California Love

One week ago, I left San Francisco to bike all the way to Santa Barbara. This didn't turn out as expected, as most of you guys probably expected :-)
There are several reasons for the failure, and it wasn't me - honestly!
Most importantly, there is not a single mile along highway 1 that is flat. It's either downhill or uphill. You seriously should try going uphill with 20 kilo strapped to your back on a mountainbike, it's almost impossible. Secondly (and this I should have anticipated), there's always wind near the coast! It happened to come from the South which meant I had to bike uphill and against the wind! Also, I always hated cycling, so I don't know why I even bothered.

Day 1 already made it obvious this wouldn't work. After maybe 10 miles, there was a hill called "Devil's Slide" which turned out to be HELL. I had to walk up the highway and it didn't have a shoulder. It was one blind turn after another and I was scared shitless to be honest. One woman almost ran me over when she was blinded by the sunlight. Luckily, there wasn't anyone coming from the other direction and she could avoid me. When I finally reached the top of the hill, it was all worth it though. The magnificent view made me forget about all the sweat and tears it cost me to get up there. In the meantime, my road atlas had gone missing as well, which meant I had no idea where I was going. Good start!

Anyways, I did make it to Monterey with the bike on the second day. I found that singing songs really helps you, no matter how stupid they are. My favourite song was "The wheels of the bike go round & round", which I probably sang for about 3 hours. Yes, I was pretty much going insane… It was just a bad day for me and I really felt homesick for the second time on this trip.
The next morning I woke up to a beautiful sunny day, packed my stuff up and set off for the scenic 17 mile drive around Monterey/Carmel. It was SO beautiful, I highly recommend it to everyone! After that I dumped the bike at the last gas station in Carmel and went back to my favourite way of traveling: hitchhiking!!
It went really well and I almost did 200 miles in one afternoon, which meant I was ahead of schedule with 3 days :-) Highway 1 from Monterey to Big Sur is a really beautiful (but dangerous) route and I enjoyed it so much. It's quite dangerous though, people die on this part of the highway on a monthly basis and we got to see an accident as well (pickup truck flipped over on middle of the road). At the campsite near San Siméon, I met "Guy" from Canada who is biking all the way from Montréal to Vancouver to the most southern part of Mexico in a couple of months. That's crazy!

On Friday, I made it all the way into Santa Barbara. This was mainly thanks to a Texan hippy, who was driving an oldschool VW van. It was so clichéd, but fun nonetheless, even when we ran a flat tire on the highway. Luckily for us, AAA came to the rescue and we only lost an hour :-) But my joy for getting to Santa Barbara was short-lived when I realized I lost my iPod somewhere along the way. No more music for me, I have no idea how I'll survive this :( To cope with the loss, I decided to party in Santa B with the other hostel guests. Turned out to be a great evening, with lots of free food, liquor and more!

I met some cool people the last couple of days but there wasn't that much ado in Santa Barbara so got to keep moving. I've had some bad moments and good moments the last week but overall I'm doing pretty good! Next up is 3 days L.A., 1 evening Vegas, roadtrip in the desert, 1 day Vegas & back to San Francisco.

I'll keep you posted!