Leucadia

yesterdaty peter, dale and i biked from hollywood to dana point. i thought would be about 70 miles, but it ended up being 90 miles. by the end of the day i wasn't in the best mood either because we haven't been sleeping that much. anyways, we got to the campground and the guy at the gate told us that there wasn't room for all of us at the hike and bike. i was like, "look, it's totally dark, and we've just biked 90 miles. what do you suggest that we do?" and he was like, "I don't know but you can't stay here." so peter and dale stayed in the hike and bike, and i ended up just putting my tent up on the beach. It was not the best day.
But then today, Peter and I had am amazing, awesome day. we only had to go 30 miles from dana point to encinitas, but we got totally side tracked and didn't even make it to encinitas. right now we're in Leucadia because this really awesome guy Steve saw us biking along and invited us in for dinner.

This is a picture of him and his wife Brenda. They made us a great dinner of pasta and we had ice cream for dessert. it was my third ice cream of the day. Steve showed us all this cool stuff on google earth, was full of advice about biking south of here, and even burned a cd of my pictures and is going to mail it to my parents. so awesome. thank you Steve and Brenda.
So then earlier today, peter and i were talking about stuff we might want to take down to mexico with us. Peter still has these really crappy sit ultegra shifters on his bike, and he wanted to change them over to friction. the first shop we tried was too busy, but then at the next shop, they guy was like, "well, i'm too busy, but i'll give you the stuff, and you can do it. i'll help you if you need it." he was super. super awesome! Here is a picture of him (chuck) and his friend Chris.

Peter kept being like, "this is too great a challenge!" but after three hours, he had totally switched out the sit ultegra shifters to the bar end friction shifters. It was a little insane though because peter and i pretty much eat constantly. and that was three hours without eating, so we felt totally nuts by the end of it. Chuck recommended this place next door called Angelo's that had $3 veggie burgers, and we totally scarfed those down. while we were eating, i noticed that for only $5.60 you could get 2 eggs, 2 pancakes, 2 ham, 2 bacon, hashbrowns, and toast. we almost camped behind angelo's, but we figured we should keep riding. Oh, Chuck wanted me to mention that he felt very validated that we'd both chosen to switch from sti to friction shifters. he is a big fan of friction shifters because they never need to be adjusted. ok, hope everyone is good. Probably in like 2 days i'll be in mexico!
-jessie

hollywood hollywood!

you know what is really cool about l.a.? there is a giant building called the oppenheimer tower. way to represent oppenheimers!
you know what's not so cool about l.a.? it's really huge. i figured it wouldn't be a big deal to go from malibu into l.a. to meet up with allie, but it ended up taking us forever to get through town. appearently l.a. is 468 square miles. i think s.f. is only around 50. it felt totally insane to be biking through the giant metropolis on our loaded touring bikes. anyways, now we're hanging out with allie and it's really awesome. this is a picture of allie and i on her roof.

allie also took me in when i was on the appalachian trail. she says i smell a lot better on this trip. being able to take showers all the time is really rad. love,
-jessie

Malibu

So, when i said that i biked really fast to get back to the bay area, what really happened, was that i biked really long days, but at a really slow pace. At one point i did consecutive 100 mile days. It was cool because I had a whole week off to hang out with friends and family, but what was definitely not very cool, is that i got some really bad sores on my butt. my mom bought me this stuff called chamois butt'r (ha ha.. what a clever play on words.) and now i have to put it on my butt every day. I though my butt would have healed during that week off, but it didn't. now Peter and i ride along and i have to be all like, "ok Peter, time for me to put more lotion on my butt). i think from here on out i'm going to call this problem "the situation". right now "the situation" is not good.
A couple of days ago Peter and I met up with this guy Dale who i biked with in alaska and canada, but haven't seen for a long time.

I figured we should celebrate Dales return, and i purchased some malt liquor beverages. I chose Old English because peters from England and i thought the word "English" in the name might make him feel more at home. i think the subtle "malt" complexities of the old English really paired nicely with the potatoes and canned beans we cooked up that night for dinner. i might have gotten a little bit distracted by the beer, and forgot to eat much dinner. then there were these three surfer girls who were camped next to us, and they invited us over to hang out at their fire and drink tequila. i'm not sure what happened, but i some how got incredibly drunk, passed out, and then woke up a couple hours later at 4:00am unable to fall back asleep. when the surfer girls saw me the next morning, they were all, "wow, you don't look very good, do you need some aleve? Emerg'enC?" it was ugly. i'm sticking to beer from here on out.
Tonight we're in Malibu and this is where we're staying.

