Grumpy Old Men On Bikes

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....

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...

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...

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. ...

Slow Hand Our group now totals 28 and last night we had our first group dinner.  To streamline this we pre-ordered, but it was still well over an hour before any food appeared.  The first people to get their dinner were finishing by the time the last person was served.  The staff were grafting but the waiter to hungry customer ratio was way too low! Price Tag I am accustomed to everything in Merica costing more than the advertised price but last night my $28 meal cost me $38!!!!  There was the tax, the tip, the large group charge, the tax on the tip, the use of a chair fee and christ knows what else.  After I picked myself up from the floor I presented my card and was told that would be another 3%.  I paid cash and will be sulking for a good few weeks. It's back to raw eggs from here for me! Something Better Change Of the 28 in the group, 23 are riding and it is already starting to feel like herding cats.  Having agreed ...

  Forgive me Father, it is some time since my last confession.  Last time we chatted I was in Ocean Cove eating raw eggs. Into The Valley (FRIDAY) Just a reminder that the majority of my group lives with Parkinsons.  If you think it's just a bit of a shaky hand do some reading on it.  On Friday they rode 90 miles and climbed over 5000 ft...the toughest ride of the trip by a country mile.  The fact that they did it all is impressive, but they did it with a smile and not a word of complaint!  Over the years I have seen plenty of riders finish that day in considerably less style. We ended in Mill Valley, just a stone's throw from The Orange Gate Bridge.  Our motel sat beside our nemesis - US101 - which, by then is 5 lanes in either direction and busy as hell.  It was as charming as the location suggests but everyone was too bollocked to care.  On the plus side it features a surprisingly good Indian restaurant...good by UK standa...

Leaving Dog Crap Villas we first made a compulsory side trip to the Chandelier Drive Thru Tree for tacky tourist photos.  Our film crew got the footage they wanted and it was nice to devote even a few minutes to something other than getting the miles done. We then turned onto Highway 1, THE Specific Coast Highway.  A sensational climb over 2 chunky hills delivered us back to the ocean (we have been inland for 2 days) and it was a short day into Fort Brag where I took a rider to the local hospital to get some riding pains investigated.  That is my 2 nd  visit to that particular hospital in recent years, but they didn't seem to remember me.  This is no great surprise but in 2 of the hotels we have used the receptionist HAS remembered me...probably not in a good way! Today should be a tough one with almost 80 miles and 5000ft of climbing but they have a magnificent tail wind and it looks like they will all be done in good time.  I was looking forwa...