The Big Sur Ride

About three months ago Mike decided that he wanted to ride the Big Sur Ride in September. Last year I did the ride with a handful of friends, and Mike drove and met us at Ft. Hunter Liggett and then at the end of the ride. Big Sur is a two day ride, with overnight camping at the Fort. Day one is about 92 miles starting in Carmel Valley, will a hellacious 7 mile climb up Nacimiento Road at mile 60. Day two is about 76 miles back through King City (over Quadbuster in the opposite direction), up to Cahoon Summit and back up Carmel Valley Road. This year there were nine of us: Mike & I, David, Jeremy, Charlie, Kelsey, Michael, Chris and MaryBeth. We left Carmel Valley at 7:30am on Saturday morning, and had a gorgeous ride down Highway One all the way past Big Sur, almost (about 45 miles short) to Hearst Castle! Charlie, Kelsey and I rode most of the first 2/3 of Day One behind MaryBeth. She is a little slower than us, and we were all wanting to take it easy so by riding with MB, it insured that we would not go to fast, nor drop her and never see her until camp.
If you've ever driven down Hwy 1 south towards Hearst Castle, you will recognize the pictures. Let me tell you, riding it on a bike is so much different because you get the sounds and smells of the sea and as Charlie says, you also don't have to worry about getting car sick because of the winding roads. In fact, the rolling winding roads on a bike are simply awesome!

At mile 60 or so, you make a left turn off of Hwy 1 onto Nacimiento Road which is a 7 mile, winding, two lane road with a climb up to about 2500 feet. At the top, there is a rest stop and lots of folks applauding the completion of your ascent. I road up the road at a snails pace, but was happy to meet up with David on the way who had stopped to catch his breath and take some pictures.
This is what Nacimiento looks like after you've climbed a couple of miles...
After the climb there is a great, winding, fast downhill a few miles until you get to the gate of Ft. Hunter Liggett, where we camp overnight. Once you are through the gate, it is another 10 miles of rollers, if you're lucky you miss the afternoon headwinds. We were lucky.
Without going into too much detail, I will tell you that Mike and I have decided to make this an annual ride, something like our annual rafting trip, where we invite everyone we know (who bikes) to come out and join us. It is a great ride, well supported and when you ride it with good friends, it really is an event!

Eighteen Thousand Miles and counting...

Hmmm. This past Sunday a group of us went out for a leisurely 82 mile ride out to Petaluma, then Tomales and finally down to Point Reyes station then home. While riding to Tomales Bay from Petaluma, I realized my odometer would be rolling over to 18,000 miles. I was basically almost in the middle of nowhere when the magic numbers appeared. Wow. I suddenly felt tired.

I tried to figure out in my head how many miles a month that was, since the time I started riding and it averages out to be about 430 miles a month! No wonder my family feels like they never see me.... :-)
We continued out on Tomales/Petaluma Road out toward the Tomales bakery and about halfway there, Michael hit 9,000 miles on his odometer.
He's afraid though, that his computer will only read out 4 whole number digits, which means when it rolls to 10,000 miles the computer will say 0000.00 I guess we'll have to wait and see. So we finally hit the Tomales bakery but got there a little too late for pastries. The bakery basically opens at 7:30 and stays open until they sell out. Well they sold out, so we had to go next door to the deli (which is also very good) and had sandwiches and snacks. That was ok because we knew we would hit the Bovine Bakery in Pt. Reyes in plenty of time and they rarely run out of goodies!
The 17 mile ride from Tomales to Pt. Reyes was great because we had a tailwind the whole way! It is a great rolling route that can really suck if that tailwind turns into a headwind. We made it to Bovine Bakery with no problem, fueled up on coffee and sweets for the ride home, er well to our one last planned stop, SCOOP ice cream shop in Fairfax.




Of course, after that it was two miles home to end a fabulous day of riding!

August in a Nutshell...

The months keeping moving, flying by and every once in a while I stop to try and figure out what the heck I did with my time. This month: (ok this is pathetic, I had to go back to my ical to see what I did last month!) The Marin Century was Mike's first 100 mile ride. He did very well, finished in a little under 8 hours. I chose to do the metic century, however because heck- I've done 100 milers enough times to cover me through the end of 2007.
Yoichi and I decided at the first rest stop that we only wanted to ride the metric century.
We had started out at 7 am, so this meant we were done with the metric right around noon. It was a nice relaxing and enjoyable ride. We realized as we rode up Red Hill back toward the Cheese Factory, that the ride was going to be a whole lot windier for those coming back from the hundred. We came up Red Hill around 10:30am and the wind was already picking up!

The rest stop in Petaluma was sponsored by AIDS Lifecycle so it was fun to hang out there awhile with people we knew before heading back to the start

August 13th was Mike's 42nd birthday, which he celebrated in true Brown style, but what else but a Birthday Ride.
We met up at Nicasio with our friends Dave, Chris D, Chris Z & Michael, and did a 55 mile ride out to Marshall, then up to Tomales Bakery- down through Chileno Valley and up and over the back side of Wilson Hill on to Hicks Road and on to the Cheese Factory for salami and cheese.
Wouldn't you know it, we ran into Kelsey at the Cheese Factory and she rode back with us Nicasio, then onward back to San Francisco.
I guess I should mention that Mike is planning to do the two day "Big Sur Ride" that takes place at the end of September. The first day is 90 miles with a hellacious climb at mile 70, and the second day is about 72 miles with another good climb about mid way. This is why he has been getting out on his road bike a whole lot in the past month.For details on the Big Sur Ride, Sept 23,24 see http://www.cypressgroup.org/bigsur.htm
In the meantime, we've been riding A LOT! August 20th was the Tour d'Organics- an organized ride put on by Organic Athlete. It was basically a ride from Organic Farm to Organic Farm, with each farmer offering up fresh, organic fruits and vegetables at each rest stop. It was awesome! We are always so filled up with bad, well preserved "ride food" that this was a refreshing change. Michael, Chris Z, Mike, Sandy and I rode through most of the Sonoma Wine Country, an area we have ridden through many times before. But where we usually stop at schools, wineries, community centers, etc; this time we got to see the really rural areas and the farms that produce most of the Organic foods in the area.