I broke my drone

Friday evening after work I drove to Yorba Linda park to see if I could get a follow shot with my drone using the Litchi app. Here it is on YouTube.

As you can see, Litchi does a poor job of following and drifts off to the side quite badly. I had the controller on my aerobars and took my eyes off the screen for a couple of seconds to check for oncoming trail users. Litchi took the opportunity to fly my drone into a tree, breaking an arm. I think I can fix it with superglue.

After that embarrassing misadventure, I rode the Brompton down to Huntington Beach and started looking around for somewhere new to eat. It was cold and overcast with a 10-15 mph wind - I loved it! Just as I got to the beach I came across someone bent over an upside down bicycle. It turned out to be a young woman with a split tire. I offered to look for something we could use as a boot, but I could see she was uncomfortable we me being around. She said she had a ride coming, so I kept riding. There's no point trying to help someone if it just makes them nervous.

Turning West along the Pacific I got a nice tailwind and, as the weather wasn't great, there were very few people on the beach trail and I was able to take advantage of it.

I rode to Beach City Provisions, a convenience store and eatery with live music. I've never eaten there before, but the music pulled me in. They are very bike friendly and I was hungry so that was a good combination. I got a cheese quesadilla with chips and a side of fries for about $14. Live music and a beach view - nice.

 Of course, when I turned around I had a headwind which was only fair. Turning inland I got a nice tailwind and got my average up to 15.1 mph - not too shabby on the Brompton. It was a lovely ride.

There's a first time for everything

I have probably cycled over 200,000 miles as an adult but new things keep happening. Today's ride was one of them. Amber, Edgar, and I rode to The Crema today. I rode the Brompton to get a little better workout.

On the way back, Edgar hit a sharp metal object that sliced his Schwalbe Marathon tire open and blew out the tube. In the 100 yards it took him to find a good place to stop, the inner tube rotated a quarter of the way around the tire and the stem snapped in two. It was really odd looking for the stem and not finding it. I have dealt with many blow-outs, but never seen a tube do that.

I used a dollar bill as a boot, put a new tube in, and we rode the last six miles back to the cars at 10mph. I didn't want to ride too fast in case the boot failed and the tube blew out again. I only pumped the tire up to 50 psi on the assumption that a lower tire pressure would put less strain on the boot. I'm not sure if that's correct or not.

I could poke my finger through this hole.

A good weekend

Friday evening I left work early to try to beat the traffic to Anaheim and it helped a lot. I rode the Brompton from Anaheim to Seal Beach and back, eating at The Bistro St. Germain. On the way back I was passed by a roadie so I upped the effort a bit and jumped on his wheel. His surprise that I could stay on his wheel at 22 mph on a folding bike was priceless. We started talking and it turned out he's only a few years younger than me. We agreed it was wonderful to still be able to ride like this at our age.

On Saturday I rode a hilly 30 miles on Rouvy.

On Sunday, Amber and I met up at Yorba Linda park to ride a flat century. I showed her my drone and she loves it. She may be buying one to take to Europe on her and Edgar's honeymoon. I added a compressed version below, but uploaded a higher resolution version to YouTube.

The weather was cool and windy which made the century more challenging than it needed to be, but we had a great ride anyway. We ate at Bistro St Germain on the way out, turned around at 50 miles and ate there again on the way back. That's three times in three days for me. Our moving average was 16.3 mph which is fine considering 20 miles of it has a 10mph speed limit and the wind was 15-20 mph for most of the ride.

I just got a handlebar mount for the drone controller. I'm still trying to master some of the basic functions like follow and track. I need a lot of practice.

DJI Mavic Mini drone

I just bought a DJI Mavic Mini drone. 

It's the entry level drone of a well-respected drone company. I want to figure out how to take drone footage of places I like to ride and take to England when I do Lejog next month. I took my first footage today. Here it is.

I can never ride the Sam Woo route again

Amber, Edgar, and I rode the Sam Woo route yesterday. We were really lucky because we normally ride on Sundays but we decided to ride on Saturday this weekend. We saw signs everywhere that the bike path and several of the roads we use were going to be closed on Sunday for the Orange County marathon. That would have been a pain.

The weather was perfect. Clear skies and bright sunshine with light winds about 10mph. Temperatures ranged from 60F to 75F. We really could not have asked for better weather.

This is a moderately hilly, 90 mile route and I have just installed a 13-29 cassette so I was keen to try the 29 tooth on the hills.

About 5 miles into the ride I realized I was hungry and starting to bonk. It had been three hours since I ate breakfast and I should have been OK for a while, but you listen to your body so we stopped while I ate a Pro Bar. It took about ten minutes to kick in. One advantage to being a randonneur is you know you have to do these things.

Riding the bike route through Laguna Beach is very hilly and I'm pleased to say the 29 tooth cog did take the sting out of the hills.

We got to Dana Point just before noon and ate, as usual, at the Brig. I was hungry again so I scarfed down a cheese omelet with hash browns and toast. I've never had a bad meal here. 

San Juan Creek bike trail heading inland from Dana Point

We got to the second rest stop at Sam Woo and found they are permanently closed. I've been eating here for twenty years. They've always been busy. Such a shame! There's a Ranch 99 market next door that sells Koran pastries so we grabbed some of those and some Boba drinks and that went down just as well.

So I need to rename the ride "The Ranch 99 ride". We bought a gallon of water at the 7-11, refilled our water bottles, and set out on the last leg of the ride.

We had a moderate headwind as we returned to the coast and Edgar was struggling a bit so I pulled. Thank goodness for aerobars. We have a new route that uses Cliff Drive starting at mile 70.4. This avoids the dangerous turn on to PCH and a few miles of heavy traffic.

Once we got back on the SART we had a lovely tailwind so I pulled us home around 17 mph with less that 100 Watts of effort. We got back with an average of 14.1 mph which is above my target for a ride like this.

Other than Sam Woo going out of business, this was a lovely ride.