Last night as just us

August 30, 2013

Santa Clarita, CA to Santa Paula, CA

Second to last day of riding!! It's still hard to believe that the trip is ending, but it quickly is. Today was a really short day, just 34 miles, so we took our time leaving Santa Clarita by getting Starbucks. A very typical ME2SB13 thing to do if you couldn't tell. The ride itself wasn't very eventful--we were on the same highway for most of the ride. There was quite a bit of debris in the shoulder that we were looking out for. Abby did a wonderful job of pointing out all of it and having fun at the same time. The scenery was again amazing with rolling mountains and green farm fields at their foothills. 

At lunch we visited a few thrift shops. At one we found this amazing pedicab!  The shop owners let us take it for a spin and I hopped in the back! It also has a CD player with subwoofers on the back, but they didn't have the right batteries to use it. 

It was still an amazing ride regardless. Jeff and Emily took it for a spin after Natalie and I were finished. We sure were a sight. 

After lunch we quickly made it to Santa Paula. My parents flew in to LAX from Philadelphia this morning and so they swung by the church we were staying at on their way up to Santa Barbara. It was crazy to see them knowing they had been on the easy coast that morning and it had taken me all summer to make it here on my bike. Tonight my chore group gave our first and only dinner presentation about Bike & Build to our hosts. Since we hadn't done one all summer, we had the lucky privilege of doing this one even though it wasn't our job. Afterwards, our leaders gave us all personalized supersize awards for the summer in small shimmery notebooks that we can all sign like yearbooks. I got "Best Hitchhiker" to commemorate the time I got Chris a ride in Oklahoma when he got a flat we couldn't fix. We spent the rest of the night writing in each others notebooks and sitting outside by the bonfire. It was a really great way to being some closure to our trip with each other as we all prepare to go desperate ways really soon.