We thought San Francisco wasn’t going to let us go. Due to a currency conversion confusion on our part and unblinking reticence on the car rental’s part, Dylan didn’t have enough money on his card and they couldn’t accept mine. We sat despondent in the waiting room for a while, knowing our car, booked some four months in advance was waiting there but $50 short of being ours. We moved our pity party to the sidewalk, it was a beautiful day, but weighed down with more than our packs we found it hard to enjoy it. The only solution involved swallowing some pride and waiting for sunrise in Australia, we called Dylan’s mum for a rescue transfer, thank goodness for family. Finally, with keys in ignition we could be on our way, we met up with our riding bud Will for waffles, a hurried affair that we felt might have left the poor guy in a cartoon cloud of dust as we ate and ran, but the day was already waning. San Francisco had been fun, but we had a trek across California to make over the next week, LAX our ultimate destination.

The car was not done convincing us that bike’s were the way to go yet. We realised that the car company had given us a car with fuel tank just below half full and too late we were climbing up a mountain. Would we make it? It was going to be a long trek with a jerrycan if we hit empty.