Anaheim to Oceanside - back by Amtrak

Roughly once a month Amber and I ride from Anaheim Amtrak station to Oceanside and then take the trail back. I feel it's our way of thanking Amtrak for letting us use their parking lot every week to start our ride from. We started at 8am to try to get the climb up Santiago Canyon finished before it gets too warm. Also they stop serving breakfast at Cook's Corner at 11am.

I had decided to ride my Trek 520 cro-moly touring bike. It's quite a bit heavier than the Serotta and has a partially broken in Brooks on it. If I'm going to tour Colorado on it next year, I need to get more miles on it.

The SART is all messed up right now so rather than keep being forced off it we decided to exit at the first construction zone and ride along Riverview all the way. That was a bad idea - it's busy and has no bike lane much of the way. Next time we'll use as much of the bike path as possible. My butt was sending out alarm signals around mile 20. I read Amazon reviews that say Brooks saddles can be ridden without discomfort right out of the box - bullshit. It takes about 1000 miles before you can ride a comfortable century on one in my opinion.

Santiago canyon was busy in a good way - there were huge numbers of cyclists using it. Some we passed, most we didn't. We got to Cook's Corner around 10:30 at mile 29 with most of the day's climbing already done. It' definitely more work riding the Trek what with the extra weigh and fat tires. I ate my whole breakfast burrito which I normally cannot do. Amber had the usual french toast. Lot's of cyclists eating here today.

Pressing on we had a wonderful 20 mile downhill to the coast. Amber wanted to ride the insanely steep Salt Creek trail but I begged off considering the extra effort of climbing on the Trek. Maybe next time. Turning south with the Pacific ocean on our right, the view is sweet.

We have decided to add a coffee stop to the route. We like the Kaylani coffee shop as it's right on the route and they have a great sea salt and caramel iced coffee. It only scores 3-4 stars on different review sites but it works for us.

Now we have cooled down a little and picked up a few calories we continued south along the San Clemente bike route and jump onto more bike path to Camp Pendleton. Big signs saying it will be closed to cyclists next Saturday so we timed our ride well. After Camp Pendleton we were in Ocean side and stopped at Angelo's. I wasn't hungry as we approached but as soon as I got off my bike I got really hungry and ordered a club combo. We had a lot of time to kill so we just hung out there for an hour and then rode a mile to the station where we hung out another hour. 

Great ride but I probably burned off an extra 10% calories on the Trek.