Up ear­ly, over to the Cow Palace, Open­ing Cer­e­monies, then Tom rid­ing off for the 545 miles to Los Ange­les. Click on the images for a larg­er size with descrip­tion. Hit­ting the ESCape key returns here

This morn­ing I rode up to west beach to see Ralph on his birth­day and watch him as he ran the “Res­o­lu­tion Day 5k” race. What an effort and what an accom­plish­ment. Lots of shots of his progress around the course. Click on any to see the larg­er ver­sion after which you can move with­in them using your mouse or keyboard.

Tom was lead­ing one of his AIDS/LifeCycle rides. I hooked on for the ride up to Buell­ton and a chance to ride through parts of the beau­ti­ful north coun­ty spring. Tom and I drove up in the Vol­vo arriv­ing at Ellen’s Dan­ish Pan­cake House around 7:40. I imme­di­ate­ly charged inside for a great break­fast and vis­it with Robert, Tom’s ride leader partner.

Back out­side all the oth­er rid­ers were arriv­ing and prepar­ing to ped­dle away. Tom’s group was head­ing to Los Olivos and Fox­en Canyon before Los Alam­os. I rode a more direct Hwy 246, Drum Canyon route to Los Alam­os to short­en my day as I thought Tom’s group would be trav­el­ing faster than I want­ed to ride and I want­ed to arrive back at the Vol­vo near to their return. That assump­tion, i.e. to ride alone, drove my 102.5 mile day.

Tom and I had agreed to send each oth­er a text mes­sage when we arrived at sig­nif­i­cant points on our routes. By lunch time at the Ocean Avenue Sub­way in Lom­poc I real­ized I had lots more time than I’d antic­i­pat­ed so elect­ed to head down High­way 1 toward Gavio­ta think­ing Tom would return to the Vol­vo in Buell­ton and dri­ve south on 101 until he passed me, pulled over, and scooped up me and my bike. But anon, this nev­er hap­pened so I just kept rid­ing and rid­ing until I arrived home in Carpin­te­ria which coin­ci­den­tal­ly was about the same time Tom arrived at his house in San­ta Bar­bara with the Volvo.

Here is a gallery of some shots from our ride. Click on any one to see an enlarged ver­sion after which you can left­side and right­side click to view the rest. (I am try­ing a new ver­sion of this slideshow deal. Alas, for now the old­er ver­sion pops up on top of the new. If you’d like to see slideshow 2.0 click on the upper right cor­ner X and V 1.0 will disappear)

I won­der if this iso­lat­ed bike lane well run all five miles to the new bike “bike off ramp” 1/2 mile beyond Mus­sel Shoals? That would be so cool and make for such com­fort­able riding.

This is the new bike lane onto the south­bound 101 at Bates Road

A clos­er look to show clear­ly the nice wave themed fenc­ing at new bike on ramp

This is the 1/2 mile south of the Mus­sel Shoals bike off ramp under con­struc­tion when I was there on Novem­ber 11th last year. Notice the sim­i­lar theme to the pre­vi­ous image

In this last view you can see the car lane on the left and the bike lane on the right, keepin’ ’em separate.