Jonesin for a Ride!

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Had to get some more coffee! Plus this place has cupcakes!  Carpenteria for a stop at Crushcakes & Cafe.  No cupcakes for me as I had a 1/2 a pizza last night, with the rest for breakfast..   So much for losing weight on this trip.

So far an easy trail, relatively flat along the coast here.  I know at the end of the day I’ll have the hills in Malibu to deal with, but for now, this is niiiiice.

Marine layer is heavy this morning making it a cooler ride that I planned for, but no complaints.

Btw, has anyone eaten one of these things?

The beach at the pier in downtown Santa Barbara

Here we go, u may be able to follow in the next post, if not, use the links on the home page

Ever since I was young, I’ve always had a dream or riding my bicycle on a long trip, wether it be a cross country or multiple day ride, I always wanted to try.

So I finally decided to see if the hips could do it.  I’m waiting to board a train to head north to Santa Barabara, were I’ll spend the night, then leave Thursday morning to head south to San Diego.  I plan on 3 days riding to complete the 251 mile trip.   First day will be roughly 75 miles to Tommys house in Malibu, 2day will be about 80ish to my house, third day about another 80 to San Diego. 

I have bail points if needed and friends who have offered to just call and they will fetch me, but I want to see if my hips can do it so I can do longer rides in the future.

So here I am, waiting at San Juan Capistrano train station waiting for my train wondering what the heck I’ve done….

I’ll have my in-reach device active on Thursday so you can follow if you wish..

Day 2 started from Cressey with a very shrt ride to the Foster Farms Kitchen, just outside one of there processing plants. Great little breakfast spot where all the locals go to fill up on a hardy breakfast before a days work on the farm.

Our only goal is to avoid the major cities to get to Big Ben’s place in Hopland and to ride a bit of CA49, the 49ner highway, and to check out Courtland, CA on the way.

Highway 49 is know as the Gold Country Highways and passes through many of the historic gold rush towns.  It meanders in the foothills of the Seirra mountains among the oak trees.  From there we headed to Courtland for a quick stop before heading towards Lake Barryessa, where we found a cool little single lane asphalt road on Google maps that looked interesting.  After our short coffee stop to try and figure out how to get our GPS to get us back to our route we had planned, we got back on the road.  This road snugged along the edge of the lake, eventually becoming a single lane asphalt road with nobody on it for 20-30 miles.  It eventually lead us to Nappa County and to a town called Lower Lake.  From there, we road an awesome ride west on Highway 175, one of the best rides I have had in a while, coming into the town of Hopland.

This was Dean’s first time visiting the Ben’s place, which is always a treat.  I always feel like I’m at Tom Sawyer’s Island at Disneyland.  After a tour of the garden, we walked into town to the Pizza/Brewery place where Ben had built a lot of the furniture.  Great place where Ben seems to be the Mayor as everyone in the joint knows him….

After dinner it was off to the Reggae festival that was just by his house to wrap up the evening just before hitting the sack at the Hopland Hide-a-way.

to be continued…..