Re: [RBW] Big Sur Tour

2013-06-30 Thread dougP
The joy of bike touring is the simplicity of bike-eat-sleep, with your 
whole world right there in a few bags.  

dougP

On Wednesday, June 26, 2013 10:48:43 AM UTC-7, hsmitham wrote:

 Thanks Perry! The ride was great. Everyday my job was to pedal nothing 
 else to be concerned about. Pure joy.

 ~Hugh

 Hugh
 Sunland, Ca
  

 On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 3:04 AM, bobish bob...@gmail.com javascript:wrote:

 Well done! Love the photos, especially. And the beard. Mustn't forget. 
 Kudos to the beard! :)

 Perry

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Re: [RBW] Big Sur Tour

2013-06-30 Thread Hugh Smitham
Yes to all of your sentiment. I loved my job for a week of pedaling :-)



Hugh
Sunland, Ca


On Sun, Jun 30, 2013 at 6:25 PM, dougP dougpn...@cox.net wrote:

 The joy of bike touring is the simplicity of bike-eat-sleep, with your
 whole world right there in a few bags.

 dougP


 On Wednesday, June 26, 2013 10:48:43 AM UTC-7, hsmitham wrote:

 Thanks Perry! The ride was great. Everyday my job was to pedal nothing
 else to be concerned about. Pure joy.

 ~Hugh

 Hugh
 Sunland, Ca


 On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 3:04 AM, bobish bob...@gmail.com wrote:

 Well done! Love the photos, especially. And the beard. Mustn't forget.
 Kudos to the beard! :)

 Perry

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Re: [RBW] Big Sur Tour

2013-06-26 Thread Hugh Smitham
Thanks Perry! The ride was great. Everyday my job was to pedal nothing else
to be concerned about. Pure joy.

~Hugh

Hugh
Sunland, Ca


On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 3:04 AM, bobish bob...@gmail.com wrote:

 Well done! Love the photos, especially. And the beard. Mustn't forget.
 Kudos to the beard! :)

 Perry

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[RBW] Big Sur Tour

2013-06-24 Thread bobish
Well done! Love the photos, especially. And the beard. Mustn't forget. Kudos to 
the beard! :)

Perry

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[RBW] Big Sur Tour

2013-06-23 Thread hsmitham


My Brother Bruce and I have been planning a cyclotour from San Francisco to 
Paso Robles for months and all the planning paid off. On June 14th Bruce 
picked me up in LA loaded up the bikes and headed for Paso Robles where we 
were planning to catch the Amtrak coast starlight to Oakland.

The Coast Star Light was 20 minutes late and when it arrived the chief 
conductor said we could not bring our bikes aboard as we had not made 
reservations for boxes. If we had all we’d have needed to do was remove the 
pedals and loosen the handlebars and roll it into the box provided. 
Needless to say we were in a bind, what to do? It was Friday on graduation 
weekend and 5:30pm most of the rental car establishments were closing and 
the ones that were open had no cars to rent especially one way.  We rented 
a Camry in SLO  for $100 a day drove back to Paso and dropped off our car 
stuffed the tour bikes in the Camry and make it to the Clarion Hotel in 
Oakland at midnight my front fender took a hit and was bent awkwardly.

The following day we jumped on BART and headed to RivHQ. How can you be so 
close to the epicenter of relaxed common sense cycling and not stop in? It 
was mandatory. We made some repairs and final purchases met with Will, 
Sean, Scott, Harry  the man behind it all Grant who was busy on a photo 
shoot preparing for a BW catalogue.  Harry  Scott helped us Google map a 
route over to Pigeon Point Lighthouse and Grant humored me with a pose with 
the loaded Hilsen and said “the Hilsen’s not really a loaded tour bike”. 
But he felt it would handle just fine. We finally made our way back to the 
BART albeit late and headed for San Bruno. From there we promptly got 
confused as the Beta bicycle map feature lead us along a bikeway of 
enumerable (Lesson carry a map) turns and eventually lead us up to a closed 
bridge near Crystal Springs Reservoir. Fortunately we met a local cyclist 
who got us straightened out and we were on our way to Half Moon Bay via the 
92 (note to self never take this route again) which had little to no 
shoulder lots of traffic and was windy.

We stopped in Half Moon Bay refueled with sandwiches and continued to our 
Light house destination for the evening.

The next day was our big mileage day 70 miles to the Marina area just north 
of Monterey via the farm lands of Castroville and Watsonville. The Ramada 
provided us with warm showers great beds and a breakfast in the morning 
where we loaded up with instant oatmeal and peanut butter for our two days 
in the Sur.  We both agreed that night’s pizza “The Luau” was the best 
ever! 

Our third day of riding took us through Monterey and Caramels 17 mile drive 
which if by car there was a fee and if by bicycle well we just rolled 
through the gate another benefit of being on a bicycle. I’ve got to say 
that this stretch is amazing as there are no large cliffs and reminds me of 
La Jolla in San Diego. We made a pit stop at the grocery store at the south 
end of Carmel to load up on supplies, Dutch Crunch bread, fresh fruit and 
other essentials.  One of my fender nuts had fallen off and there was an 
Ace Hardware store where I conveniently got a replacement.  We continued on 
for another 26 miles to the Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park hike  bike camp 
located a bit away from the water but none the less beautiful as it was in 
a Redwood grove and $5 per person, warm showers and Velo-culture abounded, 
it was like riding into a cyclo city just awesome! We met so many great 
people.

Next morning we made our way toward Kirk Creek Camp which was situated near 
the water and a bit exposed. The thing was that the hike and bike area had 
been overtaken by car campers as they liked the location and we were 
relegated to a typical car camp spot, that didn’t dampen our mood as how 
can you be upset while in the Sur? The camp host felt bad and gave us a 
wheel barrel of wood and Jacob from Colorado built a great fire. We camped 
with a couple of teachers from Colorado Jacob ( Can’t remember his wife’s 
name will update this later), a couple from Belgium Davie  Rose who have 
been on tour around the world for 9 months and two fellows from Toulouse 
France Marc and Sebastian.

On our second to last day of riding we rolled refreshed South towards our 
next destination Cambria by the sea. We stopped off at Ragged Point for a 
rest and saw all our fellow cyclotourist friends and wished them well on 
their next overnight at San Simeon Creek campsite I really wanted to camp 
another night as the wide open feeling was magnificent, but we had 
reservations and well that was that! The Bridge Street Inn was in my humble 
opinion the best I have ever experienced, the proprietor Jan was gracious 
and her intern Lauralie from France kept a clean house and provided a great 
atmosphere with great conversation. The next morning we awoke to have 
breakfast provided by the Inn to get us on our way in style. 

So we headed out of Cambria and climbed up to the Cabrillo