4th Day. Yes!!! Flats!!!

Today was predominantly flat. Some heavily climbing at the start, but nothing to complain about. Or do I just not want to sound like a broken record.?! Anyway ,check the stats of my 80 mile ride.
Again beautiful scenery. Check out this panoramic pic:

Beautiful Scenery

Had breakfast at a local whale watching diner. The single service of oatmeal didn't keep the diesel going (engine stalling). Had pancakes to keep the engine running.

Had a deer running in front of me for almost a mile. She couldn't go left or right. After a mile she found a spot to escape the terror of my blinking headlight.



As stated, from San Simeon on it was mostly flat. Did average 20 mph on some 6 mile stretches. Passed San  Simeon camp-ground where I and my family camped a few years back. Good memories!

San Simeon had many locations with seals that where sunning on the beach. You could smell them from half a mile away :o)

Smelling while chilling

San Luis Obispo I stopped at a bike shop to get some spare spokes and get rid of my troublesome pedals. Good timing! In front of my motel a second spoke broke... 

Dutch Courage!

 Morale of the day: Have courage in the things you do ....and seal it with a kiss!

PS Dutch Courage means "having courage when drunk" ;o) Cheers!

3rd Day, Big Sur

The third day went frrm Monterey to Lime Kiln State Park in Big Sur. You can find the route again on the Garming GPS link. And guess what today's entertainment entailed?



Yes...hills!

But before we get to those exciting hills...rewind. Alarm went off at 6:00 AM. I had breakfast at 7:00 AM ; nice continental breakfast (all for $44). Had Wheat bread with strawberry jam.
I left at 7:40 AM and was within 10 minutes back on PCH Bike-route. There I met my first hill of the day where I had to push the bike up!
YES...THE DUTCH DIESEL PUSHING HIS BIKE UP HILL!!!!
And if that was not embarrassing enough, 40 miles into the ride was the 2^nd hill I had to push the bike up again...aaaghhhhh.
The whole ride were beautiful coastal sights

Beautiful Coastline

Saw sea otters chilling on there back and seals bathing in the sun and making noise.

Seals chilling in the sun

Arrived at 2 :30 PM at Lime Kiln State Park. Had to pay $5 for the site :o) Little store for food 2 miles up the road. Cellphone coverage 4 mile up the road. Wanted to let Saskia know I was OK, and had to bike 9 miles roundtrip to let her know! If you do not believe me, see Garmin plot for prove. Let's say those were "bonus miles".

Pitched tent, and had a beer and cooked oodles of noodles with Tuna. Yummy!

My Crib...

Beer on da Beach



Noticed that my Achilles of my shorted leg was hurting. I have been biking 3 days with platform pedals because my SPD’s broke down in SF. My SPD shoes have shims for my leg difference.  Suspect that the lack of shim is causing this. Attempted to fix my SPD pedals with some makeshift tools and lock-tide. We will see tomorrow if that band-aide works. Have my platform pedals and tools at hand to swap them again when needed.

Tomorrow I will try to get to moro bay, maybe San Luis Obispo.

2nd Day, More rolling hills

The 2nd day started  at the Ano Nuevo State Reserve KOA Campground. I got up around 6:30 AM. and made myself some delicious oatmeal out of a package.....yummy! After that a quick shave, change in cycle clothes, and pack all the stuff in the panniers. Wheels rolling at 8 AM-ish.
The initial goal was to get a campground 20 miles south from Monterey. That would be around 95 miles for the day.
Within 30 minutes in the ride I had a view of the sea on the right and strawberry fields on the left. This one farmer advertised discount for cyclists, and reminded the cars with a homemade sign that they do not own the road.

Strawberry Farmer likes Cyclists

An hour and a half in the ride I stopped at Whale City Bakery and had my morning coffee and the best Carrot Muffin ever! They had all kind of other good stuff, and the bakery was packed with locals (always a good sign).

