by Philip

Day’s mileage : 31

Running total : 2,099

Today we have a planned mileage of 28, which coincided with an AirBnB with a 12 noon checkout – very unusual – so it was almost like a rest day, with no alarm set and a gentle start, and a breakfast of a stack of waffles with ice cream, strawberries and mango to fuel us up. 

Leaving Dana Point we meandered through residential streets for a while, noticing that all the street names are Spanish now as we get closer to the border. We were passed by a few bikes carrying surf boards on frames that sit outside the cyclist’s legs – very clever! Once out of the town we stopped to make a call (during which we enjoyed a humming bird’s attention) to arrange some logistics about the bikes for when we finish the ride, then joined a cycle path running parallel to the interstate 5 freeway. Reaching a state park we found a barrier across the road and an official saying we were not allowed through on e-bikes due to a surfing competition. Liz successfully negotiated us going through with motors off, the official commenting that he hated making these big executive decisions. The surf competition was over the dunes, but is a big affair with lots of marquees and large TV screens, and loud PA systems. It turned out that we were only in the park for half a mile and then joined the old PCH, again parallel to i5 and almost completely devoid of traffic.

One thing that has amused throughout the trip is the way lanes are labelled here – the word you read first is the one nearest you, but is equivalent to reading up a page – I always find myself reading it “normally” and then having to re-read. What, after all, does “lane bike” mean?

The route took us for several miles through a state beach campsite, some way away from the beach itself, with the road we were in and parking spaces all along for RVs – each space with its own barbecue and picnic table. From the state park we went onto a lovely cycle path which took us into military land – this was fine to start with but then took us to a control point at Camp Pendleton. The military policeman there began to ask us for ID to get us a day pass to allow us to continue until he realised we weren’t US citizens and said “before you get all that [our ID] out, I suggest you turn around otherwise you’ll be here for hours.”  Humph. That forced us onto the hard shoulder of the i5 (bikes are permitted on the i5 here, I should point out). After a couple of miles riding as fast as we could we stopped at a rest area and sat overlooking the sea for lunch, pestered by a family of ground squirrels and at one point covered in dust from the neighbouring military road as three army trucks went past. 

We had another 5 miles on the i5 – which had 4 lanes in each direction – compare it to riding on the M25 around Heathrow! We emerged unscathed and turned off into the marina at Oceanside, and then wound our way along the beach before turning into town to find a supermarket. From there we retraced our steps past the town library and went to find our AirBnB for the night before our last full day of cycling to get to the Mexican border.