California!

Short Version:
A long drive. A short ride. Ladybugs.

Long Version:
Bio-security check at the California state line saw our campfire wood sniffed but passed as OK. Bloody enormous snow-covered Mt Shasta dominated the landscape, and was beautiful, from the road and from parts of the campground we found on the shores of man-made Lake Siskiyou. Not from our campsite though - it was perfectly serviceable, but we learned a lesson about allowing counter-monkeys to select the site for us from the number of as-good-or-better sites which were empty and had views. We did have hordes of matte black, military-style lizards scampering around, chasing each other and playing in the food storage locker. And there were stars in the sky, and showers, for the first time since the Old St Francis School. That's one week exactly for those of you who lack the skills to add things up right*.

We left relatively early, with an eye on the Interstate and a run for the south, with another IMBA epic ride near Santa Barbara - The Buckhorn Trail - before putting the bikes into storage and heading to Mexico with Doctor R and her trained monkey. First, though, we needed gasoline. And, as it turned out, tacos. At 1030am. For 49c each.

Gassed-up and gassed-up, we jumped on the I5, pushed the needle up to 75, and motored. And motored. And motored.

10 hours, two rest areas, three dead coyotes, a bunch of miles and one sunburned arm per person later, we stopped for more gas at Atascadera, then hit the coast and found a campground, which was insanely expensive, right next to a heavily-used main road, and populated by some really strange groups of people. Between the feral cats and the feral teenagers, I feared a sleepless night, but I slept incrediby well, and woke bright and early and ready to surf the net on a stolen connection while doing laundry. In the fog, which wasn`t what we expected from California.

Then onwards, on highway 101, south to Santa Barbara, to a local bike shop for advice and a map and some new shoes and gloves for Janine. The bloke hadn't done the Buckhorn Trail himself, but it was marked on the map he sold us, and he recommended Romero Canyon as a nice short ride we could knock off that afternoon before heading out to the campground at the start of the Buckhorn. We got stuck in traffic on the way there, which proved fortuitous in the end, as it meant that we crossed paths with a young woman (Hi Amy!) who rode up the hill with Janine, leaving me free to ride at normal person pace. They, of course, gas-bagged the whole way up, and by the time I arrived at where they'd been waiting for agesarrangements had been made to meet after the Buckhorn, and for our bikes to live in her garage for the duration of our Mexico sojourn.

A quick blast back down the hill, with a brief stop at the spot where the thousands of orange ladybugs were congregated, then back into the van and back north through the city and east over the mountains to Paradise Road into the Santa Ynez River Valley. Past a bar, past the Rancho Oso RV park, past a couple of Day Use Recreation Areas, and a pause at the western edge of a ford to wait for the opposing traffic to get through. Eventually we tired of being the politer party, and decided it was our turn. We took the foot-deep curved concrete path somewhat slower than some of the others weèd seen, then we were off up a side-valley to the Upper Oso campground, where we set up and ate and prepared our stuff and cleared with the camp host** to leave the van in an out-of-the-way spot the next day without paying for an extra night, on the grounds that we'd be back by middayish, then hit the sack so we'd be raring to go for the morning's early start, riding the Buckhorn Trail.








* = Killdozer, "New Pants and Shirt"

** = He was a nice chap. He had the dirtiest fingers I've ever seen