Whale City Bakery

Then a few hours later my plans for the day took a turn. I hit a bump in the rock and heard a "clung". One of the spokes in my rear wheel broke. First spoke in 8 years, but had to be on my trip :o( Now the good part it that I brought a cassette tool to pull the gear cassette in case I would brake a spoke on the drive-side. (you need to remove the cassette in order to put in a new spoke on the drive-side). The bad thing was that the spoke broke on the non-drive-side and the Dutch Diesel forgot that he has disc-brakes, and also then needs to remove the disc-roter. The latter is bolted with torx screws....which I did not bring...aaaagghhhh. As a work-around I used an emergency spoke; a wire contraption (see below picture).

Emergency Spoke

This could bring me to the next bike-shop....which were all closed because of memorial day :o( . Thank God Ace Hardware store down the street was open, and had a Torx set on the shelf. And off we go again....until 4 miles later I got my first flat tire.

Now you need to understand that fixing a tire is normally a 5 minute task. But on a touring bike you first need to remove all your panniers before you can do anything. When you are finally done (with whatever you are fixing) all the bags need to go back on again.

Needless to say that both spoke and flat set me back 2 hours in my riding-day. With all the 75 miles of rolling hills, and headwind on the last 20 miles I called it quits in Monterey. You can find all the details of the ride on the Garmin GPS Plot.

After not finding a campground, I called Saskia to run a "hotels.com" search and 30 minutes later I was at my $44 motel INCLUDING breakfast! Not bad if you keep in mind that I paid $38 the night before on the Campground :o)

1st day: Start in San Francisco.

Got up at 6 AM and had breakfast. Around 7 AM I left for the Diridon CalTrain station in San Jose to catch the 8 AM 423 train to SF and arrived there ~9:30 AM.From the SF CalTrain station it as ~7 miles to the bottom of the Golden Gate Bridge, where my trip officially started.

From here it was a grueling 60 mile ride of up and down, and up and down, and up and down. Did I mention there was a lot of up and on? Normally I like climbing a lot, but with an extra 50 lbs on the bike...not so much. You can look at the Garmin GPS Plot for all the details.
Anyway despite my complaining about the "rolling hills", the ride went well and I arrived at the KOA camp-ground close to the Ano Nuevo State Reserve around 5 pm. Pitched my tent, took a shower, and loaded myself with some carbs; pasta with salmon and an nice beer. Tonight will be an early night. I am tired, and need to be rested for tomorrows ride, which is planned to be between 80-100 miles.

Driving up.

So today was all about getting up early, load up the car, and drive to San Jose. From there I will take the Cal-train to SF tomorrow and start my ride.
Before dropping off my one-way rental at AVIS, I checked out the Diridion Train station; where it is, where to get the tickets in the station, and what track the train will leave tomorrow. Good thing about this station is that all the tracks are accessible via a ramp. No hassle with the bike in elevators, or staircases!
After that, I brought the rental car back to AVIS at San Jose International Airport and unload the bike and gear. From airport the to the Radission Hotel was only a 5 minute ride. The bike is noticeable heavy, but handles well. Just needs getting used to; slower acceleration, and longer break-way. Kinda like a diesel-truck...LOL. I can totally see that my small chain-ring on the front will get a good beating this trip ;o)

The room is clean and has WiFi,. That means that I can plan my route to the train-station tomorrow on google map, and update my blog (this one).
Tomorrow will be a long day. Up early, eat break-fast, ride to Diridion to catch the first train to SF at 8 AM. Should arrive around 9:30-ish in SF. Then a short ride to the Golden Gate bridge, and then the adventure will really start!

Now....of to happy hour, eat something small, relax and go to bed early.

And the answer is...?

Yes, yes, and yes!
It does all fit...
I have room for a picture of my lovely wife...
AND I have still room for a full roll of toilet paper!

I must say, it was getting close, but below the prove that I was successful!

 
Getting everything inside all 4 panniers was reasonable easy. The difficult part is to do this while:

1. The weight is evenly distributed on left and right.
2. The rear panniers maintain heavier (kinda easy since they are bigger)
3. Items are organised in order of "accessibility"; gels, wind jacket on top - tools and new clothes at the bottom.

During the packing I used a scale to check the weight and move things around. The rear panniers weigh 13.8 and 15.2 lbs, while the front panniers ended up weighing 8.6 and 7.8 lbs. That is a total of 45.4 lbs.
Now add the weight of a full "tank of gas"  (three 20 oz. bike bottles with water) and we hit the 50 lbs. How is that for a workout?!

