thing as long as you're mentally
prepared for it. We were lucky we had plenty of days to get here
because it took more days than I expected.