Leaving Lompoc

Posted by mobile phone:
If this post sounds pessimistic, it is because we are at our lowest of the low. We are in Lompoc, CA. And we are on the first bus out of here. This place is miserable. Riding down main street, a kid on a mountain bike jumped the curb and ran into my front tire, laying us both out in the middle of the road. I lost some skin on my elbow, got a rasberry on my hip and broke the hell out of my gear shift. I am stuck in one gear unless I manualy pull on the derailer cord. The kid was an idiot, because he claimed he didn’t see me, but he had been riding next to us (we were in the road, he was on he sidewalk) for at least half a mile. I let him know he was an idiot and spared no words, while bleeding from the elbow, and shaken from having traffic screech to a halt around us. Jason thought our trip was going to end because I was going to jail for assulting a minor, but I kept it verbal. The kid jumped back on his bike and sped off.

Anyway, because I can’t very well cross hills right now, and the forest fires have closed the highway we are supposed to take, pushing us to an additional 50 mile route, we are taking a bus to Santa Barbara where we will find out if this accident was a trip ender or if it can be fixed.

Quick tune up



Quick tune up

Originally uploaded by hannaimage


Our bikes were starting to wear down, and we realized we really don’t know anything about bikes. A quick stop here taught us everything we needed to know, and they lubed up our gears and chains for free!
My finger had also gotten infected from a metal shard and I stopped in at a local health clinic where they cut the shard out and gave me some antibiotics.

Thursday-Sunday

Posted by mobile phone:
Three Days. We think it has been three days since our last real update, but we aren’t completley sure. These past hundred or so miles have been some of the best, and some of the most trying ones so far.

We last updated in Monterey, which was beautiful, but it has nothing on Big Sur and the surrounding area. Big Sur is the name of the coastline from below Carmel to just above San Simeon. You have probably seen pictures, and if not, we posted a panoroma the other day that was just a sample. The hills here were unreal. You know how regular hills end? Yeah, these didn’t. We climbed for literally miles at a time, thinking that the end was just around the bend. The pay off was the equally long decent on the other side. For the 100 + miles in the mountains, we were either going 6 mph or 36 mph. (top speed so far: Ben-48.6, Jason-52.2)

At the Big Sur State park we met three people our age who were hiking from LA to Oregon, and were two weeks into their trek. Everyone in Big Sur (the actual town of) was extremely laid back and hippyish, were were partially shuned in the general store because we let it slip that we didn’t give a damn about the organic food, we just wanted something cheap, filling and fast. A little later we were at the top of a hill and came upon a little gas station/ spirit garden. We went looking for a bathroom in the hut on the hill, and it literally was a hut, only to walk in and freeze because there was a full expresso bar full of hippies typing away on laptops drinking double mocha lattes. We were 40 miles from anything! We slowly backed out, as to not upset the techno hippies, and went on our way.

On friday we stayed at Kirk Creek campground, which was directly on the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean. Beautiful. This was still in the Big Sur area, and we hiked down to the water and explored for the entire afternoon. In the hiker/biker section of the camp, aka where we were, there was a bum who was on his 14th day there. He was selling walking sticks and outer trinkets he created to fund him self. He also let us know he was willing to trade for weed if we had any, as he was running low. He woke us up on saturday morning talking about the whales he could see out in the water. I think Jason got a glimpse, but I missed them.

From Kirk we headed to San Simeon, which brought us out of the hills and back into flat land at last. San Simeon was nothing special, but the town past it, Cambria, was almost like a dream. We stumbled in to it to buy groceries and ended up staying all evening. We stopped at the bike shop for minor bike repair, and interupted the clerk, a typical California burnout, and his girlfriend. He got us going, and we ate dinner at a great italian place, followed by desert at a french bakery. I had finished my John Grisham book, so we stopped by a used book store we saw. This little gem was a trailer from the front, but inside it was a goldmine. It was piled full of books everywhere, old ones, rare ones, romance, philosophy, you name it. Papa, this store was made for you. The little asian woman who ran it said she had 400,000 books, including some in storage out back. She admited to us that she hasn’t read a single one of them in the 8 years she has been running the place. Sad and ironic. Because JAson and I spent a good hour in this little 5 room shop and we were talking about how much we loved it, se gave me a discount, and Jason a free map.

My thumbs hurt from typing this on my phone, so here is jason. We will tell you about today tomorrow when we can think back on it… It always seems better that way!

Jason: Well I am currently holding the flat tire record at 4, two this morning alone. The shoulder fairies must not like me. I’m gonna write a letter to the California DOT about the poor condition of their roads…or not. Oh and I am doing a wonerful job representing east tennessee. I managed to fall off my bike and land on the side with my fake tooth mouthpiece in the pocket. Yea, it shattered to pieces. Ben enjoys the look on people’s faces when they realize I am missing something quite important in the front of my mouth! Subdued disbelief followed by an awkward smile, we will call it.

Other than that travel has been ebjoyable and stumbling upon “pleasantville” last night was interesting to say the least. The people we met there and Cali in general–bums included–we have come to realize as ‘pretty cool, but a little crazy.’ I mean where else can you wake up next to a hitchhiker or a dad drinking Jager Bombs on a Sunday morning as camp neighbors?

We are finally in what is considered the start of southern cal, but can’t really tell because the temp is still 65° for the high. 60 miles to go tomorrow so goodnight.

We’re alive!



We’re alive!

Originally uploaded by hannaimage


First reliable cell service in 3 days. We just reentered civilization. We have been in the mountains near Big Sur for the past 100 miles. We will update tonight!