A portion of the San Luis Rey River trail

I'll make this quick - I'm tired and want to go to bed!

There's a nice trail that starts near the Guajome Regional Park which is near the Vista/Oceanside border on N. Santa Fe Avenue. It's just like the ATT trail in North Carolina, but with lots of underpasses instead of crossings over neighborhood streets. We started our ride after dinner, so I knew we didn't have much time and wouldn't be able to ride the whole thing. And once we got started, about 3 miles into the ride, Eliza began to get cold and all I had was a lightweight sweater for her that I'd packed into the Weehoo saddlebags. I put it on her, but she was still too chilly to continue, so that decided my turn-around point!

The most interesting thing we saw on our ride today was a partially burned out house with a completely charred wooden playset in its backyard! The house backed up to the trail, and the fence was chain link, so we could completely see everything. Eliza wanted me to stop so she could stare at it. She looked like she was going to cry! She asked me if those people who lived there would get their playset fixed! I told her I didn't know, but most likely they would.

Here's our Strava summary of our ride. As you can see, this is a nice flat ride!

Riding to visit 2 fun parks with playgrounds

So we started this ride from home and I realized something today - no matter which way I leave for bike rides around our neighborhood, there's a big hill that must be conquered first. Either I climb up Lupine Hills, which is steeper and little bit shorter, or I climb up Sycamore, which is less steep but lasts longer. I have yet to explore what the roads are like if I travel north of where we live. But looking at the hills that surround seemingly ALL of Vista, and the fact that Vista means "view" in Spanish, and the only way to have a view is to be UP HIGH on a hill, umm, yeah, I'll let that speak for itself! Climb, climb, climb! I guess I will get back in shape quickly living here. I used to have to actively search for good hills to train on when we lived in North Carolina!

We rode first to go check out the park called South Buena Vista Park. It's located down in a valley down under S. Melrose Ave, so it's not that kind of park that you'd see just from driving past it. You turn onto Dawson Drive, and immediately, like 25 feet from the corner of Melrose, you turn into a driveway. There's a sign that points you down the hill with an arrow and the words "park" on it. That driveway does downhill quickly and dead ends into a parking lot. There's a cool gated playground with lots of fun things to climb, some great slides and a few swings. Outside of the fenced in playground is the off-leash dog park. So while playing on the play structure, we got to see quite a few dogs having fun running around.

Here's a picture of this playground. (It's not my picture. I just found this on Google. I sadly didn't take any pictures on my ride today)

After having fun at this park, we set off to ride to another park. Climbing UP that steep driveway to get back out to Dawson/Melrose was so physically challenging, I almost saw some stars! One pitch of this climb was a 20% grade! Okay, once I got my breath back and stopped seeing stars, we headed towards the next park - Sunset Park. This park is just past the city limits of Vista and is in San Marcos. It's located off of La Mirada Drive, which included another killer climb of the ride. Whew, all this climbing is killing me! Or maybe it's doing the exact opposite - getting me in shape! Sunset Park was nice and new and the play structure was interesting. I made a video of Eliza going down the slide at this park, but I haven't uploaded it to YouTube yet. Maybe later!

Here's a picture of the playground at Sunset Park. Again, this is not my picture. I nabbed it from doing a quick Google image search.

Here's our Strava summary of today's ride. As you can see, it had a TON of climbing! But it was a fun ride.

Here's to more fun bike rides in the future!

Our first beach ride

We're going to love living near the beach. I just know it. It's just so pretty out here. Rob already loves the beach because he grew up here. I, on the other hand, grew up in Northern California, so I would only see the beach occasionally, and it was at least an hour's drive away, so I'm not as a big of a "beach person" as Rob is. But from what I'm feeling every time I see the beach since moving here, I can't deny that I get kinda giddy and feel like a kid again. I just want to run towards the ocean and dive in head first!

Rob had a work try-out of sorts today at a local bike shop in Encinitas, so Eliza and I drove him into work and brought our bike and Weehoo. The bike shop was only a few blocks away from Moonlight Beach, which is a great area to start a beach bike ride. The Coast Highway 101 is a very popular cycling route, with the majority of the ride from Moonlight Beach to Del Mar Powerhouse having separate striped bike lanes.

