I rode my bicycle today, 71 miles. It was all along the beaches so it was a pretty ride and fairly flat. Most of our riding was on bicycle trails or designated bicycle lanes on the road. I love those two white lines and the picture of a bicycle painted on the ground every 50 feet with lots of signs saying bicycles only! California has a lot of them. Tonight we are in La Habre, California part of the greater Los Angeles area. We are staying in a house that belongs to a friend of mine, Paul White. I have come down a couple of times and spoken at a seminar that he hosted for pastors in this area, and he also has come up and attended the seminar that we do at JBC in January. He is also in a pastor accountability group that I am in. We do weekly emails to each other reporting on our goals and spiritual disciplines. We are going to stay here again tomorrow night as well after we transport the bicycles back here from the end of the ride.

Kathy had a wreck today! We were riding on a bike trail that had a fence on both sides. She was trying to get her phone out to take a picture and ran her bike into the fence, she grabbed the fence and her bike flipped over without her. She had water bottles strewn all over and her phone went over the fence into the bushes on the other side. She climbed over the fence and retrieved it. She got a few scratches but nothing serious. The worst thing was she had to put up with Cliff making fun of her the rest of the day.

We only have three more days left of riding before we start our long drive home.

Today was an 81 mile ride with a big monster hill at the end, 2000 feet up and 2200 feet down. The downhill was almost 10 miles so that was a long way with virtually no pedaling. I am writing this as a reporter of what the riders said because I drove the motorhome today.

Tonight we are in an RV campground in Santa Barbara. It is just a paved parking lot with electricity posts, water spickets, and sewer pipes between each spot. Pretty basic RV spot.

It is hard to believe that we only have 4 days of riding left, boy it goes fast. I am going to ride my bike tomorrow. I am determined to do it. Every night I say I am going to ride and then when I wake up my legs muscles are in knots, and I psyche myself out of riding. I am determined not to let that happen tomorrow.

Part of the problem is with my new medication. I looked up the side effects today and it says that some develop addictions to gambling, uncontrolled spending, and sexual addictions that they can’t control because of the medication. I am feeling a heightened sense of anxiety since starting the new meds, but Since I know where that is coming from I am determined to not let it control my decisions.

Now that I have written this I am more determined than ever to not let my flesh control my behavior or my decisions. I know that tomorrow evening I will need to write what I did, ride or wimp out. We will see.

Today was an easy, short day of riding – 55 miles, up and down but nothing seriously steep or high. We were back on the beach, and there were a lot of pretty beaches, Cayucos Beach, Moro Beach, Pismo Beach, and several others all filled with surfers.

Tonight we are staying with a very nice couple who regularly open their home up for bicycle riders, Ross and Carol Chenot. Ross and I have a lot in common, he was a church planter and in ministry for many years, he graduated from High School in 1967, the same as me, he had a very high draft lottery number in 1969 that kept him out of Vietnam, I did as well, he is an avid bicycle rider and has done many long distance trips, and he has been married for 52 years to a very nice lady with gray hair and so have I😀 we went out to dinner with them and had a wonderful time visiting. I think tonight was the highlight of the trip for me. I expect I will do quite a lot of corresponding with them in the days ahead.

I would write more but we normally go to bed about 8:30 pm each night and it is now 9:00 pm and I can hardly keep my eyes open. Sorry about that! Tomorrow is an 85 mile day with a super huge, giant, monster, killer mountain to climb.

Today everyone rode over 100 miles. Paul got to the motor home and his odometer read 99 miles so he drove around in the parking lot until it clicked over 100 miles. They all rode for over eight hours. I was glad that I drove the RV today. Tom’s bike broke today, his brakes made the front rim so hot going down a steep hill that it warped it, and he has an oddball size front wheel and can’t find a replacement for it. So he is going to drive the motorhome tomorrow and I am going to ride my bike. We will see how I do, should be OK because it is only 55 miles.

