Hollister to Monterey

Today was full of procrastination. Though everyone woke up on time nary a bin was out on time. Jack had prepared a slide show of pictures so most of us spent time watching that, as well as just generally trying to make our last morning last as long as possible.

During breakfast we passed out letters that we had written to each other earlier in the summer. We had each drawn a name out of a hat and wrote a letter for that person to open in Monterey. Chika had written a poem which she read, and my tears started. In true B&B fashion we had the weirdest of breakfasts, which included pudding cups, pizza and about anything else we hadn't eaten yet but that would soon go bad.

David, Arden and I set out for one last ride. We knew that we would have one last hill/mountain to climb, so we braced ourselves. The weather was cold, in a weird twist of irony, and we all were wearing arm warmers. The mountain we climbed was barely paved and shrouded in fog. At many points I couldn't see more than a few feet in front of me, though thankfully the road was practically deserted. It was windy and really only 1.5 lanes wide.

Halfway in we spotted a gas station ahead and all agreed to stop in hopes that they had coffee for David and I and hot chocolate for Arden. They did indeed. And, as tends to happen with B&B, where there is 1 there are more. What started out as us and a few others stopping to warm up turned into 27 B&B'ers drinking coffee, eating burritos from the sketchy Mexican place in the back of the gas station (delicious!) & generally partaking in nonsense, including dance parties, sidewalk chalking the parking lot and procrastination. All in all we spent about an hour and a half there before deciding we really ought to move on, as we had promised family we would be on the beach at 1 and it was now almost noon.

We were on a bike path for about the last 10 miles, and we caught glimpses of the water, which prompted the singing of "We biked to the PACIFIC, P-A-C-I-F-I-C!" to the tune of Gwen Stefani's "This sh*t is bananas" song. With about 1 mile to go we stopped at a Best Western and had our final lunch. I read my letter, which was an awesome parody all about B&B from Jay, to the tune of Freaks & Geeks by Childish Gambino. It was perfect! Jay ate his first & only PB sandwich of the trip (he had purposely & successfully avoided doing so all trip) We read the final Kudos (Kudos are little compliments, or shout outs, sometimes funny, sometimes serious), most were a walk down memory lane, which I think we all needed. We had a super intense dance party in the middle of the road, blocking some traffic, listening to some of our trip favorite songs, we hooked Marcus' huge flag to the back of his bike again, and finally, around 130 decided that we should maybe go to the beach.

The last mile in was on a bike path & is all sort of a blur. All 27 of us were screaming and chanting. We rolled in, dropped our bikes, took off socks & shoes & ran to the water. It didn't even feel cold, though apparently the temp was in the 50's? We danced and splashed and sang and chanted and generally made fools out of ourselves as only B&B'ers could. We circled up and had a big group hug. We posed for pictures & then headed back to retrieve our bikes. We completed our journey (my odometer read 4,199) & dipped our front wheel into the PACIFIC Ocean! We posed for more pictures & then the feasting & celebrating began with all of our friends & family.