Category Archives: Philtrons Pedal South (2014)

Rolling into San Diego

Over the past few days we’ve ridden from the LA area down to San Diego. It was amazing to arrive and look back at how far we’ve come! About 5500 miles so far, and so, so many stories.

Our route from Anchorage, AK to San Diego, CA. 5500 miles and counting!

For those of you in State College, we’ll be telling a few of these stories at two different presentations about our trip. The first will be for the Statistics Department at 3:30 on Tuesday, Sept 23. The second will be at Appalachian Outdoors at 7:00 on Thursday, Sept 25. Hope to see you there!

Ballona Creek bikeway. Mostly a gravel bottom cement-sided tidal pool. However, life abounds!

The ride out of the Los Angeles area was long, but much better than I anticipated. Our route took us on many different bike paths along the beach and tidal waterways. At one point the path even went through a hotel parking garage! And of course we rode on many different roads, from neighborhood roads to many-lane boulevards.

The bike path enters a hotel parking garage.

Our first night out we stayed at Doheny State Beach, which had a tiny hiker/biker campsite area. There was one other cyclist there, who happened to also be on a Pan-American trip! Ryan has come from Vancouver and we expect to run into him again somewhere in Central America.

Hiker/Biker site at Doheny State Beach

The old Pacific Coast Highway

Snack time!

The next day we spent some time on the old Pacific Coast Highway. It is now only used by cyclists – and we certainly saw a lot of day riders! In the afternoon we rolled through Camp Pendleton. I have been collecting animal, and other, crossing signs and I added a really unique one to my collection: “AAV/Tank Crossing”!

We spent the night with some great Warmshowers hosts, and got to sleep in a treehouse! Our host, Steve, cooked us a delicious taco salad for dinner and homemade hot fudge sauce on ice cream for dessert. We definitely didn’t go away hungry!

A treehouse – our room for the night.

Many-laned roads on the way into San Diego. The traffic came in waves due to the lights.

The next day’s ride into San Diego was another half day (34 miles). We spent it riding along the ocean, and then cut east into San Diego. Some of the roads were busy, but we almost always had a bike lane. Somehow we managed to make 6 different left turns to make it to Matt and Kira’s house. That was pretty exciting, considering the number of traffic lanes. Since we arrived during the workday, the welcome committee consisted of two very happy dogs: Indy and Guinness.

Indy gives Daisy some love

The pile of packages waiting for us in San Diego. We now have maps for Central America!

It is funny to think we could be in Mexico TODAY! However, we’ve a few things to do first, mainly Daisy defending her dissertation. (Yay!) We’ll be travelling by plane to the east coast for a week. Before that trip, we’ll be doing a several day loop around the mountains near San Diego. When we get back, Daisy’s parents will visit with us in San Diego for a few days. We’ll get beefier tires on the bikes, and set off further south!

Although we saw many surfers, this was the only surfer crossing sign.

Palm trees everywhere.

Riding through Palm trees.

Currently, we are in Santa Monica, just a stone’s throw from Los Angeles proper. A few days ago, as we rode through the upscale city of Santa Barbara, it really hit us how far we’ve come. Suddenly, there were palm trees everywhere! We started out in the stunted spruce trees of Alaska, and now we are riding through palm trees. This is amazing!

… and more palm trees.

It’s been an interesting few days. Mostly, we’ve been doing a lot of urban riding as the towns get larger and much closer together. Last time we updated we were in the working town of Guadalupe, staying with a wonderful host. She was so much fun to chat with that we stayed up way too late and then got a slow start the next day. We didn’t leave before getting our picture with the president though:

Photo op with the prez.

The next couple of nights we spent at State Beach hiker-biker sites, and really enjoyed chatting with some of the other cyclists. We met two cyclists from Victoria, BC (a city we really enjoyed riding through), and just had a great time with them. They were so positive and excited about every part of their trip, from the roads to the wildlife to the people they met. We also met a German family traveling with a 12-year-old and a 14-year-old down the coast. They carried a giant, three room tent with them.

A million dollar view for $10 each.

