Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Day 3 Paso Robles to Carmel Recap and look ahead to Day 4

Wow, what a day. Started off cold... like stop the car, get all the cold gear out and suit up. It was in the 40's from the hotel and kept that way for a good portion of the early ride. Wished I had dug out my toe warmers... But the possible rain prediction never came to fruition and the beginning of the ride along the 101 at spots was not a problem. Cody was up for the challenge after his gallant fight with some sort of food poisoning on Stage 1. 

The signature of the day, and maybe even the 5 days of riding was Nacimiento-Fergusson Rd which is a picturesque ass-kicker that takes you from the valley side of the 101 and puts you on Highway 1. It goes through an Army base and because of the federal shutdown, all the national park campgrounds on the ocean side of the climb were closed, so we saw at most 4 cars the entire climb and descent. Fantastic. Couple that with epic weather, we were in heaven. 

Nacimiento-Fergusson Rd heading west


We then hit highway 1 with a good 60 miles to go to Carmel. Ugh. Last year I remember running downwind through sections of big sur at light speed with a wind at my back. Luckily we got to this section with little to no wind for sections and maybe even a few tailwind pushes when we needed it. Also worthy of a note was that most of the traffic on the Big Sur Highway 1 route was southbound, at least on the southern end before Carmel starts to effect traffic. So we didn't have it too bad. 


We did turn some heads of the cyclists heading south. Apparently CAF is not the only group to have scores of cyclists head down the coast. There were at least two large groups doing the southern migration that we will be doing next week. The CAF MDC crew looks good compared to groups we saw btw ;-)
Cody and I at the top, right before the descent

Tomorrow is another epic day of riding. In fact, its the one-two punch of today and tomorrow that loomed large about this trip. We'll find out how were feeling after tomorrows relatively flat first 60 miles, and then the 60 miles of climbing after that. We're again leaving early to hope to avoid wind through to Santa Cruz before heading into the hills and ending in Mountain View. 

Today, the Garmin 810 behaved, at least it didn't crash and more or less told me the route along the way. We'll see if my settings work again tomorrow. I think we'll have cell reception most of the way and the tracking will work properly. Today it apparently worked but coughed when we lost cell service in the hills, but then drew a straight line to the finish after reconnecting. I didn't know this, but apparently I'm a product tester for Garmin (I'm going to send them an invoice when I get back home). 

Tired, must sleep....

Dreaming about this....

Day 4 Route: http://ridewithgps.com/routes/3473246

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