Tuesday May 12, 2015

The wind was blowing again this morning, but the sun was out. We quickly ate breakfast and left the KOA by 8:30 am. We had decided on a shorter ride to Half Moon Bay as we didn’t think we would make it all the way to Leslie’s place today and she is expecting us tomorrow.

The wind was not as bad as yesterday, we probably could have made it to Leslie’s house, but it is nice to take it easy once in a while.

We stopped in at the Pigeon Point Lighthouse.

This is a Hostel, we were hoping to stay here but when I checked on line at Barton’s house it was fully booked. It would have been a lot cheaper than the “garden shed” and warmer.

They are doing some major renovations to the lighthouse. Which will eventually include restoring the lens.

The sun was out for most of the ride, although the wind was cool. We had a few roller coaster hills to climb, and on two hills we had to peddle downhill.

Sometimes you have to look inland, the views are lovely.  We had stopped at this point to catch our breath.

We arrived at Half Moon Bay and stopped in at Safeway to get some sandwiches and some provisions for dinner. They had quiche, we decided on quiche and salads for dinner tonight. There were a couple of homeless people wandering around outside of Safeway. Ralf usually does the shopping for dinner but he asked me to do it instead. He wanted to keep an eye on the bikes and equipment. Ralf got talking to one of the homeless and was told that the people in Half Moon Bay were very kind and generous to the homeless. Ralf said “treat them like people, and most problems go away”.

We headed out to the State Park and stopped in at the bike shop (Bike Works) on the way. Our tires needed some air, fortunately touring tires do not need to be pumped up everyday, like the skinny tires do on a road bike. We had only lost about 20lbs of pressure since we last pumped them up which had to be about three weeks ago.

This State Park is on the beach, and costs $7.00 per person. It is nice and clean and the showers were hot. We will be listening to the roar of the surf again tonight.

The State Parks are trying to conserve water. They charge for the showers. The cost ranges from one token ($1.00) for 3.5 mins to .50 cents for 3 mins. I struggle to shower in 3.5 minutes, I can shower in 4 minutes, but prefer 4.5 minutes. This State Park uses quarters in their machines, so I used .75 cents and had a nice 4.5 minute shower. Big Sur used tokens and I actually wasted water, because I needed two tokens ($2.00) for my 4 minute shower and then stood underneath running water for another 3 minutes. I thought Big Sur should rethink their timing, but Ralf said they are making more money by reducing the time. I thought the whole point was to conserve water.

The ACA maps has us following the bike path through the State Park tomorrow morning. Fortunately I was chatting to a lady (Kath) who told me the bridge is out on the bike path and we need to use Highway 1.

We will be in San Francisco tomorrow and hopefully take a couple of days off visiting S.F.

When we leave San Francisco we will be on Map 3, we have already gone through two maps already and there are only five in this series. Does that mean we are half-way to Vancouver?