We drove along Sunset Boulevard into Beverly Hills and all along Santa Monica Boulevard to the coast. Cycling in Los Angeles seemed much easier than we expected it to be (there are even bike lanes downtown!): we perceived all drivers as much less aggressive than we were used to from Switzerland. That was a promising start! From Santa Monica we continued along Highway 101 to Malibu, where we were enjoying lunch directly on the beach. Weather was beautiful and around 25 °C – it feels like holidays to us :-). However, we soon made our first lesson learnt: the wind is only your friend when you are travelling with it! Meaning, sunny weather in California comes with strong coastal wind (North to South) in the afternoon. So we were in for some extra training on our bikes for the last 10km... and they felt very long! Finally we arrived at the first campground for tents at Sycamore Canyon Point Mugu State Park. RV campgrounds not necessarily accept tents or even don’t have designated space for it (nor showers or even water). Here we were up to our second lesson: if the campground is marked full, this does not apply for hikers and bikers. Good for us! And luckily the Californians are very friendly and easy to approach: everyone was giving us advice and just came over for a short talk. We met Andrew from San Luis Obispo who is driving South to Orange County during his spring break. Next morning we were excited to realize that the wind was gone. Full of energy we pedaled on towards Oxnard. After the first 10km (double the speed than we had the afternoon before!) we arrived at the freeway: prohibited for bicycles. Our learning number 3: just continue a few meters on the freeway and there will be an exit sign for bikers (no joke!). So we made an interesting detour through huge strawberry, kale and celeriac fields, where mostly Mexicans were working. Every now and then a huge truck was passing by, carrying the produce into the harbor in Oxnard. We continued pedaling through to Ventura (after all, we knew that the wind will come back in the afternoon...) and enjoyed lunch at the beach again. The Pacific Coast bike lane was always very well signaled out and separated from the highway – a really scenic drive along the beach! In the late afternoon we arrived at Carpinteria Campground, that also has a separate space for Hike & Bike. The campground is fantastic, right at the beach and we decided to spend two nights here. This allowed us some time to visit the small town, write our first blog entry J and relax. We met Laurie and Jeff from South California who used there spring break to test their bikes and equipment for their big planned tour in summer: the Transamerica. Good luck and safe travels!
1 Comment
1/6/2016 13:20:21
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Blog Archive
September 2016
CountersKilometers pedalled
Hours on the bike
Meters cycled uphill
Flat tires
Burgers eaten
Bears sighted
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