Santa Cruz Mountains

I decided to head out by myself for a couple of days after school finished a few weeks ago ( I finally graduated from college!). From Santa Cruz, I rode down to Soquel Village and went up Old San Jose Highway. It's a really nice ride. There's a great little coffee shop/convenient store just a few miles out of Soquel Village, and traffic is pretty low. I hit Summit Road and went west from there. I passed another little store, this one a bit bigger, where spandex clad roadies all sat around on a patio (probably talking about how much their bikes cost - "well, my carbon fiber fork is Italian and I paid... blah, blah, blah"). It did look like a nice spot to stop and I would definitely do a there-and-back ride and have lunch at that store.
A couple miles after I passed Highway 17, it got all kinds of beautiful. I passed through some Christmas Tree farms, and there were great views of both the ocean and down toward San Jose.

I found out that climbing on a pretty hot day requires more water than two bike bottles can hold. I started to worry as I continued on. I wanted to make a campsite a bit farther down Skyline Blvd, but when I rode past Castle Rock State Park. I decided to camp there so I could get water as soon as possible. The problem with that was the campsites there are kind of far into the park, but there was a fire/maintenance road into the camp area. The other problem was I thought I'd pass another little grocery store, so i could get some cash. At this point, I was so thirsty that I didn't care and I rode in.
The gravel fire road to the campsites is loose. Wait - maybe loose doesn't quite cover it. I was fine most of the way in, but one hill was so steep that I got off the bike to walk it and I kept sliding forward in the gravel while I tried to walk down. It was the same trying to get out, but more difficult.
There was no ranger and only one other group of campers (a father and son), so I was okay with not paying. There was plenty of water so I drank up and went to bed, exhausted.

I plunged so quickly into describing the trip I skipped some of my new gear related points. First, I went to a clothing swap a few friends put on. Everyone piled clothes they don't wear anymore into the middle of the backyard and we all went through it and found stuff we like. I totally scored a Swobo wool jersey.

And, I finally figured out a good place for that handlebar bag. On my down tube just above my bottle cage.

And most importantly, my mother gave me a point and shoot camera as a graduation present with which a took all these photos. It fits in the handlebar bag perfectly.

On the second day, I decided to cut the trip short because my girlfriend told me on the phone the night before that I'd had a response from somewhere that I had applied for a job (which didn't amount to anything). I continued on Skyline and then cut down Alpine Road to Pescadero Road. Something to be conscious of: Alpine will drop in elevation so far that you will have pretty long climb to actually get out to the city of Pescadero. I saw a bit of wildlife though, a fox, a deer, and a raccoon in a trap in the back of a truck - oh! and a baby quail running behind a mom/dad quail.



I finally hit Pescadero and stopped at a little bakery. I got a non-vegan pastry (don't tell anyone) and some apple juice. Then I started down the coast in the fog (it had been perfectly sunny before I hit the coast). Pescadero is about halfway in between San Francisco and Santa Cruz, so it was a pretty good ride.



I was exhausted by the time I hit Santa Cruz, and I went straight to the restaurant where my girlfriend works and ordered a burrito. Afterward, I went home plopped down in my desk chair and looked at my route on the internet. It was 90 miles, about 50% of which was pretty burley climbing, in less than 24 hours!



P.S. Coming soon: my girlfriend will give a woman's point of view of a tour we went on a few months back.