Day 65 – Ahhhh, South California

That’s a line from Simon and Garfunkel’s Punky’s Dilema and so apt.

Time to leave the yacht behind. In the morning, we said goodbye to Harald and Elise who were both staying in a hostel in Santa Monica and flying out of LA in a few days. Luke, John, and I made our way to John W’s house in Torrance after wending our ways down the coast through Malibu and the crowded paths at the Santa Monica Pier. Once past that, we rejoined at a state park and rode together to John W’s house through the much quieter Manhattan, Hermosa, and Redondo Beaches.

I met John W when he stayed with me as a Warm Showers guest in June, and again in July. He is retired from Grumman Aerospace and was a systems engineer who worked on the James Webb Space Telescope. He worked on the unfolding and the fail-safe systems and we were all voicing how cool it was that he worked on such important parts of that amazing endeavor. We camped in the back yard and chatted with John W and thanked him for hosting us even though he had a full house with his daughter visiting from Boulder. Just one very nice guy who I got to know through the happenstance world of touring.

John W’s daughters Brenna and Shallaney and Shallaney’s boyfriend Gabriel were very welcoming and offered us fruit and deliciously large pumpkin muffins that we all ravenously wolfed down. We went to bed early as John and Luke were leaving for a long day towards San Diego and the Mexican border.