Horrayy…we had nice beds to sleep in so we took advantage of them and slept in a little later than our usual 6am. After Jared and Jodie had hit the snooze button half a million time we eventually mowzied out of bed and headed downstairs to phenominal breakfast that didnt consist of disgusting oatmeal, but ooooo you guessed it…scrumptious fruit, bagels, pastries, 4 types of cereal, and 4 types of juice. Yum yum yum!!!…..we ate so much and then some more because it was so yummy in our tummies and it was soooooo different from our usual breakfast mush. Slowly we got organized and dressed and were able to make it out the door and hour late(not uncommon for us as this point); then we were off to TJ (Tijuana) without our bag and most importantly the menice “BOB”, whom Jared had grown so it fond of. The ride was super duper easy without all the weight and we fly as fast as falcons, and made it to the border in a mere hour (crazy……we didnt even need a butt break on this leg of the journey. Just before we crossed over the border we took some time to reflecte as the team consumed another yummy power bar and mushy banana (by now you can probably guess that we are sick of them…and rightly so). Before heading into stinky Mexico, Calen snapped some photos and handed the camera to Jared to film the end, the actual end….ahhhhhhhh, we actually made it there….and in on piece might i add. THE END………………………..

Just kidding!!!!!…….since you’ve all been such faithful fans well share about the rest of our stupendous day. It was crazy easy to get into the Mexico and we didnt even have to go through customs to get in. I think that they are just happy to have us come and spend our money. Right off the bat we took the wrong street and had to turn around(not really surprising eh eh….). Since we gave ourselves hours to burn and enjoy ourselves, thats just what we did starting with some bargaining as we shopped around the little border shops. Besides Jodie, the rest of us knew little spanish, but that was all good because the locals knew some english and Jodie taught us everything we needed to say(I guess all that spanish did come in handy for once). We had soooooo much fun shopping for souveniers and gifts and even spicey tacos that burn Jared’s mouth…..and o ya those donut sticks that have brown sugar and cinamon that i dont know the name of. Our lunch consisted of eating different and oooo sooo good and tasty Mexican foods all day. During our official lunch break we were treated to some(well lets just say creative and not finely tuned or praticed) musical entertainment or four guys beating on instruments. Our afternoon, as well as our back, burn on as we went from shop to shop trying to find food and more things to buy. Soon it was time to go and head back through the border and custom, which took a little more time as we stood in a line for twenty minutes to get our passports scanned and our bagged scanned for guns and all that illegal perifinalia that we were hoping to smuggle back in. Just kidding. Once we were over the border and had found and used washrooms(which cost us 25 cents….) and victory pictures had been taken, we rode home to the motel, ragged, beaten and bruised with a sense of satisfaction of a job/goal well done. We did it!!!!!….not for ourselves but for the Children at the hospital whos lives have and will continue to inspired us.

 

 

 

    

Guess who got up first this morning??? hmmm…tricky question hey? …and the answer is, ding ding ding, Jared ( aka Mr. EB-early bird). Well, just like every other day, we ate porridge, yucky. I was especially hopeing to meet peppy this morning but he was too shy and did not show his lovely face and stinky bee-hind. OOOhh, we were super stoked for the day because we got to ride through a marine base with a beautiful, FLAT road all to ourselves. We rode fast, we rode strong, we rode like we would have had peppy released his stink behind us. Gorgeously stunning beaches flew past us all day long; literally, we flew past every single one. Sigh, we were on a mission and had no time to stop and enjoy the shark infested waters. We did stop for lunch break at a beach where there had recently been an unfortunate encounter between man and shark. Shark won.

