Sails and Seals

After a couple of dreary days on the coast the weather has drastically improved. Clear skies, sunny, and no wind. Also, the terrain has leveled out, so I am one happy camper/biker.

With the change in weather I have seen more people out and about, including kite surfers, something I had always wanted to try. Basically surfing, but you have a giant kite that pulls you along.


I also stopped by a small cove, which looked like it had a bunch of bags washed up on the shore. It turned out they were all elephant seals. A lot of them looked pretty dead, but a few were moving around the shores and a bit more active.




I ended the day by Morro Bay, which has a giant rock sticking up out of it. I had set up a warmshowers host, which worked out quite nicely. Lately I have been having much better luck with warmshowers than I did in the beginning. It might be that I have a few more miles under my belt, which makes me seem much more like a biker than when I first started

2000 Miles

Today I hit the 2000 mile mark, lost more than a mile in elevation, burned half my brake pads, and got invited into a strangers home.

The mile in elevation was mostly between Camp Nelson and Springville, where I basically fell out of the Sierras. Lots of steep hairpin turns and no should. I had to constantly brake to make it around the turns. It wore my brake pads down a lot, to the point where they were squawking horribly when I got to town.

I had previously sent a warmshowers request to a host in town, but I hadn't been able to check email since then. I found out he wasn't able to host, so I was sitting in the middle of town trying to figure out where I was going to sleep and where the closest bike shop was to get new brakes.

That was when Nancy drove by and asked me if I needed anything. I explained what was happening, and she offered to let me sleep at her house for the night. She and her husband had done a few bike tours, and were already having a guest over anyways. I ended up camping on their lawn, since the guest bed was already taken. I also got my bike fixed up, it turned out to be a few slivers of metal stuck in the pad that were doing the worst of the squeaking, so I didn't even need to go to the bike shop.

Bad day

Today was not a very good day. I left my warmshowers hosts early in the morning feeling very well rested, and with all of my tires repaired.

From there the day went downhill pretty quick. On the way out of town I blew out a tube, which I changed out easily enough. A few minutes later I realized that my replacement had also blown, due to the cheaper patches that I had gotten at walmart, so I had to replace it again. Then my chain started squeaking a lot even though I had just oiled it, so I added more oil.

After passing through Santa Clara I was looking for a good place to camp, since I was getting worn out from climbing hills. Before I found a good spot I wound up on an Indian reservation that had all kinds of signs about no trespassing and no stopping, etc, so I had to do another ten miles to get passed there, even though I was already worn out. Literally right after the reservation property line there was a turnout, so I set up there for the night, pretty much right at sunset.

Warmshowers

So far I have tried a website called warmshowers five times in different locations. Tonight will be my first successful host, in Dolores, CO. Every other host had something going on when I was passing through town.

I have so far had better luck with couchsurfing than warmshowers, but warmshowers is a site devoted to touring cyclists, so it is better suited to what I am using it for. As I go along I'll keep trying both websites and see which one works better over all.