This Could Take a While

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We had a great dinner last night with Jeff's friends at a restaurant near Venice Beach. Apart from a slight delay in being seated, and the restaurant not having a roof (really), the food was sensational. And something as rare as Haley's Comet, Jeff shouted everyone!

Great expectation this morning as we woke wearily. Jeff said we needed another water bottle last night so we had to finish the the flagon of Merlot we had bought for $7 - No Problem! Unfortunately we couldn't pick up the RV until 1pm so we packed up all our gear and stored it in the garage as we departed on the velos towards Carson. We chose the beach road and ended up on the bike path on the beach for 13km heading south.

What a great start, it was fantastic. When we reached Redondo Beach there was an extensive complex of piers supporting a restaurant precinct, just sensational. From here we turned west and headed away from the coast and rode the 15kms to the RV Rental place. After a short informational video and some fun with the camping chairs (ask me later) we packed the bikes in the back of the RV and set off back to El Sugundo to pick up our things.

We get to look over the RV before we start to make sure it's in good order and we get a introduction to how everything works. Seems a piece of cake and the RV is almost new, it's in sensational condition and I'm sure we'l look after it on the trip - what could go wrong?

I drove the first leg in the RV bac to El Segundo and it was quite nerve racking being up quite high with a 30ft vehicle that handled like a truck and driving on the "wrong side of the road". A couple of wrong turns later (this is becoming monotonous) had us take the non-freeway route back to El Segundo which was probably better than traveling 100km/h on the freeway. We made it safely back to El Segundo and loaded up the RV with all our gear from the garage. It was quite a squeeze with our bikes assembled but at least everything fit. We decided to go straight to Oceanside rather than to San Diego as it is where we will be starting the ride. Unfortunately by the time we get to Oceanside it's too late to start riding for the day, so instead we find an RV park close to our staring point, the theory being we can have an early start to the ride in the morning. Well that's the idea.

After parking the van for the night we head to the pier which signifies the start of the race (er...ride) and take the obligatory photos - again to save time in the morning. Then back to the van to stow everything away properly and then finally out for dinner.

Our original thoughts were that we'd have a designated driver each day while the other 3 ride, and then take turns being the driver. The idea here was everyone got a day off to rest every fourth day to ensure we all got time off to recover. Well, we've decided the first day is special and everyone should get a turn to ride so all four of us will drive for a section tomorrow. The end of the day is trying to work out how to get thru town on the bikes and onto the route which is proving harder to workout than we thought - maybe we should have done this earlier.

Hold on to your hats, things are about to get interesting.

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Comments

[Anne Knights]

Wrong turns
How many is that altogether? Goodness you haven't even started yet..............