West Coast Beachride Report

Since I’m going to be heading back to the snowy Midwest for a few weeks I figured I’d better get in a nice long warm beachride in before I head back. Sunday turned out to be the prefect day, We had a small Cross race up at UCSD which is only a mile or two from the beach so Nick, Melissa, and I headed up in the car. The plan was to race and then Melissa and I would hit the beach while Nick headed back home to catch the Packer game.

The Race / Venue was awesome but since this is about fatbikes I’ll just put this one pic up.

Nick Riding through the Eucalyptus

We finished up about 11am and I switched shoes and got into fatbike mode, We first hit up the SD gliderport for a delicious sandwich before bombing the hill down to Torrey Pines state park. From there the plan was to ride north to Solana Beach and then back home. Conditions were prefect 65 degrees, no wind and mostly sunny.

Now, this was Melissa’s first real Fatbike ride, we had just finished building her a new Pugsley on Monday (look for a how to based on that build soon) suffice it to say that she Immediately Figured out why I’ve been preaching the Fatbike gospel.

Melissa stoked on her new ride

We soon found some cool rocks to play around on.

We cruised along  Enjoying the day and Amazing scenery, as well as the SoCal flavor

The Quintessential SoCal Uniform

I had looked at the tide chart earlier and confirmed that we would be able to make the whole ride without getting too wet but it was close in a few spots. We found these cool Sea caves and some sweet rock ramps to jump off.

nice rock jump

Riding out of a Sea Cave

Soon enough we reached the turn around spot but it was too nice so we continued all the way up to Oceanside and these big sandpiles

Imagine Loud Screaming

After this we turned around and headed back. If you don’t know Beachriding is hard! We had already been out for nearly 3 hours so we settled in to a good cadence and spun our way back home. Just before we got off the beach in La Jolla we encountered a few Interesting things

1. A nude volleyball game (sorry no pics)

2. This sweet beach house

3. This nasty Rock Field

When Mikesee called walking through boulderpatches like this Stumblef*cking he got it exactly right. We were pretty bonked at this point and this was a “fun” way to end 4.5 hours and 40 miles of beach riding.

Now starving we made a beeline for the nearest Mexican joint (thankfully they are always nearby) and got some Carne Asada Fries

Lots o' Fries

and 4 minutes later…

 Re-fueled we finished up our ride home through Pacific Beach.

And Finally over the bridge back home.

We got back at 5:43PM nearly 7 hours after we started exausted and ready for bed but before anything we washed down the bikes to remove any salt buildup.

A few observations from the ride:

1. People shout one of 3 things pretty much automatically when they see a fatbike. “Look at those tires!” or “What do you use that for?” and finally “Holy F*ck”, Sh*t or some other naughty word.
2. If you keep an eye on the tide you really don’t get much saltwater on the bike.
3. Helmets on the beach end up being very irritating (we still brought ours for the ride back on city streets)
4. An Internal Gear Hub or SS is very nice to have on the beach, sand can really cause some bad chainsuck.
5. Riding the beach in SoCal is superfun!