Saturday, May 28th 2011:

               We started off our day waking up to a very pleasant 6:30 sunrise at the Holiday Inn. After a hot breakfast, we set out for I-5 to make our way to Dana Point, about 50 miles south of LA. Along the way, the stench of manure seemed to envelop our car as we passed through many small cities in central California. Filling up gas in a small city seemed like we were just tossing money in our tank; gas was 4.50 per gallon! After some more biblical discussions on the road, we passed through the Tejon pass- peaking out at 4144 feet above sea level. Finally we reached LA- where Jerry and Ed starting making their way down memory lane. First we visited Tito’s Tacos, which is known for always being packed to the brim with people. We met another biker there who rode down into LA often- and we chatted with him while eating our delicious tacos. Then Ed wanted to visit his hometown- and we made our way to Compton. We joked around that I would only post this on the blog if we came out with less than 3 bullet wounds- gratefully we only sustained 2 shots, one to Ed’s thigh and the other one grazing Jerry’s head- neither of them critical- so we set back off. As we were leaving, happy to be alive, we met our first Good Samaritan, who warned us that our gas cap was off. After fixing that we set out for Ed’s daughter’s house for a visit in Huntington, just a few blocks off of the beautiful California coast. She owned a beautiful little place that gave us a nice rest from the road- which we definitely enjoyed. After another few hours of driving down through Newport and Laguna, we reached our hotel in Dana Point, California just after 3:00. Here we met up with Christian and Matthew Lyman, the other two adventurers on our expedition- and set up our rooms for the night. With a few of Ed’s daughters- we went out and grabbed an early dinner at The Old Spaghetti Factory. After filling our stomachs, Ed and Jerry treated us to a scenic tour of Newport- with so many expensive houses and cars! We just retired back to our rooms in order to grab a good night sleep before tomorrow’s adventures. J