Day 25 - Monday, October 5, 2015 - Vieau Home to La Jolla

We started the day just down the road from Gwen & Jerry's home in Newport Beach.  Raincoats on, ready for the 'just in case it rains'.

It seemed like something was missing - oh - yes - Tracy.  Wonder what color rain coat he would have worn today.  It was a great day meandering through the beach towns of Laguna Beach, Dana Point, San Juan Capistrano, San Clemente - past the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant.

  Jerry & Tom passed through Camp Pendleton and we met back up in Oceanside for lunch.

What a lunch spot!  I will miss these for sure.

After lunch we headed south through Carlsbad, Encinitas to La Jolla where we ended our day.





Beautiful beaches

Too bad Tom didn't have his golf clubs

Wow, one more day - a few more miles - the Mexican border is in sight.  We are spending this evening with friends of Gwen & Jerry's - Greg & Joleen.

Tom's Notes:

Thanks a bundle to Jerry and Gwen for letting the travelling road show stay at their house in Newport Beach.  It's great to get a break from the hotel routine and especially so we can spend two nights in the same bed.

I've never met a cyclist who wouldn't rather ride uphill all day than ride into the wind all day.  Well today we didn't get that choice, so we had to ride into the wind all day, but our luck wasn't all bad--we avoided rain all day.  When we went to bed at Chateau Vieau last night it was pouring rain--good for drought stricken Southern California but bad for cyclists listening and hoping the rain will quit by morning.  Lucky us, when we left for the PCH, there were a few drops, but by the time we started riding, the rain quit.  Gwen told us that it poured rain for 45 minutes AFTER we left.  When we arrived at Gwen and Jerry's friends' house they said they had had rain during the day.  

We somehow are still unable to quit when we should--it's always "let's ride 10 more miles so we won't have to ride as far as tomorrow."  Today we did the same thing, and we ended up riding 77.9 miles, rode for 5 hours and 55 minutes, climbed 3100 feet, and averaged 13.2 mph.

Tomorrow we only have about 35 miles left to the border.  It will be great to reach our goal, and be done.

Jerry's Notes:

Joleen's chili & Greg's beer really hit the spot after battling headwinds all day.   I guess we really lucked out with the rain - we experienced nothing!  The legs and lungs are ready for tomorrow, we are slowly running out of energy - or at least I am.  

Riding down the west coast has been harder than the west to east trip due to the constant up down up down elevation gains and losses.  It does take it out of you.  tomorrow will be fun because it is only 30 + miles to the border.  Hooray.