On Bicycles, and.... what else is there?

Day 4: the final stage of the Tour. And I was worried. This was the longest day, with each leg delivering its own dose of pain. Leg 1: Strawberry Fields, a short but intense climb leading to a long run to the rest stop. Attacking here is a must, but then it's almost hopeless to hold a gap the rest of the way. Leg 2: Harris Grade. This is the most challenging climb on the whole official route. It winds up a hill, with multiple right-hand-turns presenting themselves as strong candidates for the summit, until eventually you hit the actual peak and it's a technical descent to the rest stop in Lompac. Then next is Gaviota Pass, a long, painful, windy grind ending in a final steeper pitch to the summit and a screaming-fast descent to US101 and the final rest stop. Then finally the long run to Galena along the Hwy 101 shoulder. From the exit it's still a considerable distance to the finish, but along scenic Cathedral Oaks and Foothill Ave, a purely enjoyable finish to t...

Prologue Day 3 of the MDR is the "recovery day". It's also the day of Gregg Ferry's descending contest. Janine the night before had declared the traditional 9:00 roll-out was to be replaced with a 9:30 roll-out to provide more time for rooms to be made ready at the destination hotel, which was this year to be the Rose Garden Inn in SLO. I was a bit disappointed, as I like SLO and preferred to spend the extra half hour there, but so it was. We rolled at 9:30 sharp. To breakfast I was with Peter, and had mentioned to him that tomorrow was quite hard enough, and had no interest in following Michael Rowe, who was doing an extra climb, up Highway 46. Highway 46 is a busy road with wide shoulder, so climbing it has only the attraction of training, and I was getting plenty of that already. So we rolled as a group to Cambria, the traditional breakfast place. As we got to the turn-off, David Hover continued straight with some others to ride further, to Pismo Beach per...

Day 3 of the Memorial Day Tour is a traditional recovery day, and while some chose to flaunt that tradition by climbing the challenging west side of Santa Rosa Creek Road, I prefer to embrace it and instead focus on the highlight of the day, the descending contest. We rode south on 1 back to Cambria where we stopped at various places for breakfast. Most stop at a cafe serving the usual breakfast goods, but Kerry, Paul, and I went to Medusa's Real Mexican. Anytime I see "real" in front of "Mexican" I get excited, because really there's no better food in the world. Both Kerry and I skipped over the breakfast menu and went straight to the lunch menu, I getting tacos, she a burrito, while her husband Paul went with some more typically breakfast thing. My tacos really were quite good, perhaps not King City good, but better than the ones I'd had in San Simeon. That made tacos four days in succession (after Burrito Barn in Campbell) and I wasn't close...

The happy group at the start of MDR. This past weekend I did the "Memorial Day Ride" ("MDR"), a supported bike tour between Los Gatos and Santa Barbara organized for the past 22 years by Janine Rood. The route alternates between the original "coastal route" and a newer "inland route". The coastal route, held on odd years, follows Highway 1 through Big Sur while the odd-yeared inland route tours the parched hills of Hillister, Pacines, Bitterwater, and King City on the way to Cabria and San Simenon. From San Simeon to Santa Barabara the two routes share the same final two days. 2011 being odd, this was a coastal route year, but the same landslides which diverted the Tour of California from its planned Big Sur passage did the same to MDR this year, so inland it was for the second consecutive year. So odd and even switch: next year will be coastal, Caltrans permitting. The inland route is 370 miles or so in four days: a long first day of 1...