Day 6

Miles driven 256 – Porterville, CA to Long Beach, CA – 6 hours on the bike

Another great night of camping. I spent the night in the Sequoia National Forest up on some mountain near Porterville, CA. I neither saw nor heard another human the whole time I was up there, just the birds in the morning. When I drove up the road it was dark so I didn’t really see how beautiful the scenery was, but in the morning I was again amazed at what I saw.

I had taken a fire road up the mountain and it was a one car road carved into the side. The forest was much more lush back there than on the main road. There is so much the regular traveler misses by sticking to the main road.

Once coming down from the mountain, I was back into the sprawl of humanity and began to head towards Los Angeles. I called my old college friend Jim about an hour out to make sure he would be home, and headed into Long Beach to stay with him for the evening.

LA is a concrete maze of freeways. You feel like a rat looking for your cheese. My GPS was directing me from one freeway to another and I kept going for miles and miles to get to Long Beach. I would not be able to handle that kind of life… traffic is not for me.

Once I arrived at Jim’s house, I met Meridith, who is his fiancé and they are both actively training for a triathlon.  Some friends of theirs came over for a BBQ dinner and we sat up chatting for most of the evening. Jim didn’t think it would be right to leave LA without hitting the beach, so I stayed an extra day to do LA up right.

In the morning, we went down to the beach with wet suits and as part of his training routine he and another friend were swimming 1.8 miles. I went out with them, but my swimming sucks, and I got maybe a half mile before I was dead and walked the rest along the sand to meet at the next pier. It was impressive to see them cruising along out there.

After swimming, we went out to breakfast with some more Triathlon friends of theirs and had a big meal. Then back to the beach for relaxing on the sand and doing some people watching. It wasn’t the glamor fest I thought it would be, but a nice place to hang out for a while. I was trying to stay out of the sun as I didn’t want to have a nasty burn underneath my riding suit… that would be torture!!

That evening a friend of theirs was having another BBQ gathering, so we went over there for the night and watched the Lakers game. Great food and friendly people, but my mind was starting to wander to the next day of riding. Once we got back to Jim’s house, I did laundry and was ready for the next day heading to Death Valley.

On the road by 8 am, I headed into the concrete maze once again and flowed with the traffic. You don’t really notice the smog much until you start to get out of it and it becomes clear… then you look back into the city and see the layer hanging over it.

As I went past Riverside the temperature started to rise dramatically. I could feel the heat and by the time I was in Baker, CA it was 95 degrees and rising.

Next stop is Death Valley.

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