Cycling Across California

Co-ridden with Alex Becker, Cooper Grace, Elliot Klein, and Riley Walz; co-written with the help of Elliot’s highly detailed Strava descriptions.

In March 2024, I embarked on my first-ever bike tour, riding from San Francisco to Los Angeles with a few friends. We averaged about 60 miles a day for nine consecutive days, logging a total of 550 miles on the saddle on our way to LA. Then, in May, I continued another 175 miles on my own down the coast to San Diego, eventually finishing up at the US–Mexico border in San Ysidro.

Here’s how it went down.

Preparing for the Ride

Preparing for the trip primarily involved two parts: fitness (making sure we were up for multiple consecutive days of 50+ mile rides) and logistics (gear rental, routing, timing).

Fitness

• About two months before, I did some 20-milers in the Bel Air/Brentwood hills, including Mandeville Canyon.
• A little over a month before, I did my first longer ride — what might be a typical day on tour: 70 miles from UCLA to Ventura on the PCH. Previously, the longest ride I’d ever done was 55 miles, a few years prior, so this felt pretty difficult! I hit a nasty headwind coming out of Oxnard and my saddle was bothering me so I kept taking breaks — I seriously considered calling it quits early.
• Two weeks later, I did another longer ride — 70 miles from UCLA to Long Beach, then up the San Gabriel River Trail to Norwalk where I took the Metro back. It felt a lot easier than the Ventura ride — I could tell I was getting fitter! The saddle also bothered me a lot less — I think it was just a matter of getting used to it.
• A few days later, I rode about 35 miles out and back from UCLA to Marina del Rey via the beach bike path.
• Finally, four days before the official start of the tour, I got some good climbing in by way of a 40-mile loop up into the Santa Monica Mountains via Topanga Canyon Boulevard (taking advantage of the closure), down through the Valley, then back to the Westside over Sepulveda Pass.

For me, this was enough to be able to tackle the 550-mile tour with no problems.

Logistics

Although we’d read online that spring was a perfect time to do the ride since it wouldn’t be as rainy as in the winter and it’d also avoid the summer tourist traffic, the timing was primarily constrained by my student status at UCLA. Consequently, we didn’t put that much thought into the exact dates other than making sure they coincided with my spring break (everyone else was either working full-time and took PTO, or was between jobs). We ended up riding between March 21–29, 2024.

Elliot was an experienced bicycle tourist, having already done multiple tours in the past (including another 500-miler along the Blue Ridge Parkway through Virginia and North Carolina), so he put together a comprehensive packing list for us:

Since we’d decided to do a credit card tour (i.e., staying in hotels instead of camping), we didn’t need to bring any camping gear. In terms of routing, although we came up with an approximate itinerary before the trip (e.g., Santa Cruz by Day 2, Monterey by Day 3), what actually ended up happening was towards the end of each day, we would see where we were and decide on some nearby city to stop in which we could feasibly reach before dark. We’d then book a two-queen-bed room at the cheapest hotel we could find in that city. I brought my sleeping pad and bag (for the hotel room floor), and we would put two people in each bed and rotate the floor sleeper nightly. Altogether, this worked out to about $20–30 per person per night, not too much more than a hiker-biker site at a California state park.

We rented gear from the legendary Mike over at The Bike Hut at Pier 40 along the Embarcadero in San Francisco. Cooper and I brought our own bikes and only needed to rent racks and panniers, but the rest of the guys rented touring bikes as well. Everything worked great — I highly recommend them for any of your other San Francisco bike rental needs.

The Ride: SF–LA

Day 0

Day 1

My first pannier problem occurred in the park — one of my bags fell off when I went over a bump a little too quickly — but after re-securing it with one of Elliot’s bungees it seemed to mostly be alright.

Day 2

After fueling up on the hotel breakfast in Half Moon Bay, we got rolling by 8am. A morning of immaculate coastal riding down the 1 — dancing bunches of California poppies to our left, dazzling blue ocean to our right — brought us to Santa Cruz by the early afternoon, where we stopped for lunch at Arslan’s Turkish Street Food. Upon hearing about our big bike adventure to LA, one of the restaurant employees gave us a complimentary box of Turkish delight, which we devoured.

