PC_Day32

Day 32

Wednesday, 30 June 2004
Redondo Beach, CA to San Clemente, CA
64.1 miles, 5h08m, 12.5 mph
Elapsed Time: 7h05m, Max speed: 32.0mph
Total Climbing: 1812ft, Max elevation: 496ft
Total mileage: 1896.5

The words for the day are "traffic" and "beach." Either we were riding down the beach in peace, or riding in traffic through beach towns (those would be towns with the word "beach" in their names).

After a short run down to the end of Redondo Beach, we headed inland and through Palos Verdes. That involved some climbing. Then we were dumped onto Anaheim Avenue, which went through the oil refinery city of Wilmington and to the port city of Long Beach.

Ahh...beautiful Wilmington.

We returned to the beach at Long Beach. The beach there isn't particularly long, nothing like the beach at Huntington Beach, which seems to go on forever. It might even be shorter than the beach at Capistrano Beach, which isn't all that long either. There, I'm glad that's been settled.

Long Beach: The beach and the Queen Mary.

Like I said, Huntington Beach seemed much longer. Once again we rode down a "bicycles only" path with sand on one side and a "pedestrians only" path on the other side. At some point we stopped for a break and I took a pretty boring picture.

Excitement at Huntington Beach on a Wednesday.

Further down the road (but still in Huntington Beach) we met an older couple who were out for a ride. We talked about our trip and the road ahead. Finally, we ran out of Huntington Beach and onto Newport Beach. In Newport Beach we had to ride on busy streets and found ourselves back on the Pacific Coast Highway. After that we met another older guy who was out for a ride. He told us what to expect, including some rollers and lousy riding conditions in Laguna Beach.

He rode on ahead and eventually we reached the legendary Laguna Beach. He was right. There were parked cars on the right, traffic on the left, and hills. South Laguna was worse than Laguna Beach because the cars were going faster. Anyway, we made it.

We descend into Laguna Beach. Looks like hell doesn't it?

That same guy came up from behind us again and told us what else was coming up. And then he rode on again. Dana Point was much nicer, and we stopped briefly at Capistrano Beach. From there it was just a couple of miles to San Clemente. We are not staying at the former home of President Nixon, we are staying at...you guessed it...the Best Western. We had dinner at a Japanese restaurant and picked up dessert at the 7-11. Yummy.

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