Mhendricks

I hardly ever start threads but here's my attempt for a great ride with some of the Norcal fellow and gals. Bossman and I drove up on Friday, registered, and then hooked up with some of our Norcal members and some of the Socal members. We headed over to a Hofbrau over in Morro Bay where we were treated to some great chow. Loved that place. The next morning, met up with Marko and his wife along with their tandem, Marko Polo, Jodie, Mike from Walnut Creek, and another member (I'm bad with names). Weather was pretty overcast and a little on the misty side but other than that not a bad start. After a few miles we reached Old Creek road which was the climb of the day. Bossman and I came down this road on the way to Morro Bay on Friday and thought it would be a a decent climb. It turned out to be a great climb and after awhile the sun came out and the weather was just perfect. Met up with Spingineer, Marko and his wife, Mike, and a couple of other Norcal members at the first rest stop and took off as a group. The climb was great and then we were treated to a nice 5 mile descent down to Highway 1. From there is was on the way to Cambria for the lunch stop. Lots of good food there and we definitely got our bellies full. The weather at the beach was still overcast and it stayed that way for almost the entire way back down Highway 1 to Cuesta College. All in all I thought it was a great ride even though I didn't get any good pictures of the beach. The only down side was the after ride meal which I thought could of been a little better. Here are some pics:

Spingineer posing for some of the local news reporters and some guy in a USA jersey flexing for the camera


Rest of the Gang


The climb up Old Crook Road


View of the lake at the first rest stop


Local Studs


View from the downhill on Highway 46


Beach View at the Linch Stop



Thanks guys for a great time.

damnpoor

The best view the whole day was coming down 46 and seeing the fog layered up against the hills. The rest of the ride was way too foggy. I didn't see sunshine until I was about 15 miles from the finish.

uspspro

Yeah the descent down 46 (on the 100 hilly route) had awesome views, but we were going way to fast for Ruth to take any pics.

PS to Mike - It's Marco, and Ruth is my fiancee (wedding in June 09)

Nice riding with everyone, we'll have pics up soon (we just got back).

My favorite parts of the ride were:
- Descending 46
- Reeling in every rider in site on the biggest climb of the ride (except for Ramon). The tandem is known to be fast on the flats and DH, but to do so well on the climb in the middle of a 100 mile ride feels very good.

spingineer

Dang it, I went ahead and created a new post for this ... I guess I'll move it over here

Back from the Central Coast (at least that's what many call the San Luis Obispo - San Simeon area). This ride was a blast. It was the first time we got NorCal and SoCal BF groups to come together (even if it was a little more informal). I was kinda the tie between the two groups. It was a lot of fun.

Bostic and I drove down on Friday, and met up with herbm (from SoCal). We were all staying at the same hotel. Later, Jonathanb715, and friend, Jody, came along, and we hooked up with Bigbossman and Mhendricks. Met Cassave (also from SoCal). We didn't end up going to a different restaurant than originally planned (it was expensive, with bad live band, and we didn't want to wait till 7:30 PM for dinner). This time, we didn't have to threaten to get our food by Italian mobsters ... but just in case, we had Bigbossman and Mhendricks to lay the hurt ...

Bostic and I registered the night before, so we decided to ride from the hotel, and meet Marco and Ruth along the route on Hwy 1.

It was damp, foggy, and misty ... hmmm, felt like being in SF ... but without the GG bridge. It was so damp, I had to eventually take my glasses off. At the first rest stop, we waited for our party to arrive. We reunited with our friends from SoCal, then met up with Scootcore, Indolent, and also met up with Slabby and MarkoPolo.

Ok, after hamming it up awhile (we hung out at the rest stop for 30 min), onwards to the climb. It was a nice climb, with Marco and Ruth hammering it up, followed closely by Bostic. I could not keep up at that pace, and rode with Slabby and Mhendricks for a while. After climbing for about 10 min, the sun broke out ... woohoo. The climb from the rest stop was about 4 miles, followed by a nice descent before approaching the next rest stop at Hwy 46.

Again, we re-grouped with everyone there, and it started getting toasty while waiting at that rest stop. So off goes another layer, hopefully not to worry about layering again for the rest of the day ... but we wouldn't be so lucky ... but that comes later on in our story. There was a short climb up Hwy 46 before getting the fast descent back to Hwy 1. Last year, the descent was tough, because we had stiff cross winds, which made steering and maneuvering very tough. We lucked out this year, as there was hardly any cross winds at all .... yippee! This meant having the luxury of getting down into a tuck. Slabby and I traded passing each other, and catching onto other packs.

Met up with Marco and Ruth, Bostic at the next rest stop. This is where we split off from the metric option riders. We continued on northbound, passing San Simeon and onto Piedras Blancas Lighthouse. We got there, but then where was the friggin' lighthouse? One rider was mentioning it had been under construction, and it wasn't very pretty anyways. I asked if the smoke stacks at Morro Bay were prettier, and they said yes, and there are 3 of those ... Oh well ... this is the turnaround point, and onwards to lunch. On the way there, the sun disappeared, and what took its place??? You guessed it, more fog. Time to put arm warmers back on.

Lunch had a pretty nice spread, with pie too! They had hot chocolate ... mmmm ... didn't have to twist my arm ... hot chocolate it is. Wow, that felt good. I think SLOBC knew we might not be able to see the Lighthouse, so they put mini-lighthouses on the picnic table, just to keep with the motif. That was a nice touch.