Yahoo, we made it to San Diego by late afternoon and rode past the US Open. Unfortunately, we did not see Tiger but we did spot a Lion on the greens. eeeee we were sooo close to accomplishing our huge goal….little did we know what lay ahead. You see, San Diego is kinda tricky to bike through especially if you don’t have a sufficient map to say the least. Our pathetic map had barely enough roads to shake a stick at or fill a glass half full. Ahh, very confusing. Because there are not campsites in the big scity we reserved a Best Western at a discounted price for the sake of our charity. We mapped out our route and Jodie, the schedule nazi, even wrote out the directions by hand, but, alas, we got lost. We traveled down La Jolla, which Calen pronounced without the spanish sounds and reeled in many laughs from locals. Then we biked down many other streets that I can’t remember the names because they are ALL POINTLESS because they led to NOTHING. Our big boo-boo was when we turned onto Broadway at about 6:00pm, thinking it was the Broadway street that was on our directions. But noooooooo, there is more than one Broadway to look out for. Soooo, we ended up riding for three hours in not one, but many wrong directions. The time was 9:30. The place was a sketchy road called Harbour. The lighting was dark. The feeling was scary. The legs were oh so tired. The map was useless. The potentially useful people couldn’t speak English. The Calen was happy as a goose. The Jared was as content as an ostrich. The Jodie was stressed as a starling. The Kinshasa was as nervous as a canary. Just to reiterate, we were very lost. Hopelessly we biked like chickens with our heads chopped off as it got hopelessly darker. Phewfy, eventually we scrounged some directions in the right direction. Yeah, we zoomed down Main, which turned into National City bld, which turnied into Broadway, then passed trought he Mile of Cars, crossed over the number 5 and the 54, T-boned 8th street, and then, yipee, came across Lovely E street. Oh E street, how I love you. The unbelievable became believable as we spotted the Best Western. Hooray!!! What a day!! We entered our paradise at 10:00pm after being on the road for 13 hours. After filling our tummies with mashed potatoes and sausage, we crashed into our beds, real beds. e

 

    we woke up. we packed. we ate. we rode…..the end…

 

 

 

 Just kidding. we did more than that…at least i think we did. let me check my memory…o, yup we did do stuff. we left this morning with another bike problem….Jared’s bike. If i could remember what was wrong, I would write it, but i dont.. anyways, something was wonko again, and it had to do with the shifting, so we HAD to find the nearest bike store to get it fixed. A short distance down the road was a bike shop, but when we took it it, they refused us service becuase they were too busy! we had no idea what to do! We were then told the next bike shop was 16 miles south…16 miles! no way could jay ride his bike that far in the condition it was in at the moment. so we tried to jimmy it together until we could reach the next bike shop.

While jimmying it together, a lady gave us phone book and found us another bike shop just a couple of blocks down the road. we tried that. and they helped us! Jared’s bike still needs further repair, but as for now, we can ride, and the guy didnt even charge us any money! how cool is that?

once again, our take off time was later in the day, so we didnt expect to get into camp until 8 or 9, but we made excellent time again-due to very nive paving companies who decide to pave right by the beach and avoid the mountains- and put in a good loong day. it only felt long becuase it was so hot again. and cuz we kept on getting lost over and over. Usually when this happens, we get soo sick of getting lost, we just begin to stop and ask every person directions and every corner or unsure place we come across. And at the rate we come across unsure roads, that would mean we stop and ask someone every 30 to 60 seconds, no joke. we are baaaad with a capital BAD at directions. It might help if we had a better map as well.

 

Coming into San Onofre State Beach, we got to ride by a nuclear power plant right by the ocean. what a sight to see this big bertha is. It actually looks like a bomb behind a wimpy fence that is just about ready to go KKKKAAAAAbooooooooom!

We pulled into the campsite with the sun just setting and time enough to get our tents set up before the light left us….that was nice. ooo funny story! after dinner, we were just all sitting around the picnic table eating cookies and pineapple slices, and jared suddenly sees something moving out of the corner of his eye so he shines his light that way and…..a skunk jumps off our table and runs like mad into the bush!!! A SKUNK!…..ON our TABLE!!! hahaha. well, it actually wasn’t funny at the moment…it was more scary. we were soooo relieved little peppy ( that is his name, we called him peppy le peu) didn’t spray us with a his version of body spray. We could hardly get over why a skunk would be so brave to jump up on the table seat right beside Jay??!

