47 Miles
So this morning I got to see the other side of Lompoc, which is more along the lines of what I think of a normal town. I guess yesterday I rode into town by the airport where they had several nice hotels, several nice shopping malls and the like. This morning I rode beyond all that, all the way across Lompoc and then out of town and up the hills.
I usually eat breakfast before I go but decided to just stop for some milk on the way, then stop and have granola with the rest of the strawberries from Sharon once I got out of town. So I start riding up a hill, the sun comes out and it's starting to warm up and I see this access road on the right with a large metal gate. There are a couple of trees and it looks like as good a spot to stop as any. I pull over, set my bike against one of the metal fences supporting the gate, pull out my bowel, set it on top of a metal post in the gate and start assembling breakfast.
As I'm eating breakfast I decide to see if I can find a geocache (click here for a quick tutorial geocaching) somewhere along the road ahead. I pull out my phone, pull up the Geocaching app and discover that the closest geocache is exactly where I am. I start looking around and it turns out to be hidden in the very metal post where I assembled my breakfast! That was pretty cool.
After breakfast I hit the road. The road was a long series of ups and downs, like rolling foothills that went on for several miles and then the climb got rather steep and went on for some time. It was getting very warm so I stopped frequently especially when I found a spot of shade, and drank lots of water. Finally hit the summit and found a very cool patch of grass in a very large patch of shade and sat down to cool off for a while. After a few minutes a flatbed truck with a couple of bikes in the back and a bike shop advertisement on the side pulls over. Thinking that maybe they were stopping to ask if I needed any help or anything, I gave them the thumbs up and tried to let them know that I was OK. Ha...they weren't after me at all. Apparently this was a support vehicle for a riding club, and they were getting out to take pictures of the club as they raced up the same hill I was recovering from. After a couple minutes they jumped back in the truck and sped away, and then a few seconds later a group of 20 or so cyclists came racing by.
I left my spot and started the descent, which was long and steep. I was coasting for a while and on the brakes pretty heavy (I rarely let myself get up to 30 mph). At the bottom of the hill I joined Hwy 101 and approached "the tunnel". I'd noticed the tunnel on the map but there were no comments about it, and as I approached I noticed it was only on the northbound side. As I went by I noticed that it also appeared to be pretty short. Even so...not sure I want to be in a tunnel with lots of traffic. A few more ups and downs and I was back at the ocean! This time I could see oil drilling platforms way off towards the horizon. I've noticed these platforms on previous trips to Santa Barbara. From here it was a mostly pleasant trip down the 101, sometimes riding on the highway and sometimes riding on access roads beside the highway. When I finally rolled into my hotel I was beat!
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| Making breakfast on top of the pole |
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| Geocache in the pole |
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