Day 1 - Costa Mesa to Redlands, CA

We left on a cool misty, drizzly Monday morning for our first day ride. We left from Vanguard University, since we had ridden to and from the ocean beach on Sunday. It did not seem like a typical California morning, but the coastal area experiences this cloudy cool weather this time of year, but will heat up later when the winds turn from the desert and the Santa Anna winds kick in. My start was almost disastrous, as I had a stretch cord over my rear pack to either came loose, or was not attached on one end and it caught in my spokes and stopped me and it got tangled up and bent the rear brake pad. Fortunately,  I was able to straighten the brake out and no spokes were broken. This was 3 blocks from the start!

About half of the route was along the Santa Ana River Trail.......a multi use trail system, used mostly by bikers. We came across a coyote in the Santa Ana spillway that was chasing a batch of ducklings and the mother duck was able to fight him off as long as we watched. A little further on we rode by the Angels stadium and the Honda Center.

It was a good biking day and we arrived in Redlands at the Arrowhead Academy in mid-afternoon. Tim and TJ Spykstra rode the route out to Redlands with the group and we spoke with them and Patty, before they left for home.

There was one serious biking accident today, where the biker caught his handle bars on the chainlink fence on a narrow bike path. He broke his leg and had surgery yesterday and will need to stay in the area for 2 weeks to make sure it heals. He and his wife were terribly disappointed that they needed to leave the tour.....and only on the first day.