Pacific Coast Highway 1 to Cambria

Yesterday got off to a good start when the 'limo' that was arranged to take us from the hotel to the bike rental place turned out to be a proper white stretch limo.

Got to EagleRider and there was a Portuguese guy, Pedro, there hiring a bike and taking the same route as us so we agreed to ride down together. eD from sport-touring.net came along too to help us get out of San Francisco and take us on a bit of a tour out of the city. So grateful to eD - without him we would have been quite screwed getting out of the city! Nice twisty roads out of SF then we stopped at a famous biker cafe called Alice's Restaurant (see previous post for pic).

OK, I don't have time to write more  now - got to go ride! Take a look at the pics and I'll write up more later. We're in Cambria now. About to go try Route 58. :D

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Escape from San Francisco

The riding is good!

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Penguins and pancakes

• Went to Monterey Bay Aquarium. Saw more sea otters. Penguins will rule the world one day
• Now in San Francisco. Exited BART as Gay Pride March went past with ticker tape falling from the sky. A suitable welcome for our arrival I think.
• Waited 40min for a table for breakfast at Dottie's True Blue Cafe. I had pancakes but I didn't really like them that much tbh.
• Went to visit a friend at Google HQ today. Google HQ rocks. Please can I have a job there? I could be a gardener or something...
• Going to pick up the Harley tomorrow. Now the real holiday starts!

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Spot the Seal

I hired a bicycle yesterday and took a ride down to Monterey, where I hired a kayak for a few hours. It was not particularly sunny, but of course I still managed to get burnt. I had a wetsuit on, so I have a nice line at my ankles, and my forehead is glowing nicely. Out on Monterey Bay I saw loads of seals, quite a few sea otters and a seagull using a dead seal as a surf board. :D 

Burnt feet really hurt. Not good.

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Spot the Seal

I hired a bicycle yesterday and took a ride down to Monterey, where I hired a kayak for a few hours. It was not particularly sunny, but of course I still managed to get burnt. I had a wetsuit on, so I have a nice line at my ankles, and my forehead is glowing nicely. Out on Monterey Bay I saw loads of seals, quite a few sea otters and a seagull using a dead seal as a surf board. :D 

Burnt feet really hurt. Not good.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Freezing in Asilomar; TomTom California map?

We arrived in Asilomar yesterday after a 2.5h bumpy bus ride from San Francisco. This conference place is a little odd - kind of like a cross between a scout camp (Douglas Wood anyone?) and something from Amityville. 

Main problem is that it is really cold and misty. This isn't the weather that Arnie was showing off on all those "Visit California" adverts recently! I'm sitting in front of a roaring fire right now. It would be warmer if we headed in-land, but considering we're planning on riding Pacific Coast Highway we might not be getting much sun.

W is working now in some meeting. I'm thinking of going for a cycle ride but I'm not sure I've got warm enough clothes!

Gripe: I still planning the route for next week. I have my TomTom Rider (v1) with me and wanted to add a map for California to it. However, it seems you cannot buy individual state maps in the US. Seems a bit daft when you can buy individual country maps in Europe. The US is the size of a continent and California is about the size of the UK so you've got just as much chance of only needing a regional map. Would someone using their TomTom in Washington really want to be forced to buy a map which included Georgia? Seems like a economically motivated decision by TomTom which is daft when they're about to be crushed by Google et al who will be offering a more customer focused service. 

You used to be able to buy individual state maps for TomTom so if anyone can point me in the direction of one please do. It doesn't matter how old it is - I doubt Pacific Coast Highway has changed much recently!

Pic is of Crater Lake taken on the flight over. 

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Time to ride California again

On Tuesday I'll be flying out to San Francisco and on the following Tuesday I'll be picking up a Harley-Davidson Electra Glide and riding for four days around California. I did this 6 years ago and loved it. This time I'll have W sitting behind me! Like the social media geek I am I'll be using Posterous to tweet, blog and Facebook my pics as I go along. If Google Latitude worked properly on an iPhone I would be able to track my route properly too. Use a map you say? Yeah I guess that would make sense...

Technical gripe - when you email a photo directly from the iPhone to Flickr via Posterous, the GPS Exif data seems to get stripped out, which is a shame. I'd like to have all the photos geo-tagged.

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