Alamere

I am looking forward to the Santa Cruz Mountain Challenge on Saturday. It should be a lot of tough climbing in a pretty area. It was fun last year. But I would just as soon skip the section near the end that takes one along the beach (Cliff Dr, etc) It was congested with cars, tourists, etc. Is there a good way to safely avoid that and still get the essence of the ride?

bigbossman 

Didn't avoid it, saw lots of bikini's, worth putting up with the congestion.

BenRidin

The bikini's were certainly a wonderful addition to this already fantastic ride.

That wasn't you parked close to me who invented the new word "Mojotastic", was it?

BR

bigbossman 

Wasn't me.

Alamere

Ended up doing the whole thing. It was a wonderful event. Great weather. Great views. Very well supported. And plenty of double digit climbing. But I didn't get to see too many bikinis lest I miss the 5pm cutoff for the after ride meal.

I was talking to one of the support people who was saying that the bulk of the comments are that the event isn't hard enough and they are considering adding another 1500 ft of climbing for next year. That would probably make it too hard for me.

The time trial times are already posted on the website along with a bunch of photos.

bigbossman 

While I found this ride well-supported in general, what was up with the lunch stop? We got there at 12:15, and they were already out of sandwich meat. Lunch sucked, but the post-ride burrito was pretty nice!

Mhendricks

John,
I didn't even know you were doing this ride. Lunch was sweet! Red Potatoes were my choice along with the butter pickles. Those burritos were totally massive! We ended up doing the 100k.

bigbossman 

Yeah - I had potatoes for lunch too. Had to, that's all that was left besides some stale PBJ sandwiches, cookies, and other assorted snacks.

MarkoPolo

After having a clueless blonde in a 350 Z tell us that she felt like "running us cyclists off the road because we were so rude to be slowing her down on HER road"... and then having to endure the suffer-fest that is Jameson Creek; having only potatoes and cookies for lunch choices made us a little cranky. But we got over it.

danec99

Hey Marko

Was she being serious? I was at the stop with you, the first resident was nice (I think she thought we were a bit nuts) and then the blonde came up behind her. I took off after her comment about running us over. Anyway I did the 100k and thought it was incredible; the climbs were rewarded with two of the longest downhills - a blast. I was so freaked by Jamison all week, but it really wasn't so bad, I rode it and stayed upright. Beautiful weather, beautiful scenery - most of the ride is in the redwoods. Not a lot of traffic. The first part of Santa Cruz was nice, but the downtown bit was a little messy. A massive burrito at the end! Maybe the 100 mile next year.

MarkoPolo

Bigbossman and I had a relatively lengthy conversation with blondeZ girl. While I don't think she was raging enough to actually run someone off the road, she also didn't quite get how idiotic she sounded by threatening vehicular homicide because she was inconvenienced.

When asked if she was planning to run someone into the ditch, she said she didn't mean us, because we were "nice" and not in the middle of the road. All we were really trying to do was talk her down off the ledge and let her know that the "inconvenient cyclists" in her way were real people. I guess BBM's charm and devilish good looks saved us all from her wrath.

We DID inform the next course volunteer we saw at the Bear Creek intersection that if she actually was involved in some accident, we'd be happy to testify to her premeditation and help put her away.

It really was a nice route in regards to beauty and lack of traffic (except for around the Boardwalk in SC). Perhaps I should have been freaked out more by Jamison in advance. 3 miles of 11% avg grade was painful for a clydesdale like me. But the descents were sweet.

And yes, I've decided that a massive burrito and Marianne's ice cream is the perfect recovery meal!