TCC Days 1 thru 3

 So as I type my brother Greg and I are at our campsite in Richardson Grove, having completed days 1, 2 and 3. Mileage was just over 50 on Sunday with around 3000' of climbing. Monday was 58.5 miles with just over 2000' of climbing. And today was just over 60 miles with about 2200' of climbing. A lot of these 3 days were in the redwoods, with today being the climax of that with the 32 mile Avenue of the Giants....that was AWESOME!

Anyway, I've tried Sun and Mon nights to add pics (I'm doing this on my phone with a bluetooh keyboard)...but so far am striking out on how to get the pictures WHERE I want them (and they are OH SO VERY SLOW to load (one at a time even). Tried again tonight but I'm really getting hamered by mosquitoes (Sitting here in a full bug-head-net and they are just swarming me, biting ANY exposed skin).

So...I"m giving up for now, but rest assured I WILL get pictures posted at some point. Gotta get inside the tent, it's just a bloodbath (mine) right now...ack!!!

Tour of California Coast (TCC)

So on Saturday morning my brother Greg and I load up our road bikes and touring gear into a rental and head for Crescent City CA, just south of the Oregon/CA border. It's where we ended our TOC (Tour of Oregon Coast) last August. We'll drop the rental off that night, load up our bikes with all our gear and head for our campsite in Crescent City for the night. Then early Sunday (or whenever we get moving) we roll south, beginning a 13 day trip. 

We won't be going all the way to San Diego though, that would be at least 3 more days (likely 4 on loaded bikes), and require riding thru Los Angeles...neither of us can take that much time off right now, so we will be ending pretty much at my house in Santa Maria! Greg will actually ride to just south of Vandenberg Space Force Base (where I work) catching a train home from the Surf Beach station. I will ride with him past home out to Vandenberg (where I will likely sign him onto base and we can have lunch) and then we part ways as he continues about 10 miles or so to the train station while I ride home (about 10 miles or so, depending on where we part ways at). 

We are both pretty excited about the trip, and it will be a doozy! Right around 800 total miles with around 45,000' of total climbing! We are camping every night, and have daily route files I created taking us point to point each day. Anyway, it's coming FAST now...I finished packing my touring gear into the panniers and fork-bags tonight. I have yet to weigh my bike and gear, but assume it will weigh somewhere around 55 to 60 lbs fully loaded. I will have my SPOT (Satellite POsition Tracker) running every day while we are riding, so anybody who had my SPOT home-page link can see where we are real-time (it updates via satellite every 10 minutes). 

Here is the link in case you want to peek in to see where we are/have-been:

Matts SPOT map

The page comes up with a world map and you then go to the upper right corner of the screen, and on the 2nd line of the black window pick a time-frame to see my SPOT location updates (choices are live, 1 hour, 24 hours, 7 days or 1 month). It will then zoom to the part of the world where those tracks are at and you can zoom in/out, change the map to Satellite view among other things. 

If you select 1 Month it will show our entire route from Crescent city up to where we currently are at. So, just thought I'd toss this out there, hope everybody (that being both Rae and Susie) are doing well and having a nice summer. I'll try to toss some pictures here along the way (I have a bluetooth folding keyboard I just got and have it linked to my cell phone, so we will see how that works when I'm sitting around at night making dinner at the campsite. It's got to be better than typing on the cell-screen!) 

OK...gotta get to bed...later gators, game ON!