Day 11/17 Fort Ross, CA to San Francisco, CA
93 miles, 6,716 ft elevation
A milestone day! 1,000 miles in the saddle, and the first big city since we left Seattle, a few lifetimes ago. A beautiful day, filled with stunning coastline scenery and wildlife (Elk, deer, vultures, and a couple of - Will calls them inquisitive, Lisa calls them rabid ankle-biting - dogs).
Today was definitely a two-pairs-of-shorts day. Mainly because that’s 11 days of cycling on the bounce, but also because of the crosswinds on the Golden Gate Bridge creating some *let's go for* nail biting cycling… but San Francisco has never looked so glorious!
We had a great first breakfast with fruit and tea at the Fort Ross Lodge with a super sunrise.
After 30 miles we were on the lookout for a second breakfast and the pickings were slim. We decided a 1km detour wasn't the end of the world and went on a eucalyptus-lined road to Bodega where we found fabulous egg and cheese bagels for breakfast at Colleen's and we got a little snuggle from Peter the Daschsund.
Lisa's bum and leg started niggling about an hour in. This had been happening a bit and getting worse as the days wore on. It was getting to be more than the standard niggle. The first hour was incredibly hilly, second hour a bit less so and the third was much flatter. Overall, it felt like an incessantly hilly ride – albeit with the payoff of spectacular scenery.
We had lunch in Point Reyes Station in the sunshine on a park bench where a bird hopped onto Will's hand to try to steal his cookie.
On the way into San Francisco, we went through Fairfax, which had a heady mix of traffic, road works and the omnipresent smell of jasmine. Up a never-ending hill just outside Fairfax, we were welcomed with a spectacular view of downtown SF and the Bay Bridge through the trees.
Lisa's leg failed her about 5 miles from San Francisco (the padding in the shorts seemingly in all the wrong places, and searing pain down her right leg) and she had a mini meltdown. So much so that she decided the only way she could keep going was to organise a hire car to get out of tomorrow's 200km ride. There were no regrets.
Golden Gate Bridge was closed to cyclists on one side and so we had to carry our bikes down some steps, along the underpass and up some more steps to get to the other side (no mean feat with 23kg of bike and panniers, after 6 hours of cycling!) Monster crosswinds made the bridge crossing pretty scary - the locals who passed us going the other way seemed utterly at ease with them though. We had a quick shower at our motel on Geary before hot-stepping over to Pearl6101 to meet old friends Mark and Jana for dinner, and for an hour or two, we could almost forget about the bikes, and imagine that we were just normal tourists, visiting friends.
Day 12/17 San Francisco, CA to Monterey, CA
125 miles, 6,027 ft elevation
This ride did not happen for Lisa. With a completely ruined body and excruciating pain down her right leg, she bailed. Instead of cycling, she left the motel with all the panniers and spent 90 minutes cycling 25 km to SFO airport, then 90 minutes queueing to get her hire car, before then spending 3 and a half hours in traffic to get to Monterey - arriving only an hour before Will on his bike (the absolute beast).
Will's ride went something like this -
A cool early morning getaway to beat the traffic, with a somewhat functional route taking me out of town. A fabulous breakfast stop at Soul Grind, recommended by Logan, a lovely fellow cyclist we had met a few days earlier in the rain, gave me everything I needed for another couple of hours.
The wind finally decided to sit behind me, and I powered along, smiling away at the endlessly beautiful coast.
Another excellent stop for lunch at Davenport, and then the inevitable slowing as I navigated
Santa Cruz and it’s famous funfair, followed by 40 miles of the most tedious scenery and numbing headwind imaginable.
Just miles and miles of flat cabbage fields, with the wind howling across them.
Suddenly, the miles just seemed to drag out interminably.
After hours of carefree pedalling, now the end couldn’t come fast enough, and I found myself in a mental battle to keep going.
30 minutes and then a snack bar. Another 15 and you’ll see the beach…
It’s times like this when you struggle to keep your focus, and I was rewarded for this failure by going right through a pothole big enough to throw me out of my cleats, and throw the chain right off the chainring. Thankfully, due to the incessant headwind plus fatigue, I was doing about 10mph at the time (yes. 10mph on the flat. That’s how strong it was.) So I popped out of my cleats, and landed squarely on two feet, just as the bike came to a juddering halt. Strangely, it was almost a blessing, as it reawakened my tired mind, and refocused me on the final 15 miles.
