Day 2: Map (Partial)

Part of the 'partial' was me forgetting to start recording the track in the morning; the rest was the battery giving out (despite solar charger) halfway through the day.

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=102186344703467308535.0004891fb2bd9c90a095c&ll=36.463263,-121.405106&spn=0.379378,0.780716&z=11


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Day 1: Tent City

The camps are tent cities packed close together: they look like a cross between a refugee camp and a music festival, but the food is fabulous and there are hot showers.

Mike and I are tent mates, which works well, because we both try and out-orderly the other.

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Day 1: Map

Map of the second half of the route at http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=215357222291930401319.000488693882ebba2f2c0




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Day 1: Kite Surfing

There is a beach north of Santa Cruz which attracts scores of kite surfers. its was beautiful to stop for 5 minutes and watch them.

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Day 1: Googlers

I'm cycling with a group of Googlers; today we all wore Google Maps jerseys. This is my friend Nathan behind all that sun block.

Day 1: San Francisco to Santa Cruz

Got up at 4am after only 5 hours sleep. Cow Palace is a giant concrete bunker south of San Francisco and in thickening fog with thousands of cyclists it was surreal. The kick-off event was like a mass gymnastic performance.

Within a couple of hours, I had my first of many punctures. A little further down the road, Nathan was helping another cyclist to fix another puncture.

In the late morning, we were riding directly under the fog line; then it lifted to show blue sky.

Day 0: Registration

 Today was a day of last minute bike changes, and then the rush of the registration and the realisation that we're finally there, and this is about to begin. This is me and my biking buddy Mike, who I did most of the training with.

 The armbands made the whole things feel even more like a music festival than it did already. This marks me as having done the safety training, being registered for the ride, and being a registered vegetarian (this latter one gave me access to the express vegetarian queues!)

And here's Julian who got caught by the wardrobe people and got to experience how it feels being turned into Nancy Reagan in less than 5 minutes.