Day 30 - Malibu, CA to Hermosa Beach, CA - 29.79 miles

Biking through Malibu was fun - kinda like when we bike through Greenwich and admire all the houses we will never be able to afford. Most of the LA flavor that we soaked up came from a slow stroll through the Venice Beach Boardwalk - even on a Tuesday we saw a wide variety of characters. Our only plan for the night was going to the Dodgers game, so when we happened upon a cute street with a 2 for 1 burger deal we decided to have a late lunch, find a place to stay and make our way to Dodgers Stadium. Little did we know what making our way to Dodgers Stadium would entail. It started off with a ride to the bus stop from our generous hotel owner, Amish Patel. Over two hours later, while on our second bus, we hopped out to hail a cab for our last leg of the journey. Hermosa Beach seemed like it was in LA based on our map, but we may as well have been going back to Safeco Field. In an effort to enjoy the game (which we wholly succeeded at), neither one of us mentioned the white elephant in the stadium of how we were going to get home when we left the game and the buses were no longer running. In the 4th inning, Austin got a text from Saif (in response to his text from 2 weeks ago) saying that he now lives in LA and would pick us up. Phew! (Had only one nice Indian given us a ride, dayenu.) It was great to hang out with Saif - be sure to congratulate him on graduating, moving cross-country and landing an elusive architecture job in LA. We can't wait to come back and visit for more than 2 hours.

Day 29 - Carpinteria, CA to Malibu, CA - 64.35 miles

We had planned to take a day off in Carpinteria to hang out at the beach, but there was a 1 day limit for the hiker/biker sites. We can't really complain because that's what enables us to always have a dirt cheap ($3-5) place to camp (unless Ken's buying). Our decision to continue south was quickly rewarded when we saw a large pod of dolphins swimming alongside our route early in the day.

In the land of glamor we chose to stay at an RV park. We had a great time hanging out with our biking buddies Daniel and Dave Harris. They had ice cold coronas waiting for us and had picked out a pristine spot at the edge of a cliff with a great view of the Pacific. It was so nice, we slept in the tent without the rain fly for the first time.

Week 4 - We Wish Temples Were This Clever

Listed below are our top 10 church signs compiled from both our trip and Austin and Jon's "Quest West." We've seen a few good ones, but the Heartland still takes the cake. We guess people's Jesus out here comes in the form of a surfboard, VW bus, bike, or sportscar. Can anyone, besides Jon, figure out which ones are from the West Coast?

10. Jesus served living water, not Kool-aid.
9. Do your best, God will do the rest.
8. God did not go on vacation and leave you in charge.
6. If you don't know Jesus, you don't have a prayer.
6. If your salvation won't bring you to church, it won't bring you to heaven.

5. Coming Soon...JESUS

4. God allows U-turns. Do U need one?

3. God's line is never too busy.

2. Prevent truth decay - brush up on your bible.

1. If God seems far away, who moved?

Week 4 - By The Numbers

For week 4 numbers, previous weeks are shown for comparison (Week 1, Week 2, Week 3).

80,000,000 - amount of debt W.R. Hearst went into while expanding his estates, in dollars
4500 - average weight of a male elephant seal at Piedras Blancas, in pounds - over 321 stone!
1679.43 - total distance travelled, in miles
385.00 - week 4 distance traveled, in miles (421.56, 420.08, 452.79)
103.39 - longest distance travelled in one day, in miles (75.38, 92.40, 91.2)

86B - lowest exit on Highway 101 reached (771, 422)

46.4 - week 4 top speed, in mph (39.7, 42.6, 47.2)
77.00 - week 4 miles/day of biking (67.15, 70.01, 72.83)
57.00 - week 4 miles/day - not including our 15 mile day (60.22, 60.01, 64.68)
7 - estimated pints of raspberries eaten - gracias, Roberto!
6 - height of the fence we and our bikes scaled, in feet - almost 2 meters!
5 - maps used
5 - days we actually biked this week
3 - broken spokes (all on Austin's rear wheel)
3 - flat tires (all for Steph)
2 - number of towns named Ferndale camped in
1 - number of days we rode until dark - sorry, Tina!
Nada - cost of the raspberries

Things we lost count of: # of times we've been asked "where ya headed?", things Steph has bought as there are fewer and fewer miles left to carry them, "Share the Road" and "Bike Route" signs (so bike friendly), and iPhone yearnings (this trip has been i opening).

