Tag Archives: friend’s place

Huntington Beach, CA

On The Road,
surf city internet station
I did some blog work in the morning, while waiting for the 8 am breakfast.

I took the opportunity to upload my videos to my YouTube channel. It’s just random videos from the trail, but you may find some interesting. These were too big to send to the blog, normally, but in the morning at Surf City, most people were off the internet, so there was plenty of bandwidth.

free breakfast
The breakfast included several kinds of bread and english muffins for toasting, fruit, cereal and milk, coffee, tea, peanut butter. I just had raisin bran with milk, and tea. The man on the left is “Scissors” from Brazil, I didn’t get the names of the German couple at the table.

I stood in the kitchen to eat, as that was where most of the conversation was going on. I mentioned that I had to delay my trip to deal with a health insurance registration issue, and a girl from Canada as well as the German couple confirmed that their insurance works a lot better. I also spoke with “Sherry,” a woman about my age, whose brother owns an Avocado Ranch near San Diego. She was on her way down to help him harvest.

Odilla
This is Odilla, the charming owner with a French accent.
hermosa beach fog
It was foggy when I set out at 9:47 am.

Urban riding is hard. There are so many convoluted turns and special instructions. Sometimes the trail will backtrack on itself, or the bike path will go through a parking garage. I had a collision with a car at Post and Craven in Torrance. Fortunately, except for a couple scrapes on my part, neither of us was injured. The front wheel was still true, but needed to be realigned with the handlebars. My right shoe sole had torn off, a bad thing for a cyclist with Look pedals. We exchanged information, and went on. Urban riding can be harrowing, but I have to say, even in LA, virtually all of the drivers were courteous, even the one who darted out in front of me. It was an oversight, not malice. To others doing the Pacific Coast Route, I’d say it might be worth getting a taxi, Uber, or Lyft from Hermosa Beach to Huntington Beach, as traffic is heavy. Just a suggestion.

Without wi-fi, I have no directory, so I asked locals where I might find a drugstore, for some contact cement to fix my shoe. They pointed me to Fox’s around the corner. I tried the contact cement, but it wasn’t looking too good. I would need a better solution. The cashier at Fox’s helped me look up bike shops in the area, and fortunately, Bikecology was just a mile or two away.

new pedals
I was torn between replacing my broken shoes with new cleated bike shoes, or just converting over to old style toestraps. I chose the latter, and put everything on right in the shop.

I asked the bike shop person if there was a post office nearby, and fortunately, there was one just a mile away. I mailed home my broken shoes and the old pedals that I had removed from my bike.

dollar loan center
Who wants to borrow just a dollar?

Once I was able to get out of the city streets, things became more scenic.

LA river bike path
I was glad to get out of urban traffic and onto a bike path again. The Los Angeles River Bike Path had a few cyclists and walkers on it, and also some homeless people, especially under bridges.

I actually didn’t eat lunch this day, just snacked on bananas and pan dolce. I didn’t need any more than my 3 water bottles all day.

This pic was taken when I arrived at Huntington Library. I had just ridden in my house slippers (kung fu shoes). The bag has the last crumbs of the pan dolce, which I would have normally thrown out for birds. This time, I licked up all of it.

I got to Robert’s house at about 7 pm. He had given his mother her bath, and was feeding her dinner. We walked out later to Carl’s Jr for dinner, a 2-mile loop. My house slippers are not that good for walking. I’ll need to get real shoes, preferably name brand from a Thrift store, but otherwise, any athletic shoes.

Miles: 43.4