I was glad to get to the motel and finally stop, to be greeted by a wonderful support team of one (ie Lisa), who had bought dinner and Gatorade to help me recover.
Day 13/17 Monterey, CA to Cambria, CA
116 miles, 8,235 ft elevation
We left Monterey at 7:45am and cycled past barking sea lions in fisherman’s wharf, before heading around the 17 mile scenic drive/cycle which was absolutely stunning (even if there were a million golf courses bringing the tone down!). It added 15 miles to the journey, but everyone had told us it was worth it. And they were right.
We had a super (and expensive) breakfast in Carmel, a town which was oddly Olde English and dripping in money (all kinds of designer shops). Then it was onto highway 1, into the hills in the sun with about 33°C. The highway was single lane each way today, with stunning views of the coast round every corner, including the iconic Bixby Bridge. When we finally work our way through all our go-pro footage, there will definitely be some clips of this day!
After a couple of hours, the road left the ocean for a few miles, and climbed sharply into the woods around Big Sur. The shade gave us a little relief, but the long climb more than made up for it!
We stopped for lunch at about 80km at Coast, a gorgeous art gallery/cafe/rooftop bar just after Big Sur, and then it was just another 100km until the end....
Lisa had a meltdown (a recurring theme...?) at 120km with searing pain down her right leg. After a hug and a cry, we carried on. More massive hills followed and then a headwind on the flat. A signpost promised our final destination of Cambria in just 6 miles. 6 miles later, we were still pedalling. Heads dropped. 2 miles further, with still no sign of the town, Will got a flat and Lisa sliced her finger open getting the inner tube out. Another 2 miles further, we finally made it to our hotel. It was 8:40pm, the sun was setting, and we were just time to order pizza and have a glass of wine.
It’s been emotional. I really don’t know how Will did it today after his enormous 200km ride and a late finish yesterday. Legend.
Today's ride definitely turned out to be even tougher than either of us had prepared ourselves for. In retrospect, we should have split today over 2 days. The scenery deserved more appreciation from us than it got, on account of sheer exhaustion.
Day 14 - Rest Day in Cambria and visiting Hearst Castle
This is in another post as there's so many pictures!
Day 15/17 Cambria, CA to Lompoc, CA
93 miles, 3,661 ft elevation
We started off in the fog with moss all over the trees and it was a bit chilly until an hour 45 into the ride. It brightened up, the arm-sleeves came off, and we found ourselves off the highway, on a rural road frequented by other local cyclists.
We stopped for breakfast at 50km in San Luis Obispo. Although we barely touched SLO, as they call it, it was lovely. Bougainvillea poured from balconies and The Nautical Bean provided excellent pastries and smoothies. By now the morning mist had fully burned off, and we were grateful for long, cool drinks.
Lunch was at 100km in Guadelupe at Charley’s Mexican. Guadelupe was basically Mexico. The architecture was totally different to the towns we had passed, with a distinctly Mexican feel, and the landscape now was dusty and arid. The shops fronts, signs, and all the conversations we heard in the town were Spanish.
Our final 2 hours were tailwind assisted, and although the route was largely flat, straight and a little monotonous, we were happy to pass by an enormous fruit farm with the scent of strawberries hanging like a day at Wimbledon around us. As we approached our final destination of Lompoc we climbed one last big hill, which wound charmingly round corners, finally releasing us up to a viewpoint with the sprawling Vandenberg SFB beneath us. It looked a bit like someone had chalked the writing on the sign. That’s because it used to be an Air Force Base. Now it’s Space Force. It was hard to say that without a snigger. I guess that’s Netflix’s fault.
Lompoc itself was also a little sprawling (and filled with nods to Vandenberg and the space program. No prizes for guessing what keeps their economy afloat!) But our stop for the night was friendly, and we found a fantastic pizza spot for dinner, with the bacon, apple and gorgonzola pizza being the surprise winner. We were in bed by 9 – a very happy occurrence.
