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)