Greetings from Vacaville!

Ok, so here is our first post after starting this trip. We have ridden for about 2 days now and already have a bunch of stories to share... First off, as beautiful as San Francisco is and as much as we enjoyed it, it was filled with a lot of frustration. We had a great deal of time sitting around waiting for things to happen, and we also spent way too much money in the city. As bad as that sounds, we still did meet many cool and "interesting" people in our stay in San Fran. We met a man on the bus our first day and he insisted that we go to Haight Ashbury, as he said the place was "really psychedelic." And as he declared that place was very hippy-looking and we saw a lot of cool shops and a lot of interesting glassware. Other than this guy we also met the people at American Cyclery (the place our bikes were shipped to) and got to know them a little more than we expected because we were hanging around their shop for about a day and a half. But we really want to send out a big thankyou to those guys because they really worked with us and gave us all the support that we needed in order to begin our trip.

Our bikes were finally ready yesterday at about 4pm, which was very close to the cut off that we had made on whether we rode out yesterday or stayed one more night in San Fran. Once packed we decided we had to start going so we headed out from the bike shop at about 4:30pm in an attempt to get across the city to the 5:15 ferry to Vallejo. So we began winding through rush hour traffic, all the while getting yelled at by bus drivers and shuttle drivers that we were not supposed to be there, and just as we got to the loading dock to the ferry we saw people loading and the ferry ready to leave. We jumped into line and thought we had made it....then we got to the front and realized that we didn't get any tickets. Luckily after a few moments of fear and panic, we were told that the ferry was not full and that they could accomodate us and our loaded bikes on the boat ride. While on the ferry and gandering out upon the bay we saw a giant golden bridge in the distance. Something that we had not seen the entire 2 days in San Fran, but we were informed that it is apparently a big deal. It's something called the Golden Gate Bridge...go figure.

Once in Vallejo, it was just after 6pm and we were excited to start biking. We expected to ride for a short while, get some food, and then camp and call it quits for our first day. However, we were quite wrong. The short ride, to food, to sleep, turned into about a 3 hour ride with Jack-in-the-Box fast food strapped onto the backs of our bikes begging anyone that we saw if they would let us stay the night in their lawn. Apparently Californians are scared of us Easterners, or we looked particularly menacing (We blame Kara) because we attempted and failed 3 times in a row. Once because a peacock farmer said he had interns staying at his house?, once because a crazed woman wanted to think about letting us stay for 20 minutes and then telling us that we had to "shoo off", and finally we were directed to a public school that fined outsiders $500 and 6 months in jail for trespassing....by now it was pitch black as well. We then trodded back into a huge development near the school and walked down a steep hill behind some houses and set up camp on a flat grassy area near a creek. It was a perfect resting place for the night, except for one minor, very small thing. There were more mosquitoes in that small grassy knoll, than in all of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Once the tents were up we spent the next 10 minutes killing rogue mosquitoes that had slipped into our tents on the sly while eating our greasy, 2-hour old burgers with no light. Night for most of us came around 10pm, for Kara on the other hand bedtime did not so much happen....at all. That's why she is currently sleeping outside the library under a tree as J and I write.

Today began with a nice 5am wake-up call, it was nice and cold, and the mosquitoes had been waiting outside for us all night. We then managed to pack up the tents, and wake up the entire neighborhood (because their dogs were barking) in just under an hour and we headed out feeling confident in our riding to come. The riding went great from about 6 until about 7:30 and then Kara busted 3 tubes within a quarter mile before we found a small piece of glass wedged down through the tire. She now is riding on one of Danny's tubes which is much too large for her bike, but it is working in the mean time. That little excursion took about 1 1/2 hours and then we were back on the road. The rest of the trip has gone good so far, except everywhere you turn the wind is directly in your face making the biking much more difficult. We are now resting in the quaint and sleepy town of Vacaville, where we stocked up on extra tubes for Kara, and got some delicious chinese food to fill our tummies. Optimistically, we are hoping to get to Sacramento tonight where there is a camp ground calling our names. Otherwise we might be "bushwhacking it" for another night. Farewell humble readers and we hope to be posting again soon and getting some pictures up because we have already seen some unbelievable sights.

Now to leave you with a few pieces of advice...
1. There is free campgrounds at the Golden Gate Park in San Fran if you don't want to spend money on a fake Ramada Inn called "Ramada Limited"
2. Try to have an idea where you are going to stay for the night before it gets dark
3. Ship bikes by FedEx or Air
4. Bums give good directions (sorry if thats politically incorrect but it's true)
5. grundle cream.... we will leave that one up to the imagination

Hopefully be posting in a couple days, until then sit at your computer and refresh this page every 10 minutes until a new post appears. Also, keep writing comments, we love to hear them.

Peace out Cub Scouts,
J and Homer (Kara and Danny are asleep but they are here in spirit)