Pacific Coast Highway – Driving North
Andrew writes:
Word to the wise. If you find yourself in Valle, AZ, don’t get suckered in to the whole Flintstones thing. While it looks cool from the outside, I wasn’t that impressed with the breakfast we received there. Ok, rant over. More driving through the desert, until finally, after many hours we reached Pismo Beach, California.
Pismo Beach; where Amanda proposed to me back in 2007 on our ride south to Mexico. We arrived in the dark and booked into a nice hotel, the Oxford Suites, near the highway. We woke up to sunshine and after a yummy breakfast drove down to the beach. Hanging out by the pier we took it all in. There were surfers in the water, and we decided to rent boards and re-visit real surfing. After about two hours of floundering, I was able to finally stand up on the board. It was reminiscent of the first time I surfed, back in 2007, right here in Pismo. She wrote “Will you marry me??” in the sand. Sure enough, the sand was still there!!!
The water was COLD, with our thin wetsuits from Mexico not quite up to the task. Amanda wasn’t quite ready to get wet in the morning, and so we sat on the beach for a bit, just taking it all in. I That’s when I noticed that a) surfers were giving up because the water was getting too choppy b) people were leaving the beach because it was too windy, and c) whitecaps out on the horizon. Could it be?? Was it windy enough to kite surf??? Heck yes it was!
I ran to the car and grabbed the equipment and started to set it up on the beach. Amanda helped me launch and off into the surf I went. After 5 months of kitesurfing in flat water, it was a bit of a learning curve to be in the “real ocean”. A wave broke ahead of me and the whitewater wrapped around my ankles and pulled me under. Again, and again, I struggled just to get off the beach. Then I began to get the hang of it, and started to pop up and over the small whitewater surf.
The first real wave I encountered was about waist high. I figured I could jump over it, or ride over it, or I’m not sure exactly what I was thinking, but the result was impressive.
After I recovered, I started working my way back upwind to where the head-high waves were breaking. Approaching the waves from behind it was such an incredible rush to crest the wave, ride down the face, and then use the power of the kite to keep me in position to surf it for a few hundred meters. The next two hours were repeated over and over, and Amanda was able to snap a few pictures and take video. By the time I came in, it was past 2’o’clock and time for lunch!
The wind had died down after lunch, so we traded in the surfboard we rented, for a bodyboard, and Amanda went out and played in the waves. We ended up checking back into the same hotel again that night, secretly hoping we would wake up to repeat our awesome day.
Wednesday March 18, 2015
Rather than being in a rush to return to Canada, we took the longer, more winding, Pacific Coast Hwy (1 & 101) route north from Pismo Beach. Even though I consider it early in the year, we must have passed at least a dozen people on loaded touring bikes. I really long to get back in the saddle.