Day one (Nathan)

Last night's conversation:

 

Me: "We should get up early, say 6 a.m. or so. It's going to take us forever to unload the bikes and get going,"

Brett: "No way. 6:30 at the earliest. I'm lazy, and I need my beauty sleep."

Me: "6:15"

Brett: "Ok, if I must."

 

Fast-forward to this morning, 5 a.m.

 

Brett: "I'm awake. Let's go."

Me: "How about another hour."

Brett: "No."

Me: "15 minutes?"

Brett: Doesn't respond. Instead, gets up and starts to move around. Which, given that we were sleeping in the back of a 16-foot cargo van (in the name of saving money and ensuring adventure), meant that I had to be up as well.

 

Which, it turned out, was for the best. It did take us forever to get going. We managed to unload the bikes smoothly -- no tumbles this time, and we were smart enough to pull up to a ramp so that the angle wasn't as steep -- but repacking and refuelling took a while. We hit the road at 7 a.m. We knew where to go largely because, as we discovered shortly after pulling in to the Penske rental centre, we were parked a good 10 metres from it. We probably would have had a more restful sleep had we brought our sleeping bags into the highway centre median. Which is to say, every time a transport truck passed, it felt like it drove over our heads. A restful night it was not.

 

But it did get us up early, and that ended up being a virtue. Big Sur was as spectacular as it was billed: the bright blue ocean surging up and down, the great white rollers crashing into shore, the steep cliffs and perilously sharp corners, the rising sun glaring in the rear view mirror, the impossibly green slopes, the beaches jammed with sea lions, the sign that warned -- make that advertised -- 74 full miles of winding road ahead. It was an amazing day. By the time we pulled in to San Diego at 7 p.m. -- that's 12 hours on the road if you're counting -- we had experienced California's tasty Mexican food, its remarkably expansive fields, the interstate nightmare that is Los Angeles and the shoreline magic that is the Pacific Coast Highway. As we pulled in to our destination in San Diego, our odometer clicked just over 500 miles. That's over 800 kilometres, most of it not on freeway.

 

It was a big day. Tomorrow, Baja California. We're planning to leave early. But Brett has a proper bed tonight, so who knows when we'll hit the road. Either way, I don't doubt it will be fun.