CA trip. Day 2 UPDATED

I wasn't able to upload any pics Wednesday night, but scroll down and you'll see a lot now. I'll continue this later. It's after 1:00am again I've got to hit the hay.

Day 2 cont. BLACK PANTHER! On Thurs. morning 3/23 I rolled out from JJ's on my mtn. bike to go explore the local fire roads. JJ told me to drive from his house until the pavement ended, but I wanted none of that. So climbed nearly 3 miles of single lane pavement, and then hit the gravel and snow! There were 3 roads I could take. Two of them had too much snow for me to pedal through so I took the one on the left.

I found another road on the left going out to Star Ranger Station. I saw that it went up hill so I took that looking for some more climbing. I was grunting along when I spotted some movement up on the bank above me in the woods. I looked again and saw a pretty good size "Cat" of some kind. It wasn't a bobcat or a regular mtn. lion. It was black! Cool, a black panther! Shit, I need to stop mixing crack with my EPO before I go riding! :-)

Well, I don't know what kind of animal it was, but my first thought was to try and check it out further. Then I remembered the stories I had read of mtn. lions stalking hikers and mtn. bikers and attacking them. So, I decided I needed to turn dowhill and fast. I continued on the main road for another couple miles before turning around and climbing back to the top all the while looking out for wild animals that were ready to attack me.

Back at JJ's Jenifer fixed a great lunch for us and I headed south again about 1:30. My next destination would be Oakland, CA. Did you know there's an Oakland in OR? And a Phoenix too.

I arrived at my friend Aaron's place about 8:30pm. He wasn't home but had told me where I could find the key to get in. As I was fumbling around in the dark a neighbor tackled me thinking I was a burglar. I explained to her who I was and made everything right.

Aaron is a former co-worker of mine from Sportworks just like JJ. It pays to keep in touch. There's the obvious benefit of having a place to crash, but it's much more than that. It's so cool to have friends in different cities to visit and catch up with. And to see their living environment. Everyone is so unique and I really enjoy spending time with these people and their hospitality is always over the top.

So Aaron and his girlfriend, Ellen, swung by and picked me up. We went to a local hangout for bite to eat and some Racer 5 IPA. Back at Aaron's place his flatmate is out of town so I got his room. His bed is actually in an oversize closet of sorts. You have to climb up into it and it's a bit like being in a small cave. It was cool and I slept well.