I had a very bad day. Poor planning, plus bad circumstances. Too tired to write good text. I’ll just post the pictures, and illuminate later. Maybe you can figure out what’s going on. Note: I didn’t take a picture of all the bad stuff that happened.
EDIT: captions added 23-APR-2017
All ready to head out. I was hoping to leave at 10 am, but catching up with email and going through the final checklist took until 1 pm. Still okay, It was “only” 40 miles to the campground, designed as an easy first day. The red can is stove fuel, and the other two bottles are water. The tent and sleeping bag are rolled into the pad, and strapped on top of the blue tarp. This didn’t work out too well – the tent and sleeping bag flew off 3 times, no matter how much I tightened the straps. One time they almost went down a 20-ft embankment into the river below.Not 6 miles out, on the Los Gatos Creek trail, I heard what every cyclist dreads. POW!! Psssss…Oh, it had to be the rear, that means taking everything off. I’m proud that I did not swear once during the incident.Yeah, it’s bad. I had two spare tubes, originally, but used the first one to replace a blown tube on the front tire. Had to use the last remaining spare here, meaning I would be running without a spare until I could buy some. That’s what I get for using 7-year-old tubes that were just lying around in the garage. What a fool I was!
I was using printed Google Directions (for bicycling). That’s not the best way to do it. Their directions are designed for GPS, so involve a ton of little turns, and streets to watch out for. I also found that since my smart phone wasn’t activated, I could only get general maps of the area, not detailed ones. After missing the Hwy 87 bike path, I looped for an hour in San Jose, trying to find it. Finally, I asked someone at a Wendy’s how to get to Curtner, which was one of the later points on the directions. He pointed me to Monterey Rd, which I should have just stayed on all the way to Morgan Hill. But I went onto the Google recommended bike trail, instead.
The trail was flooded. I went around on surface streets, and kept running into more flooding. A man on the trail told me how to bypass the flooded area, which I did, but 5 miles later, the trail was closed.Okay, so I made it to the entrance of Harvey Bear / Coyote Lake park. It was almost sunset. There was a sheriff there, so I asked where the campground was. He said it was a 4-mile steep climb to it (see that peak in the distance?) I decided to head back to the Motel I had seen 4 miles back on Monterey Rd.I was in my granny gear fighting strong headwinds back to the motel. It was getting dark by the time I arrived – not as dark as when this picture was taken later. I realized that the nearest food was at least 2 miles further up the road in the dark. Hard to walk, and not great on a bike, either, considering winds.Economy, all right. $99, no continental breakfast – in fact, not even coffee in the lobby. No coffee in the room. Fortunately, I was able to microwave water, and hydrate my single emergency meal. So now, I had lost spare food, too, I’m still grateful for the motel, as there really was no other option in a suburban area other than troubling friends.In my effort to make schedule, I didn’t eat lunch, and just ate cookies and drank water while riding. Didn’t eat that many, either.
