Day 84, August 10th 2008, beginning in Arcata, California

Mike and Sean were up early ready to go. I made some French toast for Mike and myself, while Sean (vegan) had cereal. They finally showered up, and packed their stuff. They hit the road, but it would not be the last time we would see them hopefully. They would both be in Santa Cruz when we made it there, so we planned to meet back up there. So long men.

Paul and I were taking the day off. I wanted to make it to the visitor's center on the north side of town, and we had to wash our clothes. Other than that, it was play time. We packed some fruit like the soccer moms we were and headed out to a field near the house with the soccer ball. We played there for a few hours on this huge open field with soccer goals. We met a couple guys there who were from the area that we kicked it with for a bit. One was from Minnesota, who shared a passion for hockey. Once we grew tires of kicking, we went our separate ways, and Paul and I went back to the apartment. Paul got more food for dinner, while I biked up to the visitor's center to get tourist materials. On my way, I ran into a woman who was carting her dog around in a trailer. We got to talking about bike touring, and she invited me to a barbecue she was having. They were a bit out of the way, and Paul had probably already bought some food, so although it was a nice offer, I didn't end up going.

When I got back, Paul already had dinner brewing pasta fazool, his specialty while the olympics played on the tv. When there was a lull in the action, with our food and beer in front of us, we put on planet earth, which they had on dvd. What an amazing series. A comfortable breeze blowing through the house, combined with 3 fat tires and a relaxing show were enough to put me to sleep.

When I came to, we decided we needed desert and a different movie. We went back to the grocery store which had the west coast version of redbox and we picked up some ice cream and Juno. We watched Juno, which I stayed up for, and some more olympics. It's a pretty charming movie I must say, I don't think I've spoken with anyone who hasn't liked it. After that Planet Earth came back on, and it was Paul's turn to fall asleep to it. I turned it off, did some more writing on the computer and went to bed myself.

So far California has brought us nothing but sunshine and beauty. What a great state, and we were just at the tip of the ice berg. Back on the bikes tomorrow!

Life was good.