February 11, 2019
Day 4 - Stuck in LA
The friends I was talking to in Tijuana suggested that it might be better to delay my arrival by a bit since the storm was ferocious over there also and still going on. He said it was so bad the winds knocked his car around the highway, I can only imagine on the bike. So I figured why not stay a bit longer in LA
While doing some bike errands, it started pissing down with rain again mid-ride and I had to take shelter in a McDonald's. I bought a coffee and started updating my Airbnb profile to kill time. During this period a weirdo saunted in and started bothering a young woman working on her computer nearby. He was over 70 years old and kept talking about his Vietnam experiences, and how he was so lonely. To her credit she was polite and listening to what he had to say, but it was obvious she was uncomfortable. This had to be dealt with by means of confronting or distracting the perpetrator and finding a way to get him out of there and leave the girl alone in peace. The opportunity came when he tried to use the restroom. Somebody was inside and he kept jiggling the door and saying to the girl, "I have a leaky faucet." I then butted in and said "Sir, the restroom is locked. It is for customers only, while you just walked in here without buying anything. It might be better if you used the restroom at the gas station across the street." He gave me a nasty look and walked out. The girl thanked me, then I walked out also and made sure the weirdo wasn't following me as I cycled off to do the rest of my errands.
One of the errands was to get a refund on my REI membership that was used last year to buy a backup folding bike in Vegas when the first one was stolen. But as I discovered, once an REI member, always an REI member. Good to know at least, and I could at least redeem some massive discounts which I used to buy more bike accessories. Later on I went on some bike rides to see if there may be casinos. My map showed several, but they were definitely not the style as in Nevada, as I quickly learned that different states have different gambling laws.
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That would surely have explained the town of Primm Nevada located just beyond the state line and seemingly in the middle of nowhere. It was a town full of nothing but casinos and hotels. Now I figured it out. The casinos here in California weren't worth the bother to find them unless somehow I could find the ones on reserve land. I wasn't enjoying LA much at all actually and decided shortly after to get on a bus to the Mexico border.
Today's ride: 55 km (34 miles)
Total: 425 km (264 miles)
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