2010 Pacific Coast Century

We have just returned from riding the Carmel Valley to San Simeon Scenic Century. Originally written as a 93 mile bike ride, we turned it into 115 miles, courtesy of Allan's broken spoke on his rear wheel only 10 miles into the ride. Luckily a van came along and took Allan back to Carmel where he loaded his bike into his car and went into Monterey. After waiting in front of the wrong bike shop for a while, he ended up getting the spoke fixed. Meanwhile, VA, Craig and I enjoyed coffee and some really good pancakes in Carmel while we waited. We finally re-started the ride at about 11:30 am with 20 extra miles on our odometers. The weather was beautiful and we had a tailwind most of the way. Hurricane Gulch proved to be slightly scary and I thought I was going to have to walk a bit or be blown off my bike. VA yelled, "you can't walk 100 miles!" (I was only going to walk until I could manage to stay on my bike). We enjoyed the views at Nepenthe at the 30 mile point of the route (we liked to remind Allan we were at 50) and had some good laughs due to the psychedelic bathroom light at Lucia (71 miles). At 83 miles we stopped for apple pie and coffee at Gorda, good prep for the last two hills, the 'double whammies'. The last 15 relatively flat miles were really fun with strong tailwinds pushing us up to an easy 25-30 mph pace without much effort. After a stop to watch the elephant seals, we reached what we thought was San Simeon at about 7:15 pm only to discover it was really a turnout for the abandoned town of Old San Simeon. It was getting cold and dark and Craig mentioned, "we don't even have a car to sleep in." We called the Cavalier Inn only to get a recording for their corporate office, so we got on our bikes and headed towards Cambria. After cresting a small hill, we saw the Cavalier Inn sign in the distance. We pulled into the parking lot at about 7:30 pm, the last group to arrive. Emergency Dewars on the rocks helped ease the pain and we joined the large group for dinner, some of the riders having arrived at 1 pm, most at about 3 pm. My pride made it hard not to tell people we were late because of a broken spoke and, on top of that, had added a few extra miles!