Tag Archives: camping

Pismo Beach, CA

On The Road

In my younger days, Stewart Lee and I went from Morro Bay to Lompoc as a 1-day segment. San Luis Obispo to Lompoc is less distance, but I am not confident enough to do the 60 miles in one shot. Unfortunately, I can’t break it up into two 30-mile days because there is a 45-mile stretch with no camping or motels between this Oceano Beach and Lompoc. And moreover, there’s this thing called the Harris Grade before Lompoc. I don’t like that word, Grade. So I took a short day today, only 15.7 miles. It was less than an hour and a half of riding.

The meant that I got to have a leisurely morning at Linda’s house, working on this blog. Linda got back from her morning run at 7:15, and made me some breakfast.

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Health Nut Bagel, Egg, and fresh squeezed orange juice from their tree!
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The house is full of interesting collectibles.
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This is their system of de-chlorinating water. The big carafe in the middle is the oldest, and the ones to the right are successively younger, airing out.

At first, I had gone to the Oceano Dunes campsites, but at the gate they told me it was 2 miles over sand to get to the campsites. Camping on sand would have been okay, but access over sand, no thanks. It’s an ATV area, that’s probably why. So I went further down to the Oceano Campground, which was actually in Pismo Beach, not Oceano. $25, since they didn’t have hiker/biker sites. Fine. Nice place.

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These were my neighbors, a family from Germany, vacationing in California for 8 weeks. Olivia (mother), Nick (infant), Marta (daughter), and Felix (father).
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As I was about to set up, Sammy (born in a taxicab in NY) came over to ask Felix for help setting up a tent. I asked if she could use more helpers, and she said the more the merrier. We got it set up through trial and error.
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Sammy’s two traveling companions came back from their errand after a few minutes. David (“Machete” impression), Sammy in the back, Mike Rios (Stan Lee impression). David grew up in Florida, where I hope to reach at the end of this trip. Mike was a veteran, not much older than me. He spoke many languages, and was able to converse freely with Felix in German. He taught me a phrase in Hebrew, but I need to figure out how to spell it (even with Latin characters) in order to share it, here.

I decided to eat my freeze-dried meal again, rather than bother to bike out to a restaurant in town. This has been a good day.

Miles: 15 (estimated, didn’t record)