We arrive!

The ticket tape parade and mayor holding the key to the city for us is
just out of frame to the left... ;-)

Tomorrow Bill and possibly some guys might bike us down to the Mexican
border so we can dip our toe over!
Miles Today: 42. Total Trip Miles: 641.

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.

Important stop

"The Guys" have a delicious breakfast spot. You can see the excitement
in Jodi's taste buds from here!

Our welcoming committee

Bill and his friends Dave and Craig riding us in the last 40 miles!

Lots of nice roads!

Today varied a lot as far as hills and roads. We had some small
residential streets with constant up/down hills. We had flat bike path
along the beach. We had 4 lane busy roads dodging parked cars and
traffic. We also had some nice miles on a part of old highway 1 which
is totally unused andno longer accessible to cars, which they've now
allowed to be a huuuge wide bike path.

It was hot! Like 78 it said. I has to wet my jersey and head down at
one of the beaches.

We've got about 38 miles to Jodi's aunt and uncle's place in San
Diego tomorrow. Her Uncle Bill is riding with one or "some of" his
biking buddies up to where we are in the morning to escort us in from
here. That will be a very nice way to come in. If they don't mind
riding at our pack mule speeds, hehe!

Miles today: 56. Total trip miles: 599

Ferry ride

Hi Gavin! we took our bikes on a ferry today. Here we are on it in
this picture. Have you ever been on a ferry? In Texas possibly?

Love, Jodi and chris

Biking to breakfast

With Carla and Damon on their tandem beach cruiser.

Carla and Damon live so close to the beach, and a short ride from lotsa Huntingdon Beach food n' fun. What as great place to live. Those guys were totally awesome hosts. Last night after dinner we had a nice firepit session with some of their neighbors and some hot chocolate and booze.

So nice to get to stay with friends on a trip like this. Thanks you guys!!

View from Carla's

Carla lives one block across from this beach. We have surfers and happy dogs playing. Pretty! Nice place to do a short day and hang out with Carla and Damon. Miles today: 32. Total trip miles: 543.

Protecting my lady in LA

Some may wonder if we feel at all nervous biking through LA. But I
brought my big guns along to keep us safe.

Who would dare mess with us? They may have their Raiders jerseys or do-
rags... But I am intimidation personified with my Cheez-it shirt and
giant pipes. ;-)

Anyway, nothing to worry about now as we're back to a beach bike
trail. About 12 miles to Carla's.

Citybiking today

We have 20ish miles of Pacific Coast Highway today. In this area it's
sort of a cross between Lake street and Hiawatha Ave in Minneapolis.

Lots of waves and smiles from truck drivers, people at bus stops, and
other bikers.

This was supposed to be a super unpleasant part of the ride, but we're
through most of it already and it wasn't too bad. Hitting it mid-day and off season may have helped. Jodi said the "urban"
biking practice we had at home all summer helped a lot.

Pretending to be Civilized again

We thought we'd pretend to be civilized at happy hour tonight. Cute
hotel one block off of Hermosa Beach, a quick change of clothes, and
happy hour on a cute rooftop restaurant overlooking the beach. Life is
good! Miles today: 46. Total trip miles: 511.

Rockin' the Crocs!

I haven't mentioned that these are the only shoes I brought on this
trip. They've been awesome! Jodi naturally has 3 pairs of shoes along
because you know how chicks are...

Venice hostel full!

Cruising further south. Hoping to find a cheap hotel around Redondo
beach.

Santa MonicaPier

Just before Venice Beach. I'mlooking forward to Muscle Beach so I can
challenge some guys to bench press contests and win some more hotel
money!

Malibu pier breakfast

We're treating ourselves to a yummy breakfast. Today we only need to
go about 35 miles. We're going to try to stay at the Venice Beach
hostel and then have just about 35 more miles tomorrow to get to Casa
Carla Rosenquist in Huntingdon Beach. Carla and Damon hopefully will
bike with us Saturday morning (after Carla's hangover wears off----
KIDDING hehe) to Newport for brunch and then we'll keep moseying from
there.

