Flea The Race

 

Day	24	Date	1st June 2015
Distance Total Distance	69.1km 1,442.8km	Weather	Sunny , Warm
Rolling Time Total Rolling	03:42:08 81:47:53	Terrain	Flat
Climbing Total Climbing	629m 12,461m	Spend	Coffee & Bagel $6.50 Coffee, Tea, Food $11.00 Camping $5.00
Average Speed	18.7k/h	Sleeping	Camping
Max Speed	48.6k/h	Difficulty	Easy

The first of June today means I’ve got exactly four weeks left to finish this trip, get back up to Los Angeles, box up my bike and catch a flight to New Zealand on the 28th.  It’s enough time to do it I just can’t work out how much dilly dally time I have along the way.  I crawled out of the swamp that I slept in last night around 10am, some of my stuff was all wet from yesterdays lashing so I strapped it up on the back of the bike to let it dry out over the day.

I made my coffee/breakfast/chillout pitstop today in a town called Fortuna, first stop was a local cafe at the northern end of the town where everything was organic this and organic that, they were so bloody organic that they didn’t have WiFi, a cafe without WiFi is like a toilet without bogroll!  I choked back my organic coffee and cream cheese bagel and decided to go straight for the large Starbucks corporation that does have free WiFi.  I bedded down here for a few hours and finally got this blog up to date, I’m not going to let it slide anymore because It’s a chore to get it back up to speed after letting it slip past for few days even though I like updating it.  I had only done 18km by the time I left the cafe and that was at 4pm.  Now I had to play catchup on the road for the next few hours to try and gain some ground.

Along the way I cycled past another roadie with laden bike, he was wearing a hawiian shirt and I couldn’t tell much about him until I got alongside him, we chatted for a few minutes, the guy is 72, started in Astoria and is working his way down south as far as Big Sur.  After a few minutes I continued on as I was keen to make something of the day that was left.  I detoured off the main highway shortly after passing the guy and rode along a route called ‘The Avenue of Giants’, Its basically km after km of road through huge redwood forests with many river openings along the way.  These places so far are my favourite, the time goes by so quickly as do the kilometres riding through the trees.  The weather today has gotten noticeably warmer as the route diverges inland a little bit.  It’s kinda nice to get away from the sea for a while.

Towards the end of the day I passed through a really small village called Redcrest with a cafe and a campground, I considered stopping for coffee but decided against it and go straight for the campground, as I passed the cafe I saw a big group of people inside and they were all waving at me, it was the same cycle group that I met at the BBQ burger van yesterday so I parked up and joined them for a coffee.  There must be ten of them, they were done for the day, camping across the road and they were in the cafe having dinner, they invited me to stay with them for the night in the came campground but I declined as I really wanted to get another 20km out before the end of the day.  I got talking to Richard again who I mailed earlier in the day to thank him for the info and pass on my blog address, he had received it earlier on his cellphone.  After finishing my coffee and pecking at their chips I bid farewell, I found out where they are camping tomorrow night so I might arrange that I’m in the same campsite for the night, they seem like a fun bunch!

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I got to the Burlington campground at about 7:30pm and setup my tent, got talking to my neighbours at the same time who have a car and trailer with a bed in the back that they tour in.  The invited me over for strawberries and cream and they also filled up my stove with white gas so I’m topped up for another week or more….NICE!  I started cooking food about 8pm, Three ham and cheese baps, a tub of mashed potatoes, a big pot of noodles, I was starving so I cooked nearly everything that I had, I was full full once I was done eating.  Half way through the 72 year old in the Hawaiian shirt arrives on his bike, I had no idea he was coming here so I greeted him with ‘you made it’, he setup camp beside me so I gave him one of my ham cheese toasted baps and made him a cup of tea while he setup his tent and got organised, nice fella and not bad going for 72!