The Peloton

C2C4K CA.4.206

KOA at Manchester to MacKerricher State Park

I can feel the IPA’s this morning but nothing that a cup of coffee and a few miles on the bike won’t work out of my system.  It’s pretty cold this morning, in fact it’s been pretty cold every morning and night.  It wakes you up nice, but I could do without having to dawn pants, a down coat and a winter hat, it is California!  I am up early attempting to use the camp wifi to do work, but it sucks and I think I’ve paid twice now for the service with no success.  I do have a decent amount that I need to get done though so it would be nice to find a spot today. I young woman, who is touring by herself shared some conversation with me though while I waited for my counterparts to rise.  She mentioned the best place to head to Portland would be on route 6 from Cape Lookout State Park.  Seeing that she had come that way her self, we're going to take her word on it.

So we road for over 47 miles today and we battled the head wind and long hills as usual but today we discovered the benefit of the peloton, riding as a group, taking 20 minute turns breaking the wind. It definitely made things easier and helped with my bad knee, but towards the end of the day I had some pain again and the cold wasn’t helping with my right knee either.  I am thinking this will be a constant for the trip so unless things change I’ll try not to bring it up again. 

So where to begin today, a lot of my blogging for the past 4 days has revolved around what we have done, but I haven’t reflected much.  To be short, I want to wait at least a week before I start to get into what it means to me to be on the road.  So for now you get a few more pretty pictures and so more of “here is what we did today” and that its.

Tonight we stayed in Cleon at MacKerricher State Park and met a man named Kyle, but not before passing through Fort Brag and crushing some McDonalds.  We went to a small Mexican restaurant named Purple Rose, had some chips and salsa (really good) and a few margaritas (just ok).  Kyle joined us and we learned of his decision to pack up all he owned or wanted to keep, put it on his bike and ride to Oregon to work on a farm.  He was a computer programmer but just seemed to have had enough.

We decided tomorrow will be a down day before tackling the hill to Leggett

Miss you Muppet,

Matteo