Wine Country!

So...we're sitting here at Ross' Aunt Susie and Uncle Albert's house in Sonoma, Ca. Wine country is beautiful!

Here is a recap of the past 2 days:
Our flight left Boston at 6AM yesterday. The 6.5 hour flight was long, but Ross and Katherine managed to sleep 9/10 of the way to SF (Drew and Tony didn't sleep a wink). After a short ride on the Bart and a cab ride, we arrived at City Cycles, where we had shipped our bikes the week earlier. There were still a few adjustments to be made on the bikes, and we had to transfer all of our luggage into our panniers to carry on the bikes. At this point, we were also famished. We were told to visit "Marina Subs" on Steiner street across from the bike shop while last minute adjustments were made to our bikes. Little did we know that this famous sub shop was staffed by one man making sandwiches, and one man watching him make sandwiches. Getting lunch therefore took much longer than we had anticipated. That being said, we can say that the enormous turkey and avacado subs were worth the wait. They were especially worth the wait at 6pm, when we were still on the road and hadn't eaten since lunch.

Here we are, about to depart from City Cycles:


At the bike shop, Alissa Maglaty, a SF local (and hero) met us to lead us out of the city. She led us over the beautiful golden gate bridge and through the suburbs primarily on bike paths and back roads, for which we were very grateful. Unfortunately, we didn't get on the road until almost 2:30 after all was said and done at the bike shop, so didn't have much time to enjoy the scenery. Our original plan was to stay with Ross's aunt and uncle in Sonoma, but we soon realized that this was not going to be possible because we had gotten such a late start. After climbing White's hill, which felt suspiciously like a mountain, we decided that it would be better for us to veer off course and find a place to camp than attempt to make it to Sonoma. It was a wise choice. We ended up staying at the Samuel P. Taylor state park, a redwood forest outside of Lagunitas, Ca. We wouldn't have been able to make it without Alissa's superb navigation skills...so thank you Alissa!

Before we headed to our campsite, we went into the Lagunitas General store to buy groceries, and ran into Robert and Linda, two of the nicest people we could have imagined meeting on a bike trip such as ours. They immediately took interest in our cause, and offered to carry our groceries to our campsite for us. They also said they would return with firewood for us to make a campfire, and some eggs from their chickens. We met them at our campsite about 30 minutes later, and Robert built us a barn burner of a campfire for the evening, and left us some yummy eggs that we enjoyed this morning for breakfast. Thank you Robert and Linda!!

Here is robert, making us a fire!

We got on the road at about 8:30 this morning because we all had some minor adjustments to make to our bikes after our first day of riding. Ross' pannier's have decided that they don't much like to stay on the back of his bike, so we had to make quite a few stops early on to strap them back on. I think we finally managed a system with zip ties that should hold for some time (as long as the roads don't get too bumpy!) Aside from these minor mishaps this morning, we have had a fairly uneventful day. There were a few large climbs, but we were always rewarded with some great downhills. Tony clocked in at a max speed of 39MPH. We're going to try valiantly to beat Russ's record of 50mph from last year.

We got our first flat tire today...Tony fixed it in record time.

We all decided that the highlight of the ride was the cherry stand we came across about 10 miles outside of sonoma. Katherine had never eaten a white cherry, and was amazed how sweet they tasted even though they looked so unripe. They also provided a great 'kick' for the last bit of the ride. The four of us then proceeded to have a discussion about why fructose is such a great source of energy (because it doesn't require transporters to get into cells). We may be on a cross country bike ride, but we are all medical students at heart.

This is what drew us towards the delicious cherries:


So, here we sit now in beautiful 80 degree sun around the pool eating burgers with Albert and Susie. Thanks for lunch! We are slowly regaining energy, and will ride about 10-15 miles tonight to Napa, where we will camp. Tomorrow, we will head towards Davis and will encounter Cardiac Hill. We'll let you know how that goes.


ps: Drew is our navigation expert. He loves his maps!