My Worship Revolution

Two days officially down for the ride down the California coast.
And right now I’m chillin in our super sweet room at the Big Sur River Inn.
2 rooms.
Sweet front deck.
Looking right out at the river.

Here’s a really quick recap of the 2 days.

Day 1

Pescadero Beach to Watsonville
57.1 miles.  Average pace: 15.3 mph.

Here’s a rough view of the route:

Mapped Route

The group actually started in San Francisco that morning.  Since I’m taking the next 2 Sundays off, I needed to be at church, so I met them at the lunch spot instead.

It only took about 6 miles for me to almost die.
A jeep got cut off on a passing lane, it’s brakes locked up and it skid into the shoulder.  I just heard the squeal, smelled the rubber, and I swear felt the jeep pass right by my leg.
Other than that it was nice and uneventful.

I rode a good 17mph pace all the way into Santa Cruz.  For the most part, I already knew most of this route from riding it before.

The ride for that day ends in Santa Cruz at Upper Crust Pizza and everyone gets shuttled down to Watsonville.  I stopped for a quick slice, and since I missed the morning, figured I’d ride down to the hotel.  One guy, Paul, did that part with me.  He’s flew out from Virginia for the ride and has severe factor 9 hemophilia.

Had a nice ride down enjoying the coast.  Maybe some video and pics to come later.

Day 2

Watsonville to Big Sur
59.3 miles.  Average pace: 13.7 mph

Mapped Route

It was pretty chilly starting out in Watsonville this morning, so I had on the knickers I borrowed from Dan along with a base layer and my arm warmers.

I had ridden a version of this route the week before with Ryan, so I had a pretty good idea where it went, and it’s a nice scenic pretty easy route with some small rolling hills…until we head into lunch.  You’ll notice I added the elevation chart on the pic above.  See that big spike in grade right around mile 25?  Yeah, that’s to get us up and into Veterans Memorial Park.  It was a freaking beast!

And then of course there was some more climbing to get out of there after lunch.  One of the guys has a GPS computer on his bike that estimates the grade.  It had that at about a 15% grade.  So on the way into lunch, I was climbing with not much left in the tank and really needing some calories.  Then I got to climb after lunch with a bunch of pulled pork weighing me down.

Highway 1 from there down to Big Sur is pretty much amazing!  One of the things I’ve been looking forward to all along has been riding across the Bixby Bridge.

There’s one more solid hill that’s a real butt kicker on the way in, and then a few small ones to finish out the day.  Apparently it’s just prep for tomorrow which I understand it”s LOTS of climbing.

Rachel was able to grab a couple of pics of me on the way into Big Sur.
Here’s a nice shot of my behind.

And then of course coming the other direction.

So that’s it for now.
Just chillin at the hotel as a fam waitin to do dinner.
There’s some pretty cool chairs just sittin in the river to chill in.  A nice relaxing finish to a long day.  And the next 2 are even longer!