Saturday ride down PCH

Since Tucson is coming in very short order I've made it a point to make every weekend between now and then to make the most of the time left while the weather stays nice.

I met up with a guy from bikeforums.net today to ride down to Solana Beach. I drove to the Amtrak station in Anaheim and rode 14 miles down the SART to PCH (Hwy 1) where we met up. After a brief introduction we commenced our ride. It was to be a 84 mile ride for me and I don't know what Choosak's distance was. He rode from his house in Laguna Beach up to meet me.

Pretty soon after we started riding and we hit some of the little hills along PCH I found I couldn't shift into my small chainring because my chain would pop off. I knew it was a derailleur endpoint adjustment thing but never stopped to correct it. I rode the entire ride and all it's hills (which got more and more of a PITA along the way) in my big chainring powering over every hill. I'm used to carrying high cadence and not having the gearing I'm used to wore me down over time.

We went through Camp Pendleton where gas was $2.88/gal. That's a full $0.11 cheaper than anything I found on my way down to the Amtrak station. It upset me that I filled the tank at $3.12/gal Friday after work and the gas prices dropped to $2.99 overnight.

We finished the ride completing nearly 84 miles in 4 hours 24 minutes. Considering the hills involved and how relatively flat Tucson is, I think I should beat last years 80 mile time of 4:01.

We stopped at Pizza Port and sat down for lunch. There's nothing better than their apple juice after a long hard ride. ...oh yeah, and their pizza too!!! After we ate and chatted we went across the street to catch the Amtrak back to our respective destination stations.

I got pretty depressed on the way back after Choosak's stop because the Irvine Amtrak station is adjacent to the old El Toro Air Marine Base. That's where I was first stationed. The place looks so run down, decrepit, and ghost town like. It was such a pity to know what it looked like when I was there and what is does after being closed down and abandoned. ...I loved that base!