Flea The Race

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Today was a tough enough day on the bike, I was up super early for a change to try and make it to San Francisco by tomorrow, I think I was clipped in at 7:10am ready to go, no breakfast which cut out much of the usual morning faff time.  Much of the road today rode around mountain edges that lead down to the sea, the route was up and down all the way along, climbing up into the clouds and descending back down to the sea again.  I’ve grown to like the sea less and less over the trip, when you are at its level the road can only climb or stay flat and it never stays flat forever so sea means climbing at some point! Up into the mountains and back down again, up into the mountains and back down again…..

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I took out my bluetooth speaker today and blasted out some podcasts that I downloaded when I had WiFi a few days back, these ones are called ‘Snap Judgement’ and they’re short stories where people divulge the most formative moments of their life in about twenty minutes, some of them are brilliant, excellently composed and narrated, well worth a listen, which reminds me, I got to pull me another batch out of the cloud!  Anyway, these podcasts melted away the hills and time as I got lost in the stories along the way, I came across them through a link my sister sent me so cheers Em!  I’ve added one below that I listened to on the bike today, check it out 🙂

I stopped off in a little cafe earlier in the day because I was freezing and hating the cycle, it was a tiny little village and I was surprised that they had WiFi, this time I only stayed an hour, Richard one of the guys from the cycle group I keep meeting popped in to say hi as he was passing because he recognised my bike outside.  They were on their way to Gualala to get food so I said I would join them there and have lunch with them.  I finished what I was at, packed up and left, on my way for a pit stop in Gualala, I caught up with Richard on the road and we found the rest of the crew parked outside a grocery store in the town which had a deli food bar with tables inside, Richard stood me lunch (Thanks Richard!) and I sat with them for close to an hour before stocking up on groceries in the store and hitting the road again.

At 6pm I hit a state park with hiker biker campground in Bodega Bay and I really needed to pee so I stopped and legged it into the bushes, after yesterdays shit-show I wanted to stay on the bike for another two hours and get a little further but while I sat outside the campsite and rested I slowly convinced myself to call it a day and set up camp here, it surely was the easy option and I took it!

I paid the $5 entry fee and setup my tent in the biker section, for a change there were quite a few bikers here, two guys from America, Michael & Pat, two from Mexico, Emilo & Andrea, and Oscar the English bloke I met a few days back and had a burrito with.  We sat around a table for the evening over beers and we all decided to ride together the next day and setup camp in another state park close to San Francisco.