I am only doing this because people wanted more details on mine and Shane's bike trip. This is totally going against my short but sweet blogging style so if you don't want the travel-log come back another day. For those of you who asked, here it is.
We put all our stuff in two big backpacks. If you look at my first post and the picture of us by our bikes before we started you can see them on the ground off to the left. We had all our clothes and toiletries in them, so we had to pack carefully.
We left his parents house on a Monday morning and decided to bike to Coronado Island via the Silver Strand.
Five minutes in, as you know, I got a flat tire.
Here's Shane trying to fix it. (If you look closely you can see his ego posing in this picture). :)
After Handy Manny fixed the tire for us we were on our way and let me just say, biking the Silver Strand is one INCREDIBLY gorgeous ride. I had all sorts of feelings like: People who drive cars are bad, everyone should ride bikes. We are missing out on so much of this world being stuck in cars. And that thought was immediately followed by this one: Oh my gosh, I'm thinking like one of those weird people!
But that is honestly how I felt. It was so gorgeous and I wished everyone could experience and appreciate it.
It was about a 20 mile bike ride from his parents house to Coronado. Once we got to Coronado we stripped off our nasty, sweaty clothes (no worries, we had our suits on) and jumped into the ocean. We body surfed for about an hour, layed out and had a fine time. Then we grabbed some lunch and caught the ferry across to downtown San Diego.
About an hour after we checked into our hotel (which was basically in the Gaslamp District--very cool), we heard 4 gunshots. Then we immediately heard sirens and within about 2 minutes it looked like this out our window.
Apparently there was a skirmish at a steak restaurant between the manager and a vagrant. The manager called the cops, the cops tried to stop the vagrant but supposedly he lunged at them with the knife so boom-boom-boom-boom. (Most of this info came via another derelict who invited himself into our conversation while we were innocently eating ice cream sundaes outside Ghiardeli's, across the street from the crime scene). I think he said something along the lines of, "These cops don't care, they'll shoot anybody!" But back to this scene...Shane had brought binoculars for Sea World so we were watching to see them put the guy in the ambulance. After about 40 minutes they put the stretcher back in and closed the doors...without anyone on it. Shane said, "Uh oh, that's not good." I was like, "Why?" He said, "Well, apparently the guy doesn't need to go to the hospital, so either he got up and walked away after 4 gun shots or...." Man, I'm dense sometimes.
Anyway, back to our bike adventure.
The next day we decided to bike to Point Loma which is about 9 1/2 miles each way. Shane forgot to warn me it was a lot of hills, but it was by far my favorite bike day of the whole trip. We went to the tip where the lighthouse is and ate a little lunch and talked for a bit. Then we took a bunch of stupid pictures like the one below.
I honestly can not look at that picture without laughing. I'm still laughing. I have to make the sound I think Shane should be making with that face. In my head it sounds something like "Ghaaaaauuuuu". But he wasn't making any noises when I took the picture, so I didn't know how awesome this picture was until we got home. :)
After the lighthouse we biked down to the tide-pools, which were very cool. What was not very cool was the hideous hill we had to climb back up after going down to the tide-pools. But we felt like champs when we made it to the top.
Then we went to see his Grandpa Slowey's burial plaque because he was cremated and buried at the Point Loma Cemetery. We just went up and down the rows of walls looking for his name and we found it after about 10-15 minutes. You'd be impressed if you could see how many walls of names there were. (p.s. most gorgeous cemetery ever!)
The next day we biked to Sea World. It was only about 7 miles each way. It was probably the scariest ride of the whole trip because we had to ride on some really crappy roads and on the Pacific Coast Highway for a little part of it. We ran into a group of cyclists who were probably in their 70's, super nice and super slow. They led us part of the way and dropped us off on a better trail into Sea World, so that was nice.
Biking in downtown San Diego wasn't nearly as scary as I thought. I did almost have an accident with a bike taxi. That was probably the closest call of the whole trip. Here's what happened...we were biking swiftly down Broadway when suddenly the train lights started blinking and the arm started to come down for the trolley. Shane was up ahead of me and the bike taxi guy was just behind me. We totally could have made it, and that's what I was planning on doing, but Shane slammed on his brakes because he thought I was behind the bike taxi guy (and I had been known to get flat tires), so I slammed on my breaks and swerved left, which is apparently right where bike taxi guy was so he had to swerve so as not to hit me. It was a bunch of crazy swerving and breaking. Then we all sat there sheepishly waiting in silence for the trolley to go by, which took about another 2 minutes before it even showed up! Hmmmm, embarrassing? Yes indeed.
We ate at some fabulous places including the Star of India in the Gaslamp district and Ghiradeli's for ice cream sundae's--twice! That, my friends, is how you bike 100 miles and still gain weight on vacation. :)
The last day we packed up everything back in our packs and rode the Silver Strand back to Chula Vista and back to normal, car driving life.
I was sad.
It was a fantastic trip...really, truly fantastic.
(I so wish I lived here so I could run on the beach every day!)
