Burt Bacharach and Hal David were right. LA is a great big freeway.
But as such it isn’t crash hot for cycling (more hot crash) so we hire a Chevy Tahoe for the 40 mile journey from LAX to the start line at Costa Mesa. The vehicle is a supersize SUV (think Sherman tank then order the go large option) and swallows our two Evoc bike cases and four kit bags with trunk to spare. With eight lanes of traffic in each direction the Interstate 405 seems almost as wide as British motorways are long. America is a big country. In more ways than one.
Too tired to assemble our bikes immediately after check in and too scared to venture out even on side roads that have four lanes each way we don’t need much persuasion to embark instead on some essential carb loading. Without being too unkind to our hosts carb loading is something the Americans do very well if the bodies on display at nearby Newport Beach are anything to go by. Which reminds me: did I pack the spare tyres (or tires as they say over here)? It’s the carb burning they don’t do so well. But with 3,000 miles of pedalling ahead of us Rose and I reckon a burger, fries and cola won’t hurt. And it doesn’t. We wash it all down with milkshakes. And for pudding pop a couple of the cookies thoughtfully provided by the hotel kitchen for guests with the early evening post-lunch/pre-dinner munchies. I weighed 71.4 kg before I left the UK. Watch this space for my weight in four weeks time. I could well be taking back some unexpected excess baggage.