Grumpy Old Men On Bikes

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...

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 ...

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...

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...

...and the living is easy.  It is certainly summertime; after the usual misty start the sun has a very fetching hat on and it is currently about 25 degrees C (77f in old money).  And the living is easy because, inexplicably, nothing has gone wrong today.  We have 2 support vehicles....1 stays out with the riders and 1 gets to the hotel to resolve the check-in chaos.  Today I was on check-in duty but no chaos!  The receptionist was polite, helpful and relatively free from ear hair (beware hotel reactionists with excessive ear hair...I don't understand the science but they are always useless).  The required number and type of rooms were delivered without any fuss and the hotel is nice!   The riders aren't here yet but they are doing fine or, at least, not calling me to say they aren't and either of those is just fine with me.  They will be here shortly and woe-betide anyone who doesn't just quietly check in and slink of to their room. ...

Don't Go Changing Thanks to the size of our group, the matching jerseys and the signs on the van we attract attention wherever we go.  Well-meaning folk approach and ask about our journey, and we enjoy the attention, but when those people turn out to be locals I know exactly what is coming. I have spent the best part of the last 2 years planning this journey, carefully refining the route to balance our desire for natural splendour, the need for occasional sustenance and the overriding importance of finding the safest roads available.  This route then needs to be documented with printed turn-by-turn instructions and distributed in electronic form to 25 people for use with a variety of navigation devices.  It's complicated. At some point in the conversation the local smart-arse will tell me that my route is not the 'best' one available.  Usually their suggestion addresses only one of our conflicting needs....it is prettier but o...

Last night we stayed in Big Sur Lodge...actually cabins in the Pfeiffer Big Sur state park.  A great location but with a captive audience for dinner which was reflected in the prices.  Everyone carefully sat in small groups to avoid the 'large group surcharge' that seems pervasive round here but when the bill came they applied it anyway.  Everywhere in the Big Sur region of the coast is on the make...gas in California is usually between $5.5 and $6.5 but in Big Sur it is TEN dollars.  A cup of coffee?  $9.  A sandwich?  $22.  I get the sense that everywhere is trying to make up for the 3 years that tourism ground to a halt while the highway was closed.   The whole point in coming this way was for the spectacular scenery but this morning we rode into a pea-souper of a fog.  We couldn't see a thing.  One or two of the group are nervous of sheer drops at the road's edge and we're grateful to be screened from them but it was...

17 Mile Drive in the sunshine is one for the scrap book and this morning could not have been more perfect.  The route starts with the cycle path through Monterey then onto deserted roads along the beautiful coast before diving into the gated community built around Pebble Beach golf course.  Houses change hands for $40-50 million and up...a ludicrous sum but even sillier once you realise these are mostly the 2 nd  or 3 rd  homes of the megarich.  I would have given a kidney to be riding today! The grand finale is a ride through Carmel, once the mayoral seat of Clint Westwood and now an immaculate Stepford Wives collection of expensive boutiques and high-end eating-places.  27 sweaty cyclists were about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit! Two of our group visited the golf club and have somehow secured a tee time for 6:20am tomorrow morning.  The cost of this is so painful that I cannot persuade either of them to actually speak it out loud....

I have mentioned several encounters with local PD support groups; but today we scaled new heights.  A leading light in a local support group, who is also a World Parkinson Conference Ambassador, has been communicating with me for months to prepare a hero's welcome for us.  I was just expecting Ferrero Rocher* but she had laid on considerably more than just funny nutty chocolates.  She had commandeered the library in Marina, CA where local PD support volunteers had prepared a welcoming party, complete with banners, a groaning table of free food (my favourite sort) and a little schedule of speeches including a welcome by the Mayor.  A couple of local people living with PD and 3 of our own group spoke quite movingly about their personal journeys with the condition and how the physical therapy, emotional support and sense of purpose that these cycling challenges brings has changed their lives.  For a brief moment I vowed to go easier on them but it didn't last. ...