Can't wait to see Carla-- she was part of our Kilimanjaro climbing
group where Jodi and I got engaged.

Malibu

It's about 70 today In Malibu!

Camp

We skipped dinner last night. Had a late lunch. I think we got in our
sleeping bags about 5:30 and didn't get out until 7:30ish this morning.

Miles yesterday: 50 Total trip miles: 465

Good progress

Pretty awesome, we've got about a 20 mph tailwind today shoving us
along. This is so different than Big Sur. Now we can cruise at 16-17
mph without trying too hard.

Freeway

As previously mentioned, sometimes the route goes right on the freeway.

The freeway even has signs in these areas instructing drivers to share
the road.

Cheap motel!

Woo, $44 and it has an outdoor hot tub. And its close to tummy Mexican
food and Santa Claus Lane.

Miles today: 44. Total trip: 415 miles.

Santa barbara farmers market

Here I got Jodi some pumpkin pie slices to eat later. You gotta keep
Jodi's taste buds happy both morning and evening, ya know.

Descent

Halfway down. That's Santa Barbara and the ocean down there.

7% grade on the climb and for nearly the whole seven mile descent!

Think I can!

Jodi cranking up this hill. We are half a mile from the top and just
used the Emergency Red Bull. ;-)

Starting the climb

And there's our 2300 ft hill we have to get over. I have a Red Bull
which hopefully will give us enough wings.

4 miles of up but then we get 7 miles of down. Zoom!

Solvang, ca

Starting the day off right with pastries from a Danish bakery. Did you
ever know that Jodi likes tasty things?

40ish miles today to Santa Barbara, but we have to climb over a 2300
foot pass. Eek!

Buellton Split Pea Soup

A tough day today, 60 miles which included a morning of small ups and
downs (don't look bad but take lots of energy!), and a few big long
climbs. The bad news about a two mile climb is that it's two miles of
fighting for every pedal. The good news is that sometimes you get a
two mile coast down the other side, or if we're really lucky, a drawn
out gradual coast down that lasts even longer and doesn't need brakes,
just a nice gradual slope to coast it out at 15 mph for as long as you
can. We had one of those today, it was wonderful! Or if the road is
feeling mean, it's a steeper downhill that forces you to waste all of
that hard earned elevation by braking to keep from going too fast, and
before you've gone too far you have to start pedaling again!

Great rewards at the end tho- hotel with hot tub, and the "famous"
Andersons split pea soup. Our guidebook often misses key things like
if a town has a hotel or campground, or if the campground has drinking
water, but this pea soup earned a line in the guidebook!

Miles today: 60. Total trip miles: 371.

Freeway bike route

The bike route joins up alongside some freeway style of roads
sometimes, this one on hwy 135 between Orcutt and Lompoc, about 50
miles north of Santa Barbara.

Sunset

We put our tent up really fast and trotted to the beach to watch the
sunset. What a nice day!

Miles today: 54. Total trip miles 311

Albacore tacos!

This was Jodi's new happiest moment of the trip-- yummy fresh tacos,
perched on a wall in the sun watching surfers and stuff.

Today we thought about how we're living out some peoples' dreams and
other people's nightmares at the same time, hehe. For us it's a dream
(at least today was! Mebbe not so much getting rained on in Big Sur.)

Return of the Sun

Today it just felt great to see the sun again and not have any rain.
We got down to short sleeves after lunch in Cayucos, a cute little
beach town.

New tire!

Success! A new tire tube! Thanks to Paul's lesson two months ago!

Our first flat tire

Oops!

Sat Dec 12: Hearst Castle

The big push yesterday paid off. Today we slept in, went to tour the
Hearst Castle, and are doing a much needed load of laundry instead of
riding out there in the rain. The castle was impressive, and the
"Neptune Pool" was stormy but pretty. We saw three more bicycle
tourists on the road, and were glad we weren't them for today!
Tomorrow we may get a little more rain, but hopefully we're heading
into a nice sunny stretch after that.