Will it all fit?

Previously I shared with you the list of items I will be taking along on my trip. You even provided me with many witty comments on the face-book link....but how much "stuff" does this list represent in real life?
The easiest way to answer that question is with a picture!

All the "stuff"

Here we go...from left to right and top to bottom:
Bike tools and spare parts - Cooking gear - Personal care - Noodles - Gel Blocks
Clothes (regular and bike) - Net-book, GPS, Sports-watch - Sleeping bag/pad
Helmet - Bike shoes - Sneakers - Tent-pad - Tent

I still need to evenly pack this in 2 rear and 2 front panniers. Until then the main question will be:
Will it all fit?!?
Is there still room for a picture of my lovely wife and kids?
Can I pack a full (and unused) roll of toilet paper?

Stay tuned!

Check, Double-Check,Triple Check

Now that my bike is repaired, I thought it was a good idea to make a check list. The list started small...and then it grew! Funny how you forget things in the first, second and even third pass. Below my list of "stuff" (for now) that I plan to haul for 620 miles.

Then my mother reminded me to pack a rosary that she gave to me a while ago. She brought this back from a pilgrimage to Lourdes. Lourdes is a small town lying in the foothills of the Spanish Pyrenees, famous for the Marian apparitions of Our Lady of Lourdes.
Even thought I am personally not an active believer, my mom is. She told me that I should pack it as her token to me for safe passage on my trip. It is now on my check-list an packed in one my front panniers.
Did I miss anything else?

Fortunate to be unfortunate

Just when you think you got everything sorted out...shit happens.
Exactly 2 weeks before my 620 mile touring trip, my rear hub (axle in rear wheel) started to make a funny clonking/clinking noise in sync with my cadence.
Closer inspection revealed that the free-wheel or cassette-hub decided to cave in under the humongous amount of pedal torque produced by the Dutch Diesel ;o)

Anyway. Humour on the side, the free-wheel hub is the part of your rear axle to which your gear-cluster is mounted to. So that is the unfortunate part. The fortunate part is that this didn't happen somewhere between San Francisco and San Diego!

The Cassette-hub

 Still, this needed to get resolved ASAP. I called the vendor of my bike, and they where happy to replace the hub. I could get a new one, and get my money refunded once the bad one was received. I asked if I could get a different one (Shimano FH-M756 instead of the original SRAM 506) and pay for the difference. This was not a problem, and with 2 day shipping, it should arrive on Thursday.
In parallel called my LBS (Local Bike Shop) to make sure they had the right spokes for relacing my wheel with this new hub. They did, so that is covered too.
So the current plan is:

• Hub arriving on Thursday
• Drop off wheel and hub on Friday
• Pick up relaced wheel on Saturday or Sunday
• Next week a few commutes into the office to check if all is OK

Cross your fingers!

My Commute Ride

Riding your bike into the office is a great way to get in some extra miles during he week.
But you need to carefully plan your ride. Why? Well, cycling in the US this is not as trivial as cycling in the Netherlands (Wiki). The majority of car drivers are not cyclists, and thus do not understand how vulnerable a cyclist can feel.
In addition, in the Netherlands there is a continuous network of cycle paths, clearly signposted, well maintained and well lit, with road/cycle path junctions that often give priority to cyclists.

My Commute

As a result in the US you will have to pick your battles. On my commute-ride, there are no bike-paths. In this case this is mainly because if is a "back-country" road that not many cars drive, so that is a plus.

Altitude Profile

The downside is that there is some climbing involved, but that just makes it a great training ride.
I typically park my car down town Ramona at a "Park & Ride". In that way I skip the initial very narrow and winding road out of the Country Estates. I envisioned that most people are still sleepy behind their steering wheel, or are distracted while texting or sipping their morning coffee. So this strategy will prevent early morning surprises.

In addition 3 more tips: visibility, visibility, and visibility. I am not shy in lighting myself up as a xmas tree; blinking lights and bright colored clothing. So far I only had one collision...with a squirrel, but that was a loose loose situation. For the squirrel that is...

Have a safe ride!