Category Archives: travel

city, history, roadtrip, travel, USA

La Brea & Hollywood Boulevard

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Giving the morning peak-hour a miss (a good excuse for not getting up too early) we left San Diego behind, eventually, & headed north. Although a much shorter & quite different visit than my previous one, once again I really enjoyed my stay there – if in some horrible circumstance I had to choose a big US city to live in, I dare say San Diego would be it.

We are aiming for San Luis Obispo today on Chip’s recommendation (great riding), so that makes for 500 km/300 miles of freeway to get to the coast somewhere between LA & San Francisco. Getting through LA wasn’t nearly as bad as last time I drove from San Fran to San Diego in one day (via the Pacific Coast Highway), & no doubt the traffic would have been a lot better if we hadn’t got distracted around Hollywood. Valerie suddenly remembered that she really wanted to see the La Brea Tarpits, which really aren’t far from Hollywood Boulevard.

We knew a little about the tarpits beforehand but were blown away by just how extensive the paleontological finds were. With the biggest collection in the world (use a Clarkson voice) of fossils in the range of 11000 to 50000 years old, there really are a lot – three million, with at least as many to come from Project 23 (twenty-three big boxes excavated from a parking garage construction). There were sabre-tooth cats, mammoths, mastadons, really big sloths, a giant jaguar & on display over four-hundred dire wolf skulls. That really emphasized just how many animals got trapped in the tar. Coming up from an oilfield below the surface, the tar/asphalt/heavy oil still finds its way to the surface – you could touch some of it as you walked around the park outside the museum. The animals didn’t get trapped & then sink, they got stuck up to a few inches in before dying of starvation, dehydration, exhaustion or ending up as prey (the predators would often get stuck too, so you’d end up with so many different fossils in one big tangle). All in all a great & very interesting place to visit.

Harlan’s Ground Sloth – that’s well taller than me

Californian Sabre Tooth Cat

A Mammoth – of course

Still bubbling away – if you look closely enough in this particular picture

We headed back to Hollywood Boulevard to have a quick peak. I was staggered just how many stars there are on the Walk of Fame – but with such a long history of entertainment, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. Also with so many names, I didn’t recognize many of them. We also spent a bit of time checking out the hand & footprints outside the Chinese Theater before heading back to the car to hit the freeway.

Quite a bit of the first part of the 101 followed the coastline, but we had the fog to obscure our view. Since getting through Santa Barbara & giving up the driving, the road has turned north inland & the countryside is beautiful in the early evening light. Lots of rolling hills are now playing host to many vineyards – just when we’ve almost finished those six bottles from Grand Junction.

*It turns out San Luis Obispo is a really, really nice big town with beautiful scenery, lots of bars & restaurants & a great feel to it. We had Moroccan for dinner – the tangine was superb. That & the four cheese meal I had last night reminded me of a few dinners out in Auckland with ye of little Faith… I have a sneaking suspicion that I stopped for lunch in this town two years ago, the streets seem familiar somehow. It must have been when I’d abandoned the foggy Pacific Coast Highway & headed for the 101.

Yes, I was right – “Lunch in San Luis Obispo – a very nice little city & I stumbled upon a great Italian restaurant. I would have stayed the night in San Luis Obispo if I didn’t have to get back for court tomorrow as the riding is supposed to be very good.” Speaking of the riding, I’m all prepared to hit Montana de Oro State Park tomorrow – I hope the weather is fine for some great views.

Yet another sidenote – it looks like Joel & Kristy (friends from up in Canmore) are planning a roadtrip down this sort of way – might get to see some mates soon, I hope around Tahoe somewhere.

bikes, city, GPS, MTB, roadtrip, travel, USA

Moseying around San Diego

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With a long ride & a longer night to recover from, yesterday was pretty casual.  The sun managed to even come out a bit from behind the marine layer of cloud as we wandered around the Seagrove Village area of Embarcadero (downtown on the harbourside).  I left Valerie to look around the aircraft carrier USS Midway (I checked it out last time) & then took off around the bay to Point Loma & had a look around Cabrillo National Monument. The monument commemorates the first landing of a European on the west coast of the USA – by Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo of Portugal in 1542. There were good views of the North Beach Naval Air Station & its jets taking off, the city & harbour and out over the Pacific. Being on a headland to an important harbour, there was of course an old lighthouse to look around.

