Today Mike and I rode from Hearst San Simeon State Park to Pismo Beach. The ride was pretty nice, but mostly uneventful. We passed through a few towns, stopped in Morro Bay to use the library's internet, and made it to San Luis Obispo for lunch. 40 miles before lunch feels good. San Luis Obispo seemed like a very cool city. It had a cool downtown area and a little creek to go hang out at, so we went down to the creek for lunch, gorging ourselves as always.
Mike had heard that there was a hotel in town called the Madonna Hotel that has the best bathroom ever and we had to go try it out. Along the way to the hotel we stopped at a bike shop to buy a new tire for me--an expensive touring tire which would hopefully prevent all the puncture flats I've had (2 this morning and many on previous days). We got to the hotel and planned how we would find this famous bathroom. We walked into a door that went to the cafe and it just so happened to be a side door, so nobody bothered us when we walked in. I was afraid we would have to do the old dine and dash in order to try this bathroom out, but we just walked right through and found the bathroom. It was just okay. Definitely a nice bathroom, but the only cool thing was the faucets were old pumps, like the ones you'd find in an old school state park, but it was automatic. Later on, we found out that there was some other bathroom in the hotel that has a waterfall you pee in and we missed it. Oh well.
We followed the route to Pismo Beach and started thinking about where we'd be staying. We had heard that there was no longer hiker/biker camping at the campground in town and we didn't feel like spending double the price for the normal tent sites. So we decided to find a church and ask if we could stay in their yard. Best idea ever. Kurtis did that on his tour from Denver to the east coast every single night, so I figured we could pretty easily find one to stay at for one night. The first church we went to was Community Presbyterian Church. There were a couple ladies and kids inside preparing for something so we walked in and asked if the pastor was around. They told us that they were pretty sure it would be fine for us to camp in the back yard, but that we could wait for 15 minutes for the pastor to come. They were having a kids sleepover ("VBS on speed") and he'd be by to drop his kids off. So we waited for a bit and Pastor Bob came up and gave us permission to stay there. He was very nice and was smart enough to make copies of our IDs, just in case. While we were in the backyard making dinner the kids all came running through. It was hilariously chaotic and we were very entertained by them. There were two ladies in charge of the sleepover named Suzanne and Karen. They came back and told us that they had some extra pizza for us, but we had already eaten dinner. Pretty awesome that they offered it though. Around 8:30 we went inside to brush our teeth and were caught by the ladies. We ended up spending a good 30-40 minutes in there joking around and eating pop corn while the kids watched a movie. It was a lot of fun and they told us they would make breakfast for us in the morning! So we went outside, slept like babies, and in the morning we came in for breakfast. They just kept offering more food. I had two big waffles, a couple bananas, and milk. Then when we got around to leaving, they piled a bunch of sandwiches, carrots, and bananas into our arms. We were really impressed by how nice they were to us and that night was one of the coolest nights I've had on my tour. So glad we stayed there.
No comments:
Post a Comment