Bye-Sea-Cool (USA Day 145)

When does Los Angeles end? We rode south for another whole day, along the boardwalks and seafronts of Long Beach and Huntington Beach, through grotty arterial roads populated by trucks and us, both carrying our waste away from the city that used it up. We got lost in a park, retracing our steps around about three times (exactly three times, who am I kidding?) each time we ended up on a sandy deathtrap claiming to be a path. The outskirts and districts flicked by: a Hispanic housing estate with street-corner salespeople and vibrant taco trucks, a quiet seaside street with hundreds of cramped paths over to the beach, another windswept bike path right there on the beach, many off-season ice cream shacks or sandwich hatches which, despite the gorgeous weather, wouldn’t open again until the tourists came back.

We’ll be back soon. Our plan is to have just a couple of days south of the city and then return to Los Angeles to jump aboard our train to New Orleans. Even with this change of direction, we bid goodbye to the Pacific for the last time from a nondescript beach surrounded by chain-link fence, with a couple of young surfers finding waves to ride where we saw none.

From there, we rode inland along the side of a storm drain. I gave a punctured Frenchman one of our spare inner tubes, mainly because he asked. I’d patched this one about three times already and was pretty proud of it, but the Frenchman wasn’t so appreciative. “This will be fine,” he said, as if he were buying it.

“Will it now?” I replied, feeling suddenly rather attached to my tube.

“It only has to get me seven miles home. Then I’ll throw it away anyway.”

Ugh! My heart! We carried this tube six-and-a-half thousand miles, looked after it, plastered its cuts and bruises, inflated its floppy ego whenever necessary, and it was only good for seven homeward miles? Well, as we rode off I had to remind myself that of all the things to become attached to after such a long time travelling, an inner-tube wasn’t it. My weirdly-brown ‘white’ socks, maybe.

Jim, a bike tourer who found our blog on CrazyGuyOnABike, rode us in for the final ten miles to his house in Orange: a beautiful, calm place with a soft bed and an actual honest-to-dog swimming pool. Jim and his wife Pam (who is away, so we didn’t meet) are planning their own Eastbound TransAm tour next June, and it was incredible to see Jim’s tireless planning ahead of time. He’s got a town-by-town accommodation list the length of a not-inconsiderate bible, which he plans to share with the ACA. It’s probably more useful than most of the stuff they publish, to be honest.

We went over the route with Jim, whose knowledge of its twists and turns were impressive for someone who’s not ridden it yet. “What did you think of the café in Muddy Gap?” “Did you get those plastic lizards from the place just north of Toronto, Kansas?” “You can’t have gone north after Sisters if your favourite descent was McKenzie pass.” He’s leaving nothing to chance to make the best experience for Pam and himself. I can’t wait to read their journal!

In the evening, we popped into town for a gigantic pizza and squidgy, crispy garlic knots below little screens showing the baseball playoffs. I’ve taken an unexpected shine to the sport, despite the fact that nothing really happens and they all spit an awful lot. I’m pretty sure it’s the stats that get me. Give me stats, I’m yours.

We don’t deserve a rest day tomorrow, so we aren’t getting one. Jim’s invited us on a 5000-foot climb up a mountain (without bags) or, as an alternative, a massage voucher at a local parlour. I know which I’ll choose.