This blog post has photos in an essentially random order and not much text. All four participants sent photos and I don't know exactly where or when they were taken. You'll just have to let them flow over you.
First, here is the planning document, all highlighted in yellow:
San Francisco to San Diego 2021
Aloft Hotel in San Francisco:
Got a room for Mike and me with two beds at the Aloft SFO (reservation for Francis White)
Conf# 95058360 for Aloft San Francisco Airport, +1-650-443-5500, evening of Sep 5, departing the 6th.
Approximate Notional Schedule:
Subject to many changes.
Climate
Here is the climate for Santa Barbara, the nominal halfway point.
https://www.usclimatedata.com/climate/santa-barbara/california/united-states/usca1017
Route Overview:
We will be riding from San Francisco to San Diego beginning on or around 7 September. The interactive map shows the Pacific Coast route. Overall mileage will be somewhere around 630 miles. Here is the approximate route on Google Maps just for ease of viewing.
We will be doing sections 4 and 5 of the Pacific Coast route:
The basic route statistics are below. The first half (section 4) is about as hilly as our last week riding into San Francisco. The last section looks pretty flat. Once we hit Santa Barbara, it all flattens out.
We also rode the Lost Coast Alternative on our previous ride and it was pretty stupidly hilly.
If we are ahead of schedule or are feeling energetic, we can split off of the coastal route in Los Angeles, and follow the Route 66 trail to pick up the Sierra Cascades route and go back into San Diego via the Southern Tier. This would probably add two days of riding and we don’t need to make this decision until we reach Los Angeles. The route would also take us past Tom Hardenburger’s house so maybe we could crash there.
Getting to San Francisco
I vote for leaving from SFO airport rather than San Jose.
It is a short ride from SFO to Pacifica with one 700’ hill where we can intercept the route.
It is a much longer and hillier route from San Jose airport to the coast. 45 miles and 2000 feet of climbing vs 12 miles and 700 feet. Also, we would miss out on about 25 miles of coastline riding.
There are a number of hotels right next to the SFO airport. I am partial to Aloft hotels, but am open to suggestions. If we can’t ship the bikes directly to the hotel, there is a Fedex facility 1.1 miles away from the Aloft and there is a Fairfield Inn just around the corner if we want to stay there instead of a mile away.
Campsites
Here is a map that shows the state parks with dedicated hiker/biker camping. This is a real treasure. Linked from this page.
Getting our stuff home from San Diego
I have a friend in San Diego that I can lean on a little bit. I’ll try to have him pick up three bike boxes from local bike shops and we can box and ship the bikes using BikeFlights. Otherwise, we can drop them off at a local bike shop and just have them boxed and shipped.
Here is an example of dropping the bike at a bike shop and paying them to box and ship: https://www.sdbikeshop.com/articles/service-repair-pg186.htm
Here is our actual daily ride schedule, which was pretty close to the planned route
September 5th - fly to San Francisco and check into the Aloft hotel near the airport. Pull the bikes out of the boxes and start putting them together.
I realized that the bearings in my rear wheel had worked themselves loose, so I had to find a bike shop and go get it fixed. There are some tools that are just not in my travel toolkit, and cone wrenches are one of them.