How we bike

A few comments about how we bike! This is our first touring trip, quite a bit more of a bicycling adventure than our usual bike-to-Wayzata-for-dinner excursions. Even our backpacking experience is helpful but not quite the same. A few fun details about the biking part if this trip, or as we've experienced it so far...

- Hills. Hard to train for them in Minnesota, and we definately went pretty quickly into the fire based on where we started this trip. I'd be curious to hear how a "real biker" with more experience would find some of these climbs. We have sort of gotten better at them after a week, but still ended up walking some on the longer and steeper ones. In our lowest gear biking we could go between 4 to 5 mph up the longer and steeper hills. Walking and pushing the bikes isn't that much slower- 2.8 mph. The downhill is a nice reward, but overall hilly areas still end up being quite a bit slower. Yesterdays 22 miles in the hills was about 4 hours of biking, and the 18 miles on the flatter approach to town was about 2 hours including water and snack breaks.

- Pack loading confessions. We started with roughly equal packs, but Jodi's office conditioning couldn't keep up with Chris's landscaping conditioning (and we all know he's some sort of adventure strong-man). Chivalry (and loving compassionate husbands) are not gone: Chris took a bunch of Jodi's pack weight half-way through the 57 mile day into Santa Cruz, and has kept most of it until now. Flatter land ahead, and stronger legs underneath, we'll probably give some back to Jodi tomorrow.

- Daylight. It gets dark here early this time of year, at 5 o'clock or so. This makes it a little bit trickier to cover the miles in daylight, and factoring in whether we'll make fast time or not can be a little tricky in working through a days plan. So far we've been able to avoid biking in the dark by headlamp, and we're trying to avoid it the whole trip if we can.

- Biking Fanny Feelings. Yeah, bike seats just aren't as comfy as a plush BarcaLounger. Maybe if you are someone who bikes every day all season long you get your rear end conditioned for it, but we aren't there yet. The good news is that day 4 isn't much worse than day 2, and, well, hey - we didn't expect to be comfortable the whole time.

- Favorites so far. Chris: The first day in the Big Sur area, when it was sunny and we had a full day of georgeous views, topped off with
rolling into our camping site in the redwoods with giant warm burritos
in our bag from the store we passed on our way in. Jodi: The ride
down Devils Slide area (that wasn't as scary as the guidebook made it
out to be), which led stright into the cute Montara lighthouse hostel
just as the sun was setting.

Sent from my iPhone

Jodi Keepin It Real!

Belting out Proud Mary and the Elvises are going wild!

Home sweet rainy home!

After 39 miles today, we hit home for the night. 22 miles were in the
big hills with a little rain and a lot of wind. The last 17 miles were
wonderfully flat but with a pretty good rain for the last hour. Miles
today: 39. Total trip miles: 257

UPDATE: Now we're in this San Simeon motel bar watching small town karaoke. There are two Elvises here. It's dippety-doo city circa 1975!.

Elephant seals near San Simeon

Right off if Hwy 1 near San Simeon, there is a llittle rest area that
is 10 feet above the beach, which is filled with elephant seals!

Friday Dec 11 quick update

Whew! We made it out of the ruggedly beautiful, and REALLY hilly area of Big Sur. We're now in San Simeon and happy to be out of the rain and wet camping gear. :-) Tonight in a motel, tomorrow a tour of the Hearst Castle.

Kind of crazy day today. It rained all night. Then it stopped this morning long enough for us to pack up and go. Then it started again. But the WIND! The wind, which normally blows south, was gusting 25-30 mph in our faces. There were times when the road flattened and I'd be in my second lowest gear going 7 mph. A few times coasting down big hills I could only get up to 12-14. and that's with all the weight in those bags on my bike!

