Well, the time has come to turn east away from the coast into the vast interior. I will really miss the shore, that's for sure.
Most of yesterday I got a guided tour around Ventura from Mike Villa, the Bigfoot-footprint photo guy. Among other things, he took me to the secret Teva sandal factory-seconds store where I scored a nice pair for only 20 bucks. I was dumb enough not to bring along a pair of sandals and was needing just such a find.
Now I'm well east into the upper end of the Santa Clara Valley. Lots of citrus groves, then the bloated car-culture development of Santa Clarita. It was kind of funny when I went in and got water at this huge Chevron auto-detailing center, where people with lots of money pay to watch people with little money polish their car for them. I was conspicuously counter to the whole culture there. In fact I've never felt more counter to the culture than at this moment in this place. There's other bikers even here though, mainly road racers.
From here on for hundreds of miles I will be off of any sort of published bike route map or book. No suggested stopping places, no elevation profiles, just a AAA highway map. It looks pretty straightforward though. Lots of blank space between here and Arizona. Honestly I sort of can't believe I'm about to cross the Mohave Desert on a bicycle. Yes yes, I know to carry gallons worth of water with me every day. If worst comes to worst I'll put out my thumb and get saved by someone in a gas guzzling pickup.
Posted by danreedmiller at May 10, 2003 05:32 PMHello Dan, I just heard about your journey from
Barbara (Babs) Adamski. I did a one way 4500 mile
bike tour in the summer of 2000 on the mid-America
Adventure Cycling route from Portland to Yorktown
VA. I'm a gearhead, not an artist, so I was wondering what equipment you're using. Bicycle, racks & panniers or trailer? If you don't have a photo of you and your bike in your gallery, could you do that soon? I'll be catching up on your journal entries as I have time and keeping track of your progress. You've got some long, hot and dry miles ahead and then somewhere in Texas you'll hit high humidity along with heat. When I
encountered that from the middle of Kansas onward,
it turned out to be the most difficult element of the journey, as I'm a native Oregonian and had never been east of the Black Hills before.
Well, I hope to correspond more later.
Take care, Steve Abeling
Posted by: Steve Abeling on May 11, 2003 09:58 PMhi, i'm at a library terminal in 29 Palms, so am able to get onto the site and post a response.(Normally i just send the entries on a pocketmail text-only device.)
I have a 1993 Miyata hybrid, has that once-cutting edge now abandoned biopace technology.
I pull a Burley nomad cargo trailer, i like it but also wonder if panniers wouldn't be just as good. Certainly in the rainy times on the coast i was wishing for a pair of ultra waterproof Ortleib panniers.
I think the picture of me in Eureka shows the bike and trailer. No pics posted since San Francisco because my digital camera died. Someday will post the pics from the disposables and the 99 cent camera from the 99 cent store.
I won't have to deal with the eastern humidity (thank god) as i will not be biking further east than Durango, Colorado.
Posted by: Dan on May 13, 2003 01:32 PM