PC_Day29

Day 29

Sunday, 27 June 2004
Lompoc, CA to Santa Barbara, CA
56.2 miles, 4h03m, 13.9 mph
Elapsed Time: 5h24m, Max speed: 45.4mph
Total Climbing: 1908ft, Max elevation: 1096ft
Total mileage: 1719.8

The Lompoc Best Western restored the honor of southern California as far as continental breakfasts are concerned. I know all of you were worried about that. Well, everything's okay now. It looks like this Holiday Inn Express in Santa Barbara is going to be okay too.

We were going to start at 8am, but it was cloudy and cool so we decided to wait until nine. By then the clouds were breaking up and the sun was coming out, so we started climbing.

Over 18 miles we climbed over 1000 feet up a desert valley. Since we had a tailwind, we sometimes barely noticed that we were climbing at all. But we sure noticed that we were going down.

It doesn't get much better than this.

At the bottom of the hill we jumped on the freeway for the rest of the descent to the ocean. At the ocean there was a rest area where we stopped for a few minutes. This area had recently been burned over by a wildfire and we could still smell the smoke.

The next 22 miles were on the shoulder of the busy 101 freeway with a slight tailwind. Eventually we reached our exit in Goleta. At the exit we were hailed by a young woman riding in the other direction. She was a college student riding back to San Francisco from Santa Monica and she wanted to know about the distance and route to Lompoc. She was riding a skinny tire road bike with a rack that she had made out of PVC tubing. We told her it was 42 miles and wished her luck. She'd be facing a headwind most of the way and a nasty climb. JT and I ate lunch at a shopping center in Goleta and then rode through the suburbs and into Santa Barbara. [By the way, I didn't add the part about the lone female rider to this page until long after our trip was over.-11/9/04 BC]

Our travel agent did a great job and our motel was about a half block from the State Street tourist/restaurant/bar area. So we walked around for a while and then ate dinner at a brew pub. Somebody staged a protest on State Street by chaining a string of shopping carts across the street.

Not sure what the point was.

This is the view from the hotel.

By 7:30 we were all tuckered out and back in the room watching TV. Getting old is tough.

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