Flea The Race

Day	39	Date	16th June 2015
Distance Total Distance	90.6km 2,271.3km	Weather	Sunny
Rolling Time Total Rolling	04:49:41 139:08:12	Terrain	Flat
Climbing Total Climbing	591m 24,981m	Spend	Coffee $3.50 Camping $10.00
Average Speed	18.8km/h	Sleeping	State Beach
Max Speed	53.6km/h	Difficulty	Easy

I had breakfast in the hostel this morning with another American couple that arrived yesterday evening, they keep hens so she brought loads of eggs with her to fuel their mini trip and cooked scrambled eggs for the three of us.  I then spent about an hour packing my stuff into my bags and onto the bike, a difficult task after yesterdays grocery shopping, I think I have enough food to get me to Mexico which is only about a week away at this stage 🙂

The route today was mostly flat so I stayed on the bike for 45km until I got to El Chorro Regional Park where I went in and used the group barbecue area to cook up some food, the place was pretty big and empty except for squirrels everywhere, they ran in all directions as I made my way through the park to the picnic area.

After brunch I made my way to San Luis Obispo which looked like a pretty big town on my maps, I stopped off for coffee here not expecting the place to be up to much but it turned out to be a cool little city.  I walked around for a while with my bike and met a girl who asked if I was on an adventure, we got chatting for a while and she wanted to show me a creek that ran through the centre of the town between all the shops, we sat there for half an hour by the river talking about travel stories, she offered to buy me dinner in Chipotles, a Mexican food chain over here that I haven’t checked out yet but I had just eaten so declined the offer.  This place is cool, definitely worth stopping off for a few days if I had a little more time.

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I had decided to camp at Oceano Campground at Pismo State Beach but it was full and had no hiker biker section.  I got talking with a park ranger and asked him if he knew of anywhere I could camp, at first he wasn’t sure but then he said he knew of a non legal place that I could try, he also said that I could camp on the beach if I wanted to.  I went for the beach option, when I got there, there was a kiosk at the beach entrance, $10 to camp there for the night, southern California sucks for camping, there are no camping signs everywhere to funnel you into their legit campsites.  I haven’t camped on the beach so far so I said I’d try it out.  It was tough enough getting the bike the mile or so down the coast on the sand where the camping was allowed.  The bike with weight just digs into the sand, I could just about ride it on the wet section closer to the sea that was compacted by the jeeps and RV’s that had passed before me.

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I set up my tent between the sea and the sand dunes, it was pretty windy so setting up the tent was difficult, if I let go of it at all for a second it would be a kite without a string and I didn’t fancy the vision of me chasing down the beach after my tent as funny and all as it would be if it happened to someone else!  Unpacking, cooking, entering & exiting the tent was a mission, trying to keep the sand out of everything, I think I’ll be eating sand for days after this experience.  Camping on the beach is nice but not as novel as it may seem at first, I think i’ll give it skip next time.