For the rest of the night, we were quite subconsciously paranoid and kept twitching at every little snap, crackle or pop in the near bush. For the remainder of our eve, there were no more skunks or other wild animals that surprised us, but one that was not an animal….yet again, we realized this lovely campsite we chose was right beside….2 tracks made especially for 2 very large choo choo trains…..

 

    Sleepy eyed and tired as can be, we dragged ourselves out of our tents and ate the good ol meal called oatmeal. We packed up as fast as we could, then us girls headed to the lounge room (yes this campsite had a lounge room with a tv and movies, and everything you could think of. anyways, us girls (i’ll repeat that again just in case you didn’t get that it was us girls..not that we play a significant part, but anyways…I’ll stop right there) OOOK. we were in the tv room trying to catch up on our blogging, but it never happened, and we were almost done, but then we ran out of time and had to head back up to get changed into spandex and all that jazz. we made it out by noon, and began our daily routine of peddling the cranks some million times over and over.

Coming through malibu was a bit hilly, but we made it through and came upon the flat ground again…hurray…flat ground. then came the glorious beaches. beaches that stretched as far as the eye could see and amazing sand volleyball courts covering them. What fun this beach would make on a sunday afternoon with a group of people. Coming into the Los Angeles, we didn’t know how we were going to get through without getting lost, then we found this great little bike path reserved for bikes only! (why don’t more cities create such delicacies for cyclists??) It weaved literally right on the beach. we had beach on our left, and beach on our right as well. sooo amazing. the path just kept going, so we just kept biking and eventually rode by a huge whack of venders selling odds and ends. it lasted for a couple miles, then it ended. We knew we were travelling right through LA, but had no idea whereabouts. Just a ways down, we realized we had just ridden the Venice Boardwalk. A really stellar place i guess. It has a fancy smancy sounding name, so that sounds great to me.

All day was pretty much riding on these boardwalk type paths right along the beach and I must say, that was some of the neatest paths we’ve been on…right on the beach…literally… As we neared the later part of our day, and lunch time came around (this lunch was at 3 ish or so) we found a crazy sweet beach with a bunch of people all ages playing basketball. Usually we pick random weird and strange spots to eat lunch, but we decided this time we would look for something nice…and this hit the spot. sooo…. we pulled out our 3 bags of bagels and 4 lb jar of crunchy peanut butter and jam and 2lb container of honey, and began spreading for lunch. Everyone walks and stares like always (as though they have never seen 4 canadians sitting on grass eating 3 bags of pb and jam or honey bagels with their shoes off and relaxing in the sun?) hmm…maybe not.

While we were eating lunch, a bunch of life gaurds came to rinse their vehicles and one lifegaurd came out and tossed us two bottles of specialty sunscreen! He told us he didn’t want to be seeing us get skin cancer on his watch…hehe…prob cause he took a look at Jay and saw how badly he had burnt the previous day. We rode until the evening, and like 2 hours before finishing, we got totally mixed up, and lost…..again….but! a nice old man who cycles, stopped in his car and gave us directions to the nearest, cheapest motel. There was no way we would be able to make it to a campsite, this being LA.

We arrived at a motel, and for sure thought it would be a couple hundred dollars a night and would have to pay anyway because there was no place else to go, but we got the rate, and it was super incredibly cheap! what a huge blessing! the motel was really really nice inside and once in, we quickly whipped up a delicious meal on our propane stoves- in the room- to eat. Tonight was not spaghetti either but mashed potatoes and sausage! such a grateful change.

Jared and Kinshasa walked to a store to get icecream for our 2 pies we bought as fun food for that eve, and when they returned, the only ice cream within decent vicinity was a teensy weensy tin of fun. It looked like it was only 2 mouthfulls big… it was…but it was still yummy yummy yummy!

