No One Said This Was Going To Be Easy

Yesterday started out just fine. We left Santa Cruz (without having seen the boardwalk) a bit late (10:30) due to our late arrival the previous night, but we got down the coast all the way to Carmel pretty quickly. We stocked up on calories there and then headed out for Big Sur.

As you can probably imagine, the ride was beautiful. The weather was cooperating so we took plenty of pictures. We arrived at Big Sur at 4:30, each scarfed down a delicious burrito as well as miscellaneous other goodies (I also ate a king size Reese's Peanut Butter Cups for instance, which was worth a whopping 400 calories!), and then made the decision of the day... Actually, it was the decision of the entire ride.

Remember how Jody said this ride was going to be "epic?" Well... Just like the previous day, we knew how important it would be for us to make up some ground. The problem was twofold: 1) By that time it was 5:00 p.m. but we had only gone 75 miles or so; and 2) Continuing on basically meant riding all the way to San Simeon, which was another 70 miles down the road, and, even though the weather was still OK, rain was supposedly on its way.

Yeah, so we were stuck between a rock and a hard place. If we were to stay where we were, we would lose the ground we had gained the day before. If we were to go on, we would obviously gain ground, but at the risk of having a miserable night, which might ruin the next day of riding. Decisions decisions...

After a good 30 minutes of back and forth, we made up our minds to give it a go...

All was well until we reached the next town, Lucia, 25 miles and 2 hours later. That's when the lady in the lodge did her very best to put the scare in me. She told me things like: a couple of weeks ago, one cyclist went off the road and another was hit by a car; the climbs that were still to come were the worst ones yet; the rain was coming; there were lots of rocks in the road, and so on.

What did we do? We rode on of course...

My main concern was for our safety, since it was dark, the road we were on was relatively narrow, and there were lots of cliffs off to our right. Luckily, however, since we were in the middle of nowhere, there was very little traffic. In a way, that's a bit ironic. We really don't want to be riding at night, because of the decreased visibility, yet riding in broad daylight is much worse due to all of the traffic. Go figure.

Anyway, we knew the rain was going to come, but I was still hoping that it would hold off. At 9:15 p.m., the first few drops started to fall. By 9:45, I was soaking wet. By 10:15, I was feeling the cold. By 11:00 I was absolutely miserable and freezing.

All sorts of bad thoughts began to enter my head. And then, the wind really started to pick up. That's about when Joe said, "Just when I thought it couldn't get worse."

The next 30 minutes were absolutely brutal. I didn't think I was going to die, but there was a lot of negativity going through my head. I had to remind myself to fight that off with thoughts of survival.

Jody had the only really great headlight among us, but because he was a bit ahead of me, I did my best to stick with Joe, who was shouting out instructions like, "Stay close to the middle of the road so if you get blown to the right, you won't go off the road!" and "Stay as low as possible so the wind won't have a big target!"

At one point, Jody yelled "ROCK!" so I knew there must have been a big one in the road, but I was going so fast downhill and I could barely see a thing that there was really nothing I could do but hope to not hit it. (For a split second, Joe and I both thought Jody yelled something else, beginning with the letter "F," but I knew that there was no way Jody was going to lose his cool, even under those conditions.

At about 11:30, it felt like we were riding through a typhoon. We were being battered by the rain and wind. It was unbelievable and certainly the worst conditions I had ever ridden in.

A couple minutes later we arrived at the Ragged Pointe Inn & Resort and thought we were saved.

Joe said, "I don't care how much they want for a night, this is as far as I'm riding tonight!"

We pulled in and jumped off of our bikes, only to discover that nothing was open. We tried the gift shop, but it was closed. Then we tried the restaurant, but it was also closed. Then I panicked a bit and wondered where the heck everyone was.

Finally, Jody just said that we should ride it out, so off we went again. I couldn't believe I was getting back on my bike...

I knew we were still about 15 miles from San Simeon, and I was getting more and more scared by the minute. The wind just wouldn't quit, and it was still raining, it was still dark, of course, and we still had quite a ways to go downhill.

Occasionally, a car drove past us and I imagined that the driver would stop, pack us all in, and drive us out of there. I guess the drivers had other ideas...



We made it to San Simeon and I hurt all over, but we're back on schedule and tomorrow is another day.

Good night!