Everyday for 7 Weeks–Day 40–San Luis Obispo to Los Angeles

We left San Luis Obispo (SLO) with the idea of riding along the coast via CA1. We should have looked at the map more carefully than we did. It doesn’t run along the coast for very long south of SLO until near Santa Barbara. We stuck it out for a bit. Since we couldn’t see anything, we hopped on 101 and flew down to Santa Barbara (SB).

My wife had visited SB a few years ago, but it was my first visit. It was as pretty as she had described with palm trees and the Spanish inspired architecture.

We stopped for a very tasty lunch, and then spent entirely too much money at the bakery. They packed it all into a white box. After a little bit of shuffling, we managed to fit it into the top case.

After lunch, we wanted to see the ocean we’d been missing, so we went the beach to relax.

We spent a couple hours just watching the world go by. We were sitting in the shade as the sand was a bit warm.

My wife was sporting the latest in beach fashion:

A bunch of motorcycle cops flew by escorting some runners. Looked like a fun job.

Even the squirrels wanted to visit the beach

Then we hopped on 101 and headed towards LA. I was hoping to skip LA and stay on CA1 and hug the coast to avoid the awful traffic mess that is LA. We have some old friends we haven’t seen in a while, and they made some time for us to come visit. About 50 miles out the mess started. It was also getting quite warm ~ 90F.

I was under the impression my SV was too fat to lane split with the side cases, but after getting passed by several other motorcycles splitting I couldn’t take it anymore. For the uninitiated, lane-splitting is where a motorcycle shares the lane with the car. Typically, the cycle rides along the dotted line between cars. It is silly you can split everywhere else in the world and California, but not the rest of the US. It is safer for bikes and easier on traffic flow.

I started splitting too. Wow! They have to make it legal in the rest of the country. Whenever the traffic went below 30mph, I hopped into the middle and crept past. Most of the cars moved over to give us more room. Very nice. A couple went the other way and tried to block. Silly cars. They were easy to pass the proper way, and then back to splitting. One of the things I really dislike is traffic and splitting made it much more tolerable. I’d almost consider moving to CA just for that perk.

We had a nice dinner with our friends in Pasadena. They have busy crosswalks there! Just look at all the ways you can cross with this one.

 

 

PS: for those watching the SPOT, you know I’m already in Colorado  

 

Day 40 Full Flickr Album

 

Today’s Route:

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