Tonight we have our motorhome parked in the parking lot of Cambria First Baptist Church. We have an extension cord running to an outside receptacle so we have electricity to recharge batteries and to run the C-pap machines that several use at night, I call them the Darth Vader machines. Tomorrow night we are parking our motorhome in front of the home of a retired Baptist pastor and his wife. I have texted back and forth with him and they sound very nice and bicyclers too. Tomorrow we will be back to riding next to the ocean. Today we went by literally hundreds of vineyards. It was all rolling hills covered with grape plants.

I spent all day reading a good book entitled, “The Unseen World” by Micheal Heiser, a great read. I also wrote a bunch and reviewed a 120 Bible verses that I have memorized.

We have six days left before we head home, the trip has just flown by.

Because of the washout of hwy 1 south of “Big Sur,” we had to travel inland today to go around that spot. So when we left Moss Landing this morning we headed South East and went through acres and acres of beautiful farmland much of which was being harvested by hundreds of farm workers. Tom stopped to visit them several times and he rode into camp with a head of lettuce and a head of cauliflower both cleaned and wrapped with cellophane that the workers gave to him. Most of the riding was on back roads through farm ground with very little traffic. The temperature also went up as we moved inland and is quite warm as we sit in the shade in camp. Tonight we are camped in King City and tomorrow we head back to the ocean. Cliff had another flat today, I think that is four or five for the trip. I told him that I think it is God punishing him for not being nicer to his big brother. Today was 72 miles of riding. I usually leave with the motorhome and trailer a couple hours after the bikers leave in the morning, pass them in different locations along the route that they have made it to, Cliff and Kathy are the only ones who ride together, get into camp an hour or two ahead, get registered, parked, and set up. I have been getting in a lot of reading and writing not riding my bike.

Today was a short trip, only 55 miles and relatively flat, all on hwy 1 next to the ocean. I had a no-problem day driving the motor home, I even maneuvered around some cars getting into the gas station and out. The fill-up cost $205 😩😭.

We went through the town of Santa Cruz and the beach area was like a circus. There was rides like Ferris wheels and roller coasters as well as volleyball in the sand. One of the photos shows a bunch of people getting kayak lessons sitting in a kayak in the parking lot. There were also hundreds of people surfing, and I also saw some people surf fishing – smart people!

Today started with me second guessing my decision to retire from bicycling, at least from the long distance, cross country rides I have done for the last twelve years. I thought of all kinds of options to try and make it work, shorter trips with less miles per day, buy a bigger e-bike that would do more of the work, schedule rest days every other day, and a host of other options. The problem is that what has made these trips fun was the challenge, the hardness or difficulty of doing them.

What drew me to these cross-country rides in the first place was their difficulty, the challenge, the harder it was, the crazier it was, the more fun it was. But suddenly, that is no longer true of me; I have changed. I don’t know if it is the Parkinson’s, old age, if I have turned into a wimp, or what, but now I seem to be much more attracted to adventures like hunting and fishing, where I can sit down while doing it and I don’t have to walk much. I remember when I said I was done with playing basketball, it hurts too much; I am done with climbing Mt Adams, I can’t get my body to do it anymore; I am done with running marathons, half marathons, ten k’s, and triathlons; sheeesh why did I do those anyway! And now I am done with bicycling. Today while driving I came to a peace about the decision and am embracing the new chapter in my life of easier, not easy, just easier, I don’t want to turn into a lazy old man.

I will probably still go skydiving with Lloyd Smith who is ten years older than I am.

I rode in the motorhome today with Tom and we went to Les Schwab in Valejo to get new front tires. That took most of the morning but we got it done. I was the co-pilot using my Google Maps to get us through the city. Tom is very hard of hearing so I had to yell directions and he missed a couple and we had to back track. That is not easy with a motorhome pulling a trailer. We had one mishap with a corner turned to sharp and the motorhome rear bumper hooked the front bumper of a car and pulled it off. YIKES!! That took a bunch of time with the insurance and phone number exchanges. The guy was very nice about getting his front bumper ripped off.