It was a huge struggle the first 22 miles getting out of the big hills. Then it decided to start raining for real. Nice day! At least we stayed ahead of the raccoons...

Biking near Big Sur

Scenic view from somewhere south of Big Sur

In the tent

This is how Jodi usually looks in a tent because it seems to rain
every time we camp and she's freezing.

Miles today: 29 with two 900 ft climbs. Total trip miles: 219

Campsite, round 2

This is actually our second campsite for this night. Story: after
biking in on-and-off rain all day, we finished up with an hour of
rain. Arriving in camp soaking wet, we thought it would be a good idea
to set up under the trees that are barely visible to the right of the
photo. We set up camp in the rain, then it stopped for us to cook
dinner. After dinner we thought we'd walk down a path to the ocean.
By the light of our headlamps, we saw a pair of eyes reflecting back
at us but thought nothing of it. ( even though we had seen the
raccoon warnings).

The beach was awesome- big crashing waves that glowed. Maybe they
caught light from somewhere? Or maybe it was the glowing
phytoplankton. Either way, it was beautiful.

We walked back to camp to have four sets of glowing eyes in the tree
above our tent. Ha ha we thought, how cute. They look too small to be
raccoons. But it was raccoons. And they just finished raiding our
site!

All they got was some minor snacks we left in our handlebar bags...
But of course they spread everything else out they could get to and
chewed up Jodi's whole Kleenex supply. Little shnooks! They were professionals!

Luckily most of our food and toiletries were in a wooden box that the campground supplies, or we would have had a lot more to laugh about.
A full family if raccoons in the trees above us was kind of creepy. We moved to the site out of the trees. Just after the move, chris went back to check out the old site, and came back to find that all four of them had followed us an we sitting on the picnic table at our new site. Food safely locked in the storage lockers, they didn't bother us the rest of the night.

professionals.

Campsite!

We made camp in Pfeiffer state park. Ten bucks! Also there was a
burrito stand like two miles before camp so we got a couple. Kinda
nice to camp and not have to cook tonight.

Wed Dec 9 night

Tonight we're camping in the redwoods at Big Sur. Today was amazing
and we have a lot of photos to share, but not very good reception so
it may have to wait until tomorrow... Miles today: 42. Total trip
miles: 190.

Sent from my iPhone

Carmel scenic drive

Today the views got better and better. This is the "Lone Cypress" tree
on the drive near Pebble Beach golf course. Later in the day we biked
around and past that point you see across the bay.

More on the way to Big Sur

Sometimes we ride along cliffs like this which DON'T have guardrails.
Yow!

Upwards to Big Sur

Big Sur sun

Here's one of the many delicious views as we headed toward Big Sur.
Camping tonight!

Scenic drive in Carmel

This is the "Lone Cypress" tree, which has been growing out there for
250 years. Sheila, we didn't miss it! This was Thursday, as we headed
from Carmel into Big Sur.

Underwater dreams

Chris + Jodi at the Monterey Aquarium.

Monterey Aquarium Feelies

Chris gets freaked out touching sea creatures at the children's touch
ponds.

Roads n roads

Sometimes we bike along Pacific Hwy 1. Sometimes this is a nice
country road with wide shoulders, or sometimes it is a freeway and the
bike route goes on detours (like the strawbery and artichoke fields we
went through today). At one point today we were on Hwy 1 and it
turned into a divided highway that looked and felt like a freeway.
Eek! The route directed us off at the first exit, and then on to a
nice bike path right alongside the freeway that brought us in to
Monterey. Miles today: 48ish. Total trip miles: we haven't been
keeping an exact count, but we're going to call it 148 miles.

Strawberry Fields

Here's where our strawberries come from. A nice lady driving past us
out of her ranch stopped to tell us about what we were seeing. She
said these new plants would yield for at least two years and it took
incredible labor to do. We saw a bunch of laborers up ahead and they
seemed to think we were the crazy ones for going to San Diego on a bike!