Flat Tires Day 1

Started the day mailing home extra gear from ski trip to Banff.  Had a 20 mile bike ride in the other direction to start my trip, from Jonathan’s at Mira Mesa to Ocean Beach Park. I had to bike the extra 20 miles because according to my brothers logic, if I was going to bike over 3,000 miles what was an extra 20? The beach is the official start of the Southern Tier, which ironically, is an off leash dog area at the beach.  Great place to start a bike ride. Only one of the little yappy dogs barked at me, you know the Chihuahua type.

I realized I was slightly dehydrated from the pre carb loading the night….week…. okay month prior.

On the way there, I took a detour from the bike path from the directions Jonathan and Jennifer printed for me because the bike path had an lot of homeless people in the way. Old back seats from vans that fold down, blankets and other assorted junk littered the trail. It’s kind of hard to avoid a folded out van seat with someone sleeping on it in the middle of the trail when you come around the corner and you are riding a loaded touring bike. Luckily, I did not know about wobbles, with loaded pannier, or I might have panicked when I went flying around a turn to find a homeless man and/or junk littering the trail. Shortly after this, I learned of the wobbles.

I found a hopefully bum free route using the maps on iPhone. On what turned out to be a bum free route was full of people walking for exercise, moms with baby carriages and the old ladies were the worst of these walkers. They took up the whole trail like they owned it, duh I owned it. On my first attempt to pass one set of old ladies walking side by side, I stood up to generate a lot of force to fly passed them and that is where I discovered wobbles with panniers on my first push to accelerate. I leaned to that side then the weight of everything shifted that way. I tried to over compensate the other way and, almost crashed into old lady one so I threw my weight the other way to avoid the collision. So there I was wobbling out of control barely missing the old ladies. The looks I got when I wobbled by were incredulous mixed with terror, but I made it and learned a very valuable lesson without any old lady carnage.

Didn’t dip back tire in pacific, might be reason for bad luck.

Ended at Rancho Los Coches RV Park in Lakeside, CA.
Forgot to turn on GPS