Here's some pictures from our bike ride. Note the beautiful beach scenes in the background in some of these photos!

I have a lot of pictures from this ride. I guess you could say that I was pretty excited to ride in such a beautiful place! Eliza liked it a lot, too. She especially liked seeing the Coaster trains and Amtrak's that would pass by us every so often. In fact, I had to take a picture of one of the trains as it passed by us at the Del Mar Powerhouse area because she said she "wanted to show Daddy the picture of the Coaster train". So cute!

Since we've only been home less than a week, we still have most of our belongings packed away in boxes in the garage. This weekend we'll be getting a storage shed unit for some of our stuff. As you can see from the picture of me, I'm not wearing a jersey, because the only jersey I packed for myself for the move across country was my Chico State jersey. I wore it when we rode in Colorado last week, and I still haven't done all the laundry from our trip, so...cycling in a t-shirt was what I had to do today!

Here's the final 3 pictures from today's ride. This beach ride is so nice and I think I'll be doing it again sometime soon.

Here's our Strava summary. As you can see, there's very little climbing on this ride. Oh, and I feel that I should point out that I've been riding exclusively with 2.2 width mountain bike tires, so yeah, I could be a little faster if I put my 'cross tires on, but right now, it's not about how fast I am, it's about enjoying the ride. And I enjoy riding these tires.

After our ride, we walked down to the beach, found a shady spot to lay under, dug in the sand for a while, and dipped our feet in to cool off. Next time we do this ride, I think I'll have to pack our swimsuits and towels, too!

We're here! Back home in California

We left Grand Junction on May 29 and drove to Las Vegas. We stayed overnight at the Rio Hotel and enjoyed a quick dip in the pool and a delicious breakfast at Hash House A-Go-Go. We left Las Vegas around noon and arrived in Vista last night around 6pm. We are so glad to be home!

Today's ride was just a quick ride to the local frozen yogurt shop near our house. Frugos Yogurt is a self-serve yogurt place, Eliza's favorite kind of treat. Her favorite is chocolate ice cream with mini M & m's on top. I took a picture of Eliza enjoying her treat:

After I took this picture, Eliza told me she wanted to ride to Twin Lakes Park (her favorite park near our old house in Durham). I don't think Eliza understands yet that we moved across country, and what a big move that is! She is 3 years old. :)

Instead of Twin Lakes Park, we rode home, passing by a small park called Thibodo Park along the way. We stopped to play for a bit, and I got a cute picture of her sitting on some of the HUGE rocks they have here:

Here's our Strava summary. It's only a one-way ride on Strava because I forgot to start my Strava app when we started! I was too busy staring at the Google map to make sure I knew how to navigate to the yogurt shop!

Heading west - short ride at Lunch Loop Trails in Grand Junction, CO

My last Weehoo ride was about 3 weeks ago, but it feels like 3 years ago! That's what preparing to move across country does to your sense of time, I guess!

We are in the middle of our move to California, and I could write a book about the past 3 weeks, but I honestly don't have the energy or desire to do that. So I'll summarize it:

1.) May 9: Last day at work. Hooray! I'm free!

2.) May 10-16: Sell a bunch of our stuff on Craigslist. Sell some stuff to neighbors and friends, too. Prepare to have a big garage sale.

3.) May 17 morning and early afternoon: Garage sale!

4.) May 17 late afternoon into the evening: Donate the stuff that didn't sell or couldn't be taken to the pawn shop.

5.) May 18-23: Pack, pack, and pack some more. We had quite a large collection of junk after living in 1 house for 8 years!

6.) May 24: Load up the U-Haul trailer all day, even though we thought it'd only take a few hours...finally leave and say goodbye to our house at around 10:30pm. Today is also our 11th wedding anniversary!

