Day 1 - Manhattan Beach > Moreno Valley/Riverside, California (90.7 miles)

 May 5

Cormac McCarthy wrote "All the Pretty Horses", and he has a quote that sums up the beginning of this trip: "Between the wish and the thing, the world lies waiting." We've talked about doing this trip for a long time, and we wait no more.  

See three views of our route below for perspective... (the last one is for the bikers!)

We had a great first day! We put our rear wheels in at Manhattan Beach pier to start with the Pacific Ocean, and the front wheel will hit the Atlantic in late June. This beach was famous from one of the cheesiest movies of all time (but worth watching): Point Break with Keanu Reeves, Patrick Swayze, et al. A great quote from that movie comes from Swayze's character, Bohdi, when he says "Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst dreams to come true." Spoiler alert if you watch the movie: Keanu has always been a bad actor so do not expect a surprise performance. 

Ok, back to the ride: See Raff and I below at the water and the four of us on the pier...not sure when we got old, must be recently. 

Raff, Bill, and I decided to be overachievers and ride an extra 6'ish miles today...we can blame it on technology as our GPS devices were struggling a bit when we transitioned from roads to bike paths. We did not yell at each other, and we managed to work back into the group before the next SAG stop. Stuart followed the rules (for once) and rode the right route. The official ride was 84.5 miles. Counting matchsticks - every 34 miles that we ride is 1% of the total ride, so we completed 2.5% of our odyssey today - sometimes I hate math. Once we got out of LA proper, we rode along some of the canals and through some beautiful orchards as we had a final climb towards the finish. We finished in Moreno Valley/Riverside today, and it is famous for citrus farming- specifically the navel orange trees. Trivia time: in 1874 a few orange trees were planted from Bahia, Brazil, and these Bahian oranges thrived in California while they did not do well in Florida - (I am sure that Ron DeSantis has an opinion on why this was a fluke)...Anyway, one of these original Bahian trees is still alive in Riverside; we actually might have 'watered' it today on one of our pit stops. Why is it called Riverside? Yep, there is a river here called the Santa Ana. The last piece of trivia on Riverside is that it is the home of the world's largest paper cup. 'Wow', I know. It is 68 ft tall and sits where the Dixie Cup manufacturing plant used to be. It is actually made of concrete, and if it had been full of beer at the end of today, we would have consumed it.  Drum roll please for the most exciting part of the daily blog...spreadsheet to summarize the day:

Day one was fantastic, and your messages and texts are so cool. I need to crowd-source from you all for trivia and great quotes...I have a bunch, but you'll be sick of me before this ride is done. Lyla gets the gold star today for her trivia on California: there are more people in California than there are in Canada. Gina gets the quote of the day: "It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters in the end." Tomorrow, we have 92 miles to Indio, CA...