04.11.08
Pacifica – Santa Cruz
108,8km, total 3945,3 km
Around 10am I left the motel – the sun was shining again!!! After a few miles the part of HWY 1 which is called Devil‘ s Slide began. It‘ s a narrow, busy road which has a very small or no shoulder at all. I read about it and other cyclist described it as very scary – that‘ s why I really wasn‘ t looking forward to getting there. Actually it wasn‘ t that bad when I cycled there because the traffic wasn‘ t too heavy. Except for a few cars they were giving me a lot of room and waited ‚till they could pass me safely. There‘ s some construction going on because a tunnel is being build.
After the climb it was an easy ride into Half Moon Bay where I had lunch at Mc Donald‘ s. I stayed there for almost an hour ‚cause I had a great conversation with th guy who was sitting next to me. There was a nice tailwind which helped me a lot. There were some climbs but overall it was an easy and beautiful ride to Santa Cruise.
At the City Line I called Margaret, the cyclist I met 2 weeks earlier in Northern California. She offered me to crash on her couch what I was very happy about. She gave me directions to her appartment. Unfortunately it‘ s starting to get dark very early now, it was dark when I got there at 5:45pm. It was really good to see her again. She cycled from Portland, Oregon, to Santa Cruz where she‘ s going to school. After taking a hot shower we had dinner at a small taqueria – the burrito was really good. Later we cycled across town to visit her friends at the place she lived before. At that time we got to know that Obama would be the next president of the US!!! It was very interesting to see the more than happy reactions of Margaret and her friends. Everybody was shouting and yelling, they were hugging each other and making phone-calls to their families and friends! Then we cycled to the house where she‘ ll move in in a few weeks to watch Obamas speech on TV. Everybody was in a great mood and about 10 college-kids were glued to the TV – listening to the first speech of their new president. I was very happy to be right there at this moving historical moment!