The rest of the crew peddled across the Golden Gate Bridge and through San Fransico without mishap and then along the coast on highway one until they reached the KOA campground at Santa Cruz. They rode over 70 miles today with a lot of hills. I have some pictures to send with this blog but the wifi is so poor in this campground that I can’t get them to send, tomorrow. I had several long discussions with people who ask what we are doing and they are always amazed at our adventure, especially when they hear that half the group is over 70 years old. OK, now I am going to see if I can get this to send.

Everyone else rode about 73 miles today, but Cliff and Kathy got lost and rode 85, but they made it to camp. We all have an app on our phones called “Ride with GPS”. It is a mapping app that has each day’s route in it that I had plotted before the trip. It gives audible turn-by-turn instructions which are nice because you don’t have to look down as you ride through traffic. That will be good tomorrow as we go across the Golden Gate Bridge and through San Fransico with lots of turns keeping us out of major traffic. Cliff got lost because he turned off his phone and missed a turn. Tonight we are camped in an RV Park that is basically a big parking lot in the middle of busy traffic. Many of the streets in San Francisco have designated bike lanes, and our app indicates on the map with a green line where those are. Tomorrow should be gorgeous as we ride along some very high bluffs next to the ocean. I am going to ride tomorrow because I don’t want to miss going over the Golden Gate. I will probably try riding every other day for awhile and see how I feel. We are watching the NBA championship game tonight on the TV that is in the motorhome, the RV park has cable TV at each of the RV sites, and they had a warm swimming pool as well.

This is the twelfth long-distance bicycle trip that I have done. The first one was in 2012 and I have done one each summer since then. I started because in 2011 I went on a motorcycle trip up to Fairbanks, Alaska and back, and on the trip I saw a number of people bicycling the same route and trip I was on. I camped with several on different occasions on the trip and talked with them about their experiences. I became intrigued with the challenge of riding a bicycle to Alaska. That winter I did a bunch of reading about long distance bicycle touring and bought my first bike, a Navara Safari from REI. I continued the trips each summer because of the health benefits, the challenge of doing them, the enjoyment of getting away, the personal and spiritual renewal that they always were, seeing the country, camping, and the great fellowship with those who went on the trips with me. I think there have been about 30 different people who have gone on at least one of the trips. The longest trip was to the Grand Canyon, then up to Yellowstone, and then home. That trip was a bit over 4,000 miles. The most interesting trip was the second trip up to Alaska with my brother Cliff and his wife, Kathy driving a support vehicle, we saw 92 bears on that ride, along with thousands of buffalo, moose, caribou, rocky mountain sheep, and even a wolf. The most challenging was the trip across the northern United States ending in Portland, Maine. I rode that one with John Smith and it was unsupported meaning that we each carried 70 pounds on our bikes in front and rear panniers. I lost 40 lbs on that trip. The most enjoyable trip was the one we did from San Diego to St Augustine, Florida. John Smith, Richard Klindtworth, and I rode and our wives all came on the trip with us. When we pulled into camp the tent was all set up, dinner was cooked, and Patty was ready to give my tired muscles a massage. These past twelve years have been a wonderful and enjoyable chapter in my life and with enough experiences to fill ten books.

I decided last night and this morning that I am going to pull the plug on my bicycle riding. It is getting more and more difficult to ride and the pain and the not being able to sleep the night after a hard ride have taken most of the joy out of the experience for me. The joy of the past experiences and the part of me that hates quitting anything because it is hard has made this a difficult decision that I have pondered on for several days, but it is time. I will be the designated driver for the rest of this trip. I might try some half-day riding or every other day riding, but usually, when I make a decision like this it is better if I just do it so I don’t keep second-guessing my decision.

The positive thing about this change is that now I can devote more time to grandkids and fishing.

I will keep writing this blog about this trip from the perspective of the others riding, today’s ride will be part B of today’s blog.