Day 16/17 Lompoc, CA to Oxnard, CA
108 miles, 3,694 ft elevation
A hearty breakfast at our motel powered us up a 15 mile (!) hill to start – though it was fairly gentle, rising only 1,400ft in that time, and a good tailwind kept our speed and spirits up. Descending suddenly put us onto a 3 lane freeway, with the shoulder at times either covered in broken glass or inexplicably barricaded off, pushing us out into the traffic. Thankfully, as we have experienced throughout the journey, American drivers were generally considerate and gave us plenty of room.
The glass thing was a recurring theme however, as we moved south from Lompoc to Oxnard and then LA. It seems to be a peculiarly South California thing, and it does make us sad that people are so thoughtless to throw glass out the window of cars. Where do they think it ends up? Does a magic glass-fairy collect it all up every night and turn it into sweeties for children?
2nd breakfast saw us kicking back on Refugio beach, finally off the highway. We tucked into some US-sized muffins we’d bought at a gas station, and watched the squadrons of pelicans cruising the shore in formation. Will couldn't resist adding sound effects to the fly-bys...
It was good to sit on the sand, and forget about the noise and mayhem of the freeway for a precious half hour.
We were so keen to stay off the freeway, that we ended up ignoring a ‘bike path closed’ sign. You’ll recall from earlier blogs that this move has always worked out in our favour…
This time the path really did deserve to be closed. It was cut into the side of a beach-top cliff, and half of it had literally crumbled away with erosion. We managed to stay on the still-intact side, and eventually reached more stable ground. Seemingly inevitably though, we were soon back on the freeway.
We reached Santa Barbara with stomachs getting ready for another stop, and found that whilst it was very pretty, it felt a bit too much like a movie set - impossibly pristine & perfect. It was reminiscent of the Beverley Hills from Eddie Murphy’s first Cop film, straight after the gritty realism of downtown Detroit. All that being said, the mission did provide another very welcome respite from all the traffic coming past us down the highway.
Some urban sprawl then turned into a lovely long bike path right along the beach and all the way into Ventura and on to Oxnard, where the final part of the ride was once again 3- lane highway, with lots of traffic and precious little to recommend it.
Will found a smoothie place just down the road from our motel and so we went straight there. Will got chatted up by the very hot guy working there who recommended a bbq place. Again, we went straight there before checking into the motel. Lisa had a huge salad. Even when eating a salad, it doesn’t feel very healthy since there’s so much dressing. Will had half a chicken and then a mud pie dessert. He still could have eaten more.
There was an end of term feeling to the evening – we were so close now, it felt like we’d already arrived…
Day 17/17 Oxnard, CA to Los Angeles, CA
63 miles, 1,850 ft elevation
The ride profile for our final day looked very manageable. A mere 63 miles, and hardly any climbing. However, sadly we were thrust onto 2 and 3 lane highways once again for almost all of it - which is reasonably fast, but not very scenic nor good for the nerves. Nonetheless, we arrived at Santa Monica pier in one piece, and followed the lovely beach-front bike lane through into Venice beach and beyond.
After a trawl through interminable crossroads (and a tour round Beverley Hills), we reached our hotel in East Hollywood. 1,500 miles DONE.
To celebrate, we donned some glad rags (it was only 3 o’clock in the afternoon), and headed off to Hollywood Boulevard, where Will had booked us tickets to finally catch up with the world outside, and watch Top Gun: Maverick at the iconic Chinese Theatre.
As it had been released 2 weeks ago, we pretty much had the screen to ourselves. There was just one other couple, a row behind us and a few seats over. Lisa stole a glance over, and then whispered ‘I think Keanu Reeves is sitting behind us’.
Will thought this was a ‘we’re in Hollywood, so everyone is a lookalike of someone famous’ sort of joke. But he looked anyway.
Sure enough, there was Keanu Reeves, sitting behind us.
We let him enjoy the film, and then couldn’t resist getting a photo with him afterwards.
Strangely, he didn’t recognise us though. I guess we’ll have to do another, bigger bike ride to get his attention…
