mikebeauchamp (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} mikebeauchamp) wrote,@ 2007-12-01 03:34:00 |
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Home from the california trip!
Well I'm home from California and the trip was awesome.. very awesome.
I was slightly worried because I put the trip together pretty quickly, leaving certain details for the last minute. But everything worked out great and I don't think a single thing went wrong that I had control of. Earlier, I said I was regretting taking the bicycle along on this trip since it was such a hassle to deal with a big bike in a box at the airport, etc. I still believe it was a bit of a hassle, but after the first day of flying down a mountain on a tight and twisty road, pushing a box around wasn't a big deal.
The flight was pretty boring, since it was dark out. Flying over what I knew had to be Chicago was pretty insane though, realizing the size of it. At least, I thought it was insane until we flew over Los Angeles for what felt like 30 minutes. The place is so big and I can't imagine how much it takes just to power the lights I could see. Nevermind the fact that each of those lights is probably a block full of houses, each with several TV's running, computers, washing machines, etc. Just crazy. My cousin Angie met me at LAX and we tossed the bike in the back of her beat up Neon and made our way to her awesome place in West Hollywood. The next morning, she gave me a huge bag of food to bring on the Bus to San Francisco. The bus ride was 7.5h, driving past a lot of smoke from the fires happening Malibu (which I assumed at the time was had to be a controlled burn).
In San Francisco, Scott picked me up and drove me to his fancy loft in a former warehouse/factory type thing. We hung out for a few days, walked around the city, etc. Lots of bicyclists in SF, and even more girls carrying around yoga mats. Every grocery store is an expensive-as-fuck health food store (which I'm convinced is just the same as a regular grocery store only packaging colours are limited to brown and green). San Francisco was awesome, and I spent a good day walking around the Mission area going to a handful of used clothing stores to look for souvenirs. A Canadian girl I met on the Greyhound was staying in a nearby hostel, so I joined her and a bunch of Australians (and a German) to go hang out, and we ended up at some bar surrounded in nude velvet paintings where all the young hipsters were playing Bingo. By the end of the night, the German figured out I wasn't drinking alcohol and I never saw a more confused/disappointed man for the rest of the trip.
Leaving San Francisco, I biked down to the Caltrain station where they let cyclists bring their bike right onto a dedicated car at the rear of the train. For a few bucks, I saved myself a few hours of riding and a few hours of navigating and ended up in Sunnyvale (where the Atari 2600 was made). I rode through Sunnyvale, and got into Saratoga. This was my first day on the touring bike, and I had to get to Saratoga Springs Campground, which was located on a twisty street according to my hand-drawn map. The twisty road ended up climbing steeply up the mountain that separates the bay area from the coast. I rode as far as I could and eventually stopped, rethinking the whole trip. I sat at the edge of the road, eating my shitty organic peanut butter on overpriced pitas, wondering how the hell I'd make it to the campground. Eventually a cyclist (without 50LBS of shit on his bike) floated up the hill past me, so I flagged him down and asked where the campground is. He said it was close, so I continued on.. finding the campground only 1 Mile ahead.
I was at this Campground for "International Rust Fest", a yearly get together of Neil Young Fans in preparation of the Bridge School Benefit concerts (an Annual concert held by and featuring Neil). A few "Rusties" were already there, so I hung out with them and set-up my tent. For the next few days, I chilled out by the fire and years of playing Neil Young songs on my acoustic guitar in my bedroom finally payed off. Everyone just sat around singing and talking, and it was great. On one night, we drove up to Half Moon Bay for an acoustic jam at the Old Princeton Landing (a dive bar where Neil has played under the pseudonym "The Echoes"). I ended up getting on stage since someone didn't show up, and I played "Song X" and "Ambulance Blues". For the second song, my friend Roel from the Netherlands (Who I only knew previously on the internet) jumped up onstage and started playing the harmonica parts on the harmonica he bought on the way up here "Just incase". The next night, we were shuttled off to another venue for an electric jam, which was even awesomer.
For the Bridge School Benefit, I got a ride with Kevin Chong, who wrote a few books I believe I've written about on here previously. Neil played acoustic for a few songs, then Regina Spektor played (so cute), Tegan & Sara also played, as well as My Morning Jacket, John Mayer, Tom Waits with Kronos Quartet (which was awesome) and Jerry Lee Lewis. Then Neil came on with a full band, and then Metallica played (but nobody told their drummer the set was acoustic). The next night, we did it all over again.. thanks to Roel who had an extra ticket for me! Before Neil went on the second night, I snuck down to the lower bowl using someone's ticket from the night before (with my conveniently placed thumb covering the date). I sat in an empty seat in row A for Neil's entire set.. very very awesome.