 

       Today was a rather strange day…It started off with a new twist. Instead of gettin on our bikes and riding like the wind, we got on our bikes, then got off them and one of our team members walked his to the nearest bike shop. We had finished all our morning duties and were on our way out of the Campsite when we decided to take a different road than when we came in. It led us to some train tracks. We had to cross the train tracks to get to the other side where the road was. Calen popped his bike over fine. Jared was popping his bike over fine, when bad bob did his bike in. It got caught in one of the tracks and made Jay’s bike go all wonky and slip from his hands…crraack! his cranks dinged hard onto the tracks. With surprise, we rescue the trailer and the falling bike that weighs a ton and the rest of us get our bikes over. we go and hop on our bikes and think everything is fine and dandy till Jay goes to take a peddle. crraaack! Pop! crunch, crunch, crunch…. he did a big boo boo to his bike. I guess when the chain hit the tracks, it opened part of a link on the chain and the chain got caught in his spokes. It bent his rim soo bad, and broke 3 spokes at the same time….oops!

Our first big problem, but we asked where the nearest bike shop was and moseyed on down there and got it all tiddlied up in and hour and a bit. We were all soo glad this was a problem that could be fixed! and also that we were in a good size town where things wouldn’t be waay expensive and that a bike shop could even be found! We returned to the road at 12:30 and began to ride with the wind. The terrain has totally changed and except for the small hills coming into Malibu the road was completely FLAT. sooo nice. hills are ok sometimes cuz we get to rip down them afterwards, but the flat road helps us make incredible time.

This day ended up to be a long one for us only for the fact that we rode into the dark…again. We didn’t think we would get into Malibu but amazingly we did! We pulled into the RV Park at 9 o’clock and payed a lot of money for a tenter campsite that was really high up on a hill. BUT the veiw was gorgeous. well we couldn’t quite see anything at that time at night, but in the morning it was be-a-utiful! Anyways, while the boys made dinner, us girls headed to the showers until dinner was ready.

After dinner the boys had their showers and once everygthing was cleaned up Jay went to bed, while Calen sat outside, but i guess he got to sleepy and fell asleep on the tarp with his sleeping bag..hehe he looked like a hobo. and for that he later got woken up by a RV Ranger and told he couldn’t sleep there because there are rattlesnakes around. soo, he moved into the safety of his tent. As for us girls, we went back to the bathroom cuz there were some outlets for the computer. The computer needed to be charged and we really needed to update our blog. We stayed up into the wee hours of the morning writing and such. It was a pretty funny sight for the onlookers. Every few hours someone would come in the bathroom and be a little surprised to see 2 girls sitting on chairs by the sink with a computer…eating raisins…haha. We gotta do what we gotta do.

It seemed like we wrote forever, but still did not get our stuff fully updated and our brains were just too tired to keep writing, so finally, at 2 am, we called it a night and went to bed….then try to be ready to go in 7 1/2 hours…..we are crazy-as usual.

 

This morning started our superbly, with the sun shiny shine shining down on our little faces. It seems to us that every morning we wake up to now is really bright and sunny with not a cloud in the sky! how cool is that? we have forgotten all about those rainy days many days ago during our first 2 weeks of riding…

Our goal today was Carpenteria State Beach and supposedly what everyone had told us was that it was beautiful! and one of the best State Beaches in California. But not to jump ahead…This blog today needs to contain much for information because it was a good day. actually, it is getting harder and harder to remember what happened in these days as the days go on…so much happens….anyways, enough lolly gaggin about and time to get back to the details. ok, where was I…. right, we were leaving Lompoc- a really great town and it had a good community- and once again we ate porridge for breakfast (by now, our tummies have just about had it with that mush, and within a few days prob won’t be able to take any more) then hopped on our trusty ol bikes and head but one direction…south.

