The Saturday morning drive up the ocean was a pretty ideal start to the trip. Spring here in Southern California means lots of green, and the ocean is always good scenery. Then we arrived on the UCSB campus... and we instantly learned why people say that UCSB stands for the "University of Casual Sex & Booze". The campus is a sprawling fantasy land sitting smack dab on the beach a few miles north of Santa Barbara. An extensive network of bike paths runs for miles in and around campus, with a fully-lit path running down the coast to downtown Santa Barbara. When we went to pick up our numbers at 10 a.m. in the morning, the bike paths were full of well-tanned young men shirtless and young ladies in bikinis riding cruiser bikes barefoot to the beach or to various parties. At turn 2 on the race course a frat party was already spilling out into the street, again the dress code apparently calling for as little clothing as possible. This place is not real, and did I mention it was just past 10 AM?
And then there was our bike race. The White boys asked me to what expect and were already eyeing the prize list with dollars in their eyes. I tried to explain that in a place with 20 million people, lots of mountains and never any snow, there are a lot of bike riders in good shape - but I don't think they got it. Then we lined up with 110 riders including three HealthNet riders, a full Successful Living squad, 9 riders on some British team in town, and 90 other guys that have been racing full tilt for three months.
We averaged 30 mph for 75 minutes, and the White boys saw average heartrates not seen since Superweek. They both covered a lot of attacks and managed to finish right around the top 20. As for me, I was just happy to be there. 75 minutes would be my longest ride in three weeks and this was really my first race since the San Dimas debacle didn't turn out so well. I actually hung out at the back with Mark Swartzendruber (of ABD TT Series domination fame), who's brother lives in town. I made up to the front of the race for a few minutes and jumped into a two lap breakaway that ended up with a lot of horsepower (most notably Rory Sutherland and Karl Bordine), but I'm pretty happy we were caught so quickly since four pulls through that rotation made me want to hurl.
After the race we did a sweet little ride down the coast to cool down, grabbed lunch at the delicious Brewhouse in Santa Barbara, and then drove the back roads up to Ojai through the mountains and past Lake Casitas - the same route the Tour of California takes. The night was just too nice to sit in the hotel room, so after showers and a few minutes of tv-watching we drove up through the East End and upper Ojai. The Orange Blossoms are in full bloom and you can smell it throughout the entire valley. I took the boys up Sulphur Mountain Road, which after 4 miles of single lane, twisty road, crests the mountain ridge to the south of Ojai. Anyone who lives up there might have some of the best views in SoCal: the Pacific Ocean and Channel Islands to the Southwest, the Ojai Valley to the North. I'll let the pictures posted at the end do the talking.
And today we take on the Garret Lemire NRC Crit: 50 miles, $15,000 in prize money, and a race time temperature predicted to be 97 degrees. Should be awesome for a couple of guys coming from the "neverending winter".
The view to the north of Sulphur Mountain Road. Those are the channel islands on the horizon.
And the view to the North: Looking down on the Upper Ojai Valley.
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