Day 5 Santa Barbara to Santa Monica

Perfect weather and a great send off in the morning of the Star Spangled Banner by guitar and a pep talk by sports broadcasting legend Dick Endberg (who's wife is riding with us this year btw). We were off down the coast. The scenery is spectacular as we keep the water on the right side. The roads however, required constant attention.

Nancy's chain is beyond help courtesy of me

Day 4 Pismo Beach to Santa Barbara

What does the Foxen Say? Day 4 was spent retracing some of the same roads I took on the way north. In that respect it was a bit anticlimactic, but I had some time to look around and see some things i didn't see before. We had some early offshore winds that caused some havoc in the peloton. A lot of people are riding deep section carbon wheels that are hard to handle in a cross wind, and early yesterday, that was the case.

Don English (r) and John Howard blasting thru the crosswinds

Day 3... Epic Day Along Big Sur...

We've been cruising. Day 2 we hit the digital black hole of Big Sur. The hotel we were at... well, the motel we were at doesn't really have internet. So the blog, instagram, facebook are onhold. Today we broke the digital impasse, but really, who cares. were on the most beautiful section of coastline in the world as we hit the Big Sur coast on a early monday morning. Spectacular... more tomorrow night. Today was a 115 miles and it's time to prep for the longest day of the ride. 130 miles tomorrow. Stay tuned.

CAF's Million Dollar Challenge 2013: The Main Event

The 2013 CAF MDC is underway...

We're off! After early morning send off ceremony and an amazing rendition of Country's National Anthem by Breezy, we set off for Santa Cruz across the Golden Gate Bridge. Once again, it was awe inspiring to see towering in the fog as crossed over into the city to be met by police. No really, we had a police escort all the way to the southern border of San Francisco through every intersection. We all got pretty spoiled pretty quickly.

R & R Day: Restless and Ready...

Spent the day today trying to figure out how to spend my day. I got up early, then went back to sleep. But that didn't last long. I got out of bed, threw on my cycling clothes and pulled out my bike and headed over to the city across the Bridge. Not hard, not easy either... just a little ride to not let my legs forget we have some work to do this coming week.

Bike laundry day...

Day Five... glorious Day 5... we made it to San Francisco

Not the usual direction, but that's what made it epic!

We made it. Crossed the bridge today on route to our hotel at the Lodge at Cavallo Point about 2pm today. That's after we had a coffee at Rapha in the city. I've been meaning to check that place out, and it was worth the visit. But I digress... 

We left Mountain View at 7am, and it was chilly. We headed up and over Old La Honda, which is a incredible climb. In fact if the light was better, I wanted to take more pictures. As it was, we only took a few. The road surface was fantastic, and the climb was beautiful in the early morning. 

Day 4: Carmel to Mountain View and a look ahead to Day 5

Wow, what a day. We started the day with rain. No really, some pretty heavy wet stuff as we left the motel to 'warm up' on the 17 mile drive. It was more like the 17 miles of driving rain and wind. It was stunning even with the weather, but it was not good for morale when we had 120 some miles to go with ninety percent of the climbing in the last half of the stage.

Climbing up Empire with our Dodge Journey CAF service car