The wind made it chilly for about 15 minutes while riding and then came our first little hill. because of the wind we had put on our ‘bergs’, tights, and the whole sha bang, but even after 33 days, we all don’t get it that after the first hill, we ALL usually are fully warmed up and shorts and a tank does just fine. we got to the top of the hill and as soon as we reached the small summit….swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh….schripp. schripp schripp, schripp…. and schloop, schloop, schloop, schloop. the swooshes are our “bergs” being swished off, the schripp are the sound of our shoes being un-velcroed(the only sound i could think of velcro being undone) for quick removal of the schloops (our tights)…. all our extra layers came off and we were back to the ‘norm’ attire of summer wear.

we rode on some lovely paths for a while, then climbed another short hill into a little town called Solvang. The town was and old Dutch town and was manicured to still look super cool and clean. all the buildings were restored and it was the coolest town we have been in so far. Calen took some pictures to capture the coolness of it, then we sat for a snack break. Hey, I don’t think we have shared what we eat for snacks. It is the same thing every day (kinda like our other meals-not so surprising) but we love taking breaks, and bananas and power bars do the trick. these special nutritious, protien filled bars are pretty much like a chocolate bar so that is exciting. and bananas, well, they taste great, but are mainly just a good filler for us. it holds the guys rather large stomachs over till lunch.

After finishing our small tour through Solvang, we continued on our merry little way to the next town. and the next town. and the next town. and then…da da da daaaaaaa…(scary music) we had to climb a mountain.

We knew this mountain was coming up and we tried to prepare ourselves for it, but no matter how much we prepared ourselves, it was no use…this was big….our biggest one yet. we climbed for 2 hours straight and completed a vertical distance of 3400ft…pretty impressive i must say….except we four humans are rather silly at times, and though the map suggested we not take this route we took it anyway. why? well because this route get full sun exposure and the temperatures easily rise into the hundreds, in the summer. we thought the temp wouldn’t be so bad because, well you know its only like June 2 and thats not summer.

As we climbed it got hotter and hotter and hotter and hotter. It never quite reached the temperature like that one day in Brookings, OR, but I’m sure it was close. and this time we had our natural body heat working with us too. We took a million 5 sec breaks to let our heads stop pounding from the intense sun and allow our core temp to drop back into the safe zone.,,then continued on. This time we had lots of water which was beneficial to our well being, but we still were completely exhausted by the top. But only for like 1 min, because then we looked at the downhill which was like 8 miles of straight downhill, and we forgot how tired we were and started racing down the hill.

Calen and Jared always travel down first, cause they love speed and do not fear about crashing, i guess. They clock 70km/hr easily, then decide thats not fast enough after a few seconds and start peddling down the hill in their 27th gear…to gain even more speed…

Kinshasa and I, we are a bit different. we like speed, but keep it at a nice 65-70 and only as fast as we are willing to crash if we must. with loaded bikes, it feels a bit sketchy and quite honestly, we are girls and don’t know how to take the corners properly with a fully loaded bike. But the speed is still fun. o yea, i forgot to mention that Jay and Calen do all this downhill stuff…shirtless. one wrong turn and…. well we won’t say the rest. they would just be in a lot of pain for a very long time. Thankfully they are excellent cyclists and more importantly, Jodie is praying that no one will get killed as we literally fly down the mountain.

wow, all this exciting downhill and we finally coast right on into Santa Barbara. Here is where we ran out of water. we thought it would be no prob to fill them up in just a few minutes, but we were wrong. The road that would have led us to a small gas station or something was closed so we had to take a detour…a very long one that was not biker friendly at all. It was all uphill and i mean really steep uphill. we had just climbed a mountain for goodness sake, and here we go again climbing more mini mountains. our throats were parched and we could ride no longer without water and aha! we found the perfect spot to fill up our water bottles! It was at a Elementary school, so we filled up and guzzled water like crazy cuz we were so thirsty. Running out of water, I say, is one of the worst feelings that a cycler can feel. Horrid. Don’t try it on purpose.

Finally, after much pushing to the end, we made it to the grocery store. Bought some much needed food. rode to Carpenteria State Beach (which was just down the road like a minute away! ) and made supper. but it does not end there. We topped off our dinner with a huge watermelon we bought from the store! it was sooooooo goooood. We spent the rest of our evening just sitting and chatting to our new friend David, who we found out was hiking from San Diego to British Columbia….we are not just the only crazy people out there.

we went to bed early and did not fall to sleep all that well tonight, because 150 ft from our tent were the train tracks…I need not say more.

