Day 87…. Planning the night before to try to beat the heat today. Weather predicts 108 by 2 pm today. Brutal to ride in. I was able to get off before 8 am. With most of the day being downhill or a little flat everything should go extremely well.
Whenever possible I use the website WarmShowers for a place to stay. The night before I had contacted 8 people on WarmShowers. Most were out-of-town or unable to host for the evening. Come morning I took a minute to contact more people in hopes that before I reached Sacramento that I would have place to stay. A WarmShowers host was not in my cards this day. Everyone was unable to host for the night. So hotel for the night it was.
The closer to Sacramento I was, the more the trails followed the river. Being Saturday afternoon the trails were quite busy with cyclist, runner, and walkers. There ended up being a group of cyclists that passed me during the day and I passed them later on that day. Once they caught up with me we started chatting about the Journey. Chris was the main guy to talk with me and we rode along for few miles talking away. Before it was finished Chris invited me out later for Burgers and Beer.
I arrived at the hotel around 2 pm. Normally the hotels are pretty nice and help me out by allowing early check in. At first this manager wasn’t friendly about early check in. Telling me that check in is 3 pm and I can wait. So I went outside and sat in the heat waiting for the next hour to pass. I am not sure what changed but before 2:30 the manager came out and offered to check me in early. What a relief. It was 108 degrees at this point and would peak at 112 before the end of day.
Chris texted me right as I was getting cleaned up to meet for food and beers. I grabbed an Uber to Burgers & Brew. Upon arriving I met the rest of the crew. Chris, Chris, Harrison and Josh all showed up to hang out. We had planned on staying till 5 pm and the conversations seemed to keep going. We ended up leaving after 6 pm. It was great to meet the group and hang out. I away enjoy meeting new people and learning about others.
