Thursday, October 20, 2011

"Ninety five ... and still alive!"

I am talking about ninety five miles, not ninety five years.  Once again, my fears and apprehensions about the upcoming days route were unfounded.  Tuesday, by agreement, we rode very easy from Santa Cruz to Carmel because we knew we had a big ride to do on Wednesday.  It was impossible to get reasonable reservations for two rooms on the Big Sur coast, so we were going to do a more than 90 mile route and ride the entire Big Sur coast in one day.  The mileage was not my concern. I was concerned about the amount of climbing, and the road condition, the shoulders and the RV’s.  Jim thought it was going to be about 5,000 feet of climbing.  I looked at the profiles while we were in Santa Cruz and I estimated 10,000 feet of climbing based on prior profiles for other parts of the coast we had already completed.  Whatever it was, we knew we wanted to ride easy from Santa Cruz to Carmel, so that is what we did on Tuesday. 
Riding out of Santa Cruz through Soquel, Capitola and Aptos, there were a few rollers, but when we rode down into the Watsonville area, we rode through miles and miles of farmlands.  The primary crops were artichokes, strawberries and Brussels sprouts. After the farmlands, the route put us on a nice bike path for many miles between sand dunes and what used to be Fort Ord until the bike path ended at Monterey. 
Jim and I biked out onto the wharf, because we missed a turn and checked out the wharf business; mostly fishermen, fish, seagulls, pelicans, a few sea lions and a few more tourists.  No sea otters, though, but I did see one sea otter in Elkhorn lagoon when we passed Moss Landing.  After Monterey, we found our motel in the Carmel River area.  Jim and I were ahead of the SAG team, Dennie and her mom, so we went and found a burger place that served beer and we fueled up.  It was an easy ride and it should set us up for what I thought was going to be an epic, or maybe even a major ordeal the next day, when we rode the entire Big Sur coast in one 95 mile ride.
Next day we got up early and told Dennie that this was going to be a real SAG day because there was not going to be convenience stores or many places to eat along the coast.  We set up a place to meet 50 miles down the road and told her to be there at half past noon.  Then Jim and I set out at 8AM, pedaling south.  We passed Point Lobos and the coastal areas south of Carmel; very, very nice houses perched on hillsides overlooking private little bays and priceless coastal views.  I never saw Clint Eastwood, former mayor of Carmel.  Oh well, he did not ‘make my day!’ 
Continuing to head south we crossed over the bridge to Big Sur that Dustin Hoffman and “Mrs. Robinson” made famous. 
And then we came to the lighthouse on the large rock structure, attached to the coast by a spit of sand, that I consider to be  north end of the Big Sur coast.  By this time, I was slowing Jim down because I kept saying, “Stopping! Picture!”  I spent a lot of summers in this area when I was growing up, so I was thinking of a lot of memories.  Dennie and I spent some quality time in this area also, before we started making boys. 
We started going inland on Highway 1 and through the community of Big Sur.  We stopped in Big Sur to consume a sandwich and I called Dennie.  Or more accurately, I attempted to call Dennie unsuccessfully.  No cell coverage where we were in Big Sur.  This was going to make for an interesting day for the only day that we told Dennie she would have to seriously SAG. Jim and I continued to pedal south; pedaling, climbing, chasing cars going downhill and only interrupted by me saying, “Stopping! Picture!” 
We passed a sign that said Hearst Castle 45 miles, so we were half way.  About 5 miles later, we were at our 50 mile mark where we were going to meet Dennie and the SAG wagon, but Dennie was not there.  I guess I need to cut Dennie some slack though, because we were 30 minutes early.  Also, due to cell coverage, I could not raise Dennie on the cell.  So we decided to eat what we had, drink what was left and proceed to the next little community of Gorda and hope she would also.  We also kept looking north to see if we could see her on the road.  As we were finishing up what we had left we thought we could see the van about a couple miles north heading our direction.  We kept looking, and sure enough, we could see a van with a Thule pod and Bill’s bike on the top, so the SAG was on the way.  I decided to be cute and lay my bike down in the parking lot and prostrate myself on the pavement like I was totally exhausted.  Dennie pulled in the parking lot and drove up to me and honked the horn to get me out of the way.  I asked, “What!? Weren’t you worried about me?” She replied, “Jim did not look too concerned so why should I be concerned.”  Next time I need to get Jim more involved or stop being cute.  We still had a very big climb to do so we discussed what we wanted to do next.  Did we want to ride most of the way to San Simeon, our destination, and stop and let Dennie portage us in the rest of the way; or did we want to do the entire 95 miles and get in real late and make it a long, long day of cycling.  I said, “I have hundreds of people reading my FaceBook and my CanMexPacRide blog and I already told them we were doing 95 miles today and 10,000 feet of climbing.  I can’t tell them we only did 75, or whatever?” Jim muttered something that could probably be translated as, “Rookie, don’t ever show your hand and don’t ever do that again.” 
So we continued to pedal south to San Simeon for me and our fans.  We did have one more major climb, but I just took it at an easy pace, and it was not too bad.  We also had road construction that stopped us 3 times.  One of the construction stops was very interesting.  There was a boulder about the size of two bedrooms or a very large living room, poised about 200 feet up a cliff, over the highway.  Traffic was stopped and there was a crew of about 10 climbers up the cliff trying to dislodge the boulder, so it came down on their schedule and not nature’s schedule.  We pedaled to the front of the line and we watched 30 minutes while they worked on the boulder.  After about 30 minutes, they decided that they HAD to let traffic pass and that it was safe enough to pass.  They got a front loader to clear one lane of Highway 1 of all the landslide rocks that had tumbled down while working on the big boulder, and then the flagman told Jim and I to go, and he would release traffic in a few moments.  So we pedaled our butts off and continued south. 
About this time, the wind started picking up and what was a mild tailwind for most the day, became a strong tailwind.  We left the mountainous Big Sur coast and we had about 20 miles to go to San Simeon.  With the tailwind, we were doing about 20-22 mph.  Up ahead we could see a lot of cars parked and people walking around.  As we rode up, we discovered we were at the sea elephant refuge and Dennie, her mom and the SAG wagon were there also.  There was probably a “trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, million … billion” sea elephants.  I asked Dennie and Jim how many there were and they said, “Make something up”, so that is where that big number came from.  I think there were actually 200-300 sea elephants in a stretch of beach a bit less than a mile long.  They were making a ruckus, and fighting with each other.  Their fights were hilarious.  They would push, bite and bark at each other for about 30-45 seconds, and then they would both drop down exhausted, next to each other and neither would move for another five minutes. This was being repeated up and down the beach, between piles of sleeping sea elephants.  We were up on a small bluff, probably 20 feet up from the beach, behind a rail, and the sea elephants were about 10-15 yards away.  It was a great end, a nice dessert to a long ride. 
After the sea elephants, we continued to get blown in to San Simeon where we will stay two nights and have our rest day. Oh, and I was worried more than necessary.  It was not a 95 mile ride; it only turned out to be 94 miles. And we did not have to climb 10,000 feet; we only climbed 6800 feet.  And the pavement was very good for most of the ride, with good shoulders, and the drivers and RV's were well behaved, for the most part.  Next stop will be Pismo Beach, California.

2 comments:

  1. My body is sore just reading all this. But you guys are amazing. The trips sounds great. Manzanita seems like years ago and yet you are still at it. I think I have determined a core theme from all of your blogs: Beer! Keep going lads, San Diego is within your reach.

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  2. Hey guys, need an update! it's been almost a week!

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