Conquering America, or the British Invasion Redux.
Our friends from the UK, Suzy and Ben Moore, rolled into California with their bike bags full of sweet Orange Bicycles and their hearts filled with dreams of blue skies, warm weather, hero dirt and beach time. The following is their account of how all that worked out for them and it's quite a story:
America, oh yes!
Planning for our honeymoon, holiday, birthday, end of year work trip was quite a task. We had so many places on our hit list in the state of California. Like most Brits, we underestimated how far everything was apart... nearly 3,000 miles and 3 weeks later, we had seen and experienced most of the highlight attractions from San Francisco right the way down to San Diego. We also met up with some of the most incredible and positive people we know.
Starting and finishing our trip was at Kali Protectives HQ in Morgan Hill, around 30 minutes south of San Jose, where meeting Brad, owner and founder, was an awesome way to start the trip. His knowledge and friendliness was a breath of fresh air. It's easy to see why everyone else at Kali is so cool when their boss is like Brad.
The main subject of our trip was to ride our Orange bikes in most of the top locations; not for work, just for our own pleasure. This quickly sidetracked into work in most places like riding with the amazing Wil White in the south of the state.
We managed to ride our bikes over the Golden Gate bridge (Ben wheelied most of it on the way back!)
Suzy wanted to run 5km in Death Valley and smashed it out with ease.
Crossing the border into Nevada to see Vegas was an experience, but even more so because it was raining, hard! Skipping over the state line into Arizona was quite exciting for us both, as we wanted to ride over the Hoover damn and ..... bridge. The sun made a guest appearance which made this experience one to remember!
Seeing the Grand canyon was very much on the hit list but after handing over well over $100 to see a big hole, we felt very much abused! This isn't one of the bits we recommend to future tourists! However, seeing this on Christmas day and in the snow was pretty cool!
San Diego was our favourite place. Riding with good friends and surfing in the warm sea was incredible. It was a breath of fresh air to see so many polite and nice people throughout the trip.
As we travelled back up Route 1 straddling the Pacific coast, we spent this 500 mile day mostly with our jaws on our chests. The views were simply breathtaking and stopping off in Santa Cruz for one last really ride put the cherry on the cake.
All in all, we couldn't recommend this road trip enough. The views and scenery are incredible but meeting nothing other than amazing and welcoming people all the way round really makes this a road trip for the everyday bike rider.
Thank you America. We'll be back sooner than you think...
Kali Protectives would like to thank your UK distributor, Oxford Products, for bringing Suzy and Ben to our attention. They are not only amazing athlete (yes Suzy, we put you in the athlete realm), but they are pretty special people. We are rooting Ben on to have an injury free and victory filled season.