I believe it. (Of course. I'm the one who said it.) Even though I am not racing, I do find it a logistical challenge to get to the geographical starting point for our big bike rides. And this trip providing no exception.
Bro Mark and I are planning to ride California's Route 66, west to east, straight across the Golden State. A five day ride from Santa Monica Beach (Los Angeles) to the desert city of Needles on the Colorado River. About 450 km (280 miles) of historic "Main Street America."
Our route weaves through the heart of the "City of the Angels," across Los Angeles County, over the 4,000 ft Cajon Pass of the costal mountain range, and across the high Mohave Desert. A challenging ride by almost any definition. Challenging distances, Spartan terrain, and sparse access to water, food, and shelter.
But the first challenge is to get myself from Ontario, Canada to California, USA.
I intensify the normal logistical challenges of getting oneself across a continent by absentmindedly scheduling myself a full day of clients on Friday, March 8. I should have been home packing and organizing (and resting!) for my very very early Sunday morning departure.
So I find myself sitting at my desk in my home office all day Saturday completing Friday's paperwork and preparing invoices to be sent off so my family will not starve. (I am so stinking responsible sometimes it irritates me. It can create such conflict with an adventurous lifestyle.)
Come late Saturday evening I find myself packing my bags. Fortunately this still daunting task has been slightly mitigated by my foresight last week to gather up and inventory my cycling equipment and supplies from the various corners and crannies of my home from whence I previously scattered them. This is primarily an exercise of carefully checking each equipment item off my list and packing my big duffle and backpack so as to move efficiently on and through the shuttle bus and airports and plane.
I complete this task about 2:00 am Sunday morning. That's when I get a big surprise. I am reminded that all clocks are to be moved forward for some absurd reason called Day Light Savings. This means I have just lost (more precisely, been deprived of) a precious hour of sleep. (How can it be called "savings" when I have "lost" one hour of sleep?) So I collapse into bed.
At 4:30 am (which is really 3:30 am) I awaken to iPhone alarm playing Poco's "Crazy Love." Staring into the pre-dawn darkness I think "Crazy Trip." "Crazy" may not have been the exact word I was thinking at that moment. And I briefly ponder what exactly I thought might be exotic and adventurous about how I planned this departure. (I could not come up with a satisfying answer at that moment, nor as of today's date.)
My body begrudgingly assumes something that roughly resembles an upright position. A warm shower and dosage of icy water from our 95 foot deep drilled well over my head alerts me slightly enough above a sub-conscious comatose level that I can dress and load the car and head out the lane way at 5:30 am. Someone is driving the car. I think it's me.
I ask Squishy, my 14 year old teenage VW Beetle (I call him "Squishy," for he is smallish), to activate our imaginary Auto-Pilot feature (Why not? Someone told me that if you can believe it, it will be :-) for our two hour drive to London, Ontario (The Canada London, not the other one) where Squishy will rest for several days in the Ramada Inn parking lot and I will board the Robert Q (Interesting last name, eh?) airport shuttle bus and be chauffeured for three hours to the beautiful Wayne County Airport in Detroit.
I am not thinking much this morning except occasional unpleasant thoughts about some person who contrived this artificial and unnatural Seasonal Clock Adjustment. What a rip off.
Two hours and three large cups of Tim Horton tea later, I meet my wife, Deb, who has been enrolled in a real estate course all week in London and just took her Broker's test. [Update: Deb passed the test with a 96% grade. Ain't she awesome? I'm counting on her radical success in the real estate business to fund my future bike trips and retirement. I haven't discussed this, in detail, with her, yet :-)]
Our visit is short due to my current episode of LDD (Logistical Deficiency Disorder). That means I am either running late, or cutting it way to close to the wire. A quick fourth cup of tea and two trips to the Washroom (Rest Room to our American readers. Canadians prefer to wash in there. I guess Americans prefer to rest in there?) brought on by the multiple teas, and I drive across the street to the Ramada Inn, tuck Squishy in for his well deserved rest, and lug my duffle over to the shuttle bus loading zone.
I hop, as much as one can hop at 8:30 am with only two hours of sleep in the past 28 hours, onto the Robert Q airport shuttle bus and begin the three hour bouncy ride to Windsor (the Windsor in Canada, not England. Part of being a Commonwealth Country is that you do not have to create many original names for your towns, cities, and streets.), across the Ambassador Bridge (Ah, the memories. As a long haul truck driver I rumbled across this bridge almost twice weekly for six years) and through the scrutiny of the Homeland Insecurity Officers protecting the USA from Canadian Tourists.
I arrived at DTW about 11 am with just enough time to check my bag in and get an x-ray/radiation treatment by airport security. I literally walked right onto my plane. No wait. A rare moment of efficiency in my LDD life.
The 4.5 hour flight to Phoenix became a four hour flight thanks tail winds. I actually got to sleep a bit between servings of Dr Pepper and peanuts.
Stepping out of the chill and into the warmth of Phoenix, Arizona in the month of March is a delightful experience. (Appreciated much more so by Canadians than most people.) Such moments always conjure up thoughts about cashing in on my American citizenship and relocating in the southwest. (But then I think of USA medical insurance and health care and polarized politics and quest for world domination -- Wait, I didn't say that -- and the urge fades fast. I hope my American readers have a good sense of humor, or at least tolerance, today.)