Bobbie's friend Barbara is putting us up, and she took us to see this free dance performance in downtown l.a. it was this modern dance troupe from Beijing. they were so, so amazing. i'm really glad we got to see such a cool show. thank you Barbara for putting us up and feeding us and taking us out for a night on the town. Tomorrow i'm going to hang out with Allie.
-jessie

in cambria

i´m on a spanish computer with a really crappy key pad, and also it´s the library so i can´t upload photos.
being home was fun, but also made me feel totally insane because i was trying to see so many different people and coordinate meeting up with the other bike riders and what not. but over all it was good. it was really nice to spend time with my family and friends and what not.
right now i´m in cambria, which is south of big sur. it´s been gorgeous riding, with nice clifs along the coast. the fog has been really intense and totally controls the climate. sometimes the fog wins and it´s pretty cold, but then the sun will burn it off and it will get hot. erik´s girlfriend is here so he´s riding by himself so he can spend some more time with her. so right now i´ve been hanging out mostly with peter. it´s pretty fun hanging out with him. today we saw all these elephant seals, and peter got really excited about them. it was just me and him hanging out on this cliff over looking the beach, and there were probably almost 100 elephant seals down there. the giant males kept fighting with each other and then making all these snorting noises, and peter was like totally cheering for them and taking a zillion pictures as they bit each other in the neck and tried to drown each other. then we road a little further, and we saw a cow pasture that had a heard of zebras in it. i´m not kidding. it was totally insane.
peter is still speaking funny british english. today he was yelling at me about something called ¨strimming¨, which i eventually figured out meant weed wacking. then he wouldn´t believe me that we called it weed wacking and i had to ask this guy in the super market to convince him.
anyways.... we´ll probably take a zero day in l.a. and then head to san diego. hope everyone is good. love,
-Jessie

I'm back at my parents house in palo alto. I totally left the group and biked really fast to get here. then i called my parents on my cell phone from the front yard, and my dad was like, "where are you?" and i told them to come to the front yard. and there i was waiting with the camera. i think maybe they look more shocked then happy, but really they're like pretty happy to see me.

this morning i was riding along and i met this guy cameron who was also on a bike, and we were talking and stuff, and he was all, "that's an annoying noise, i used to be a bike mechanic and could probalby fix it." he lived in fairfax, and we went back to his house, and he took apart my bike and like put this crazy blue/green grease that was designed for boats, and he totally fixed this horrible, terrible noise i've been biking with since fairbanks. i had one guy in the yukon try and fix the noise, and he was kinda condiscending and like told me that nothing was wrong with the bike, and that i was "chasing red hearings" so i never tried to get it fixed again. anyways, thanks so much to cameron the world's most awesome bike mechanic. This is a picture of cameron at his house. cameron if you read my blog, send me an email with your address, i want to mail you like a thank you something. here's my email address jessieoppi@yahoo.com.

since i left the group and started biking on my own, people have been super nice to me. also, i think most people think it's totally insane to be a single, woman bike tourist. the other night i was in this camground and was talking to this guy, and he said he'd come bring me coffee in the morning and then like he showed up while i was still in my tent with this huge mug of hot coffee, and a little debbie snack, and a banana. it was pretty awesome.

hey, my mom just walked in and told me that this was the "most shocked" she's ever been. that's cool.

-jessie

i'm in bandon oregon. soon we'll be in california. i'm getting really, really tired. i think we need to take a rest day. other than that things are going good. i talked to my mom on the phone, and she told me that erik can't bear mace people cuz it's considered asult, and he could go to jail. so now we're trying to think of new things for him to bear mace. this morning i was awoken by really loud crows, i think maybe if this happens again erik could bear mace them. i can't upload photos right now.
it's funny thinking about coming home and seeing everyone. i think we'll be back around the 17th.
chris and lauren are checking in to see where we are. i really hope they can catch up. i talked to them yesterday and they're still a little bit behind us. there are a lot of cyclists now, and we keep meeting people. i'm not that into the road though. it's highway 101 and it goes right along the coast, but it's super busy. erik calls it monoxide highway. ok, hope everyone is good. love,
-jessie

So we cycled through washington and now we're in astoria, oregon. We took a ferry from victoria to port angeles, and then it was night time, and we found this patch of grass in a city park to camp on. it looked so nice. but then at 3:00am these sprinklers came on, and like totally went right through the vent in the side of my tent and started soaking me. i was like swearing and running around and trying to move my tent, and i fell into a puddle of mud and lawn clippings, and i was so mad. anyways, the next morning lance armstrong was like, "that was some storm, huh?" also tomorrow is lance's birthday and he's going to be 72 i think.
i'm at the library and i can't put pictures up, which sucks.
We biked through the olympic peninsula. eveyone said it would be really cool, but it didn't seem that great to me. there was like a rain forest though, so that was cool i guess. also, now there are racoons. one went through my pannier and ate all this stuff. last night Erik, Peter and i slept at this rest area near the bridge into astoria. i think my standards of living are going down. we weren't supposed to camp there, and like we were right by the highway, and there was this really big light on us, and like all these semi-trucks and what not. Peter's from England and i guess they call them "lories" over there, and so we're all, "look, you gotta call them semi-s now." but then yesterday he refered to one as a samuri truck. ha ha. I tried fixing my bike myself, which didn't work, but i got a ton of grease on my hands. then i was trying to clean lettuce in the bathroom sink in the rest area and like all these ladies were tyring to wash there hands there and i was looking at my black greasy fingers and thinking, "is this even making the lettuce cleaner?" also last night we put all our food in the bathroom so the racoons didn't get to it.
anyways, not too much else to report. lauren and chris are behind us now cuz they went rock climbing with kernby. but maybe we'll see them again closer to san francisco. i miss them.
also, thanks to kernby for putting us up in his house in vancouver. that was like the most awesome thing ever.
-jessie