The next day after the BSB concerts, I loaded up the bicycle and continued riding up the mountain to the coast. Again, I stopped on the road thinking I'd never make it up the hill. A motorcyclist who was stopped told me I only had several more miles of climbing to go and I managed to get to the top, averaging around 5mph. After that, the ride was amazing. I took some smaller roads I found on a map. Skyline blvd, which narrowed and turned into Summit Rd, the narrowest and twistiest road I've ever rode on.. and easily my favourite. After that it was a long steady descent to the coast. All the campgrounds along the coast had reasonably priced ($2-5) hiker/biker sites except one. The one that didn't, I was able to share a space with a couple who refused to let me pay my share. For a few days, I was camping along with a few Australians who were cycling the whole coast.. very cool. One night the campgrounds were closed due to the fires down south, so I had to camp off the side of a fire road. Riding the Pacific Coast Highway was very awesome. Traffic was pretty light this time of year, so it was pretty damn stress free, except when the road would turn into an express-way and cyclists were forced to exist and navigate through a city or town. Some of the routes were well signed, some weren't but the book I was carrying did give directions on how to navigate anyways.
Riding through the Big Sur area was beautiful. I stopped off at the Henry Miller Memorial Library to check it out and use some of the free computers they have outside. A hippie couple was there, with the guy using the computer beside me and his girlfriend laying on the deck giggling at a poetry book. The guy kept asking me how to spell words like "Los Angeles", which I spelled "angeles". But then he said "no, the 'los' part". 10 minutes later he jumped up and said "Babe, we -have- to leave! I just lost my belt buckle.".
After 10 days of riding from Saratoga, I got into Los Angeles. Riding through Malibu was crap, since everyone's car is parked right on the shoulder of the PCH, leaving not much room for cyclists. To get to my cousin Angie's in West Hollywood, I drew out a little map of about 20 different little side streets to take to get there. Thankfully, the map worked perfectly and I rode through LA on mostly calm and quiet roads, some even having bike lanes. After almost 800KM of riding, as soon as I got into Angie's, my rear tire started going flat.
LA was pretty interesting. Saw a lot of really botched plastic surguries, complete with really crazy pointy breasts on 50 year old women. I did a lot of walking around, checked out the Mutato Muzika building, went and bought a harmonica, etc. Angie brought me to a lot of cool places and fed me lots of great food too! Maybe I was wandering around all the wrong areas, but I have to say, LA made me really miss Windsor people. Anyways, I think the total spent for the trip was around $700-800.
Well I'm home from California and the trip was awesome.. very awesome.
I was slightly worried because I put the trip together pretty quickly, leaving certain details for the last minute. But everything worked out great and I don't think a single thing went wrong that I had control of. Earlier, I said I was regretting taking the bicycle along on this trip since it was such a hassle to deal with a big bike in a box at the airport, etc. I still believe it was a bit of a hassle, but after the first day of flying down a mountain on a tight and twisty road, pushing a box around wasn't a big deal.
The flight was pretty boring, since it was dark out. Flying over what I knew had to be Chicago was pretty insane though, realizing the size of it. At least, I thought it was insane until we flew over Los Angeles for what felt like 30 minutes. The place is so big and I can't imagine how much it takes just to power the lights I could see. Nevermind the fact that each of those lights is probably a block full of houses, each with several TV's running, computers, washing machines, etc. Just crazy. My cousin Angie met me at LAX and we tossed the bike in the back of her beat up Neon and made our way to her awesome place in West Hollywood. The next morning, she gave me a huge bag of food to bring on the Bus to San Francisco. The bus ride was 7.5h, driving past a lot of smoke from the fires happening Malibu (which I assumed at the time was had to be a controlled burn).
In San Francisco, Scott picked me up and drove me to his fancy loft in a former warehouse/factory type thing. We hung out for a few days, walked around the city, etc. Lots of bicyclists in SF, and even more girls carrying around yoga mats. Every grocery store is an expensive-as-fuck health food store (which I'm convinced is just the same as a regular grocery store only packaging colours are limited to brown and green). San Francisco was awesome, and I spent a good day walking around the Mission area going to a handful of used clothing stores to look for souvenirs. A Canadian girl I met on the Greyhound was staying in a nearby hostel, so I joined her and a bunch of Australians (and a German) to go hang out, and we ended up at some bar surrounded in nude velvet paintings where all the young hipsters were playing Bingo. By the end of the night, the German figured out I wasn't drinking alcohol and I never saw a more confused/disappointed man for the rest of the trip.