Not able to bring myself to have two consecutive days off the bike, I had found a nice close & short ride to attack before lunch. Heading south to Chula Vista & then east to the San Miguels I was riding at nine o’clock under a cloudy sky. Shortly after setting off, I was heading up Mt Miguel & quite rapidly. There were a lot of switchbacks, & not all were as friendly as those up San Juan on Thursday. With the rocks on some of them, they were right at the limit of my middle-ring strength but I managed to keep pushing it around. After almost 300m climbing in half an hour I was at the summit under clear skies & feeling a little warm. With the biggest cairn I’d seen in a long time, I could work out why the trail was named Rockhouse – there was what looked like the simplest rock-outlined maze next to it. I suppose if you used your imagination you could see the waist high walls as a basic house floorplan.

The ride off the peak was steeper than that up, so I was pleased to not have gone up that. The last section had a bit of service road before flattening out to loop around a smaller hill. Here I saw my first roadrunner. At least, it looked like what I thought one ought to look like. Alas, I didn’t see a coyote go flying passed with rocket-propelled shoes so I couldn’t be sure. It strutted around a bit & had a interesting call (not quite meep-meep). The trail around the hill was nice & I was enjoying the scenery. More service road (at least there were some big water bars to jump off) & singletrack mix gradually wound itself back to the car.

By the time I got back into the city, the clouds had also disappeared from there too – so we spent the afternoon wandering around city parks. Balboa Park was great in the sunshine. I stupidly left my camera behind, but as I’d been there before wasn’t too concerned. The Spanish architecture built for the 1915 Panama-Californain Exposition is just fantastic. After getting a bit of simple work done on the car, we checked out the Mt Soledad Memorial with its great panoramas of the city & then headed down to La Jolla Cove to wander around the seaside & look at the seals, sea lions & pelicans.

bikes, food, friends, GPS, MTB, roadtrip, travel, USA

Bike cleaning, great food & a big ride

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Coronado was well worth a look, as the bridge over is not far from where we are staying in San Diego. We moseyed around late Friday morning, found some great ginger beer in a Scottish shop (not quite sure what that was doing there, but the accent was great) & generally looked over the harbour at the city while chatting with a very talkative gallery owner.

The afternoon had been long ago handed over to bike maintenance at Chip’s place. My bike was still filthy from its Utah & Colorado muddy adventures & just altogether greasy. So it was great to hang out with Chip (I met & rode with him a bit last time I was here, we’ve obviously kept in touch) & pull various parts of my bike to bits. A short trip to the LBS (local bike shop) later I had been converted to a Geax Saguaro on the rear (back to tubeless, the tire was so hard to get on the rim I don’t see it coming off any time soon).  After riding on it for a day, I’m not entirely won over – it didn’t seem to give as much climbing traction as the Crossmark.

All the time I was tinkering with my bike Chip & Dale (a coincidence I assure you) had been preparing a feast for us. Over the last two years I’d got the impression that the food served around here is fantastic, so I was pleased to see this great looking barbecue in action.

The homemade bread was delicious, the barbecued chicken & ribs absolutely fantastic and the homemade strudel so good Valerie managed to down a whole one. With some good wine & a lot of travel & bike stories it was definitely the most memorable meal of the trip so far. Thanks so much for having us in your home,, Chip & Dale – I can’t say much more, I don’t want it going to your heads.

It wasn’t a late night, however, as Chip had organised a big ride for early Saturday morning. With most of an hour’s driving out of the way, nineteen of us were on our bikes by 7.45. We were riding a big loop around the Cuyamacas – I’d done this same loop (or a similar one) with a few of the same people last time, but in reverse. I’m not quite sure how we ended up with so many people, but it was fun – even if it did end up breaking up into two or three smaller groups at times.

It was a nice morning for a ride, not too hot, clear & usually there was enough breeze to keep the annoying bugs away. We ended up doing 50km/31 miles & there was a fair bit of climbing involved (1200m). I mostly sat in the back group just hanging out & cruising along in the middle ring pretending I was slower than I am – was good fun. Although a long ride, it wasn’t too technical (some short sections up required a little pushing) so I wasn’t as tired by the end of it as I expected – hungry though. I think because I’d ridden it before I didn’t end taking a lot of photos, but here are a few.

Despite having been told by many that riding the loop anti-clockwise was better, I’m not so sure. The climbing was definitely easier, but the way we went yesterday had a big downhill on a fireroad – reading my post of last time I rode here, I was definitely more excited about the down sections going clockwise. Still, it was wonderful ride – the longest of the trip so far, so that’s got to be good for the legs.

