Day 27

Day number 2 with a headwind. A very rare thing for south-going cyclists. I rode from Halfmoon Bay State Park to New Brighton State Beach. It was very good to be out of the city, but the day was still pretty difficult with the constant headwind. There was lots of riding along the beach and it was pretty, but nothing breath-taking I thought. I noticed not far into the ride that there were a lot of other cyclists riding that stretch of the road. It was easy to tell because each one of them passed me. Every time I was passed I thought You're only passing me because you don't have as much weight on your bike as I have. None of them said hi. It was stupid. There were even cycling teams practicing on their time trial bikes and of course they all had frowns on their faces along with their several-thousand dollar bikes.

A couple highlights for the day were road-side strawberries and road-side pie. So good!

One annoying thing was that the screw on my front rack broke. Thank God I had a spare screw, because that happened before on the other side. Now I have two hardened steel screws for my rack, so that should hold better.

I made it to Santa Cruz, where I bought Subway for dinner. I realized that $5 footlongs is actually a good deal. A lot of my dinners that I make on my own end up being that much anyway since I can't buy in bulk at all. I had to complement the subway with more food though because I can just eat and eat without getting full.

I arrived at the campground, took a shower, ate my subway, and went over to meet the other cyclists at the camp. I met Ian and Kaitlin, who were pretty cool. They were definitely roughing it though since they had buckets instead of panniers and didn't have a tend. They just slept out in the open and had a tarp in case it rained. They were pretty cool and we made a fire. While we were standing around the fire two other guys rolled in named David and John. They were very funny guys and a lot of fun to talk to. They were doing a tour from San Francisco to LA. They were completely unprepared for the tour, but were having a great time and had really good attitudes. Addictively good attitudes. After a while of talking, we all said goodnight and hit the hay.