Day 43: Unexplained speed boost
Today started with eating 2 big complementary homemade chocolate chip and banana waffles covered in maple syrup in the hostel while watching a crazed drugged homeless guy go crazy outside and throw weights at the glass hostel wall. The police were called and when they arrived, he went running.
Had no problem with the rear wheel today which was a worry. However I did forget my helmet in the hostel. Only realized after 30 km or so and was not going back.
Every day after the cycle I am shown some metrics including average speed. This is always 16 km/h. Has been for the last 40+ days. Doesn’t matter about hills or weather or distance or anything. At the end of a day’s cycling, it is always 16 km/h.
But today my average speed was 21.5 km/h. That is an insane 5.5 km/h difference. Not sure what the cause of this is but it could be a number of things I think, but probably some combination of:
- A particularly flat day today.
- Tubeless tire, though not sure why this would help.
- Moving some weight from the back to the front. Maybe better balanced?
- The bike cleaning and chain lube I did yesterday?
- The rest day yesterday.
- Viewing speed and average speed on my Garmin rather than the Map which is my usual default screen. Viewing metrics seems to push me more, but only switched to this as I seemed to be going faster than usual.
- The much bigger than usual breakfast and 2 mugs of coffee this morning.
- Maybe (hopefully) my legs are starting to get used to this whole cycling thing.
So I was really happy with today’s cycle. The cycling itself was next to surfer covered beaches all day today. Which reminds me I should learn to surf. Not in the USA though as that would be too expensive. Maybe somewhere in Latin America.
Campground is just ok. The showers operate on tokens. I bought 4, each of which should last 2 mins. After 2 tokens, the water was still freezing so I just washed the bare minimum with the 3rd token and left a token on the machine for the next person.
The tap water is murky white and looks disgusting. I asked 2 different rangers and they both said that it is drinkable. However, I couldn’t bring myself to drink it. So it was a good excuse to use my water filter which I haven’t used yet but which I expect I will have to rely heavily on later in the tour. Passing the water through the filter squeezy thing seems to have cleaned the sediment white stuff from the water and the water seems to taste normal so I guess it works.
Last noteworthy thing is that I replaced my lost spoon while in Santa Barbara, however it seems like I lost it again. I guess it fell through the basket while returning from REI. This is the 3rd spoon I have lost so far… So I had to eat dinner with just a knife… Again!
Will post this entry, go watch sunset, and call it a particularly early night. Tomorrow I will arrive in Los Angeles.
