Did you say MARYLAND!?

We are finally in San Francisco and getting close to the start. Tomorrow morning will be the official first day of Surly Headed East! At this moment everything is packed, nothing more we can do.

Well, the past couple days have been good and bad. The flight went well on Wed and everything arrived in one piece, but just because everything went well doesn't mean it wasn't stressful. Waking up at 3am to fly cross country, praying your bike arrives at a sketchy airport motel is never fun. Luckily, as I said, everything went well. After arriving at flee bag motel, we took out our bikes and started the assembly process. For the most part the bikes went back together easily (mine still isn't shifting very well). Once we unpacked and reassembled we took the bikes out for a short four mile test ride, trying to find dinner. In the end we ate prime rib like kings at the Hunter Palace (it was actually pretty good).

Day two of prep work was much better, but had its own little snags. We spent the day running errands, buying all the last minute gear and food for the trip. Our resort is located about ten miles south of the city so we cruised up into San Fran on the bikes, doing our first urban biking, which is so much fun! Having some trouble finding products at crappy REI or EMS type knock off sports store (Sports Basement), we finally found everything we needed on the otherside of town at the real REI. After getting the final camp gear and groceries we rode up to the Golden Gate bridge and checked out the start location. On the way back to our estate, Ryan and I went back along the Pacific, getting lost in the ghetto and eating stomach turning $30 pizza. By the time we reached the motel we clocked a nice 55.4 mile warm up ride, although we only had our rear panniers on all day.

Over all the trip has been fun so far. San Francisco is a great biking city. They have bike lanes every where and when there aren't bike lanes the cars have been great about bikers. Tomorrow we will be leaving the city and heading over to Vellejo towards Sacramento. Time for another sleepless night.

-Patrick