Lompoc...Day 08

The best day so far! Sunny and 65degrees. My route headed to Figeruoa Mountain...the same way as my ill-fated attempt last week. I made it this time. There was a slight snag once I hit the dirt (clay) part of Happy Canyon. It wasn't quite dry enough yet to ride on. In CCX fashion, my brakes became gummed up and my wheels no longer rotated...I walked for a half mile of so. I didn't care, it was sunny and warm! Here's a view from the start of the dirt. On the other side of the ridge in the background is Santa Barbara/Goleta area.

Once back on to pavement I stopped at the first stream crossing to wash off my bike, cleats and shoes. Took about 15mins to wash everything off with my booties, but my bike was now cleaner than when I started. Now on to the rest of the climb. At this point, you are all by yourself, no one is around. I didn't see people until I started to descend. At one point climbing you can see all the switchbacks to get to the top, like 5 or 6 of them.

Once at the top, you have awesome views of the backside of the mountain into the valley, even snow covered peaks. I got up to the top in about 4 hours, 48miles into the ride. The descent is super fast and took about a half hour and as you get off the hill, BAM! There's Wacko Jacko's guard house and brick entry way to the Never Neverland Ranch.

Here's some views of the decent into Solvang valley and Los Olivos.

By now my chain was super noisy after getting covered in clay and rinsed off with water so I stopped by Dr J's in Solvang to rap with those guys and lube the chain. The one guy, Dave, used to live in NoPo and made the astute observation that NoPo and Lompoc are the same. And gentrification is stuffwhitepeoplelike. I think Lompoc beats PDX out of liquor stores per capita.

I ended up in Solvang, again, hit the bakery, again, but this time had a "Sandra Bernhardt" - almond pastry with chocolate frosting. Pretty good. And a double Americano got me going out Alisal Road to Hwy 101, down to the 1 and back to Lompoc.

Followed the 105mile ride with 56min t-run damn near the whole way around the city. It's that small, at least the grid portion. Went to the Mexican Cart in the market parking lot, tres tacos, tres dollares! Damn good! Goes well with my Heineken Lights!

In the last eight days, I have ridden almost 500 miles!