Day 18: King City to Paso Robles

Today’s Highlights:

The ride from King City to Paso Robles showed me a view of California that I did not expect.  It seemed very remote, almost like eastern Wyoming except it had trees.  In the sixty two miles we traveled there were signs of land ownership, like fences, but very rarely a barn or house or livestock.  We started our day in heavy fog with temps in the 50s.  There were a few miles of slight climbing at a good pace, fast enough to be quite chilly.  After three miles, we started a 1000-foot climb which got very steep on the last two miles of it.  That last stretch warmed all of us up.  After cresting the top of that hill, we immediately were out of the fog and had bright blue skies.  The rest of the day remained that way and temperatures slowly climbed to 95 by the end of the ride.  We had one flat stretch near the Fort Hunter Liggett army base, but otherwise it was a very hilly ride with many steep sections.  The day ended with almost 4000 feet of climbing.

The landscape along the entire route was dry grassy fields and hillsides with big oak trees.  Occasionally, we saw some livestock, a few barns and several big gates that led to ranches far out of site.  After a very big climb around mile 43, we had great views into the valley that we climbed out of, and impressive views of Lake Nacimiento down the other side.  In this dry landscape, a large lake is a very soothing site.  The lake seemed very far below us, but the ride down the hill to reach it was fast and took only several minutes.  We rode over the dam that made the lake, then proceeded to Paso Robels over many more steep hills.

Chris and I enjoyed a very big lunch in town at Big Bubba’s BBQ since we ended our ride a little after 1:00 today.

Nacimiento is Spanish for Dragon
I’m writing late because I was both very sick and very busy; no time for blogging. I’ve been working up a cold for a couple days (it’s going around) and today it hit me good. The day started with a giant climb in the cold fog and I thought I was going to call it quits right away. I know the buzzards were circling for me again, but I couldn’t see them in the fog. I couldn’t see my front wheel (pic 6). As soon as we crested the mountain, the fog and clouds lifted and the warm sunshine did me good. I still felt pretty bad and the many hills didn’t help, but I made it. Take that, buzzards.

I was also struck by how ’empty’ the landscape was. Lots of big empty ranges. There’d be one big house on the top of a hill and then miles of fence (pic 37, 39). That’s a lot of land to own. I wonder what a piece of land like that goes for. Probably the same as a rowhouse in DC.

Lake Nacimiento is my new favorite lake because it’s shaped like a dragon. I almost got a Lake Nacimiento t-shirt at our ABB Shirt Swap, but some one stole it from me.

I was sick and I was busy. I was going to go to bed early (earlier than I did) but I didn’t want to be a party pooper for the t-shirt swap. So I was busy having fun. Everyone brought a shirt (most were cycling themed, but not all) and an amazing story about that shirt (not all of them true). We put all the shirts on the table and all drew numbers and then took our turn to choose a shirt. We could choose a shirt from the table OR take a shirt from someone else, but the third person to take a shirt gets to keep it for good. I had the dragon shirt but someone took it, boo hoo hoo. It was super fun. I ended with the coveted ‘Manchester’ shirt from Tim, who’s here from… you guessed it, Manchester… but at the end of the game I traded it to Herb for his El Tour de Tucson. He liked the Manchester and I thought it’d be nice to have a souvenir from Herb. Then I went right to bed. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Chris

Pictures Of The Day:

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Statistics:
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Chris: