Jono's Travel Blog

14/10/2010 Day 44 Vancouver to Mexico

Distance Travelled: Cachuma Lake Recreation Area to just a little North-west of Ventura 53 Miles (85km)

Money Spent: $5 some fast food and $4.50 for groceries.

Time cycling: 4 hours

Total Distance Traveled: 2727 km

After chatting to Bob and Jesse about how small the world is and how often you meet people you that know people you know, it turns out Jesse knows Liberty and Amanda who I know very well from Thailand, Jesse knew these girls from working as a teacher in Korea.

I packed all my shit and got back on Highway 154 that included a nasty 4 mile uphill section before dropping downhill for 7 miles to Santa Barbara. The downhill section was incredibly good fun as it always is because of the sense of accomplishment of finishing the climb up the hill. I was even able to break my record for maximum speed; it now stands at 46.7 Mph (74.7 km/h).

I really should have been taking it a bit easier as my bike was still broken from the other day, but the way I temporarily fixed it only puts the rear breaks into question.

I did check out a few bike shops that couldn’t remove the partial screw still in the hole, so I reckon I’m just going to leave it because this cycle trip is unfortunately coming to an end soon; San Diego and the Mexican border is something like 200 miles away.

In Oregon McDonalds were offering Pumpkin Pie flavoured shakes that I really wanted to try, for those who haven’t eaten pumpkin pie before I suggest you give it a go; anyways, I hadn’t seen it here in California but a fast food chain called Jack-in-a-box had it so I gave it a go, it was good but to be honest ill stick with the actual pie rather than the shake.

The weather more inland was much nicer than when I arrived in Santa Barbara, it stayed overcast for most of the day along the coast and really was a mood killer so I spent some time in a library in a town called Carpentaria.

Santa Barbara seemed like a nice town but along the coast there were a lot of bums/bogans/homeless people chilling on the grass alongside the beach with their trolleys and bicycles and smoking something whether pot or crack, giving the town a bit of a sketchy vibe. Also having the look I have with dreads and all with how all my gear was on my bike, I almost felt people glanced at me associating me as a bum as apposed as a touring cyclist that has cycled over 2500km to get here which always gets positive attention.

At some point along the freeway I got a flat, I pulled over to a plush hotel to repair the puncture but I stupidly didn’t check if the foreign object was still embedded in the wheel so when I repaired it I soon after got another puncture. This was damn irritating as it was getting close to dark and I still had at least 15 miles to go to get to the next camping ground. Unfortunately after all the repairs were done and I removed the fucker – a metal staple, it was too dark to go on so I found a place under a tree beside a bicycle path to set up my tent. I cooked dinner, worked on some Photoshop projects I’ve been messing with and went to bed.