We also spent an afternoon playing on a perfect beach.

cold water?

Fun in the sun.

We built a ‘castle’ and watched the waves take it away.

Bicycle roundabouts at UC Santa Barbara.

In Santa Barbara we ventured off-route to find a grocery store, and ended up getting really distracted in what appeared to be a giant downtown open-air mall. There were people shopping everywhere; it was like an ant nest of consumer activity. While we stopped to drink a cup of coffee I saw a distracted driver almost hit someone in the crosswalk, and then a distracted cyclist run into another cyclist. Their bicycles got caught on each other in some awkward configuration, but neither fell down.

Crazy mansions along the beach in Malibu.

Yesterday we rode nearly 80 miles to enter Santa Monica, at the edge of the Los Angeles metro area. It was quite a day. We woke up at 5:30 am to be on the road at first light, and we watched the sun rise behind the mountains as we pedaled along the ocean. It was wonderful, and calm. There were already surfers everywhere preparing for their day on the waves. As we got closer and closer to LA things got busier and busier. More towns, more people, more lanes on the highway. For the most part, we had sufficient room on the shoulder. As we approached Malibu, however, cars were parked in the shoulder to facilitate surfing access, so we increasingly had to claim an entire lane of the highway. Miraculously, nearly all the traffic was very courteous and politely changed lanes to accommodate us. One car honked and the driver yelled at us with colorful words and a single prominently displayed finger. You can guess which. He even pulled over in front of us to yell some more, which certainly took far more time than moving over in the lane would have! We just ignored him, and carried on.

Just as the traffic started to get really stressful, we had a stroke of fantastic luck. A power line was down on the main highway ahead, so they were not allowing any cars through… but bikes were ok! We had the entire 4-lane highway to ourselves for 3 blissful miles.

The four-lane highway all to ourselves!

After the cars re-entered, traffic was still lighter and we had a stressful but safe ride to the Santa Monica bicycle path. It was a great path – sandy beach on both sides and row after row of volleyball nets.

Awesome bicycle path in Santa Monica.

We rolled through the busy and opulent streets of Santa Monica to our host house for the night. We are staying with Greg, my friend from college, and his two roommates for two nights to rest, recoup, and plan our next two weeks. Thanks guys!

A holiday weekend heading South

5000 miles and we’re on the ocean.

Protected bike lane in the city.

We left San Francisco at 9 am on the Saturday of Labor Day Weekend. This 3-day weekend supposedly marks the end of summer (but not for us!), so it was expected to be quite busy traffic-wise. It was. We had a nice day of riding on Saturday, but put effort into getting up early on Sunday and Monday to beat the traffic. Our riding in this section has been a little hectic with the cars, narrow roads, and urban road negotiations, but we’ve been rewarded with good coastal views and wildlife sightings.

San Francisco City Hall.

Pedestrian only section along Devil’s Slide.

Our first day out was a shorter one, only 35 miles, and we hit a few towns that were crazy with traffic. Luckily, an narrow section of highway in an area called the Devil’s Slide had been replaced by a tunnel, and the old highway had been converted to a bicycle and pedestrian only path. We loved this section of care-free riding! That afternoon we met Ryan and Kristen, two of Jason’s friends from Penn State that now live in CA. We spent a few hours chatting on the beach under a beautiful blue sky. It was great to see them. That night we stayed in a hiker-biker site with about 20 other cyclists, all but one of which were on an overnight ride from the San Francisco area. It was fun to be around so many other people on bikes.

Sunset over the water.

I stepped in cement-like mud.

The rest of Labor day weekend was busy busy. Jason got his second flat tire of the trip, another tiny thing of metal that thwarted our efforts to get out of camp early. We entered an agricultural area and saw huge fields of artichokes, brussels sprouts, broccoli, and strawberries. We even stopped at a farm stand to buy 10 avocados for 1$. Wow! The terrain was pretty gentle for a few days, and we enjoyed afternoon tailwinds. One night we stayed in Sunset State Beach campground, and watched the sun set over the ocean. Another night we camped in one of the southernmost groves of California redwoods.

