Santa Cruzin'

8/6 Day 26 - We got up and the sun was shining so we were happy about that. It was actually kind of warm out, which never happens in the morning. We made sure to put lots of sunscreen on. We packed up and headed out. We were told that there was one or two kinda big hills to go over and the rest was pretty flat. Yay!

We also had a pretty strong tailwind that we were happy about. Before we left town we stopped at the grocery store for lunch food. We rode for a while and made good time to our first break on the first big hill. The hill wasn't too bad and the toe clips definitely helped. My knee was still bothering me, but it got better as the day went on. We got about half way when we stopped for lunch. We were supposed to call the guy that had my phone then, but we didn't have any service. Poopy. Ethan decided he would keep checking his phone and call as soon as he got service.

We rode for a while when we came to a beach where there were a bunch of people kite surfing. It was so cool. Eventually, when we were about 14 miles from Santa Cruz, Ethan had enough service to call the guy with my phone. He said he would meet us at a park about 9 miles down the road. We were going pretty fast until we got to a fruit farm that had chocolate covered strawberries. We had to stop. When we pulled in there was a sign that said 10% off for bike tourists! Perrrrfect!

We went in and the chocolate strawberries were $1.50 each. We decided against them, but saw a mini chocolate cheesecake with a chocolate covered strawberry on top. Bingo! We bought that and tasted some of the jam that they make. Free samples are the best. We had to get going though so this guy didn't have to wait around for us for too long.

We made great time getting to the park and the guy was super nice. It felt great to have my phone back :]. I thanked him a ton and then we were on our way into Santa Cruz. We rode along a bike path for a while, but needed food for dinner. We got off the bike path and went into town. We ended up turning on a busy street with no bike lane so we got on the side walk. A guy had pulled out onto the sidewalk to turn left so Ethan went around in front of him. I decided to do the same because he wasn't turning anytime soon.. There was a lot of traffic. As I was going around my front tire slipped on the lip of the curb (like 2 inches of curb) and when I tried to correct it my tire slipped and I went down hard.

It hurt pretty bad and I cried. Mostly because it scared me and it was embarrassing. The top of my ankle and my knee got scraped and my shoulder will have a decent bruise on it. Other than that I was fine, just shaken up. My front tire had spun all the way around so my handle bars were backward and my breaks were a little messed up. Luckily there was a bike shop really close. We took it in and they felt really bad so they looked at my bike really quick. The tire had come loose and just needed to be straightened and the tightened. A quick fix. At that point I realized the elastic on my right shoe was broken and the handle bar tape on the left side had been scraped off in one spot. I tied my shoe back together and decided we could fix the tape in the morning. It was a rough couple of minutes, but after we realized there was no serious damage (other than to my ego) we knew everything would be ok .

We got to the store in one piece and then headed to camp. We made burritos with refried beans, a green pepper, cheese from lunch and Mexican rice. They were awesome and actually filled us up, which rarely happens when we make camp food. After that we found a place to charge our phones and I cleaned out and bandaged my injuries.

I talked to Nonnie (my grandma) for a while, which definitely helped heal my emotional injuries from the last two days. :] and we made s'mores with our little stove. It was just what we needed to end and interesting afternoon. We are now in bed and finally caught up on our blog! Hooray!!