Moving Sluggishly through Southern California
By admin | June 24, 2012
Friday, June 22, 2012
Santa Barbara to Ventura
46 miles
We had a hard time leaving the house this morning. It was just too comfortable! We finally got three miles away, headed for second breakfast, when Sadie’s pedal fell off!
The way that pedals are not supposed to come off. Luckily, we were 2.5 miles from five bike shops. It couldn’t have happened at a better time.
It only took a few minutes for Sadie to get new pedals, and the bike mechanics sent us down the road to a breakfast recommendation. Backyard Bowl’s specialty was like a smoothie with granola and more fruit on it. Delicious, and it was next door to a chocolate shop and a crepe place. I did get a few chocolates,
but mostly we just spent a lot of time on line and sending texts, trying to organize places to stay for the next few nights. And wasting time on Facebook.
We finally got on the road, and never felt like we were quite getting up to speed. We rode for a while on the 1, where it was a full on freeway, with a large shoulder marked for a bike lane.
As we neared Ventura, two cyclists caught up to us and slowed down to chat a bit. Pete and Steven had spent the previous night at Steven’s apartment in Santa Barbara, where Pete had gotten rid of all the gear he felt he didn’t need for the rest of the ride, but Steven had had to pick up the things he had originally left at Steven’s because he didn’t want to carry them on the bike. They had encountered several of the other cyclists we had met along the way, so we compared notes.
This was their first bike tour, and they were so excited about it, they were already planning their next one. Their energy was infectious, and it seemed to help us wake up and finish the last few miles into town more strongly than when we began.
We arrived just in time to drop our stuff off at Chris and Sara’s, but then we had to kill some time before they were finished with a previous commitment around 9ish. We headed out to a movie with unloaded bikes. It makes a huge difference. That was the final six miles of the day. The movie theater was three miles away, exactly where we had just come from on the way in to town. We enjoyed watching Brave, and having milkshakes and popcorn for dinner, but backtracking still feels wrong.
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