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.

Through yes­ter­day I had accu­mu­lat­ed 421 miles for the month of Jan­u­ary, my sec­ond high­est num­ber of miles in any Jan­u­ary after the 478 miles in 2003. Today I was going to dri­ve down to Los Ange­les to vis­it friend Car­ol so was set­tled on 421 for the month. But ANON! Car­ol was not feel­ing chip­per so asked that I come down Sat­ur­day instead. What to do with my now “free day”. Bin­go, I’ll ride 60 miles and set a new per­son­al high for Jan­u­ary. So off I ped­al to San­ta Bar­bara for some banana/wheatgerm pan­cakes at the East Beach Grill where I decide that rid­ing down to Ven­tu­ra for lunch and then home would accu­mu­late the miles I sought. It was a nice 60 miles with lots of won­der­ful views, inter­ac­tions, and contemplations.

Note: I con­tin­ue hav­ing a prob­lem with my new slideshow tech­nique. The orig­i­nal slideshow lays on top of my new one. So for now please click any­where out­side the ini­tial image pre­sent­ed to remove the old ver­sion and allow my new one to get cen­ter stage, thanks.

I took the 9:10 21X bus (X for eXpress) from Carpin­te­ria to San­ta Bar­bara this morn­ing then 10 min­utes lat­er was on the 12X head­ing to Gole­ta. This 25 miles cost me 55 cents and placed me right in down­town Gole­ta at 10:15.
I rode out Cathe­dral Oaks to it’s end then took the 101 to the Gavio­ta Tun­nel. With some stops and explor­ing I returned to the Camino Real Mar­ket­place, had a late lunch at the Kahu­na Grill, then reversed the 12X -> 21X for anoth­er 55 cents to arrive home at 5:15 PM. What a nice and cheap adventure.
Click on the mon­tage above for a few shots of my day.