Flea The Race

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I had another lazy ass day today, before heading off for the morning I took a walk out to the beach beside the campsite, it was a sunny morning and the water was pretty cold.  There is a bridge spanning the beach which carries the main highway that I needed to cross to get out of Manchester so it was a workout just getting out of the campsite this morning getting to the top of the hill leading to the bridge.  I rode 3km into Mendocino which is a nice little town where I bumped into the main group of cyclists I keep meeting, they were just finishing lunch at a cafe but it didn’t have WiFi so off I went in search of another, there was a second nice cafe at the south end of town that had WiFi so I hung out there for what must have been four hours calling home to friends I haven’t spoken with since I left.  I use Skype on my phone when I get WiFi so I can call mobiles at home, it’s cheap to call, about 7 cent/minute but you need credit in your Skype account.

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I was back on the bike at 4pm leaving me with 4 hours to try and get Mendocino behind me, on a good day this would get me about 80km but today was lots of little hills all the way along, some really steep but not very long so progress was slow enough.  The ocean has begun to look slightly more tropical today, there is much more of a turquoise colour in it than I’ve noticed before.  I got to Manchester at about 7:30pm and really wasn’t bothered cycling anymore, I was passing a state reserve that was overlooking the sea and the sun was there ready for setting in 2 hours.  I decided to setup the tent there where I had a view of the sunset out of my tent and call it a day, a half day!