rom Gooseberry Mesa / southwest Utah, I drove to California to visit family and friends. And did my first-ever mountain bike ride in the Golden State on the unremarkable San Joaquin River Trail. In a nutshell, the trail went up and over a big ridge, then followed the shoreline of Pine Flat Reservoir forever, so far that I gave up after 11 miles out. The best part was the wildflowers.
Happy to be leaving the Central Valley (sorry Mom), I eagerly headed over to my former college town of San Luis Obispo. I thoroughly enjoyed my 5 years at Cal Poly and the following 3 years that I taught at Cuesta College. Those were the formative years of my life, where I discovered my affinities for both science and art, and equally importantly, learned that even I (who grew up as a fat boy) could enjoy and excel at endurance sports. I became first a runner, then a cyclist, a swimmer, a triathlete, a marathoner, and a USCF Cat 3 bicycle racer. Those were some of the happiest years of my life.
I had done some interwebz searching and knew there was not a lot in the way of trails on the Central Coast but I was determined to ride what I could.
Day 1 was a short ride in the Irish Hills, so named because they are as green as Ireland.
The next day I hooked up with a couple of locals and we rode some stuff on Cuesta Grade above town. A lotta lotta lotta steep climbing.
Damned if I didn't forget both their names already. Sorry.
We rode past some crazy antennas
And through an explosives disposal area...
The we went downhill on some of the crappiest stuff I have ever ridden. A quarter mile of chunky singletrack followed by maybe 5 miles of old reverted doubletrack. These locals kept grinning at me and saying "Isn't this awesome?" And I'm thinking, "NO! this sucks ass!".
But eventually we got onto a singletrack trail that was pretty damn fun, if only for a couple of miles.
We were crossing the creek and saw this scary water bug with her eggs glued onto her back. Ick!
I made sure to go to the beach a few times. I like the ocean, but not as much as I love the mountains.
On my last day on the Central Coast, I rode at Montana de Oro with a cool local guy. His parents named him Taurus, after the car I guess, but he goes by Brown Teeth.
We rode a fun trail up through thickets of poison oak to a peak, then down to the bluffs over the ocean and back. I enjoyed it very much.
A pic from the peak:
Th ride back out went past all these sweet-smelling sage bushes. Not the desert type of sage out here in New Messico, but the kind of sage you would cook with. It smelled heavenly.
So that was my week in California. Then I drove home. I'll tell more about that later.
Thanks for looking!
