Day 41, 9/24/08

We had another great day today. Well, all but for a couple hours towards the end of our day. After a hot breakfast, which was included in the price of our hotel room, we got rolling around 11:00 am. The weather was incredibly nice. Our route was on Pacific Coast Highway right along the coast. Riding through Malibu, we hit some tough rollers. We broke for lunch of fish tacos at a seafood grill in Malibu.

Back on the road, we rode through Santa Monica on bike paths on the beach. Then we had fun riding through Venice beach. It was around 4:30 pm when we left the boardwalk south of Venice. I followed the route sheet which directed us to turn onto a street but I didn't notice that the map depicted that we should be on a bike path which would have taken us around Marina Del Rey. Anyway, this caused us to be off route by a long way, winding up in Culver City. Recovering from my mistake, we headed south on Sepulveda towards Manhattan Beach.

At LAX, Supulveda goes into a tunnel under some runways. As we approached the tunnel, it didn't seem like it was that cycling friendly, but neither did bailing onto Century Blvd. So I decided we'd keep going and get through the tunnel as quick as we could. Big mistake. As soon as we were in the tunnel we hit a very large drainage grate in the road with holes large enough to swallow cats and dogs. Sam said when he saw me hit the grate, stuff went flying off my bike in different directions and he braked and hoped for the best. The force of impact stopped us dead in our tracks and luckily were not thrown into the traffic. Thankfully, the car behind us was following at a safe distance and was able to stop in time. Immediately after we crashed into the grates, we got off our bikes and pulled them to safety onto the walking path. Shaken, we took a few moments to get a grip on what just happened. I lost a water bottle and rear flashing light. All 4 of my panniers had their bottom hook come undone from the impact. The angle of my seat had been forced down also.

We walked the rest of the way through the tunnel with 4 lanes of traffic whizzing by. Clearly not a good place for cyclists. Out the other side we took stock of the damage to our bikes. Both of our rear wheels had their rims dented. Sam's was worse. His rim was dented bad enough that we had to release the brake calipers in order for it to be rideable. His rear derailer also suffered damage. After we adjusted what we could, we got off Sepulveda in El Segundo and made it back to the bike path and the main route.

A few miles later we got a room at the Sea Sprite, a motel right on the strand in Hermosa Beach. We determine that both bikes will make it the rest of the way without requiring any further repairs. We'll keep our fingers crossed. We are grateful, as things could have been so much worse. After we got settled, we walked out to the boardwalk to catch the last few minutes of the sunset. When we left the room, I slid the glass door shut. Sam was not aware of this important fact when he headed back into our room at full stride. Yep, crashed right into the glass door. The impact raised a nice knot on his forehead. Like I pointed out at the beginning of this post, the last couple hours of our day today were not that great.

Dinner was pizza, which was very good. We also tried the deep fried macaroni as an appetizer. It was incredible. Mileage today was 68 mile, including the 3-4 miles off route.