Not much happened today. I didn’t sleep well and left at 6:00am, an hour before sunrise. The roads were pretty quiet, since it was a Sunday morning, but I had great shoulders for the first half of the ride.
I wanted to stop for “second breakfast” in San Luis Obispo. I rode through the “downtown” area between 7:30 and 7:45, but I didn’t see a single restaurant open. I even passed a closed donut store! Since when are donut stores closed at 7:30am? I saw a guy walking his dog, and asked him, and he started good-naturedly ranting about how everything opens late and closes early. He and his partner moved from LA, where (according to him) you can get anything you want 24 hours a day, and even though they SPECIFICALLY chose to live downtown in San Luis Obispo, it didn’t matter, because nothing was opened! He was so animated, I don’t think he noticed that his dog pooped, so I gently pointed it out before I rolled away. I did find “second breakfast” a few miles away, in Shell Beach, at a nice little sidewalk cafe.
Some of you know I love snakes, and I am good at spotting them, but I haven’t seen a single live snake. Today I saw the saddest thing a snake-lover can see. A dead baby California King Snake. I also saw a dead gopher snake. I didn’t take pictures of them, because it is too sad.
I had my first scary driver in California. This was less than a mile from “BIKE ROUTE” and “3 FEET MIN” signs on a narrow road with no shoulders. A big diesel pickup pulling a “fifth wheel” trailer started honking at me while he was behind me, then passed me really close and “rolled coal” (or tried to). I tried to memorize his license plate number, and spent the next hour scanning the road and cross streets for him. I just wanted to tell him he was the first asshole I’d encountered in the whole state. It’s probably best I didn’t see him, but it gave me something to do for a while!
Finally, I had a small headwind for most of the day, and it turned into a pretty powerful headwind for the last third. The ride ended with a descent from a nice climb, but the wind was gusty and when the descent flattened out a little, I was forced to pedal! I have definitely gotten spoiled!
