Day Fourteen

Mileage: 76.8 miles
Total: 806.2 miles

Today was the longest day of the trip. It was the longest mileage day, and long in other ways as well. I experienced my first flat tires of the trip. Fortunately, Oscar rrramon is still flat free and Kelly was the (un)lucky winner of two flats.

The weather today was warm and sunny, which was a nice change from earlier in the week. We were looking forward to a 65 mile day to Gaviota State Beach. This was not going to be the case due to a few detours. One planned. One not. The first planned detour was to the best smoothie place ever, Blenders in the Grass. Their furthest north location is in the town of Orcutt and would only cost us an extra 4 to 5 miles. Deciding their smoothies were well worth it we pedaled over for our lunch stop. While picnicking in front of Blenders a local cyclist came by and tipped us to a nice frontage road we could ride for several miles to avoid the busier road. After rejoining the main route we saw a sign telling us Harris Grade was closed, which we needed to take and had to take a detour. This caused us to go the long way around and added a few extra climbs and a few extra miles.

However, after all this we still managed to roll into camp around sunset. After setting up camp and eating dinner my friend Linda aka the ironlady (she's done 9 ironman triathlons) dropped by the campground with homemade cookies and cold beer! It was an amazing way to end a long day and the 2 week mark of my trip.

Last week I mentioned that I would at some point talk about types of pavement. I then saw a lot of folks in San Francisco and told them the gist of the post, so I have been reluctant to write it, But after some of the roads we were on yesterday I feel its necessary to write about it. In fact yesterday I think we discovered a new pavement type, bone-jarring pavement. I am sure you can determine whether or not you think its pleasant or unpleasant to ride on. Now, the main pavement types are as follows:

Smooth pavement: Just what it sounds like. Picture nice smooth fresh blacktop, where the miles just fly by.

Rough pavement: Again, this is pretty much what you'd expect, bumpity bump bump.

Then, there is another type of pavement that I can only call energy sucking pavement. The worst part about it is it can look smooth, but there is something about it that sucks the energy from your tires and makes forward motion feel really painful. This pavement can come out of nowhere, at any time causing you to feel weak and slow.

The other thing about the ride today is it had the last big hills of the trip. But the urban jungle of Los Angeles still lies ahead.

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