Flea The Race

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We were all on the road this morning for 9.30ish, a convoy of six headed for the next state park Samuel P. Taylor, 75km away, the group dropped to five within the first ten minutes as we lost Oscar to a Laundromat, soon after that we split with Pat and Michael who decided to take the long route and I followed Emilio and Andrea who were following google maps for the shortest route, the best in my opinion!   Before the split we were stopped on the road by a local woman in a pickup, her name was Elizabeth and she stopped us because Andrea the Mexican guy is cycling with wings strapped to his back and Pat is wearing a hat with a racoon tail took to the back, she said she had to see what we were all about!  She runs a farm close by and has lots of foreign travellers woofing there, working a little for food and board.

Our first stop was in a small town with a grocery and deli counter so I grabbed coffee and a muffin and we hung about outside eating.  Pat gave me a spare battery for my GoPro as I only had one and struggle to keep it charged, he said he had a few and could spare it, nice! cheers Pat!  After this stop we kept going until 30km before our destination where Emilio, Andrea and myself stopped off at a fancy food joint and decided to grab dinner there, it was pretty good and I managed to book accommodation in San Francisco for 2 nights in a hostel.  I booked something with Airbnb a day or two ago but the host cancelled as they were booked out.  Its nice to know I can land in the city and not have to wonder about trying to get a bed for the night.

There was a lot of headwind in our way today which is unusually unusual for this trip so far, the last 3okm after food was a struggle because the food makes you lazy but we got to our destination where we were reunited with all that got split up along the way over the day.  The hiker biker section was full and the ranger asked us to camp in the overflow section which we ignored and setup camp in the centre of the craic!  There was a bunch of other people that live in San Francisco but had cycled and drove out for the night just to get out of the city.  There was a good buzz there until after 10pm when a school teacher came along and asked us to be quiet.  Quiet time in the campsites is from 10pm.  This is definitely a good campsite to hit on a Saturday night, it gets a good crowd and it’s a good fun spot!