Anaheim to Oceanside populaire - another perfect riding day

After dire threats of rain from weather.com all week, Saturday came with perfect weather for my Anaheim to Oceanside populaire. Rather than taking the obvious coastal route, the ride goes over Santiago Canyon which means we start with a good climb, descend on Alisal Creek bike trail, and avoid Laguna Beach.

There were four of us at the start: Myself, Kerin, Len (just getting back into randonneuring), and Marc (first organized ride). At 8am the skies were blue with puffy white clouds, there was no wind, and it was slightly cool. We left Anaheim Artic and stayed as a group until the start of Santiago Canyon. By the time we reached the top at mile 26 we were split asunder.

We skipped getting a receipt at Cook's Corner because they were quite busy and settled for a selfie.

Not my best selfie

We waited for Len for a while a Cook's Corner but after ten minutes Kerin took off. Marc and I had almost given up when Len showed up so the three of us took off down Alisal Creek trail which was fun as always. I'm glad we waited because Len and Marc were not familiar with the route and would have struggled to stay on course.

Marc and I got to Crown Valley Parkway at the same time and grabbed food and Gatorade at the 76 gas station, expecting Len to show up a couple of minutes later. After a while I phoned him and it turned out he had stopped a mile or so back and told us to continue without him, which we did.

Marc and I rode on to Kaylani and once again I courted brain-freeze with one of their wonderful iced coffees. Most of it went into my water bottle. We took the beach path which Marc thought was stressful, partly because of the pedestrians and partly because he was riding narrow tires.

Beach path through San Clemente.

Riding on we got to Camp Pendleton. Marc was not pre-authorized, but Kerin had mentioned they would let people though who were not pre-authorized. We decided to give it a go, I mean what are they going to do? Shoot us? Worse case is he's denied access.

They let him through without a murmur. Interesting.

We got to Oceanside in almost exactly six hours which is a very good time for me. Kerin beat us by fifteen minutes or so and managed to get an earlier train. Len texted me to say he had DNFed at the entrance to Camp Pendleton and his wife was picking him up.

All the trains were hosed up for some reason and running very late, so I ended up getting a train to Anaheim Canyon and riding the five miles back to Anaheim. It took me almost as long to get home as it had taken me to do the ride.