From the Pacific to ...

The journey began today with the ceremonial wheel dipping in the Pacific. Being the excitable sort, I ran down the beach with my bike into ankle deep water, then turned around to have my picture taken. Being the Pacific, and not Long Island sound, there are things called waves. One arrived about 10 seconds later, soaking my bike shorts and the bottom half of my bicycle. I understand that salt water is good for mechanical parts, and a layer of salt in bike shorts makes them more comfortable. Lucky me.

Today was a very flat 79 mile ride. About 60 of those miles were urban Los Angeles. This is the definition of urban sprawl. Stopping at over 100 traffic lights allowed us to really enjoy the variety of fast food, tanning salons and auto repair shops. We've finally reached an area that might be suburban, which we can tell by the presence of Starbucks. The weather was perfect, which can easily be explained by the presence of a priest in our tour group.

I'm riding with a great group of people. We just met, but here we are pretending to be best friends:

The group spans the country - comng from Boston, Florida, California, Washington and points between. We also have a French Canadian and four from the U.K. However, they won't be us for long, since they are sure to be deported as soon as we cross the Arizona border.

79 miles ridden. 3336 miles to go. We're almost there.