July 12th
Bridge Street Inn, Cambria to Oceano Dunes County Park
51 miles
Up at 730AM. Hostel had coffee and continental breakfast! Homemade bread and muffins, sooooo good. Coming back here again someday!
Hung out for awhile, packed up stuff and headed down to the bike shop. Alan there, brought bike in to check it out. Tried to adjust and true wheel but no luck, kept breaking spokes. He told me rim was just to0 far gone. I thought that I had hit a pothole or something but he told me I was just carrying too much weight on a low quality wheel. He said I should be using a 36 or 42 spoke wheel, instead of a 32, which mine was. Good to know.
Luckily, he had a used 700 wheel! However, the hub was the old screw on type, which meant my cassette wouldn't work with it. He had a used freewheel cassette lying around, but they were road gears, like for a cruiser bike. No choice but to throw it on. This just meant that I wouldn't have the low gears that had made climbing hills so much easier. Good thing most of the climbing was behind me, I would have been totally screwed if I was still in Oregon!
He quickly threw everything together and all he charged me was $15! Super nice guy, said he likes to look out for bike tourists. I'll definitely be recommending his shop to anyone I come across.
Got out of the shop around 10:15 and decided to have breakfast at a place Alan recommended, the Redwood Cafe. Pancakes, eggs, sausage - very good.
Hit the road again feeling better. Bike definitely feels different, will take a while to get used to. I can go much faster on flats now with these taller gears, though!
Rode through Cayucos, cool town. Rode through Morro Bay - awesome! Tons of cruisers anchored out in the bay, so jealous. Wanted to explore waterfront but no time.
Lonely back roads again to San Luis Obispo. Another cool city, though I kinda blew right through it. Looking for a picnic table or something to have lunch on but couldn't find one. Finally said screw it and stopped on a turn off 7 miles outside of town. Ate quickly, 5 more miles to Pismo Beach.
Arrived in Pismo Beach, started looking for a place to camp. 1st state park I came across didn't allow hiker/bikers. 2nd state park didn't either. Found ranger station, woman said next park with hiker/biker site was a 40 minute drive down the road (that's about half a days worth of riding, by bike).
Kept riding down the road, one more campsite left to check out. Its a county park, so hopefully it will be different. They do have hiker/biker, but its $24! Oh well, cheaper than a hotel, which was my next option. Ranger told me if I found other bikers I could split it with them, which was great but I doubted any bikers where coming in at this hour.
Started setting up camp. About 30 minutes later 3 bikers came into camp! I had passed them earlier in Morro Bay and said hi. We split the campsite 4 ways, so they gave me $16. Looks like my luck was turning!
Needed food, so I rode to the Safeway the ranger had told me about, 5 miles round trip. Stopped at Ace to get a 17mm wrench for my new-to-me wheel (didn't have quick releases on it) and picked up groceries and my favorite Safeway deli sandwich (California Dreamin').
Got back to camp and ate, showered (free!). Other bikers made more dinner than they could eat, so they invited me over to help, which I'm always up for. Erin, Jessica and Dan, all from Irvine, CA. Jessica grew up in Tacoma and went to Lakes HS. They started in Monteray and where headed back to Irvine. Dan is fucking funny. Said he was riding the Oregon Coast around the same time as me, and asked if I remembered seeing a fat guy on an orange bike (I didn't).
Hung out for a while then crawled into bed. Getting closer to the end. Planning on El Capitan State Park tomorrow. Last 2 big climbs of the whole trip tomorrow, then all flat! Starting to plan my attack on southern California. Want to do it in three days.
 |
| Bridge Street Inn |
 |
| looking towards Morro Bay |
 |
| Morro Bay |
 |
| Tucci Rd, on the way to San Luis Obispo |
 |
| outside Lompoc |
No comments:
Post a Comment