We were originally only aiming for Santa Cruz (there’d been some rain in the forecast for the afternoon), but the rain held off, so after lunch, we decided to push on to the next town over, Watsonville, a few miles inland from the coast.

We made it to Watsonville with about 75 miles on the day.

Day 3

We got a bit of a late start on our way out of Watsonville to Monterey, waiting out some morning rains at the Motel 6 and dealing with more tire issues on my end.

Eventually, though, the rains subsided and we returned to the coast, biking past the Fort Ord Dunes before reaching the beaches of Seaside and Monterey.

Day 4

We woke up to some more morning rains in Monterey, so we spent a few hours watching Mexican TV shows in our room at the Days Inn before it dried up outside, eventually rolling out of town and into the Salinas Valley at around 11am. We enjoyed a lovely tailwind, zooming past miles and miles of fields and rolling green hills along the 101, and got 65 miles in before stopping in King City for the night.

Day 5

As we were biking into Paso Robles, a motocyclist zipped by us; her wallet flew out of her pocket and landed on the ground as she passed. Cooper picked it up and we took a half-hour break on the side of the road to scour LinkedIn, Facebook, and TruePeopleSearch (Riley’s favorite) to try and find her phone number in order to get in touch. Alex was eventually somehow able reach her son (“oh, she’s my mom”), and we Priority Mailed her wallet back to her in Atascadero, where we stopped after 75 miles.

Day 6

The ocean views finally returned as we climbed out of Atascadero, down a crazy descent through SLO, and into Pismo Beach. Unfortunately, the coastal riding was short-lived as we quickly cut inland to avoid the restricted areas around Vandenberg Space Force Base.

Day 7

After a couple of days along the coast and a few days through fields, we continued our Tour de California with a trek through the vineyards of the Santa Ynez Valley. We stopped in Solvang for the night, where we had a Danish dinner and retired to Svengaard’s Lodge after 43 miles.

Day 8

We stopped at UCSB hangout Naan Stop for lunch, and the man behind the counter generously gave us some complimentary rosewater lassis after hearing about our journey.

Afterwards, we enjoyed the excellent coastal bike infrastructure past Santa Barbara, and we finished our longest day by far — a little over 80 miles — in Ventura, where we had pizza with some friendly locals at Fluid State Beer Garden.

Day 9

We left Ventura at around 9am for our final push to UCLA, about 70 miles.

We experienced some of the most stunning coastal riding of the trip since the Pacifica–Monterey segment back in NorCal — alongside some of the worst bike infrastructure of the entire trip.

The Ride (Appendix): LA-SD

Day 1

I rolled out from UCLA at 9am, heading down San V to Santa Monica, where I picked up the beach bike path down to Redondo Beach. At Redondo, I turned east and cut across town on Torrance Boulevard to the LA River bike path, which took me down to Long Beach and back to the coast.

I went a few more miles down the coast past Newport before stopping at a friend’s place near Crystal Cove for the night, after 75 miles of riding.

Day 2

Some hectic interstate shoulder riding on the 5 through Camp Pendleton thankfully led to beautiful Pacific views in Oceanside and Encinitas en route to San Elijo State Beach, where I cowboy camped by the sea in the hiker-biker site after 55 miles on the day.

Day 3

I woke up bright and early at my campsite at San Elijo State Beach and cruised down the coast past Torrey Pines and UCSD to downtown San Diego, where I caught the Coronado ferry and rode the Silver Strand to the border crossing at San Ysidro.

After 45 miles of riding, getting as close to Mexico as I could (I’d unfortunately forgotten my passport, so I couldn’t cross), I took the trolley back up north to a friend’s place in Mira Mesa, where I stayed the night before catching the Amtrak back to LA at Solana Beach the next morning.

Next Ride?

Definitely Big Sur!