My legs are disgruntled and irritable
My ass is unhappy
Actually everything else feels rather good. So long as I'm not seated on a bicycle seat that is
ANYWAYS what happened on day 3 - we got going at the usual time from the beach shack, 10:30 ish. Although I did wake up a bit later due to just being more tired. Breakfast was four eggs instead of three and like twice as much watermelon. I'm definitely reaching that point where I'll eat myself into a food coma and then come out of it a few minutes later into a state of complete starvation. So we rode across the marina towards the Starbucks meeting place, met up with some other riders and started heading north along the coast. The wind was still really strong today but we were hoping for a tailwind on the way back. The goal for today was to climb Sulphur Mountain. Adam had climbed it a few days prior and named it "Where the fuck is the top."
Once we reached the base of the climb we had split up with some of the other riders. Continuing on, the climb quickly turns to dirt as we climb through a metal cow fence. Apparently the climb features some gnarly bumps, twisty switchbacks and cow patties. It starts off very gradual, any severe ups quickly flatten out again. The pace is raised but not redlined, we're all pretty chatty as we make our way up.
We run into more than a few bovines but manage to run around all of their mess. After climbing for about 45 minutes, we're pretty much above everything else so the views are spectacular. The forecasted high of 13 is wrong again as temps soar to 20. We joke that the single solitary cloud in view makes for horrible California riding and that we should turn back before a second cloud potentially shows up.
At this point, Adam's name for this climb starts to make a lot of sense. We've been climbing for about 20km and still no sign of the summit. It's not until almost 25km that we hit the high point and are able to take in the best view yet. There's even a huge mansion at the very top that looks like an Italian villa, complete with massive gate and waterfall.
We went down exactly the way we came. The 25km descent took 24 minutes and I captured it all on my GoPro (attached to the handlebars). For me the descent was pretty hairy. I had the same tires on for all the road work we've been doing so they were still pumped up to 45psi (note for non cyclists, this is extremely high for off roading) Also, the tires I'm using we're actually discontinued because they were so shit on dirt. The XR1's were an attempt to copy the Small Block Eights. Only they used bigger knobs, they rounded the ones on the outside and they used a harder compound. No it doesn't make sense but I'm using them because its a mountain bike tire that I don't care about burning out on the road. (My other tire is a Racing Ralph, it lost tread just riding around Joyride for two hours)
The bike would definitely skirt around some corners and a couple of times I had to skid the tail just to get the bike pointed where I wanted it to go. We hit the bottom and started our way back to Starbucks, extremely thankful for the semi tailwind we were getting. We wanted to see if Starbucks had the fabled "Trentas." The 30floz cup is only available in the states but unfortunately they only fill it with the frozen drink variety. We settled for the "medium" venti's instead.
Back at the shack and I'm tired as fuck. Thank god Thursday is a rest day, I fell asleep before I could post this...
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