There was a massive heat wave that hit the southwest, which included all of Southern California. And guess who decided to visit Southern California during this heat wave … yeah, yours truly. I figured that since we have the 4th of July off, I might as well extend my time off with a couple extra days to extend to the weekend. I knew it would be bad when I saw the weather.com forecast to be 108 F in Rosemead, which is where I would stay.
Well that forecast was a little generous … actually, it got even hotter. It got to 112 F at the hottest point, and that wasn’t even the hottest in the Southern California area. The hottest was in Woodland Hills, where it got to 117 F. Yeesh!
Needless to say, I didn’t ride on this day. I actually got into town the day before, and rode around the Rose Bowl for about an hour … but even then, the temp was around 100 F.
Saturday, I did a ride with a bunch of friends, and we started in Tustin, then headed to the coast, then went south to Carlsbad (just south of Oceanside). It was a cool 82 F on that ride … much better than the triple digit temps forecasted in the valley. And that was about 10 degrees cooler than the previous day.
We took the train back from Oceanside, back to Tustin. The Metrolink route goes parallel to the beach, so as you can probably imagine, a number of people were taking the train from the beach back inland. And yes, Metrolink was crowded. I guess it’s kinda lucky we boarded with all our bikes in Oceanside, where we did have room to get all our bikes on. Passengers who boarded a few stops later weren’t so lucky
It was actually pretty funny … the train conductor was begging people to get onto the train. In my 10 years of riding Caltrain, I never heard them begging for people to get onto the train.
When we finally got back into Tustin, opening the door, it was an oven … Oooh … we wanted to get back into the train. Oh well.
I was to drive back the next day … I decided I would leave before 7 am, just so I can beat the heat. Luckily, the temp never got above 100 while on the drive … at least according to my thermometer. By the time I got into San Jose, it was in the low 90s. At least it wasn’t 111 F.
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