Day 38 - 40

Day 38 was a short ride, I had thoughts of doing 80 km's but my heart was not in it, my energy levels were ok but not great. I had expected my fitness levels to have improved way more than they had and was definitely leaning towards taking a slow ride to San Francisco, spending a couple of days there before flying to Orange County just south of LA, for a few days with my brother at Laguna Beach.

My bike had taken a pounding and one major problem was that a couple of the teeth on gear 2 of my front sprocket had broken and it was slipping in that gear, forcing me to stick to either 1st or 3rd gears.

On the up side, my pants which at the start of this trip had been tight were Marjory loose, I needed to make a new hole in my belt as it was to big, judging by my belt, I had lost between 4 and 6 cm's and I was looking forward to seeing how much weight I had lost.

Day 39

This part of the coast is really beautiful, a very rugged coast line, not very populated. There was very little accommodation available, which was all very expensive, but very different from the rest of the States, lots of complimentary wine, and more like guest houses. Most of the places I had stayed in were real gems. but none of the accomodation had laundry which had become a problem as I had only 2 days worth of clean clothes left. I scoured the internet trying to find a place with Laundry, the only place that I could find was in Bodega bay but they were full for that night. So I not to unhappily had to reduce my distances even further so as to be in Bodega Bay one night later, hence that day was a very scenic but meagre 30 km's to the town of Jenner on the "Russian River". The previous night I had made the decision to stop at San Francisco so I was no longer in any rush. At Jenner I found a lovely cabin which was basic, but had beautiful views of the river and the beach. But no WiFi and no cell phone signal so wasn't able to tell the family I had got there safely.

Day 40, washing day, it didn't even seem worth getting my cycling gear on for the 18 km's from Jenner to Bodega bay my least mileage on this trip. I was in Bodega bay by about 12, for the 3rd time in last 5 days I was given a complimentary bottle of wine, the previous bottles were half bottles, this was a full bottle. After showering, I did my washing and then looked for accommodation for the next night Stinson Beach about 78 km's. I then had a planned hop of about 42 km's the day afterwards, to the apartment that I had booked in San Francisco for 3 nights.

This had been an uneventful 3 days and I hoped the same would not apply to my time in San Francisco.

I did not want to carry my complimentary bottle of wine the next day so I was forced to open it and used the time while sipping my wine to update my blog, what I had to go thru to reduce my load.

I was getting close to the end and had to decide whether to dump my bike or bring it back to SA. I had bought the bike for R5000 and it would  cost me about R4000 to get it to LA and then home, so it was a bit of a no brainer, I had to dump it.