A long 102.5 mile ride: Buellton, Home

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)