I find and claim my duffle bag from the baggage carousel (It was having so much fun riding said carousel that I had to coax it off with promises of a funner time in California) and then call Mark. Perfect timing. He is just now entering the airport road maze with his nifty little pick up truck loaded with our bikes and his gear. I meet him at the passenger pick up curb and throw my stuff into the pick up bed. It is about 4:30 pm local time and we begin to snake our way through evening traffic.
A Burger King beckons us and we respond.
Back on Interstate 10 we head west for Los Angeles. As usual, we talk and talk and talk. About 6 hours later we penetrate into the core of LA.
We find the home of our friend Chuck. (About 35 years ago, when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, Mark and Chuck were students together at Northrup Institute earning their Airframe and Power-plant licenses, or something like that, so they could fix big and little airplanes.)
The plan is that Chuck will drive us to and drop us off at our motel. He will then take Mark's truck to a secure location until we return to claim it after we complete our bike ride.
We find Chuck and then we find our motel. To be specific, "The Pavilion" motel. You must understand that Mark and I are connoisseurs of, shall we say, "budget" motels. We always stay in the least expensive accommodations available. (Not because we are "cheap," or anything like that, because we aren't. Really. We are just responsible consumers seeking to live within our means and socioeconomic strata. Watch out. Hang around a Ph.D. in Sociology like Bro Mark for a while and you actually start thinking and talking like that.) Occasionally we stay in luxury motels. These are easily identifiable because they provide plastic drinking cups and Kleenex. But most of the places we stay don't. And most of the places we stay can be rented by the hour. High class joints.
But "The Pavilion" in Santa Monica is, I believe, the most "basic" place we have ever stayed. No plastic cups. No Kleenex. One double sized bed. One small wooden chair. One toilet. One sink. One shower. One huge television. One huge mirror on the wall. And -- this is very ironic -- it is the most expensive place we have stayed on any of our trips! It's not about "value." It's all about location. When you own a motel of any condition and it is located two shorts blocks from the Santa Monica beach and pier, you can pretty much charge whatever rate you want.
It is almost 11 pm (2:00 am Ontario time!) as we push our bikes and lug our gear into the room. I'm exhausted. Not from over exertion. (All I've done is sit around all day.) But lack of sleep now catching up with me. I've got a large headache.
We spend a few minutes organizing our equipment and loading some of it on our bikes. At midnight I take a quick shower and lay down and do not remember anything else. I could have been in the Hilton.
 |
| The red line is our route. But not the whole route. There should be a couple of more inches of red line to the left. That would be the part from Santa Monica Beach and through LA. |
 |
| The blue line in this map is the red line that isn't in the previous map. This is ALL city, or what is politely called urban cycling. Not for the faint hearted or uninsured. |
 |
| That's the whole route as seen in his 1940 map. Sure looks short, eh? Also looks populated. The left hand half of the route is populated. The right hand half of the route is not, or at least isn't now. Actually, I don't think it was ever really too crowded. |
 |
| Some of the personal stuff I packed. Socks, underwear, light jacket, dog spray, butt butter, six extra bike tubes, extra bike tire, etc. (Unfortunately the bed stayed home.) What isn't shown here is the tent, air mattress, sleeping bag, and ground cover that would give me plenty of ballast and ensure that any sporadic and unscheduled suspension of the law of gravity would not allow me and my bike to drift away into space and potentially colonize a new planet. I felt better knowing that. |
 |
| Here's all my stuff stuffed into my handle bar bag, two new side bags (that hang down the sides of my back wheel) and the small bag that sits on my bike rack over my back wheel, and the small tool/repair bag that attaches under my seat, or actually the bike's seat, and my backpack. Rather professional looking, eh? |
 |
| Well, look at this! Another map! Someone seems to be obsessing a little bit in the map department, do you think? You can see the change in marker colors indicating the 5 and a half days of the trip. It was a theory, anyway. |
 |
| Yet another map. This is getting embarrassing. But I really like this map. It makes the trip all the way across the state of California look really really big and long. So any two guys that do a trip like this must be amazing and awesome, right? No, I didn't say "crazy." Hush now. Don't even think it. |
 |
| You know what this is. |
 |
| Speak, our Burger King. Your subjects shall obey. Answering the call of the Burger King in Phoenix, Arizona. (Notice the clever product placement in the background. We should send them an invoice for this.) That's Brother Mark, in case you were wondering. |
 |
| That's me. Tall. Good looking. Athletic. Rich. (Well, not rich. I lied about that one.) |
 |
| Our spacious room in the "Pavilion Motel." There are not enough "stars" to rate this establishment. |
 |
| Bro Mark playing techie with his bike. |
 |
| This is actually the following morning, March 11. That's Mark dressed in his Capt Arizona suit. (Proof that at least Mark survived the night.) As you can see, we have less equipment on the bed, and more on the bikes. This is progress. |
 |
| Ready to roll on Monday morning. Note the jacket on Capt Mark. After this morning, the jackets were just extra weight. Take away the ocean down the block and you take away the coolness. Except for Mark and I. We're still cool. Metaphorically speaking. |
 |
| Entrance to the Pavilion Motel. That's our room on the left, just past the Pepsi machine. |
