My Brother Bruce and I have been planning a cyclotour from San Francisco to Paso Robles for months and all the planning paid off. On June 14th Bruce picked me up in LA loaded up the bikes and headed for Paso Robles where we were planning to catch the Amtrak coast starlight to Oakland.
The Coast Star Light was 20 minutes late and when it arrived the chief conductor said we could not bring our bikes aboard as we had not made reservations for boxes. If we had all we’d have needed to do was remove the pedals and loosen the handlebars and roll it into the box provided. Needless to say we were in a bind, what to do? It was Friday on graduation weekend and 5:30pm most of the rental car establishments were closing and the ones that were open had no cars to rent especially one way. We rented a Camry in SLO for $100 a day drove back to Paso and dropped off our car stuffed the tour bikes in the Camry and make it to the Clarion Hotel in Oakland at midnight my front fender took a hit and was bent awkwardly. The following day we jumped on BART and headed to RivHQ. How can you be so close to the epicenter of relaxed common sense cycling and not stop in? It was mandatory. We made some repairs and final purchases met with Will, Sean, Scott, Harry & the man behind it all Grant who was busy on a photo shoot preparing for a B&W catalogue. Harry & Scott helped us Google map a route over to Pigeon Point Lighthouse and Grant humored me with a pose with the loaded Hilsen and said “the Hilsen’s not really a loaded tour bike”. But he felt it would handle just fine. We finally made our way back to the BART albeit late and headed for San Bruno. From there we promptly got confused as the Beta bicycle map feature lead us along a bikeway of enumerable (Lesson carry a map) turns and eventually lead us up to a closed bridge near Crystal Springs Reservoir. Fortunately we met a local cyclist who got us straightened out and we were on our way to Half Moon Bay via the 92 (note to self never take this route again) which had little to no shoulder lots of traffic and was windy. We stopped in Half Moon Bay refueled with sandwiches and continued to our Light house destination for the evening. The next day was our big mileage day 70 miles to the Marina area just north of Monterey via the farm lands of Castroville and Watsonville. The Ramada provided us with warm showers great beds and a breakfast in the morning where we loaded up with instant oatmeal and peanut butter for our two days in the Sur. We both agreed that night’s pizza “The Luau” was the best ever! Our third day of riding took us through Monterey and Caramels 17 mile drive which if by car there was a fee and if by bicycle well we just rolled through the gate another benefit of being on a bicycle. I’ve got to say that this stretch is amazing as there are no large cliffs and reminds me of La Jolla in San Diego. We made a pit stop at the grocery store at the south end of Carmel to load up on supplies, Dutch Crunch bread, fresh fruit and other essentials. One of my fender nuts had fallen off and there was an Ace Hardware store where I conveniently got a replacement. We continued on for another 26 miles to the Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park hike & bike camp located a bit away from the water but none the less beautiful as it was in a Redwood grove and $5 per person, warm showers and Velo-culture abounded, it was like riding into a cyclo city just awesome! We met so many great people. Next morning we made our way toward Kirk Creek Camp which was situated near the water and a bit exposed. The thing was that the hike and bike area had been overtaken by car campers as they liked the location and we were relegated to a typical car camp spot, that didn’t dampen our mood as how can you be upset while in the Sur? The camp host felt bad and gave us a wheel barrel of wood and Jacob from Colorado built a great fire. We camped with a couple of teachers from Colorado Jacob ( Can’t remember his wife’s name will update this later), a couple from Belgium Davie & Rose who have been on tour around the world for 9 months and two fellows from Toulouse France Marc and Sebastian. On our second to last day of riding we rolled refreshed South towards our next destination Cambria by the sea. We stopped off at Ragged Point for a rest and saw all our fellow cyclotourist friends and wished them well on their next overnight at San Simeon Creek campsite I really wanted to camp another night as the wide open feeling was magnificent, but we had reservations and well that was that! The Bridge Street Inn was in my humble opinion the best I have ever experienced, the proprietor Jan was gracious and her intern Lauralie from France kept a clean house and provided a great atmosphere with great conversation. The next morning we awoke to have breakfast provided by the Inn to get us on our way in style. So we headed out of Cambria and climbed up to the Cabrillo Hwy 1 South to the 46 to Paso Robles it was a vigorous climb and a bit exposed but the view was worth it as we could see Morro Rock to the Southwest and the descent was exhilarating! On our descent we saw an unusual site so we crossed over to the West bound side of the 46 to meet Tony Adams of Portland Oregon who apparently has been on the road for 13 years and visited 35 states. He was riding a three wheel recumbent and towing a homemade 14 foot trailer weighing 620 lbs, complete with solar panels a digital receiver and small color T.V. we gave him some food and he shared his various write up’s from Newspapers and T.V. studios. Tony was raised in a Navy family which moved often and he later went to work for 15 years with a carnival which he said moved around a lot hence the wandering bug. He chose a bike because when his Father was in the hospital he asked to see his eldest Son who he was estranged from, so Tony took it upon himself to jump on a bike and travel a great distance to find his Brother which he accomplished and the bike was it for him since. Our final destination was the Paso Robles Inn which had a pool and hot tub. Pretty nice after 272 miles of California’s finest. http://www.flickr.com/photos/pedalpusher61/sets/72157634279860662/show/ Pictures prove it happened. ~Hugh -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
