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June 22, 2007
OTIS AND THE BIKE RIDE
The Coast Leads To Canada
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It's On, Baby! Friday, June 22, 2007 - Day 1 First of all, I want to thank everyone who helped me get to this point. Whether it be a place to stay, help with projects, or just advice, there were definitely some people that really did a lot to make this adventure a reality. Thanks to everyone that has been supportive about the decision. So at exactly 12:00 noon, the ride officially started. A little later exit than I planned, but I needed the sleep. Joey drove me to the entrance to the Los Angeles River Trail instead of me riding there. I think that cut out about 5 miles. Nothing wrong with that. It would have taken me through East L.A. and Vernon. Not exactly nice riding. So after some pictures, I was off. The destination for today was Escondido to stay with P.D. I was gonna ride to Oceanside and have him pick me up there, instead of me biking the whole way inland, which is another 13 miles. This is a bike ride up the coast, after all. I gotta admit, the ride didn't start out too well. Nothing wrong with the riding. The bike is a bit more unstable than I'm used to, but it's not as bad as I thought it was going to be last night. No, the bad part was that I had to take a shit really badly. At first I thought it wasn't too bad. It's about 10 miles to Long Beach down the river trail, and I figured I could make it that far. After a few miles, though, it was obvious that wasn't going to happen. I barely made it to a public bathroom in time. It really was amazing how quickly I was able to get my bike locked up and everything off me - my helmet, gloves, shoes, bag. It was a really close call. After that I felt 100% better though. There were no recurrances. My pace was kinda slow at times. Then I made the mistake of heading down the peninsula at Newport, instead of staying on PCH. I completely forgot that it doesn't connect at the end. I remembered when I got to the end of the peninsula. So that was at least a half hour or so that was wasted. That on top of my pace being slower at times meant that I wasn't going to make it to Oceanside before dark. By 6:30 I was only in Laguna Beach, which is still probably 40 miles from Oceanside. It gets dark at 8:30, and I needed to eat before going any further. Wow, I'm too tired to keep writing. I'll have to finish this later. In summation, though, I made it to San Clemente, where P.D. picked me up. It would have been very hard to bike the rest of the way in the dark. PCH ends and you have to weave through roads a bit inland of Camp Pendelton. Tomorrow it's border time. I'll have to write more after that. I need to sleep.   
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