SB Ride Report

Great ride to Santa Barbara this past week, the second annual SLO/SB ride.  Les grand depart (tour talk...) occurred around 6am; myself, Tim, Chad, Ben and Todd took the start energetic and looking forward to a great day riding down the coast.  We rode in overcast and drippy skies making our first stop in Guadalupe, we weren't able to stop too long though because Chad kept asking the question "why are we stopping so much and for so long?"  From Quadalupe we head south to Black road where we ascended the Casmalia grade, Tim was heard at the summit proclaiming "that wasn't nearly as hard as last year! Let's go guys! Yahoo..." From there we passed the gates of Vandenburg and the rollers into Lompoc where Chad was once again heard saying "are we stopping again??"  Starbucks was our host in Lompoc creating a good rest and refueling for the second half of the ride.  The sun came out and we slid into each others slipstream, well truth be told we slid into super domestique Todd's slipstream who took pulls for hours at a time! Tim took a short pull at the front (the downhill section into Gaviota) and claimed that he had done the majority of the work all the way from Lompoc.  I thought I heard him say "the truth doesn't set you free, pulling on a descent sets you free..." Ha! We off-ramped it into the Gaviota rest stop and by this time Chad looked incensed that we were making our third stop of the day and said "why can't we just keep riding?"  We hit the road going south on 101 taking big pulls (actually we all pulled for 4-5 minutes with Todd pulling 15-20 minutes -- dude worked the front!).  Ben then took a big pull on the front (his mentor Todd set a huge standard) but when he faded off the front his face had that all to familiar hollow look of pre-bonking.  We exited at Hollister/Winchester and took the foothill route into SB, Tim groaned every time we rounded a corner and he saw any level of upward pitch. We hit State St. in downtown SB for our victory entrance, the sun was warm, a light breeze and the ride was done! 111 miles, 19 mph ave.  Chad said "let's ride to Camarillo!" everyone else said "let's get off our bikes!"  We jumped into the pool/hot tub at the Harbor View Hotel and immediately began to talk about the days events -- good times for sure.