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The Boys Are Back In Town

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The mixed grill didn't disappoint, and we caught up on all the news.  We are men so this just involved Neil telling me the status of his car restoration project while I pretended to listen. We flew with Vueling, an airline I haven't used before.  They are part of IAG, along with BA and Iberia, and positioned as the budget alternative to those two flag carriers.  Some of you will know my opinion of BA so the prospect of flying on their even crappier sibling didn't fill me with optimism.  Fortunately, Ryanair exists to save all other budget airlines from being the absolute worst and Vueling turned out to be just run of the mill crappy rather than spectacularly crappy. When we rocked up at the Enterprise rental desk the guy took one look at our bike boxes and swapped the hatchback we had booked for a cargo van.  170 miles later and were in Gijon...a much bigger place than I was expecting!.  We have now ditched the van, assembled the bikes and procure...
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Bicycle Song

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  Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick   During a moment of boredom I wondered when I started with this blogging nonsense and discovered it was more than 15 years ago.  May 23 rd 2011 to be precise.  In the process of looking up this fact my eye was drawn to the readership stats page which informed me that I have had 170,000 page hits.  This sounded quite a lot but a quick bit of maths tells me it equates to a mere 30 hits per day or, more relevantly since I don’t blog every day, about 300 hits per blog entry.  Even this miserable number is falsely inflated due to an entry in 2013 which, bizarrely, has accumulated over 5,000 hits.  Out of curiosity I then researched how many hits one needs to properly ‘monetise’ the whole thing and it seems 30,000-50,000 per month might earn you a very modest income.  Any dreams I had of becoming an Influencer are now dead.   Take This Job and Shove It   May 23 rd 2011 was actually a very big day for ...
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Heroes

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We did it!  Correction, THEY did it.  Sitting in a van for nearly 6 weeks isn't going to impress anyone but riding up to 2093 miles with a condition that many probably perceive to be life-limiting isn't too shabby! We met up with the Chicago team in Steele Indian Park, just 3.5 miles from the convention centre, for a final mass ride to the finish line.  A CBS news crew turned up and did a couple of interviews and all 40 riders formed up for the glorious final miles.  The Phoenix Police Department, bless their cotton socks, provided a group of Highway Patrol motorcyclists to close the road and set the lights to green as we swept into town.  Ahead of the group was our documentary crew, filming from the back of a pickup truck, and behind were our support vehicles, decked out with balloons.  It was probably the coolest thing I have ever been part of.  There have been many moments on our journey when I have wondered why on earth I do this and these g...
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Cowboy Song

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I skipped the karaoke and sat on my porch with a glass of wine and watched the sun set.  The motel cat, which was considerably cuter than the room, came and joined me and we sat together and put the world to rights.  It was my best evening of the trip. Salome was like so many Merican towns that I have passed through, on this trip and others.  A small place with little obvious sign of employment opportunities and a population that seems hardened by their situation and the heat.  Another 50 miles across the desert took us to Wickenberg which couldn't be more different.  It is a delightful town with a bit of a cowboy/western theme and a measure of civic pride that was lacking in Salome.  Our hotel a Super 8, a brand that usually languishes in the 3 rd  division, but it is smart with capable staff and reasonable rooms. I I left home 38 days ago., that is a lot...but it feels like more!  Tomorrow we will be in the outskirts of Phoenix....
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When 2 become 1

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Desert, sand, punctures.  There, you are now fully up to date with the last 2 days.  Yesterday was longish at 60 miles but the weather gods finally let us down and served up a stonking headwind that was either on their noses or gusting strongly from the side.  It was one of those days when all you can do is grip the bars tight and dig a little deeper. Today we crossed our last state line, into Arizona.  Shrewdly I filled up with gas at $6.29 before leaving California....it is $4.50 here.  Bugger.  Other than the price of gas there is little to distinguish the California desert from the Arizona desert.  It isn't exactly 'pretty' but it is more interesting than you might imagine. Our destination today was Salome...a stop I have been dreading.  Salome is a 1 horse town where the horse is ready for the knackers yard.  We need 17 motel rooms and this requires virtually every available room in the 3 places that offer them.  These pla...
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Accidents Will Happen

