It was a cold night, so it was another one of those mornings that it was a struggle to get out of our toasty warm cocoons. With our gear quickly packed away and loaded onto our trusty steeds, we headed in for a hot drink with Sally before she headed off to help a friend move house, the job that fortunately took longer than expected yesterday or we wouldn’t have seen her as she would be in Santa Barbara right now.
With Sally gone and Mick still asleep in his motor home parked in the driveway, we headed off in the direction of the local Safeway supermarket to buy breakfast, but first, we needed to visit the Santa Cruz Boardwalk. How could anyone visit Santa Cruz without doing that?
While consuming our bread rolls and milk, the breakfast of kings, we had a brief encounter with one of the Safeway employees. She didn’t wish to be photographed and didn’t want us to use her real name if we mentioned her in our blog, so we will call her Zebedee. Zebedee was excitedly impressed with what we were doing she even dragged one of her co-workers out to see our bikes. The co-worker, whom we will call Dylan, wasn’t at all impressed with being dragged outside, so smiled politely and returned to his work. Zebedee shouted further words of encouragement as she also disappeared through the automatic doors.
Confused at what had just happened, we swung our legs over the back of the bikes and started back down the road towards Highway 1.
Highway 1, or rather the hard shoulder of Highway 1 that has been designated a bike lane, was our home for the whole day, with a small exception when we tried to use a bike lane without first consulting the map only to find it didn’t go in the direction we wanted to, so ended up making a detour that we could have done without.
By the time we were safely back on the highway, it had warmed a little but the clouds remained, so while the uphill stretches kept us warm the downhill sections had us shivering. The only good thing about the weather today was the wind was blowing from the south… we had a tailwind at last.
With smooth roads, a clean hard shoulder/ bike lane, and a tailwind, the miles flew by. With no towns to speak of between Santa Cruz and Half Moon Bay, there was nothing to stop for although the coastal view when we could see the coast was spectacularly rugged.
As lunchtime approached we spotted a lighthouse in the distance, so decided that would be a good spot to take our break. We turned off the highway at the sign for Pigeon Point Light Station State Park. Prioritising lunch over lighthouse viewing we tucked into our bags containing previously purchased calories. The lighthouse itself was closed off to the public and looking a little sorry for itself, so after a quick view of the rocks that it once protected shipping from we headed back off towards our destination for the day, Half Moon Bay.
The cycling remained fast, with only a few challenging hills thrown in to keep us warm.
Just after the last climb of the day, my chain appeared to come off, but on looking down at my crank I could see that I in fact didn’t have a chain, or at least not a continuous loop of chain. With only 36 miles left to the end of our cycle across the US, my chain had broken.
My first ever roadside chain fix took a surprisingly short 10 minutes to fix. Chuffed with myself we pedalled on to Half Moon Bay and directly to our first stop in any town that has one, Safeways, to celebrate. Milk and yoghurt bought and packed in the panniers we continued on the last mile to our sleep stop at the Half Moon State Beach Campground.
$14 poorer we camped up next to three other guys that had arrived just before us, Remy, Fredrick and Marcel. They were all heading south to Mexico, with two of them from Quebec and the other from France, so conveniently all spoke French, as they met on the road over the last couple of weeks.
Once our tents were set up we all headed down to the beach to watch the sunset, before heading back to make dinner.
Just as we were packing away after our dinner, a young lady arrived at our table. She had arrived yesterday but had cycled up to San Francisco today, which explained the tent on our site without an owner. Celeste, also from Quebec, was planning to cycle down to San Diego over the next three weeks but was concerned at the drivers in the US after just one-day cycling in the country. She described a number of encounters during the day when she had received abuse from car and truck drivers. Expressing my surprised, as we hadn’t experienced a single incident in the past 10 weeks, she elaborated.
As it turns out she had been cycling on roads without a hard shoulder, in the middle of the road and didn’t feel it appropriate or even necessary to pull over, even when there was a queue of traffic behind her. She also elaborated on the last incident that had happened just before she arrived back at the campground in which a car driver had shouted at her to get off the road and go buy some bike lights. She then demonstrated that she had bike lights by turning the rear lights on, only to find that in fact, they didn’t work. She seemed really sweet, but it’s two-wheeled pedalled powered road users like Celeste that doesn’t help the reputation of cyclists in general. I can only hope her road awareness and bike light fixing skills improve before she gets into trouble on her 1,000km journey south.
Before heading to bed I introduced her to the other guys, said my goodnights, and turned in. They have been singing French songs for the past hour, but things have become quiet enough for the crashing of the waves on the beach less than 100 metres away is the only sound to be heard… let’s hope it stays that way.
