Day 36 - Success!

And here I am! What an ending day it was! After my last post, I continued along the Pearblossom Highway, which eventually became the Sierra Highway, taking me through canyonlands along California 14. I was still hoping to reach Santa Clarita before I slept, and made decent time, but finally chose to get what sleep I could along a closed road, as places to throw down a tent were getting scarce.

The camping site was between CA 14 and the Sierra Highway, and traffic volume at night kept things busy. After a few hours of napping, I packed up again, figuring I would be able to finish up on that much sleep.

I knew that the last bit of travel had a few jogs, but it sure made for an interesting trip! As I traveled on in the very early morning hours, I got to take advantage of the really low traffic conditions, pushing through Santa Clarita, heading down to an intersection where I wasn't sure whether to go left or right, going right, biking for about 5 or so miles, and getting into.... Santa Clarita.... uh oh. Yup, a poor choice at the intersection had sent me back into Santa Clarita So there I am at 2 AM, with nothing open. I stopped my bicycle in a McDonalds parking lot, dug out the laptop and was very glad that they don't turn off their internet when then close for the night! Instructions had me go right back the way I came, giving what I was hoping would be a short day a bit of extra length.

I managed to backtrack and drop into the road-grid region of the Los Angeles valley just as the sun came up and traffic picked up. I got onto Topanga Canyon road, pushing up a good distance before reaching the canyon drop on the far side. Steep and downhill for miles with lots of turns, high traffic and no shoulders in some points. Fortunately, Californians are more used to bicyclists than most other states it seems, and I wasn't even honked at once! From there, it was onto the Pacific Coast Highway, and I could see my goal - Point Dume! Sure, I could have stopped at any part of the beach to touch the ocean now, but it wasn't where I was going to "end" so I chose to wait. Once I got off of the Pacific Coast Highway, I knew I'd just have about a mile or two to go!

As I came up the last hill to my turnoff, I noticed my controls were a bit funny. I looked down, and sure enough, the rear tire was very low on air, almost flat. I pulled off, pumped it up, started pedaling hard and made it about 1/4 mile before it was flat again. ARGH!!!! SO CLOSE!!! At first, I decided I'd just push the bicycle the last 2 miles, and got to the last 1/2 mile or so and my last turn before I decided I had to pedal in. So there, so close to the end, I took off all of my gear, flipped the bicycle, took off the tire, patched (I figured I'd save a new tube for when I was going to be veeery careful), and reloaded, then took off. I could tell that even with the fast patch, it was still losing air, but I managed to roll up to the entrance way to my grandparents house just as my grandfather was going out to drop off some mail! Viola!

After that, all that was left was the pictures and the pampering! (which seems to be ongoing). I surprised everybody with how early I arrived, which messed up others' plans a tiny bit (oops), but nobody was too bothered by that. Initial plans to post very quickly were actually overwhelmed by the need to nap after my arrival, so I have been here for a few hours.

Sometime soon, I will be adding a summary of my route, thoughts and general comments on the trip, but there are a few things I can note right now:

First, thank you to everybody, both family and friends (old and new) who supported me on this trip. You made the good times better, and the hard times into fun stories to share rather than miserable slogs! Without your support, I might not have made it!

Second: The meetings I had along the way with the wide variety of people were by far the best part of this trip. It had changed my perspective on people and I will always view some things in different ways (as well as always noticing what the shoulders are like wherever I drive.)

For those that are wondering, I did weigh myself and appear to now be around 179 pounds, a bit over 10 pounds lighter than when I began, despite eating very unhealthy food for much of my trek. That's a lot of calories to burn!

Over the next few days, I'll try to give a summary of my route, thoughts on gear, how much a trip like this costs to undertake, and other general comments. For now, I'm off to work on recovering (food and sleep!) THANK YOU EVERYBODY!!!!