 

 

We rode for six days, and today is the seventh, and yay! we actually took it off We pre planned our meals for today and bought all the necessary food to make it a day with no porridge, bagels, or spaghetti…

So this morning, when we woke up, the boys stayed in bed (Jay for once didn’t get up first) and Kinshasa and I pulled out the WAFFLES!!!! we were too hungry to make them all, then us four sit at the table and eat like normal people, so we cooked and ate as they were coming off the frying pan….waffles top porridge any day. We had also bought peach yogurt and syrup to go with them and they were scrumptiously umptiously delicious.  We polished off a box of 24 in no time flat. well, not just us girls. we each had our own stack, ate, then cooked up the rest for the guys. Waffles are delic, but they don’t contain as much filler properties as porridge, soo…we whipped out the old porridge again…NOT!  Instead, we had fruit, and hmm, I actually can’t remem..wait.. i do so remeber. we whipped out the cinnamon buns! yum yum. we pulled a Will Taylor move, and ate the rest of the cinnamon buns for breakfast.

Last night, we also decided that we were going to make it to church, so we packed like speediness, threw everything in our tent, and rode through town looking down random streets for lots of cars gathered. We for sure thought church would be started anywhere as it was already 10 30, but as we were riding, we saw a bunch of cars, thought “hmm, maybe this is a church”, and to our surprise, it was a foursquare church that started at…10:45! what church starts at 10:45??!!

Church was awesome. We can say no more. They pretty much had an orchestra going on upstage, and they had a grad tribute thingy as well, which was cool. The pastor was hyper active, and is always like that we presume, cause he came up and chatted with us after. Funny, He had seen us at Albertsons the day before. We were soo glad to have made it to church, finally, and it was super close to our campsite too…God seems to work everything out perfectly.

Now…our clothes…. we threw them all in BOB and rode into town to find a much needed laundromat, internet, and a grocery store. we were just about to a laundromat, and ka pop! another flat tire….. I probably don’t have to tell you who it was, cause at the rate flat tires have been happenning to one individual in our group, i’m sure you can guess…Kinshasa! She had ridden right through a sea of glass…hehe we all saw it, but because she was using her eyeballs to search high and low for a laundromat, they became fixated on a shop called “the door” and she did not see it-though Jodie warned her- and rode right through.

Thankfully she had packed just one spare and the tire pump, so we fixed it in a jiffy, and were on our way again. While the guys sat at the laundromat and ate frosted frosty doughnuts and drank Arizona iced tea, us girls walked to find the library so we could update this blog.

we did not get this blog updated fully as everyone could see, and we are still far behind, but when we finished at the library, our laundry was all nice and clean and the boys had even folded it for us! We did a quick shop and headed back to the campsite to make dinner.

For dinner, we made corn, rice and sausage and for dessert…banana boats that was super good. after supper we wrote more blogs without internet, had showers that cost money and were lukewarm (for the girls..the boyz was broken so they had unlimited hot showers) and listened to the frogs croak and a strange black cat scamper through the bush.

good night.

Ahhhh, what a beatiful feeling to wake up in a bed and eat fresh bluebery muffins for breakfast.   Ross and Debby were so kind to us and it was such a blessings to be invited into their home.  They gave us a whole bunch of maps and directions out of the city and informed us as to avoid all those tricky Freeways that don’t allow bikers.  Today we zoomed like nothing else….must have been the pizza      The wind blew on our backs and our legs began to feel like hardened jello, not jellowy jello.  In other words, the muscles in our legs were actually responsive and we could motor along the roads.   In order to make good time we also took a lot shorter and fewer breaks.  It all payed off as we rolled into Lompoc at 3:00 in the afternoon!!!!!    This was quite the acomplishment seeing as we usually don’t complete our 100 plus km and find a campsite until 7or 8…..or 9pm.     A new adventure awaited us in Lompoc…..ALBERTSONS.  A brand new grocery store for us, never had we set foot in such a wonderfull place since Fred Meyers in Oregon.    For the first time, all those dohnuts, cookies and cinamon buns that we had drooled over and WALKED BY IN every other store were finally cheap.   Yahoo!!! We bought eight loaded cinamon buns for $2.99.  Oh Joy!!   Again, we pretty much filled up a cart and then sat outside Albertsons and ate and ate and ate.  oooohhh, we also bought yogurt, yummmy!!  While we ate, we made phone calls home.  Our poor mothers, they are always so happy to hear from us cuz we do not call home on a regular basis like good little youngsters probably should.  Well, byt he time we had actually eated enough food to fill our bottomless stomachs, called home and decided where to camp, we had been “loitering” outside of Albertsons with our shopping cart ( now half empty) for 3 hours!!   We are quite the bunch of funny people and so many passer-byers look and laugh….actually, stare and laugh. 

