Well I am off and riding, the day started out good. Left a little later than I had planed, I think by the time I finished packing and saying good by to my Parents, I hit the road about 8:15. I made the ride through San Onofre and hit the guard shack at Camp Pendleton at about 9:15. The ride went well through Camp Pendleton on into Ocean Side. About half way through downtown I turned eastbound to leave the Pacific behind and look to the Atlantic.
About 30 miles into the ride I hit my first hill on the east side of Ocean Side, the hill was not so bad but not being able to power up on the pedals and come out of the saddle made it hard. About 5 miles farther along I had problems with the trailer. The trailer shifted on the axle in turn knocking the rear wheel off the frame. I ended up pulling into a C store and had to remove everything out of the trailer so I could re- hitch the trailer and back wheel to the bike frame. This ended taking about a hour.
For about the next 20 miles the ride was very pleasant, all the roads had either a wide bike lane, and in some areas there was a bike lane with a bike trail that also paralleled the road. At about 50 miles I had made it to San Marcos. From there I started on Hwy 78, this was fine, no bike lane but wide shoulders. This continued on up to about the San Diego Wild Animal Park. After the Wild Animal Park Hwy 78 became narrow with no shoulder. And boom the hills started big time.
From San Marcos to Ramona the ride was 11 miles, this 11 miles took me almost 3 hours. It was not so much the hills, most of the grades were not much worse than what we have been riding out by Clermont and Cherry Lake. The problem was the hills just kept going up and up. And it was not so much the going up and up, it was the trailer. The hard part is not being able to stand up, and by not being able to stand up puts a lot of pressure on the lower back. This was wearing me out very fast, I think I have a new Max Heart rate of 190 now. With the road being so narrow and the trucks flying by, I ended up stopping at least 100 times. I think I was averaging about 3 to 3 1/2 miles an hour going up the hills.
The trailer says it can carry 70 lbs, I have about 60 lbs on the trailer now. I think the problem is the bike can’t handle that much weight. I think the bike is to light and and the tires are to thin. With this kind of weight I think it would be more stable on a mountain bike or a hybrid with bigger tires.
I finally rolled into Ramona about 5:30, this was going to be a treat night after all those hills. I ended up staying in the only hotel in Ramona.
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