Ok, now onto the rest of the ride. After that big lunch, we are greeted with a slight hill. Now that is pure evil ... but at least it was too long of a climb. I had Bostic in sight, but not for long. I think I had him in my sight for about 5 minutes ... then, over the ridge he went, and that was the last of them until the next rest stop.

Great ride, great people, and great opportunity to ride with our friends in SoCal. We should do that again. It's a lot of fun.

Oh, and since Bostic and I rode along the route, we continued to ride back to the start. That meant we had to ride back on the first 8 miles that we skipped in the beginning. True to form, on our way back, we saw a steep straight road that we couldn't resist ... we climbed that to give us an extra few 100 feet of climbing. That's tough, especially after having 90+ miles in your legs.

Stats:
Distance: 98.25 miles
Elevation Gain: 4857 feet.
Elevation Profile

spingineer

Rolling out in the fog


Bigbossman ... proudly showing off one of his many bikes ... the Pinarello


Yours truly, at Whale rock


Herbm and Spingineer ... proudly wearing respective BF jerseys ... with ... ahem ... some extras


NorCal contingent ... uspspro, ruth, bostic, marko polo, mhendricks, slabby


Marko Polo, Jonathanb715, Bostic


Bigbossman, Slabby, Marko Polo, Jonthanb715


Mhendricks plowing through the fog


Jody


Climbing Old Creek Road

Mhendricks

[QUOTE=uspspro;7564719]Yeah the descent down 46 (on the 100 hilly route) had awesome views, but we were going way to fast for Ruth to take any pics.

PS to Mike - It's Marco, and Ruth is my fiancee (wedding in June 09) QUOTE]

Marco,
Thanks for correcting me and congratulations to you and Ruth. Ramon and Bostic sorry I left you guys out. I have memory lapses. Old Age

spingineer

Slabby and Mhendricks climbing Old Creek Road


The descent








Scootcore (Bill) refueling


Old Creek Reststop


Jody arrives at rest stop


Continuing on Hwy 46

spingineer

Descending hwy 46






Look ... we're near the beach!


Heading towards lunch


Hearst Castle somewhere at the top of the hill


Ruth ... what's that behind your head ... a Lighthouse?


Ramon hiding behind the lighthouse


Jonathanb715 showing his fondness of lighthouses

bigbossman 

That Pinarello is the only aluminum bike I own.


A few pics of mine:

Beginning the climb:


Further up - if you look closely, you can see the road gap on the right edge of the far peak:


5.5 mile "ballroom" decent back to the coast:

damnpoor

Is that your white tandem in the photos?

I was absolutely amazed at the number of tandems I saw yesterday. Unfortunately every time I saw one it was going the wrong direction

I also want to mention that I was impressed with the "community service" cars and the CHP support we had. I commented to another rider about the CHP, "It must be a hard job driving around watching all these bikers"

uspspro

Yep. That's ours.

slabby

great meeting everyone: jonathan, john, jody, mikeh, mark, ron, ramon, marco & ruth. special thanks to jonathan for calling out "hey, norcal bikeforums!" as i was rolling around the parking lot at the start.

agree the best part was climbing Old Creek and descending to the 2nd rest stop, then descending 46 down to the coast. (several years ago, i had taken the 46 to cut over from the 1 to the 5, and it was so gorgeous i had to pull over for a panoramic shot of the coastal fog weaving through the mountains. would've never imagined i'd be riding my bike on the same stretch of road years later.)

i was bummed by the fog once we approached cambria. my riding lately has been on-and-off and i had originally signed up for the flat metric. but on a sliding scale, i'd decided that if the weather was good and wind was bearable i'd do the full century. alas, rather than an extra 2 hours in the mist, i decided to turn around at the cambria stop. (but seeing ron's pics, now i see that the sun did peak out at san simeon! ... next year!)

on the way back near cayucos, i rode with a h.s. student from nearby atascadero. he was so hyped to be riding in his first organized event and riding in a group with other cyclists. he was in "the zone" and nothing was gonna break up his stride. i loved it.

BlastRadius

Thanks for the report.... 4800 ft in 98 miles; sorry I missed it. At my friend's 40th b-day party was fun.

spingineer

Photocrazy shot ...

BlastRadius

Nice. The guy didn't holler at you to sit down?

spingineer

I was busy trying to maneuver around the riders in front of me so that the camera would get a clear shot of me.

damnpoor

Here's mine (blue and white in front):

x136 

Can't slow! Guy in clown jersey will eat me! Can't slow! Guy in clown jersey will eat me!

Bostic

bigbossman 

I found my pics on the Photocrazy website, but cannot find my free download code.

MarkoPolo

I'm in the same boat, but the photo made me look fat - it IS the camera's fault, right? - so I don't want it anyway!

Great to see and ride with all the NorCal BF folks.

spingineer

Well it's not fair to compare to Bostic ...

slabby

blue steel.



the flash got my arm warmers all shiny.

uspspro

Here are our pics...

First the photocrazy ones

First one = climbing earlier in the day
Second one =Flying on Hwy 1 (43 mph when they took the picture)

uspspro

Here's more:

Start of the ride... fog


First rest stop... Ron in the fog


Ramon... same fog


Heading to the climb... here comes the sun ... almost