I plan to park my car at Fullerton and my wife and I will ride our bikes down to San Diego. We'll catch an evening train back to Fullerton ($40). I don't know how much they charge for throwing the bikes onto the train.

I know this has been done before, but does anyone know the safest route?

Jim

Personally, I would start at Irvine, not Fullerton, but that's only because I'm not familiar with any decent routes in that part of the OC. Starting from Irvine is a piece of cake--just turn left from the parking lot onto Barranca Pkwy and go south; as you cross Alton, Barranca becomes Muirlands. Follow that down to La Paz, then jog right (west) across the freeway, then continue south on Cabot, the first street. Follow Cabot down to Crown Valley, cut to the left (east) a block to Forbes Rd and go down to the Metrolink parking lot; take the pedestrian underpass to get to the other side of the tracks, and you're on Camino Capistrano--you can follow that all the way down to San Juan Capistrano and beyond to PCH. Head down to San Clemente along the coast and decide if you want to leapfrog Pendleton by train (if you're doing this on a weekday, you can take Metrolink to Oceanside cheaply) or ride down I-5. http://forums.roadbikereview.com/showthread.php?t=6418. From Oceanside, you basically just stay on PCH to La Jolla. I did the whole ride once about 15 yrs ago, so I'm hazy about the La Jolla/San Diego part (things have probably changed since I was there), but I can vouch for the Irvine/San Clemente bit (in fact, I'll be riding there this coming week--and taking the train, too.)

As for bikes on the train, there's no charge on Amtrak's Surfliners; each coach has racks for 3 bikes (except the cafe car, the business class and the control cab car). If you were to do this on a weekday, as I said before, you could take Metrolink, which is much cheaper, though not quite as plush, and each car has room for 2 bikes, at no charge. An additional benefit to Metrolink is that there are more stops, which could put you closer to a good bike route.

(A bit of clarification on Metrolink: it only runs as far south as Oceanside, so you can't come back from San Diego on it. There is a counterpart in SD County called the Coaster, which does run from San Diego up to Oceanside, but I don't know anything about scheduling. You can find Metrolink schedule info for the OC line at www.metrolinktrains.com.)