After a breakfast of leftovers, (I was told to make myself at home and at home I eat leftovers often) Mrs. McDermut joined me for a bit, in between her miriad phone calls. She is a very busy woman, but still made time to force some dried blueberries on me (well she didn't have to force too hard) and wish me on my way. After careening down the hill and scaring an morning motorist I was back on the road for a nice, short leisurely ride to Ventura, my last coastal town before I climbed up the hills in to the beating heart of LA.
And that is pretty much all there is to tell. I didn't have any problems, the ride was quick and easy, the only hard part was climbing the last little hill to my hosts' place. Now this is the interesting part. My host, a couch surfer named Joy, is the mother of two and just recently migrated her family onto to terre ferma. A week prior to my visit, she was living with her teenage son and daughter on a sailing boat in the harbor. She is an avid sailor, rides horses, and currently has seen pretty reasonable success in her online business. She is an RN and (here is the part that I really want to try now) was recently a crew member on a replica of a 16th century galleon! Apparently, San Diego has a tall ship festival every year. Joy wanted to take her kids to it as well as a few of their friends, so with her small gaggle of adolescents, they begin touring around these giant wooden vessels. Being the avid sailor and skipper that she is, she began asking lots of questions from the crew. So detailed and relentless were her questions about the fine points of rigging and sailing a ship of this size that eventually she was speaking with a captain of one of the three mast giants. By the time the conversation had concluded, the dialog had turned more into an interview and the captain offered her a position with the crew for the trip from San Diego to New Zealand! As she was accepting the offer, she suddenly realized that she was supposed to be chaperoning the kids, then she further realized (now brought out of her dream, almost come true) to the fact that she could not take her kids on this three month voyage.
So in a matter of days, she put her work on hold, arranged for the father of her kids to take them, and then headed of into the pacific on a relic of the Armada! What an awesome story, she was even paid enough to afford the ticket back to the US after arriving. She said that sometimes they will even take green horns like me to be a night watchman, basically sit up all night and make sure we don't hit anything. This has me extremely enticed. She even offered to borrow a boat (she sold hers when she became a terrestrial once again) and take me sailing for a day. If I had more time I certainly would have, however the offer still stands and so I just might take a crack at this sailing thing next summer and see if I have sea legs or not. If I do, then there is also a shorter voyage that usually takes on rookies from Baja California up to San Diego. I haven't investigated this for myself, but Joy seemed to be well versed on the sailing world.
So after lots and lots of conversation, we went to an Irish pub nearby, had dinner and beer, then called it a night. I had a long day of hill climbing ahead of me and I needed some sleep.
The next morning Joy was happy to whip me up an awesome breakfast, including some chocolate covered raspberries that she had made herself the day before. Then, I cleaned up my sleeping area, packed my stuff and with a hug from Joy I was out the door and on my way.
The next 11 hours were miserable. From sea level, it was a long slow gradual climb that took me up 1200+ feet to the pass. When I was going to Santa Cruz, I am pretty sure I climbed just as much, but is was a shorter distance and so I got off and pulled a lot more. This time, it wasn't quite steep enough to justify getting off and pulling so I kept plugging away at it until I was right at the foot of the pass. I pulled the trike the next three miles or so up the last 500 feet. I was too pooped to care that it was only 500 feet. It seemed like it was a lot more. Once at the top, I selected a nice stout branch for my ad-hock breaking system and began my very short, fast decent. This is the worst part. I spent nearly 10 hours climbing up the pass, and my decent was just over 30 minutes. There was a highlight though, all along this route were lots and lots of fruit stands and so I stopped in at one for lunch and feasted on fresh cherries, blueberries, and raspberries. I'm pretty sure I ate five pounds of fruit.
So after my quick decent, which turned out to be a good thing because all the fruit for lunch was catching up with me and I need to find a toilet, I found the residence of Mr. John Micheal McGuire Papp and his roommate (who was also his roommate in college coincedently) Mr. Grant "The Gentle Ginger Giant" Walthall. I was greeted with smiles, handshakes and most importantly, beer! These two young IT specialists were gifted with a brand new kegorator! So we settled into some delicious beer, I found the toilet and shower, then more beer. We caught up on all that had been happening in our respective lives and dined on delicious oven pizza. When that wasn't enough, we swilled more beer and ordered Domino's! How I miss college.
The rest of the night, was like so many other college Friday nights and I wound up on the floor.
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