November 27, 2010
After thoughts and tweaking a nearly perfect adventure!
We have been home since mid September and yet we can not get our trip out of our head. We had such a wonderful time....we are ready to head out again anytime. There are just a couple of things holding us back....the cats for one and winter rains. We do have our next adventure planning in process. We are going to ride from Santa Barbara to San Diego and the border BUT we are not going through LA we are going through Joshua Tree. We hope to do this next Sept/Oct 2011. So we have time to plan. We hope Catherine that we traveled with us this trip will want to go with us and my sister Catherine is hoping to have her new Surly LTH this week. Turns out she has always wanted to tour. She has a year to train and we are so excited she is going to be a part of our Surly Gang.We did take one more short trip a few weeks ago during our spell of beautiful weather. We rode down to Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park camped and rode home. What a great training ride and right out our front door! 75 mile round trip on some of the best and most scenic coast in the country. On our trip down the cost we were not completely satisfied with our tent. yes it was very light however it was also very small. We could not sit up or really even dress in it and we are very short. During the trip it did break/tear at one of the corners where a peg goes so we were not completely happy with the quality either. We decided to return it and get a bigger tent. We really liked the Nemo Losi that our travel mates LaShelle and Jimmy had. We decided to go with the three man because it had so much more room than the two man and for less than a pound more. We believe we will camp more and hotel less with this tent. Had we had bad weather there is no way we could have spent hours in our little ultralight. We did have one bad mosquito day and it was just awful while we looked over at LaShelle and Jimmy they had room to sit up or be lying down at the same time. Jack feels it is really worth the added weight. We purchased the Nemo Losi 3man and tested it on our Big Sur ride.We also decided to get the Therm-a-rest chair kit and tested these on the Big Sur overnight -they worked great. Because it is dark so early now we were in the tent by 6pm and with the chair we could both sit up and read for a log while before needing to lie down. This is a very big plus. We can now ride out any unforeseen event in comfort. Purchasing the larger tent we decided to get the Ortleib Roller Rack Pack. We both feel it will give us just that little more space we need for extended touring(which we fully intend to do). We decided on yellow as our black panniers needed to be a little more visible. http://www.therandonneeshop.com/media/262/rackpack-yellow.jpgI am encouraging Jack NOT to load his up to much. I was not very happy with my handlebar bag and I upgraded that also. I decided on the Detour Cruiser -was not that keen on the Ortleib. Like the multiple compartments and the map case. I am very happy with it. Jack tells folks that after a tour like we just completed you either love them or hate them. We LOVED it and fully intend to do many more. What a wonderful way to see all the places you want to visit. Until next time.......Jack and Janet
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