7.) May 24/25: Drive west on I-40 through the night, watch the sunrise come up somewhere in Tennessee, stop for a quick breakfast, switch drivers (me to Rob), drive through KY, IN, switch drivers again, and keep driving until we arrive in St. Louis, where we slept like babies after a quick dip in the hotel pool!

8.) May 26: Keep driving west. Kansas was so boring! Cross the border into Colorado and stay in the world's comfiest bed at a mom-n-pop owned motel in Burlington, CO.

9.) May 27: drive west to Grand Junction. Pulling a U-haul trailer behind a Hyundai Elantra is fun, err, something like that! Get a hotel and decide to stay 2 nights because we needed some rest.

10.) May 28 (today): Go for a short Weehoo mountain bike ride at the awesome Lunch Loop trails.

Wow, what a network of trails these Lunch Loop trails are! I wish we had more time to ride and explore out here. Here's a trail map of the area. We rode the easiest and shortest trail called the "Kids Meal Trail". It was fun and Eliza said "weehoo" every time we went down any portion of downhill trail!

We didn't ride far, only a couple miles. We rode slow mainly because we kept stopping to say "Whoa, look at the view! It's like a postcard!" Here's our Strava summary:

Only 800 more miles to go until we reach home.

Ride to Trinity Park

I needed to let some steam off from all the final days at work stress, so all 3 of us went for a ride this evening. We rode from home to Trinity Park, stopping off at the Montessori school playground 2 blocks away, too.

I didn't take any pictures, but Rob did, so I'll have to get him to share the pics with me later. It was a nice ride in through east Durham. We didn't take Holloway into downtown like we normally would do to get to this area of Durham, instead we took Miami to Geer to Trinity. There's less stoplights and more chance to just keep pedaling this way. Eliza seemed more secure in the ride tonight. I think she was just excited to go play at one of her favorite Durham parks. We've been to Trinity Park many times before. We stopped first at the Montessori school playground and she had a lot of fun playing with 2 local kids, and Rob and I enjoyed talking with their Dad, who was super nice. Then we went to Trinity Park and played until dark. Then we turned on our lights and flashing blinkies and headed home.

We did our ride there and our ride back as 2 separate rides on Strava. I know I should've just put the ride on pause while we played at the park, but oh well, it doesn't really matter in the long run. Here's our Strava summaries:

We took a slightly longer route home, just for old times sake, I guess. We figured that we're not going to be in North Carolina for much longer, so we might as well ride some of our favorite urban streets (East Main Street and North Driver Street, specifically).

Only 3 more days of work left for me and we'll be ready to roll on this moving across country thing!

No Weehoo rides during the month of April - what??

Wow, the month of April sure was a whirlwind of all kinds of activity. I won't attempt to list it all here, but I can summarize it in 3 words: We are moving!

WHAT? Moving? Really? YES! :) We are so excited to be moving back home to California in a few weeks!

We moved to North Carolina almost 11 years ago. When we moved here, we thought we'd only be here 2, maybe 3 years at the most. Well, life sure does have a way of happening, and God sure does have a plan for all of us, and sometimes our plans and His plans are totally different! 2 to 3 years turned into 11. Wow! At this point in my life, I can't really say if I'm happy or sad to be leaving here. Of course I'm happy to be moving back home to California to be closer to family, but leaving here, leaving Durham, where we've lived for the past 8 years, where we bought a house, where we endured a critical illness for many years, where we built a thriving Masters swim team, where we were saved by the grace of God, where we had a kidney transplant, where we had our miracle baby girl...where we have so many memories...I just don't know, I will miss some things dearly, and other things, umm, not so much.

I gave my resignation notice at work a few weeks ago. At my job, in my management position, they ask for a 4 week resignation at a minimum. 4 weeks is a LONG time! And I can't take any PTO due to the HR regulations, so I'm still working a ton of hours each week. I'm trying not to, of course, but tying up loose ends and preparing the facility to be ready for summer swim lessons is taking a lot of time! I've got just a little bit over a week left here before my last day, and at that point, we can really start getting ready to move!

That's all for now. If we have some time in May, I definitely want to ride the Weehoo somewhere before we move.