California

 Febr 19, 2023

I was up at 2.30 am this morming to go to the airport in Toronto. I had this uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. I knew that I had checked my bags a thousand times and was confident that I had not forgotten anything. Yet the feeling remained.

 

It was a bit of an eventful boarding process. I was supposed to have flown with Air Canada and without notifying me the flight was changed to United Airlines. It took three different lineups before I finally figured out where to go. This delay meant that there was a very long line of people waiting to get through the security check. And I had to go through customs as well.  Luckily the airport has made some changes to their system. An airport staff member will check your boarding time and when you are running late he/she will take you out the long line and allows you into a faster line. Even with using the fast lane, I just made it in time for the boarding. I slept for a bit but was awake for the coffee round. Bonus: I got cookies which I would not have gotten with Air Canada🙂.

I arrived around 10:00 am in California. There is a 3 hour time difference with Ontario, so in time for coffee with Rachel and Sharath. Can you tell that I like coffee!!

We spent a wonderful day together. I made it an early night as I needed to catch up on some sleep.

Monday was President's Day and both Rachel and Sharath had the day off thus a good time to finish off some last minute shopping for the upcoming bike ride. 

The day began with biking 11 miles to Palo Alto to the bike store. During the ride my motor shut down again. This issue started during my previous ride from Seattle to San Francisco in 2022. During that ride my bike was in the shop twice to have it fixed. At that time I was told that the cause was an issue with the software and an update would fix the problem. Unfortunately, the problem remains. So frustrating! I told Timothy from the bike store about the issue and to please try to fix the problem. 

Wednesday we picked up the bike and I was told that an update in the software had fixed the problem and that my bike should be okay. 

It was cold, rainy, windy and getting dark very fast so we put the bike in the back of the car and drove home. The testing has to wait till tomorrow.

This morning, Thursday, I took my bike for the 1st test ride and the bike performed well.  I will go for another bike ride tomorrow to make sure that everything will be fine. The landscape here is perfect for testing my bike. Hills with a grade between 9% and 15%. Yet the bike seems to be fine.

My to do list is nearing its end😊.

And now I'm in the process of trying to pack my bags and there are of course too many things that need to come and not enough space.

How cold is it? Snow capped mountains seen from the livingroom window.