11. Humbug Moutain

It's the first day off and it is really hard for me to keep sitting, while the other cyclists are leaving the campground but I know that this is the best for me and especially for my legs...
As promised I would like to take this occasion to write about the hippie-cyclists. This is
something I really did not expect before the trip: On the roads along the pacific you can regularly meet American cyclists with really bad equipment. The simple reason for that is that they do not have enough money to buy appropriate equipment since they neither have a job nor a place to live. Often they only survive by the food marks provided by the gouvernment.
For me it is hard to see people cycling thousands of miles with too small bicycles, no breaks and
badly working gears.
One man that I met has to stop every 10 miles because his butt hurts so bad because of the broken saddle. He needs the break anyway because 2 of his 4 wheels (cycling with a kids trailer) are constantly loosing air. He sleeps in a cheap foldable tent with holes in it that covers him only from head to upper legs. In the moskito areas or during rain this must be really painful.
Often it would be so easy to improve their equipment or fix their bikes but to be honest I do not want to loose my replacement equipment and that's why I often just help them out with some grease or oil and let them continue.
For the ones that are interested what I did on my day off today: Besides doing some laundry and cooking and eating a 1.8lb steak I did something that is really important to me personally: I went "swimming" in the pacific ocean. It was the second time after I swum in april (!) 2004 in LA. However, the big cold waves made it hard to really enjoy it ;-)