I wasn’t long home & showered & I got a text from Andrea, so I spent the evening in PB (Pacific Beach) with her & some of her friends – very nice to catch up & see a familiar Kiwi face. It was great just to be driving back into the area; the scenery is always good in PB. It turned into a bigger night than I’ve had for quite sometime (which is not altogether difficult), so I’m not sure if I’m tired from the ride or not getting to bed (couch) until late. Best thing was the lack of mugging. But the sun is out now, so we should go & explore San Diego a little more.

bikes, GPS, MTB, roadtrip, travel, USA

San Juan ride

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With dodgy WiFi at the motel last night, this was the only page I had to go on for a ride today (fortuitiously left open on my browser from the previous morning). I’d heard it was a good one, but quite a long ride. I managed to get a jpeg of the topo map on my GPS & work out how to find the trailhead, so this morning with an hour’s drive through the June Gloom I was setting off for a ride up a big hill. Luckily for me, another guy pulled up shortly after & he’d ridden the trail before – so I joined Levi, a lifeguard at a beach just a little south.

Speaking of the beach, this was the closest I’d been to the ocean for quite sometime. 250m was also the lowest elevation I’ve been at for over a year (the London weekend doesn’t count), so I was hoping my mountain lungs would hold me in good stead. Straight off the bat, the trail just climbs & climbs – first through fifteen (count them) switchbacks before starting to follow the contour of the hills a bit more. The climbing continued for the first 10.5 km, surrounded by artillery barrages echoing through the hills from the nearby Marines’ base Camp Pendleton. Apart from some tricky switchbacks it was all pretty easy & I cruised up with quite a few breaks to wait for Levi. The trail surface was really nice crushed granite, in some places the scrub tended to encroach a little; compared to what I’ve been riding recently, it wasn’t the slightest bit technical (that is, if you avoided the drainage ruts). The gloom wasn’t really conducive to photos, but I tried my best. Although it was quite cool in the cloud, I sure noticed the difference in being close to the sea – I haven’t sweated so much in who knows how long.

Switchbacks climbing out of the valley

More switchbacks, with the scenic Ortega Highway in the background

A wide easy section

About ninety minutes after leaving the car, we reached a fork in the trail at Cocktail Rock (so called because it looks a little like a bar). We went left up the wide trail here, eventually completing the loop on the trail that comes up the hill from behind the rock.

Cocktail Rock with the return of the loop on the right.

We’d done most of the big climbing by now, the loop was mostly undulating. It was quickly into a neat downhill section that was wide & fast, then filled with loose rocks & then rooty & rutted out. It was all great fun, with nothing too difficult there. Near the end of this part we’d left the scrub behind & were riding through meadows surrounding by massive trees – it was a surprise to see these & have some shade (the sun having begun to burn off the clouds just after eleven o’clock).

As we left the meadows behind & I saw this climb ahead, I was pleased to have Levi catch up & tell me to turn right & avoid it.

There were two more intersections (one with an old sign & one un-signed) where we had to take the right option. We got a bit more up & down in before returning to Cocktail Rock.

From here it was pretty much all downhill & boy was it fun. Nice smooth trail that just went down & down for more than half an hour. It was well worth the pedal up & negotiating all those switchbacks going down was a whole different skill to pedalling up around them. We were back at the trailhead with grins plastered on our faces. I was pleased that I’d taken a punt on the weather (we had a little rain on the drive there) & gone on this ride with another big ride promised in two days’ time. I wasn’t really hurting or exhausted by the end of 28km of riding & 1000m of climbing in 2:40 riding time – all those rests must have helped.

All the rocks dotted through the scrub looked a little odd – I kept thinking I was seeing water tanks on the ridge

Just to prove the sun came out & it was a nice day

After feeding the machine that powered me up the hill we hit the road to San Diego. Just over an hour down the I-5, it was great to be driving back into San Diego & recognising various placenames & exits from the freeway. My month here immediately after leaving NZ two years ago was just fantastic (apart from the mugging incident, of course). Disappointingly, my visit this time has been ill-timed to coincide with most of my Kiwi-American friends being out of town – I was so looking forward to staying in a home again & seeing people I know for a week or two. At least I still have a good riding buddy I met on my last visit – tomorrow is bike-TLC day (must be about my bike’s fourth birthday) & BBQ at his house, can’t wait.