San Diego

Well somewhere between my 3 hours of sleep on Monday night and the urine and feces filled elevators of the San Francisco subway I contracted some sort of virus.  Tuesday morning we left camp and rode about 20 miles to get on the subway, which took us to David's house in Berkeley.  We relaxed and spent the night there and I made reservations for a train that would take me to San Diego.  California 1, at least at this section of Cali and in conjunction with this time of year, proved to be somewhat of an expert level trail.  My brother, who had planned to ride all the way to San Diego with me, is only 3 months into his recovery from a broken leg.  He didn't know how it was going to hold up, but it started to hurt him a bit.  The bike he was using was also in need of a serious rebuild as it was the one that he took cross country a few years ago.  That bike was not ideal for serious hills.  After 12 hours of train and bus rides in which I felt woozy and had chills I arrived in San Diego.  I checked into the nearest motel and passed right out.  This morning I'm feeling better, but I still need at least one more night to recover before setting off east.  Luckily, my brother hooked me up with one of his friends who happens to live about half a mile from where my route begins and he will be putting me up tonight.  Highlight of the miserable train ride yesterday was when a random guy saw me rolling my bike down the isle of the Amtrak.  I guess he saw my gigantic panniers (bike bags) and this led him to stop me and chat me up for a few minutes.  He asked how far I was riding, so I chuckled a bit and said "Florida".  He proceeded to tell me just how awesome he thought this venture was, and that he wished he had done such a trip in his youth.  That was the end of the conversation, but when I went to grab my bike from the rack before leaving the train I found a business card on it with a little note on the back.