Day 1

July 23, 2003.

 

Getting out of Los Angeles

 

 

Finally, the day of departure came. I was really excited and could hardly sleep last night. Instead of being ready to take off in the morning, I only started to put the bags together by 9 am.

This was not exactly my choice – just the consequences of certain circumstances.

 

Anyhow, I started by attaching the bags to the racks for the first time. The rear bags, as can be seen on later pictures, are not exactly cycling panniers – they are just regular school backpacks.

They did attach nicely, and after cutting off few extra millimeters of front rack bolts, I installed the front panniers, which are also originally meant for mounting on the rear and are called round town grocery panniers. I got them at REI, when they were on sale for 30 $, being big and easy to put in and take the things out of. Originally they came with no top, so I had to sew some black material and a zipper to cover the contents from dust, sun and maybe some rain. J

 

When I first loaded the bicycle and tried to make a circle around the parking lot, I discovered that it was completely out of balance and extremely unstable.

 

Right away I had to leave the big and warm sleeping bag, nice and warm jacket, extra blankets and a number of other nice items.

 

Finally, the bike was loaded and I was able to take off.

 

I cycled on Freemont Blvd going towards Pasadena. The sun was shining as it suppose to shine in the middle of summer in Southern California.

 

In about a mile from the departure place, I created a bad, hazardous situation on one of the intersections. When I was approaching the red light, green turned to yellow and instead of stopping, I tried to manage to get across. Since this was a large intersection with several lanes in each direction, and I was going pretty slowly, the light turned red when I was still in the middle of it.

Cars on the right started moving and by the time the driver lined up against me, I had to jump off the bike in about a meter from already fast moving car.

The driver, of course didn’t expect me to be there, but at the same time she was not looking anywhere except what was right in front of her. This is also not a very good practice.

 

All this happened in an instant and I’ve got a big doze of adrenaline injected in my blood stream. Not a very nice start, eh? I stopped at the curb past the intersection and promised myself to be much more careful in the future. This was a very embarrassing in front of all the drivers on the intersection, but also a police vehicle that witnessed the entire maneuver.

 

Continuing further, I started to notice increasing knock from the bottom bracket and since the bicycle shop was few miles ahead, I decided to stop and see what’s wrong.

When I got to the shop, the owner tightened up the nut on the bottom bracket and after a circle around the block, I made sure the knock went away.

I was buying most of the parts from this store and so the guy knew me and heard about the trip. When he picked up the bike, he asked if I was carrying a refrigerator. The bike was indeed pretty heavy.

 

I cycled north on Fair Oaks Avenue to Pasadena and turned right on historic Route 66. This was a familiar part of the road, with busy streets and many tourists wandering around gift shops.

In about an hour I cycled to Duarte – about 12 miles East of Pasadena. There I headed to Wal-Mart and bought two spare tubes and a tire. I also bought a pack of zip-lock bags and a belt bag, to always have the valuables with me.

 

Then I stopped at the grocery store and got some oranges, bread, candies and quart of milk, which I drank with a burger at a near by Fast Food restaurant.

 

By this time it was nearly 3 o’clock. I wanted to get out of town before it gets dark and started cycling north west towards the Angeles Forest Highway that goes across San Gabriel Mountain Range and starts somewhere north of Pasadena.

 

Several hours I was cycling through quite streets of Monrovia, Santa Anita, Arcadia and other nice foothill communities. One time I got close to the mountain but the road came to a dead end, and my map from Mc Nally atlas wasn’t detailed enough to guide me through the streets. After asking for directions few times, I came to a road that was suppose to connect with Angeles Forest Highway.

 

The road extremely steep and for nearly an hour I was pushing the bike uphill. When it already got dark, I was still in a residential neighborhood. I also had a feeling that this was not the right road.

After asking for direction again, it indeed turned out that this was not the best way to the highway I needed.

 

Few miles ago, I remember passing the entrance to some kind of park, so I decided to roll down the hill and check it out, but I missed it and was unable to stop as there was a car following me and the road was too narrow. Since it was still kind of early, and there probably were some people in the park, I hanged around the Chevron Gas station a little further down the road.

 

When it was a better time, I entered the park and walked further down the trail. Unfortunately there I saw a sigh prohibiting overnight camping, but as I had no other reasonable option, I decided to do it anyway.

Hey, after all, I am not leaving trash and not causing any harm to the park.

 

One car passed down the trail, possibly a ranger, so I set behind the bushes and when it was gone, went further down the trail. There I found a perfect camping spot with tables and even a tap with running water.

 

I got out a tent a discovered that it still had a heavy cardboard insert that I was hauling all day long. First time setting up the tent in the dark, isn’t the best practice, but since it is similar to other tents I was familiar with before, the process took no more than 10 minutes.

 

I washed off at the tap and got into the tent. Not much progress today, but with the sun and hills, I was pretty tired. Under the beautiful melody of night birds and crickets, I soon feel asleep.

 

 

 

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