Day 33

June 24, 2011

I can hardly believe that I only have one week left. The time flies by and it just seems crazy that I'm almost done. When I started the tour, the distance I'd be going was just too great for me to really imagine. I took it one day at a time and here I am 33 days later almost done.

Mike and I rode together again today and went from Pismo Beach to Lompoc--pronounced Lom-poke as the ladies at the church explained while poking Mike.

You're probably wondering about this Mike guy. I originally met him in Monterey, saw him again at Kirk Creek, rode together for the day and we have just ended up riding together. At this point it looks like we'll just stick together until he catches the train in Santa Barbara. He's a very cool guy from Tucson and works part time as a Montessori teacher and part time at a bicycle co-op in Tucson called Bicas.

The ride was pretty boring since we were several miles inland among lots of flat farm country. There was one climb for the day in the Purisma hills which we tackled around lunch time. Mike was having some knee pain so we stopped half way up for lunch. As we ate two other touring cyclist passed us, going uphill. The wife waved and a minute later the husband came up and stopped to talk to us. He seemed happy for the break. We saw them again at the grocery store in Lompoc and got to know them a bit. Their names were Randy and Karen and they were from Portland, doing a portion of the Pacific Coast. They were very nice and a lot of fun to talk to for a while.

We had heard that the Lompoc area had no hiker/biker sites, so we tried to find a church to stay at again. It was pretty ridiculous though. We went to about 5 or 6 different churches and all but one said no. The other place had nobody there to give us permission. The area is apparently kind of ghetto and all of the churches had had problems with homeless people staying on their property. Eventually we called the campground in town and found out that they do in fact have hiker biker camping. So we just went over there after putting a ton of effort into finding a church. Oh well. Now we know how ghetto Lompoc is.

The campground we stayed at was alright. We met a group of mountain bikers riding around the area trying out different rides and we also met some Kiwis named Dan and Anna. We talked with them for an hour before going to bed about all the many differences between New Zealand and the US. Then we went to bed.