     After talking to a bunch of people we found an awesome RV Park 5 minutes from town.   Slugishly we rolled in, set up the tents and made supper.   It was a quiet campsite and we fell asleep with the soothing thought of a day off in the morning.

We woke up early but, even so, Esau beat us on the rode by about 2 hours:D By eight in the morning it was already smokin’n hot and we lathered on the sunscreen. In the process of gooping up my back, Jodie found a tick on me!!!!! ewwww!! yucky!

 

It was gorgeous, the road was gorgeous, ( and very mountainous might I add), the sunshine was gorgeous, we were gorgeous, ( as usual)……..so because everything was so gorgeous Jodie and I worked the camera with some stellar poses on top of boulders at a vista point. Follow the pictures, they are self-explanatory. It was such a pitiful moment crashing to the ground after sporting a flying superman pose off of a 2 ft tall boulder. Pathetic to say the least. We laughed our heads off….well, we laughed our heads just about off, luckily they stayed ontop our necks where they belonged.

Tootie Fruties were calling to us so we stopped in Big Sur, bought some very expensive milk and each had two heaping bowls of the joyous cereal. We rode on and on. Our food supply was pretty much zilch but every town we enteres seemed to be getting smaller and smaller. First there was Lucia, nothing but a bar/grill connected to an inn. Then there was Pacicific Valley; hmmm I don’t recall anything at all in Pacific Valley, actually I don’t even recall riding through Pacific Valley. Hark, actually Jodie can recall seeing one motorhome in Pacific Valley.. By now we were more than zilch out of food, we were nada, zip, empty, broke outa food. Our last hope was Gorda. And hope we found in a quaint, oober expensive general store. They sold teeny tinny jars of peanut butter for $6.75 and that was pretty much it. Though Gorda had a little food, it did not have any place to camp so it was going to be another bush night. We rode just outside of Gorda and started looking for the prime location away from prying eyes and find it we did. After detouring a private, locked gate, we reined our bikes down a path until, voala, there was a private campsite just for us. Complete with a bridge, mowed grass and n excellant bush bathroom with the most magnificent ocean veiw. It was dark. The crickets were out. Our stomachs had begun the laborous and often painful job of digesting unchewed spaghetti. Then we heard it. A motor. A squealing motor. A squealing motor heading down the path towards us. Paniking we switching off our headlamps and Jared voiced the dreaded words, “We’re done for”! The squealing motor rounded the corner and the headlight shone on four squatting candadians, frozen with fear. The squealing motor shut off and an awesome dude proudly dismounted his 5 horse moped and chatted up a storm with Calen about the history of our private campsite, his little cabin down yonder and that it was no problem for us to stay ther for the night.