Leaving San Francisco, I biked down to the Caltrain station where they let cyclists bring their bike right onto a dedicated car at the rear of the train. For a few bucks, I saved myself a few hours of riding and a few hours of navigating and ended up in Sunnyvale (where the Atari 2600 was made). I rode through Sunnyvale, and got into Saratoga. This was my first day on the touring bike, and I had to get to Saratoga Springs Campground, which was located on a twisty street according to my hand-drawn map. The twisty road ended up climbing steeply up the mountain that separates the bay area from the coast. I rode as far as I could and eventually stopped, rethinking the whole trip. I sat at the edge of the road, eating my shitty organic peanut butter on overpriced pitas, wondering how the hell I'd make it to the campground. Eventually a cyclist (without 50LBS of shit on his bike) floated up the hill past me, so I flagged him down and asked where the campground is. He said it was close, so I continued on.. finding the campground only 1 Mile ahead.
I was at this Campground for "International Rust Fest", a yearly get together of Neil Young Fans in preparation of the Bridge School Benefit concerts (an Annual concert held by and featuring Neil). A few "Rusties" were already there, so I hung out with them and set-up my tent. For the next few days, I chilled out by the fire and years of playing Neil Young songs on my acoustic guitar in my bedroom finally payed off. Everyone just sat around singing and talking, and it was great. On one night, we drove up to Half Moon Bay for an acoustic jam at the Old Princeton Landing (a dive bar where Neil has played under the pseudonym "The Echoes"). I ended up getting on stage since someone didn't show up, and I played "Song X" and "Ambulance Blues". For the second song, my friend Roel from the Netherlands (Who I only knew previously on the internet) jumped up onstage and started playing the harmonica parts on the harmonica he bought on the way up here "Just incase". The next night, we were shuttled off to another venue for an electric jam, which was even awesomer.
For the Bridge School Benefit, I got a ride with Kevin Chong, who wrote a few books I believe I've written about on here previously. Neil played acoustic for a few songs, then Regina Spektor played (so cute), Tegan & Sara also played, as well as My Morning Jacket, John Mayer, Tom Waits with Kronos Quartet (which was awesome) and Jerry Lee Lewis. Then Neil came on with a full band, and then Metallica played (but nobody told their drummer the set was acoustic). The next night, we did it all over again.. thanks to Roel who had an extra ticket for me! Before Neil went on the second night, I snuck down to the lower bowl using someone's ticket from the night before (with my conveniently placed thumb covering the date). I sat in an empty seat in row A for Neil's entire set.. very very awesome.
The next day after the BSB concerts, I loaded up the bicycle and continued riding up the mountain to the coast. Again, I stopped on the road thinking I'd never make it up the hill. A motorcyclist who was stopped told me I only had several more miles of climbing to go and I managed to get to the top, averaging around 5mph. After that, the ride was amazing. I took some smaller roads I found on a map. Skyline blvd, which narrowed and turned into Summit Rd, the narrowest and twistiest road I've ever rode on.. and easily my favourite. After that it was a long steady descent to the coast. All the campgrounds along the coast had reasonably priced ($2-5) hiker/biker sites except one. The one that didn't, I was able to share a space with a couple who refused to let me pay my share. For a few days, I was camping along with a few Australians who were cycling the whole coast.. very cool. One night the campgrounds were closed due to the fires down south, so I had to camp off the side of a fire road. Riding the Pacific Coast Highway was very awesome. Traffic was pretty light this time of year, so it was pretty damn stress free, except when the road would turn into an express-way and cyclists were forced to exist and navigate through a city or town. Some of the routes were well signed, some weren't but the book I was carrying did give directions on how to navigate anyways.
Riding through the Big Sur area was beautiful. I stopped off at the Henry Miller Memorial Library to check it out and use some of the free computers they have outside. A hippie couple was there, with the guy using the computer beside me and his girlfriend laying on the deck giggling at a poetry book. The guy kept asking me how to spell words like "Los Angeles", which I spelled "angeles". But then he said "no, the 'los' part". 10 minutes later he jumped up and said "Babe, we -have- to leave! I just lost my belt buckle.".
After 10 days of riding from Saratoga, I got into Los Angeles. Riding through Malibu was crap, since everyone's car is parked right on the shoulder of the PCH, leaving not much room for cyclists. To get to my cousin Angie's in West Hollywood, I drew out a little map of about 20 different little side streets to take to get there. Thankfully, the map worked perfectly and I rode through LA on mostly calm and quiet roads, some even having bike lanes. After almost 800KM of riding, as soon as I got into Angie's, my rear tire started going flat.
LA was pretty interesting. Saw a lot of really botched plastic surguries, complete with really crazy pointy breasts on 50 year old women. I did a lot of walking around, checked out the Mutato Muzika building, went and bought a harmonica, etc. Angie brought me to a lot of cool places and fed me lots of great food too! Maybe I was wandering around all the wrong areas, but I have to say, LA made me really miss Windsor people. Anyways, I think the total spent for the trip was around $700-800.
