At last night's group meeting Ray covered the tour schedule, ground rules, how the budget works, distributed the group equipment and assigned cooking teams.
This morning we loaded all of our gear and headed towards Ocean Beach for tour kickoff photos. Dipping our tires in the Pacific required us to walk our bikes about 100 yards down the sandy beach. We all balked at first but RJ took off and we all followed. The bikes were covered with sand by the time we got back off the beach so it is questionable whether we should have done this or just taken a photo of the beach and ocean in the background. But we all figured, what the heck, we should actually dip tires in the Pacific.
After the tire dipping we headed towards the road along the top of Point Loma that leads to Cabrillo National Monument. A rite of passage for this trip apparently is a climb up Hill Street - an extremely steep street that just about burst my lungs and burned out my quads. This is supposedly the steepest climb of the tour - though we would later question that in at least a couple of instances (leaving Lost Maples State Park in West Texas for example). Once at the top it was a very enjoyable ride to Cabrillo. The park attendant was an avid cyclist and let us in for free. At Cabrillo we took took photos from spots overlooking San Diego and the harbor. After eating our lunch we covered how to read and interpret the Adventure Cycling Association maps. I'd used them earlier this year on portions of the Northern Tier route in Washington state so I already knew how to use them. It was chilly and windy at Cabrillo. We then headed back to the hostel.
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| The ACA Fall 2011 Southern Tier Self-Contained Tour Group: L to R - Kat, Ray, Vicky, RJ, Adrian, Dan, Gary, Fred |
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| Tier dipping ceremony at Ocean Beach: L to R - Vicky, Ray, Kat, Fred, Dan, Adrian, RJ, Gary. Special thanks to the lifeguard who snapped the photos for each of us. |
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