Phew. Today was going to be a short day. This just what I needed after all those hills. I knew I could take it easy. But then again, anything would seem easy after yesterday.
Today was an epic ride. An epic ride which will result in an epic blog post. So please bear with me. I did mention yesterday that today was going to be a big ride and so it turned out to be.
This picture sums up exactly how I felt this morning.
It was cold. It was damp. And confusingly enough it was California. I hadn’t slept well and I was also hungry, so this may have clouded my judgement but . . . I thought I left the wet in Washington, and the cold in . . . Europe. California was supposed to be warm. The OC, Baywatch, all the TV ads fail to tell you they are talking about Southern California. No one made this clear to me, or the rest of Britain, that not all of California is hot.
Today was the first day I was on a bit of a downer. This is probably when I should have had a rest day – to chill out, recuperate and cheer myself up. It was one of those days that if I wasn’t touring, I’d be going out or doing something to be alone.
I had a bit of a fright last night.
I got up at maybe 3am for a wee, as I had for most nights. The night was clear, the stars were out and it was just extremely calm. I head to the bathroom and I saw someone else going into the ladies. “Another Camper”, I thought.
Today was an odd day.
After discovering I had been ransacked by those Bastard Bandits I stopped sulking and got breakfast on the go. Oats and trail mix.
OK, so today is my last day with Oz and Paul. They are heading off to Portland tomorrow so I am going to have to make the most of their time. And it’s not as if I’ll catch-up with them either as they will head East as I go South the following day.
How a week seems to fly by. 7 days ago I was still in Vancouver blissfully unaware of how much FUN this was going to be.
So the hot weather continued. My English skin was taking a pounding even with sun screen on, but I did all that I could in order to prevent an evolution into a Lobster happening in a few days time. As it was a windy day, there was a bit of wind chill going on, I had my long sleeves on. This was my answer to the sun burn.
Waking, I felt refreshed and ready. I had been given kitchen duty for my 15 minute morning chores which I was pretty happy about. No one ever wants to do the toilet, right?
Day 4 started off as Day 3 ended – Wet.
Paul found me in the toilet block warming my hands under the dryer as it was a pretty cold night. This was mainly due to the fact that I had no ground mat, meaning all my heat was used to warm-up the water under my ground sheet, not my body.
Live in the Trees 