We got up at 5:00 in order to beat the majority of the traffic on the mountain road. Since it was so early it was cold and very foggy. The first 20 miles were easy rolling hills…and then the fun really started. We would climb for about 20 minutes and then enjoy 3-4 minutes of the best downhill ever. Then we would do it all over again: climb, downhill, climb, downhill, climb, downhill…for 75 miles. I felt like I was riding through a movie scene with the mountain to the right and cliffs down to the ocean on the left. The fog was crazy so we could not see the ocean, but we could hear it sometimes. As we continued to climb we began to ride through the clouds. There were times when we could not have had more than ¼ mile of visibility and, just so you know, it’s very chilly inside a cloud. We almost preferred the climbing because at least our blood was flowing and we were able to pretend that we could feel our numb feet. Margie and I led the pack and finally broke through the clouds. We sat in the sun and waited for the rest of the group to eat lunch at this spot. The ocean is somewhere far below all those clouds. When I flew into San Diego I thought it was cool that we flew through clouds...turns out that is much more cool to bike through clouds.
After lunch we did more of the same-climb, climb, climb, downhill, climb, climb, climb, downhill. I knew that we had been climbing for a long time when my ears started popping. There were times when our legs were so tired we couldn't tell if we were going up or down. When we finally reached the campsite we set up the tents, took a quick trip to a waterfall (we all went in the van:), ate some burritos and marshmallows over a campfire, and then had a great campfire discussion. After that, we were spent and slept well in our slightly overcrowded tents. When I laid down I still felt like I was moving up and down the hills.
 |
| Victory dance at the end of the ride |
No comments:
Post a Comment