Ready, set...

Saturday, April 20th: Pacific Grove
0 Miles

Pattye and I drove up from Cardiff yesterday and made it to Pacific Grove yesterday evening just in time to check into the motel, have dinner at Cannery Row and then catch opening night of "9 to 5" at the Paper Wing Theater Company (where my brother Lloyd is...what...inextricably bound? Hard to imagine one without the other.) just up the hill. Today we're spending the day with Pattye's brother who drove down from San Jose. I wish we had more time to spend with friends and relatives here, but I'm on a mission. Tomorrow Pattye drives the car home and I'll start pedaling. This is going to be my first bike vacation since...I think 2009 when I rode across Virginia the long way, and would have kept going all the way to the Pacific coast were it not for the combined effects of getting myself way behind schedule and having my budget deflated by a rather large and unexpected expense. And then what? My focus turned to other things...getting married, moving a continent away from the suburbs of Washington, DC to the suburbs of San Diego. Which reminds me, there was at least one other trip in there. A short but enormously satisfying three-day ride from Los Angeles to San Diego that was the catalyst for huge life-altering changes to follow.

The Plan

So the plan is, ride the bike from Pacific Grove (near Monterey) to my home in Cardiff-by-the-sea (let's just say "Cardiff", near San Diego) in two weeks. This is 500 miles or so (give or take) along some of the most beautiful coastline I've ever seen: Pacific Grove, Carmel, Big Sur, Santa Barbara, Malibu, Venice beach, Los Angeles, Long Beach, San Clemente, San Juan Capistrano. I hope to include lots of pictures. I'll be following Adventure Cycling's Pacific Coast route. I'm taking two laptops (the "work" one and the "personal" one) and two cell phones (the "work" one and the "personal" one) because I'm an insecure workaholic who can't be cut off from his cyber-existence. To make room for all that in my bike bags (panniers) I'm taking a minimum of clothing and plan to stay in hotels the whole way, but I want to be prepared in case inspiration or necessity strikes. I'll be riding my brand new (well, new in September) "Surly Disk Trucker" purchased from Chuck and Gretchen at Pacific Coast Cycles when my Giant frame cracked for the second time. For the record, I love this bike. It's been the most solid, reliable and comfortable to ride bike I can ever remember owning.

So that's the plan. I'm going to try to blog every day both to try to capture the experience and to maybe provide information and inspiration to others planning to take this trip.

P.S. Had lunch at Rocky Point Restaurant today with pretty much "this" view...

View from Rocky Point Restaurant