Artichoke plants! They are really flowers.

Bizarre sighting: A cactus growing in a tree stump.

More sea lions than dock space.

It was a good 63 miles.

On Tuesday morning we were so relieved that traffic would be lighter than we slept in far too late and got a late start on the road. It was our 5,000 mile day! It was also a day filled with hills, as we were traveling through Big Sur, where some mountains meet the sea. It was good to be back on some big hills. From our vantage point high above the ocean we could see pelicans, sea lions, and even some whales. Later that day we saw elephant seals too. Apparently, these giant marine mammals were hunted nearly to extinction. A final, tiny colony of less than a hundred survived, and in the last 25 years has grown incredibly to over 15,000 animals. We saw a big group of them lounging on the beach. They were so big and fat!

Lazy elephant seals.

We are now rapidly approaching Southern California, which means that we are doing more and more urban riding and less of the isolated riding that we tend to prefer. We are nearing Los Angeles, and plan to head inland from there to enjoy some more mountain riding before heading back to the east coast for a week. Still some more work to do before the defense, but still we ride on! I put all the pictures of lovely coastal views here. They go on and on in this stretch of road.

Five days in San Francisco

Icons galore.

It was a crazy, fun experience to be in a huge metropolitan city for five full days. Each night we slept in a huge bed, had a shower in easy reach, and the run of a complete kitchen. During the day we did tourist activities with Jason’s parents to see the sights, and in the evenings we watched movies or played pool or pinochle. I saw ‘we’, but really I (Daisy) missed out on some of the fun to arrange my defense details and put a little more work on my dissertation. It was a good time all around though. I will share some highlights.

Making cookies from scratch.

We rode the famous cable cars, and went to the cable car museum to learn about their history and how they work. It is really neat! There are giant motors that move massively long cables across the city at 9.5 miles per hour. The cable cars sit above these cables routed in the streets, and the car operators control a device that grips the cable to tow the car up and over the hills. To slow the cars, they let go of the cable and apply thick pine wood brake pads. You can smell the pine when you go down the hills!

The next day Jason’s parents were wonderful enough to get us a rental car so we could drive north to visit Guide Dogs for the Blind’s main campus for a tour. I raised 9 dogs for them between the ages of 12 and 22, and always love seeing where the dogs are bred, trained, and matched with their partners. We had a wonderful tour, and learned a lot about what measures they take to ensure the dogs can safely guide their people. There is an obstacle course to help train the dogs to look up and stop when there are things a person would hit but a dog could walk under. They even train them around the sneaky silent Prius’s to make sure the dogs know to listen for their quiet sounds! Yes, there were also cute baby puppies that we got to see!

Future guide dogs for the blind. Oh how I wanted to take one and raise it!

Obstacle course supplies for training the dogs

Jason and the Bay model: an acre-sized replica.

On the way back to the city we stopped to check out the Bay Model: it is a scale model of the San Francisco watershed with working tides. Scientists constructed it decades ago to see how the area would be impacted by proposed developments. Nowadays computer models (and statistics!) made the physical model obsolete, so they open it for tourists and school groups. Jason loved it! We also stopped for some photo and more views of the iconic Golden Gate Bridge. What a beautiful day!

Bostrons, Philtrons, Golden Gate.

Endless beach north of San Francisco.

Jason and his parents spent a full day at the Academy of Sciences. I stayed back at the timeshare to do work, but I am pretty sure they had a blast! They also went to the Conservancy of Flowers in Golden Gate Park.

Fancy flowers at the Conservancy.

Carnivorous plants. Careful for your fingers.

We left the city pretty early on Saturday, around 9, but the city was slow to awaken and we had a wonderful ride out. The streets were pretty empty, and we waved goodbye to city hall as we headed back out to the coast. Los Angeles, here we come!

On the road again! Thank you Mike and Debra!

The Philtrons

Cycling South America in 2026 with kids

Category Archives: Philtrons Pedal South (2014)

Rolling into San Diego

Palm trees everywhere.

A holiday weekend heading South

Five days in San Francisco