Day 28 - Goleta, CA to Carpinteria, CA - 25.38 miles

We rewarded ourselves after our long ride with an "off" day in Santa Barbara. We have been so excited to come back to SB after having such a great time at Marshall and Steph's wedding, but after just writing about how we never know which parts of the trip are going to be the most memorable, nothing really happened today - no surprises, no dreaded best man speech, not even a picture - but definitely a fun day off in a beautiful place.

Day 27 - San Luis Obispo, CA to Goleta, CA - 103.39 miles

New P.R.! Today was off the bixcitement charts - better than finding Clif Bars on sale. We took our time getting going because we had the Sheridan's house at our disposal again. To our surprise, he and Sasha were gone by the time we woke up - apparently you're "on call" when working for the railroad. He left us a nice note offering us to stay for the day and relax/refresh - which was very enticing - but we decided to move on. We were planning to bike about 85 miles today, so the late start meant our first break would have to come late in the day. About 25 miles in, we ran into our biking friends Brock & Adele. We haven't mentioned them yet, but first met them north of SF and have been leapfrogging since, including a few nights of camping together, lending each other tools, commiserating over a recent climb, or celebrating the academic calendar. For the next 20 miles, their company helped the miles fly by. We were hoping to come upon a farmer stand for an excuse to stop riding - 45 miles without a break was starting to wear on us - but the best we could find was a deserted field of raspberries. After leaning the bikes against a pole and taking out the Nutella and Peanut Butter, we spotted a worker. After he responded "si" to our question, "Are these raspberries?" we knew we might have some problems communicating. He was excited to let us try the raspberries, and in trying to ask how much they cost, he gestured "hold on." Roberto came back with 14 empty Driscoll Raspberry containers and gestured us to help fill them. As we collectively finished filling our second container, we tried again to ask, "Quantos? Quantos para uno?" He gestured that he wouldn't take money and we didn't quite have the Spanish to argue, so forced him to take some granola bars in an epic bartering event. Our four containers of raspberries definitely beat out his three granola bars. Roberto's generosity - and food - gave us the inspiration we needed to get up a couple big climbs and 40 miles to our goal. Our day was supposed to end with a 2 mile bike path connecting two beautiful campgrounds on the beach. The Park Ranger warned us of an eroded section that we should bike/hike around. Getting around the fence into the construction zone was pretty easy...getting out of the construction zone was definitely not. There was no convenient gap/hole in the fence, so, since we were not about to turn around, we unloaded the bikes, hoisted everything over the 6 ft fence, packed up again, and kept going. At this point, we had about 75 minutes of sunlight left and had ridden 87 miles - Austin told Steph, "This is our chance to do 100!" We were energized by such an eventful day, so decided to get back on the highway and keep going. 6 ft of fence in three directions didn't stop us, but 2 inches of nail did. The nail jammed through Steph's tire, inner tube, other side of her inner tube, took a U-turn, went through the inner tube, other side of the inner tube, and then started to pierce the tire again before running out of its 2 inches. We think the nail came from the grassy knoll. It ended up being an incredibly difficult flat to fix and in doing it, we lost 40 minutes of daylight. If you're doing math at home and have been following the blog closely, you know that 35 minutes is not nearly enough for us to bike 16 miles. We guess we gave away the ending in our title, but definitely finished the ride in the dark.
Had we just woken up in a nice bed with a roof over our heads - Dayenu. Had we just ridden with our biking friends - Dayenu. Had we just met Roberto on the raspberry farm - Dayenu. Had we just had to climb the fence - Dayenu. Had we just ridden 100 miles - Dayenu. Today was definitely our most memorable day so far.

