This is the last day of my wife's six week sabbatical from work. My riding has been Freddly with a few efforts thrown in for good measure. Yesterday, we rode along Highway 1 to Santa Cruz. We parked at a state beach and headed south with the wind at our back. According to my iPhone weatherman, the wind was supposed to be 6 to 8 mph. We were going along at 25 mph on a slight uphill grade doing a couple hundred watts. The tailwind was amazing and must have been 100 watts. I told my wife, we have to slow down or it will take forever to get back. Nah, let's just enjoy the ride.

That part of the coast is actually tough to ride on due to the hilly terrain and wind. Santa Cruz was nice and we turned around and headed back. The ocean was in full whitecap mode and the headwind strong but the views were amazing. We took turns pulling but it was z3/z4 the entire way back with some of the climbs feeling like Mount Ventoux.

Today, we had the goal of an easy ride and left our house. The road we planned to use was blocked due to an accident so I got the bright idea to go another way via a road called Parrot. It goes through neighborhoods up to Skyline but we had not done this route before. Well, it was one of these 12 to 22% curvy roads. So I did get some good standing start practice and worked on OTC form up the steep grades. Once we got back on course, the ride was easy and the weather wonderful with sunny skies, light winds and temps in the low 90s.