20170723 - Redlands - Inglewood - Solvang - Inglewood - Redlands

I  reconnected with a friend today, picked her up in Inglewood, and went on a ride to Andersen's Split Pea Soup in Solvang Ca.  I'd been to Andersen's before and it is a nice restaurant.  The trip up the PCH is always wonderful.  I left at 6am since Google was saying the trip to pick her up would take 1:47 minutes.  I took 91 and when I arrived around I-405, I pulled over and found a place to park.  I was running early and needed  to check my oil.  The oil looked good and I was still early, so I stopped at Starbucks about 15 minutes from her house and had a hot chocolate while I checked email.

I pulled up to her place right on time and within about 15 minutes, we were having breakfast at Denny's while we caught up on everything since 2013, the time I saw her last.  The conversation would continue over  Bluetooth  Sena headsets for hours.  The plan was for us to get on 405, cut over to 10, and pick up the PCH in Santa Monica.

The coast was nice and cool almost all the way to Solvang.  The heat jumped up to 90+ for the last 5 miles or so to Andersen's.  We stopped once to check out the ocean and stretch.  The Pacific ocean is huge and gorgeous.  Where we stopped, there were multi-million dollar homes below us.  It must be normal in these circumstances to wonder what the people that own these homes do for a living because we both asked the question at the same time.  When I looked at all that blue water, I found myself wondering how far out I can see and how much water all that amounts to.  It is vast.   The answer to the first question comes from howstuffworks.com:

SquareRoot(height above surface / 0.5736) = distance to horizon.

 For us, overlooking homes below us, I guesstimate we were about 100' above sea level.  That would put the horizon 57 miles away!  Seeing something that far out is impossible without magnification.  From an airplane, only 6 miles high, you can readily see land features, but not too much more.

One thing to remember about Andersen's is that their portions are enormous.  I got Danish Meatloaf and the portion might have choked an NFL linebacker.  Joy ordered the  Danish Style Danish Sausage - Medister Polse, and it was equally sized.  We both left plenty on our plates.  Sorry mom.

The conversation and company was excellent.  There was so much to catch up on.  We weren't watching the clock.  I suspect we spent about an hour there.  Outside, it was 94.7 degrees and we baked for the ride back to Santa Barbara, where the temperature dropped back down to something reasonable, like 70 something.  We were starting to get a little saddle sore along the way, so we stopped at an In-N-Out burger place for something to drink and to get off the bike for awhile.  I'd never eaten at the California staple In-N-Out, and I still never have.  We had an iced tea and a lemon-aid and jumped back on the bike.  Traffic was horrible, but moving.  We were splitting lanes for miles.  It was all the return traffic from the weekend we were mixed in.  It's the first time I split lanes while 2-up.  On a big bike, that doesn't make any difference, but, I suspect on a smaller bike, it would.  We arrived back at Joy's place at 6pm and said our goodbye's till next time and I was on my way home.

605 was an absolute nightmare.  Traffic was completely stopped for miles in both directions.  I think something happened on one of the overpasses.  I was splitting lanes for over a half an hour straight.  That's a lot of weaving and mirror dodging.  The rest of the ride home was really uneventful.

Here's the maps:

The map above is comprised of 795,004 unique latitude, longitude coordinates.  The actual number of coordinates in the file would be approaching 1.5 million at this point, but every once in a while I uniq the file to make it easier to load.  After my trip in August, my bet is that I won't be able to get that number under 1 million any more.

20170623 - Morro Bay and Back

This was a short trip - about 600 miles.  Paul didn't have much tread left in his rear tire and we didn't want to come back on the belts, so we picked a distance that would burn off the rest of the tread and set him up for a tire change.

The temperature is heating up in southern California.  Depending on where we would go, the temperature could be anywhere from 74 degrees to 111.  Initially, I thought a route that was more in the mountains would be the best, but it turns out the coast is definitely the way to go; that meant the Pacific Coast Highway.

Our plan was to head after work, take I-10 straight out to the beach, turn right and head north.  Our stop for the evening would be Solvang, a dutch town halfway between Santa Monica and Monterey.  From there, we'd do a little back road riding and head back.

On the way, somewhere west of Ontario on I-10, I was dangling my feet off the pegs to give my knees a break when I hit a bump in the road.  As the suspension compressed, my feet lowered and left foot struck a break in the pavement.  Fortunately, my legs were hanging completely loose.  My boots helped, but not as much as if I were wearing steel tip boots.  I never wear steel tip boots because having my feet contained in leather for hours at a time is a great setup for athletes foot.  I prefer a hiking boot with Vibram soles for traction.

My foot went numb from my toes to about mid-way through the arch.  Even still, I knew this wasn't bad.  I just needed to wait for the numbness to wear off to figure out how bad this could be.  I've broken bones before and this wasn't what it feels like.  I was still able to shift without any issues.

I decided it wasn't bad and we pressed on.  In Solvang, I took a look.  My big toe took the brunt of it.  It was now 4 hours since it happened, and the nail was only a slight shade of lavender.  It didn't hurt much, so I decided that drilling it could expose me to infection and that wasn't worth the risk.  If it were really painful, it would have been necessary, but it really wasn't.

Other than this, the trip was very uneventful.  Solvang is a nice place to hang out.  We had breakfast at Paula's Pancake House and managed to get there just before everyone else.  We sat outside and enjoyed the morning before jumping back on the bikes.

It would have been nice to ride quite a bit more in the Solvang area.  All that country between there and Santa Monica, and I-5 is largely unexplored, except for some of the Morro Bay riding I've done.