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I got up yesterday morning and decided that today would be a nice easy one.  I got everyone on the road and was planning to take a stroll around a major classic car show that had taken over the main street when the phone rang.  Someone had managed to fall off less than a mile from the hotel. By the time I got to him the road was closed by a fire engine, ambulance and police car and he was being given a thorough check with roadside ECG and the whole works.  Despite the strong recommendation from the experts that he go with them to the hospital for further checks he declined.  So began another day in paradise.  A 75 mile dash to deliver the downed rider to the next hotel then backtracking 45 miles to check on the rest of the group and shadow them to their hotel in El Centro. We have now emerged from the SF to San Diego bubble of wealth and are back in grotty towns full of homeless people.  El Centro was a particularly fine example of the genre with a t...
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Now That's What I Call Music Volume VII

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All Kinds Of Everything* (Wednesday) We stayed in Dana Point last night.  It was one of the better hotels but our dinner booking turned out to be in a restaurant that has closed down.  Instead ,we shopped in the nearby supermarket and took over the breakfast room for a make-shift group meal.  At some point someone decided it would be fun to have some karaoke.  My group are plucky cyclists but horrible singers!   *you need the singer Road To Nowhere (Thursday) The day to San Diago is always exciting because it requires 7 miles riding the shoulder of I5.  Yesterday was even more exciting because the Marines had decided to close the bike path that precedes this section, while they practiced transferring men and materials by helicopter to a ship moored offshore.  Wankers.  Rather than placing a sign at the point where riders should divert they had a solider 6 miles down the road to turn people back.  Wankers. The n...
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Orange County Girl

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4 more riders joined us in Redondo Beach and we are now at our full complement of 26.   To look at their luggage you would think it was 62!  How can anyone need 2 sodding great bags stuffed with christ knows what for a 10 day ride in the sunshine?  The group is now so large that I can no longer keep track of everyone.  My plan is to just check the van each night for unclaimed bags and inform the next of kin. Our day started with 12 urban miles, cutting across the base of the Rolling Hills Estates peninsula, before joining the beach path in Long Beach and rolling south through the OC.  I have seen more Rolls Royce's and Bentleys today than I have in the last year!  Passing through Newport Beach, Huntingdon Beach, Laguna Beach and Dana Point (which obviously didn't get the 'beach' memo) there is an ostentatious display of wealth that has to be seen to be believed.  Was it only a few weeks ago that I was complaining about people living ...
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Now That's What I Call Music Vol VI

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2 days to catch up on: The Laughing Policeman I forgot to mention this in the previous entry.  While I sat at the top of the sodding great hill between Solvang and Santa Barabara, worrying about how they were all doing in the heavy Sunday traffic, a car pulled up alongside.  The driver wound down her window and began berating me about the recklessness of allowing people to cycle on the road.  She asked me which idiot had planned the route so I introduced myself, then informed me that she had reported this crime against America to the police.  I am enormously proud to say that I remained calm and polite. Sure enough, a few minutes later a California Highway Patrol cruiser turned up.  In the UK it takes the police about a week to investigate a murder but in the good old US of A the police are thicker than flies.  I was sort of expecting a bollocking but the officer couldn't have been nicer.  He confirmed our right to be on the road, said h...
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Barbara Ann

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If you ever find yourself visiting Solvang you should consider staying at Pea Soup Andersens* Inn in Buellton.  It is 3 miles from Solvang and a mere $200/room...compared with $300+ in Solvang itself.  It had a nice pool and hot tub and the receptionist had hair-free ears. *you should Google the whole 'Andersens pea soup' thing. It is probably worth pausing for a moment to discuss our journey.  The core group has already ridden 1500 miles....with Parkinsons!  They have done this with less moaning than many I have led.  Depending on how advanced their condition is, the meds they take and many other complicated factors, they show the strain to a greater or lesser extent, but they are all digging deep.  The new arrivals in San Fran kind of self-selected a shorter distance matched to their strength/experience but they are also getting their miles done in style. Today was a case in point.  The road from Solvang back to the coast in Santa Ba...
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