TravellingStrom

Thursday – Miramar, California

A long day in the saddle today, but a comfortable one

It was an early start, I intended to get away around the 8am mark and nearly succeeded. I had some re arranging of the packing to do because of the extra food I had bought, plus all the spare and service parts I had bought as well. I had all the goodies that had been sent to me as well 🙂 For example, my flags from home, thanks a bunch 🙂

Then the SPOT mount which I did not have time to mount here, but would do so down south. It looks like it will do the trick nicely 🙂

Then the replacement sunnies that had been destroyed by bugs hitting the frames, not the lens.

And finally the Tshirt from Matt up at McCall, thanks m8, free advertising for you down in Oz, now, can you tell me where to get the Holy Grale as a lot of people have asked me about it 🙂

Of course, I have already mounted the Pacsafe tankbag, thanks again, so I am good to go 🙂 It was nice meeting you Ziggy and Judy, and of course Buddy 🙂 I wish I could have spent a bit more time there, maybe next year before I fly out, who knows 🙂 Thanks for having me and putting me up, see you on the flip side 🙂

I headed south via the mountain roads and the valleys, but only for about half an hour or so. I was trying to work out a route that would get me the other side of LA and not get caught in peak hour traffic, well I was doomed from the start. I dialled in some different routes into the GPS, even then the fastest route, which used the interstate system was 502 miles, while the one that avoided the motorways was over 600 miles from my present position.

As it was 9 am I decided to bite the bullet and hit the slab, first I had to find it, this included some very familiar landscape to me from the Queensland bush 🙂

But, the highway took a bit of time to get to as it basically followed the coast, so I had to meander across the landscape in a zig zag fashion, blindly following the GPS as usual. After a bit of time I finally was on the highway, and even saw a ute, although nothing like back home.

It was getting hot now, up in the high 90s F, early 40s C and very dry amongst all the irrigation. I kept seeing signs saying this dustbowl was caused by congress, I have no idea what that is about, but I guess politics, so I don’t want to get involved. I stopped for lunch at a Subway, who would have guessed, before getting away from a sky full of buzzards or something and headed south at a fast rate of knots though alternating dry paddocks and green crops.

Usually about every hour, on the hour if I have been drinking my fluids correctly, I am in need of a leak, so I waited the extra 17 minutes as there was a rest stop ahead, but that wait was in vain, the damm thing was closed!!!

I continued on, looking for a safe spot to stop, but during this time my music had stopped, it seems the iPod is out of power, no worries, I shall plug in the charger, but it was not working, so now I was in desperate need of a stop, I had no choice but to find a spot under a bridge and fix what needed fixing. It also gave me a chance for some shade and take the jacket off etc.

It seems I blew a fuse in the fuse box, but not only that, I blew the actual 12V cig to USB charger as well, lucky I had bought a cheap spare when I was in Boise the other week and could get the music back on air 🙂 Another hour or so of straight fast riding through boring landscape and of course I needed fuel again, the economy was down at these speeds 🙂

I tried to buy fuel, in fact I paid for it first as normal, but maybe I should not have picked pump number 13, because when I went back to pump the fuel, no hose, WTF!!!

These idiots had seen which pump I was at, there was no ‘out of service sign’ nor any witches hat to show it was being serviced, they had taken my money for that pump, now they set about installing a repaired hose they had taken down. It gave me a bit more time to cool down, but I wasted 15 minutes here because they would not go back in and change my money to another pump, grr!

I eventually got moving again and even found some fast paced curves through the mountain passes. That was a bit of fun for a while 🙂

But, the traffic bunched up which was a bit ominous, and sure enough an incident had occurred, an unsecured load of sheets of ply.

Did I mention it was a tad hot, well it got worse.

As I got closer to LA I could see the traffic packing the lanes heading out of town and knew I was in for some jams soon. 😦

I was right, as I got into the centre, the traffic came to a full stop but a bike came past me and I remembered in California, filtering is allowed, so I followed him for a while.

The cars over here are used to bikes filtering and mostly move over but in some cases my bike is too wide. I got through the city finally and as I was feeling fine I figured if I can do an hour south of LA, I should be good for an early start tomorrow to see the bike shop about my headset.

As I got further down the coast I saw an increasing number of military vehicles and found out later all the choppers and hummers are to do with a military base, nothing to do with the border patrols. I stopped at a rest stop to dial in an actual address, this one was for a motel near my destination and eventually found a room in a budget motel in a suburb called Miramar, just about 5 miles from the bike shop 🙂

After some dinner and emails etc, I worked on the blog again, before crashing out, it had been a long day, I was tired but could have kept on going, so although my intention was not to set myself up for a long day prior to riding, without that pressure I managed it anyway 🙂 It was still only half an IronButt event, but if I do long days like this too often, I won’t see anything 🙂

Day 564 miles and 908 km
Trip – 37,255 miles and 59,956 km

Cheers
TravellingStrom

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