 

What a great spot we had last night to sleep and it feels soo good to have permission to be occupying such campsites. We met Gord again this morning…well we didnt meet him again, but we caught a glimpse of him scooting by on his scooter moped and heard the roar of that mighty engine putting up the slope to the road. With breakfast well done with and our things all tidy like, we pushed our really heavy bikes up the hill to the road as well, and waited for Calen…yes again, we waited for that boy…but all is well, we had to get water as well. we tried to find the jungle stream again, and Jay and I did, but when we filled one water bottle it was….hmm….yuck…and it looked really bad too. so we vetoed the water from that scummy stream and thought we would just keep cycling till we find a more suitable one. Once on the road the sun began to shine freely and the road got hotter and hotter and our throats were becoming rather parched and dry so we really started looking for some water. tadaa! we found some! it was still not 100% perfect, but it would do. and boy, did we ever need it… but we should have waited just like 3 min more, for when we rounded the next few corners, there was a glorious,clean, rushing river thing that prob was 100 times more perfect to drink than the stuff in our bottles.Too lazy to stop again and fill them up, we just kept on going. Especially cause we had climbed most of that particular hill, and we were now on the way down and it is just plain silly to stop momentum when one is flying down hills at 40 miles an hour…

We were totally out of food, so our next stop was a larger town called Cambria. It astounds me how fast the team can pedal down and up hills when we all know the longer we take to get to that town, the longer it will be for food. Once in Cambria, we stopped at a grocery store and stocked up on food-soo much food that we filled up a shopping cart, then ate almost all the food from it hehe- o yea, and we bought a large large thing o strawberries and ate almost the whole plastic thingy. about 1lb each. Just before leaving, some random guy came out of the store and gave us a whole gallon jug of sunny D to drink! he just gave it to us just like that! Calen and Jay were super stoked, and filled their bottles full of this pure sugar concetrate. After a great tummy fill, we then continued on our merry little way.

The roads were sooo superb. flat. straight. the wind on our tails. what more could we ask for? Sun! and sunny D! we made excellent time becuase we were able to cruise at like 40-45km/hr for a loooooong loooonng time. soo nice. o yea, some more sweet things to write about. as we were riding on this really flat road. to our right, right along the beach were like 150 huge, ginormous, and really really fat sea lions. they were all sleeping on the beach and it looked like they were dead. and the smell. it smelled like they were all dead too. garosss.

we were all so jolly at this point and i guess when Calen gets extra jolly, he bursts forth in song. His crazy, ridiculous, girly-voiced songs. Today’s specialty was ” I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts..deedlee dee” etc.. and on and on he went. Kinshasa and i tried to sneed a candid camera event, but he saw, and did not want to be seen singing it in front of the camera….next time….

Because we were riding soo fast, we were almost flying into San Luis Obispo (don’t ask me how to say it, i cannot) and just as we were about to enter the city… an old man rides up beside me and starts asking about the trip etc etc, then he rides up to Jay and asks where we are staying. Jay tells him we want to find a campsite or RV park or something for the night and the guy tells him that there is none…..uh oh….

but be of good cheer, for he helped us overcome this mountain. He-this man’s name was Ross- decided to phone his wife to see if we could just stay at their house!! whaaa!! soo amazing. She- this lady’s name is Debbie- said we could come, so we followed Ross through the town and to his humble abode in a nice quiet part of town.

They- Debbie and Ross- were going to go out for dinner, but first, they let us all have showers and clean up a bit before. oooo how glad were we? sooo happy! can you guess how many days it had been since our last one? 6 long stinky days. when we went into their house, we smelled soo bad it was embarrasing. but we smelled o so pretty when we came out! just like pears and flowers:D They took us into town as well, and dropped us off downtown while they went our for dinner. We on the other hand, smelt some delicious pizza cooking just across the road, so instead of being true black creekers and looking ofr the best deal, we were soo hungry we all instantly voted on pizza! we ordered 2 extra larges. they were extra large for sure, and soooooo yummy in our tummies. We ate it like barbarians, then after 10 min, we realized we didn’t have to eat that fast. we took about 3 intermissions during our meal so we could finish it. It was sooo much fun to hang out in a fun place (this was a pizza place unlike any other) with tons of people and action etc…

Back at the house they fed us sherbert and tea, and Ross photocopied lots of good maps to help us get to Santa Barbara- something we desparately need because we are excellent at getting lost- with a full tummy and a warm bed…aahh…a bed! we were set for a good nights sleep.