Day 26 - San Simeon, CA to Edna, CA - 51.42 miles

Waking up to our biking friends at the campsite was nice, but waking up to a third broken spoke was not. Austin has actually learned how to true a wheel pretty well, so we were able to ride 45 miles to San Luis Obispo (SLO) before having it fixed properly. After a fixed spoke and putting pink handlebar tape on the Cannondale (pink on yellow is like hotter on hottest), we hit up the SLO Jamba Juice, grocery store (where we finally remembered to buy Nutella to go with the PB, granola bars, and fingers), and library for four posts (Since we're posting a few days at a time, we hope all 7 of you are reading each entry. We'd say 8, but we know Tina is.). The big adventure of the day started when another generous David found us in the library to "pay it forward." He explained that he has done a lot of touring and was so appreciative of the generosity others showed to him that he wanted to invite us to come stay in his home. We pretended to think it over, but knew this option was 1,000 times better than the Pismo Beach Dunes Vehicle Recreation Area (think ATV's, not back country). After winding through Edna Valley wine country, we arrived at a beautiful home with a front yard filled with grapevines; orange, lemon, and avocado trees; and one excited six year old who couldn't wait to show Stephanie around. David gave Austin a beer while Sasha showed Steph her room, the pool, which oranges were edible, and made sure we knew all the rules of the house - "If Papa's office door is closed, it means he's working, but you can still go in." Remarkably, David and Sasha left us home alone to join friends for dinner. It's hard to say if we were more excited about taking showers, doing laundry, cooking in a kitchen, having unlimited Internet access or just the refreshing generosity. When they returned, Sasha showed us how to check the moon phases, showed us the weather forecast for tomorrow's ride, and took our picture - all on Papa's iPhone. It was like a Mac commercial. When Sasha fell asleep, we swapped teaching and railroad engineering stories with David. He is one of 20 engineers who conducts the SLO to LA Union Pacific Railroad. He said there were 100 engineers a few years ago, but there just isn't much freight to move in this economy. He ended up being called to work in the middle of night so we woke up to an empty house and a nice note - "...please feel free to hang around and rest for the day....lock the gate on your way out." Ironically, we were so excited to see Big Sur yesterday, and didn't have much to look forward to today. We knew this summer was going to be filled with adventures, but we're slowly learning that you can't predict when they are going to come.

Day 25 - Big Sur, CA to San Simeon, CA - 70.11 miles

The big things we saw today - literally - were the coastal fog, elephant seals at Piedras Blancas, and the Hearst Castle. Although we were disappointed the fog hadn't lifted, we were actually able to look down from above the clouds because of the big climbs we had today. It was a very surreal experience and looked a lot like a view from an airplane - hopefully the pictures will do it justice. In an effort to have time to see the "big" attractions, we pushed 60 miles before taking a real break. The 2 ton male seals were grunting, growling, play fighting, and constantly flipping on their sunscreen (sand) while waiting for the females to arrive for mating season. We made it to Hearst Castle just in time for the last tour. We were skeptical of touring a mansion - especially at $24/person - but it was actually worth it. W.R. Hearst's "tribute to ambition and affluence" was decorated with an extravagant worldly taste. He shipped in Spanish Palm trees, exotic flowers, Canadian Elk, African Zebras, Tapestries owned by the Sun King (Louis Quatorze), Swiss cheese, Egyptian sculptures, and (of course) Jersey cows. His 80 million dollar debt made sense after learning that this was just one of the five estates he was continuously augmenting.

Day 24 - Sunset State Beach, CA to Big Sur, CA - 64.74 miles

A few notable moments from the day: We enjoyed the sweet smells as we biked through 20 miles of strawberry fields (we'd think the Beatles visited here, but strawberry fields are probably a metaphor for something else like a walrus), faced our first prolonged headwind (yesterday we averaged 13 mph, today 10), enjoyed a few hours on the old Monterey Fisherman's Wharf where Austin sampled 6 different clam chowders, and still had Big Sur to look forward to. Unfortunately the fog never lifted and, like in Oregon, we missed the views everyone had been telling us about. We added it to the "things to do in a car with Josh" list for next time.

Day 23 - Half Moon Bay, CA to Sunset State Beach, CA - 69.96 miles

We definitely went with our stop 'n go approach today. Our first stop came before we had ridden any miles when we had to enjoy a last morning on Ken at the Ritz with breakfast and one more visit to the spa. We made a strong push before our next stop and forty miles later came upon an organic strawberry farm that enticed us with a 10% off deal for bikers (off the bixcitement charts!). After enjoying a strawberry shortcake, strawberry-apple cider, strawberry cheesecake brownie, strawberry macaroon and sampling EVERY type of strawberry jam we continued on our journey. One of the coolest parts of Swanson's Organic Strawberry Farm was the "famous honor till" - you just added up what you ate and took your own change from the register. Ten miles later (thanks to a great recommendation from Morgan), we stopped at the Santa Cruz boardwalk to ride the 85 year old, wooden, Giant Dipper roller coaster and Skywalk Gondola; check out a free, strange, but entertaining Cirque Magnifique show; and enjoy a boardwalk snack before we kept rolling.

Pictures!!!

Pictures!!!

Pictures!!!