Photos for Friday, 7/31

Cupertino to New Brighton Beach state park (Capitola, CA)

Friday, 7/31 - 38 miles. We have been on the road just slightly over a month and we have about two more weeks of riding at the most. Today was a short but difficult day. In the morning we had a 12 mile ride to a bike shop in Las Gatos. At the bike shop I bought a new tire which they mounted. They also lubed my chain and did a quick disc brake adjustment. Nice and very helpful shop - Mike's Bikes in Las Gatos, CA. I also bought some inflator cartridges because my pump is now inoperative. I should probably mail the pump home so I can attempt to fix it at home. Surprisingly the bike shop was out of 26 inch mountain bike tubes so they sent me to another bike shop where I was able to buy two tubes. While we were at the bike shop a small thunderstorm blew overhead. I heard a few rumbles of thunder and then the storm blew away without delivering any rain. After lunch we left Los Gatos on a dirt trail which followed a river upstream. One section of the trail was so steep it was impossible to get any wheel traction in the loose dirt. In fact it was hard to get any foot traction pushing the bike. The final part if the trail was paved but it had a very steep and long uphill. We took a rest at the top and I noticed my rear wheel was flat again. It turned out that the tube patch put on yesterday failed so I had to install one of the new tubes. For the first 25 miles today we were predominantly climbing although much of the climbing was gradual. However, later in the day the climbing got steeper. It was not the steepest climbing but it seemed to just go on forever. Eventually we had several spectacular downhills where we lost all the elevation we climbed up all day. We ended up on the coast just south of Santa Cruz. We have the entire hiker/biker campsite to ourselves tonight. Apparently the state park we are at has a serious theft problem. The park ranger warned us about the problem and we had to initial a form acknowledging we were aware of the theft problem. Hal's sister-in-law drove out to meet us at the campground and we all went out for Thai food at a local restaurant - good food! When we were riding inland today it was hot as usual but it immediately cooled off once we reached the coast.  However, it is not as cold as it was when we were further north near San Francisco. We are camped pretty close to the ocean so we can heard the roar of the waves. One nice thing about riding in various towns and on many busy roads in this area were the abundance of bike lanes and signs reminding drivers to share the road with bicycles. Some bike lanes even had detectors buried in the pavement to specifically identify a bicyclist at an intersection to trigger the traffic light. Two long downhill runs this afternoon were on a narrow two lane road with minimal shoulders. However, roadside signs said cyclists were permitted to use the entire lane. Tomorrow we will continue down the coast but we may have to ride one or two short days due to the campground locations.