So, having just watched England stumble to a very pathetic draw against Algeria (why do we have so many gifted footballers and yet not one player with a creative bone in their body?) and drunk four pints, which at 6,500ft are having more of an effect than normal, I thought I’d write another blog entry. Apologies if it seems unduly depressed.
My last entry (apart from the train one) had left me in San Luis Obispo, which is a very nice pretty town in Central California that is about 10 miles from the coast. The name is abbreviated, fairly appropriately, by the locals to SLO. It’s also home to Cal Poly (California Polytechnic State University), which meant the entire place was full of testosterone fueled frat boys. Apparently even more so than normal, because that was a reunion weekend where everyone who’d graduated in the last few years came back into town to catch up (/get drunk). You might be gathering that from this that drunk American college boys aren’t my favourite group of people. And you’d be right. I don’t like generalizations and most people I meet are great individually, but as a collective the nearest UK equivalent seems to be guys on a never ending stag do.
It was also Memorial Weekend, which mean prices for hotels were astronomical, if there was space at all. My usual lack of forward planning meant I didn’t realise this until the Wednesday night. I’m happy to characterise this as something like an idiot tax. If you can’t be aware enough to see it coming then you have to pay more. Sort of like the having to replace various high technology gadgets after dropping or spilling coffee on them (not mentioning any names, but you know who you are!)
As a result of this the cheapest motel room I could find for the Saturday night was $150. Thankfully I met a couple of guys in a bar on my first night who told me about a hostel in town and I managed to get the last bed they had for $27. I might have had to lie to the motel I was meant to be in about a blown tire meaning I was going to be a day late arriving, but I think it was worth it for the amount of money I saved. Happily they filled the room anyway.
Because of the number of people in town that weekend there were quite a few things happening that weekend. Unfortunately, my stinginess (which amazingly Word recognised as an actual word) meant that I didn’t get to see any of them. MGMT were playing some big festival on the Friday night just outside of town and I found a girl on the internet who had a spare ticket, but she kept changing her mind on the price. I’d get a facebook message one minute saying $40 and then a text five minutes later saying $70, so, given my lack of transportation there or back and the fact I don’t like MGMT that much, I decided it wasn’t worth the money.
Rather more depressingly, they also had a massive beer festival over the weekend that I couldn’t get a ticket for. In town there were quite a few nice places, but everything seemed to centre around one bar. They had seating for a couple of hundred and did food to go, but there was a permanent queue of about 60 people outside from midafternoon until 10pm every day I was there. I think a third of the building was just given over to a huge fridge to store all the food they went through! Far better though I found a little bakery that made these little doughy mounds stuffed with raspberries, which was possibly the best bready thing I’ve ever had. I also got my hair cut by a guy who was completely obsessed with British TV and seemed to have actually watched far more of it than I ever have.
From there I followed the coast north again, via some kayaking in Morro Bay, into the Big Sur area, where I found myself humming The Thrills song of the same name over and over again for at least a couple of days. The area itself was stunning. If you’ve ever seen the episode of Top Gear where they drive a car along the French Riviera, imagine that plus a bit more. The climbs were tough, but the descents were amazing, with the ocean on one side and cliffs on the other. I had my first night camping, which was a great success until the following morning when the fog rolled in leaving me and everything else with that slightly damp feeling. There weren’t even any showers to warm me up.
Once I returned to civilisation I had a fantastic evening at a hostel in Santa Cruz, which was only about two blocks from the beach, and a night in a hostel that was a converted lighthouse. After that there was just the matter of a ridiculously steep climb up into the clouds in Daly City to get down into San Francisco. Climbing on city streets is so much harder than in the countryside, because the gradients tend to be a lot steeper.
After a couple of weeks where I’d spent much more time in the country than the city, San Francisco felt huge. Just riding through Golden Gate Park seemed to take me half an hour. San Francisco was a bit of a paradox for a cyclist. There were tons of us around and quite a few cycle lanes, but we seemed to get less respect from car drivers than anywhere else I’d been. I was told there’s a bit of a war going on between the two and that the cyclists are getting slightly militant. One afternoon a month they take over the whole city centre and just ride round and round disrupting traffic, which can’t be helping matters. Then you get things like this http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_15246548?nclick_check=1.
Hmmm.
Andy
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