Day Seven (Recap): Newport Beach to La Jolla (72 miles)

Today is the last day. The nerves and anticipation were high since we'd be returning home to La Jolla and be greeted by everyone, including my family! We headed out of the Newport Beach Marriott, and I had the pleasure of riding with David Lee and Webby today.

We had a nice ride through Newport Beach with its rolling hills. I remember during the first ride from Anaheim to La Jolla in June, the rolling hills obliterated me. I could hardly get up the hills without needing a respirator. But this time around, they were a piece of cake. It was really nice to see the improvement in my riding ability since when I first started training.

We flew through Laguna, San Clemente, and took a quick pit stop near the nuclear dolly parton's (San Onofre). We hit the landing strip and then came an interesting junction in our ride today. Since Camp Pendleton was closed for construction, we had to ride on Interstate 5 for a 7 miles to get to Oceanside. Riding on one of the busiest freeways with a group of 10 riders can be scary. Thankfully we had a hummer escorting us and blocking off the traffic, but nonetheless, it was pretty thrilling. Would I ride on the freeway again? hell no!

At Oceanside we regrouped for a SAG and I had some yummy nutella and jelly sandwiches. Nutella is amazing! After some refills for the water bottle, we headed out for the last leg of the ride. And then the speeds demons came by... Garmin along with the fast rider groupies. I decided to hop on to that train and had a blast.
We were coasting through Oceanside and Carlsbad and it was a blast. There were actually some other riders on the road sporting the Garmin Slipstream team outfit pretending to be part of the team. I would have loved to see their reaction as the real Garmin team flew by along with their chase car. It would have been priceless.

The ride with Garmin was fun. We did some fast climbs too where I scraped wheels with Mari. It sounded like two circular saws touching each other.
I eventually lost team Garmin... I couldn't keep up. It happened when Floyd deciding to put on his racing shoes and bolt after a stop light turned green. I was still clipping into my pedals and Garmin and Floyd were gone. Goodness these guys are fast. Actually, fast is not even the right word. They are lightspeed fast!
After 20 or so more miles, we all met up near Kellogg Park. It was amazing... everyone had made it! We were finished with 620 miles of riding down the coast. We congratulated each other, celebrated, and breathed a sign of relief that everyone was ok.
Shortly after, we saddled up again for a smile journey to Kellogg Park where there were at least 500 people cheering for us as we rolled through the archway. It was pretty awesome. One of the first things I saw was a big sign my family had put together that said, "CHIN". It really stood out and was great!

We received medals from kids who were part of CAF. One of the things that hit me was all these kids were lacking one to two legs, but were still so happy and smiling. These kids are as normal as you and I.
To celebrate the end of wonderful ride down the coast, Priya and Neerav brought me pizza from Luigi's and some chocolate milk!!! Delicious!!!