Paso Robles to Santa Maria - 82 miles

Today was advertised as a light climbing day and everybody agreed (accept me).  With 5 days of long rides and heavy duty climbing my legs are shot.  So even though we only did about 3200 feet of climbing - it was a tough day.  Thankfully all the climbs came during the first third of the ride.

The day started off raining and cold (was supposed to be warm and dry at the start).  I must have changed my clothes about 5 times before the start of the ride trying to figure out what to wear.  Should I dress for the later part of the day when it was expected to be 85?  Or should I wear my rain gear and suffer later in the day?

In the end I picked a middle ground and decided on vest and arm warmers which I could dump at the first sag stop. Proved to be the right decision as it stopped raining about 20 minutes into the ride with the sun coming out and the temperature quickly rising.

The first part of the ride we went parallel to Route 101 which by now has been transformed from a two lane road that we rode in Oregon to a super highway in California (which I pray we don't have to get on again). When I passed the sign heading into San Francisco we were able to ride on the road - now? not sure if this is even possible.

On the top of the first hill we climbed, we passed another reservoir with its water level again down dramatically.   Check out the distance from the top of the dam to the water level in the second and third shots.  Egad.

Good thing about climbing the hill above the reservoir is that we got a fantastic downhill.  I hit 40 mph on a couple of sections of the road with a bunch of the ride trucking down over 35 mph.    It was scary on a couple of the turns but I was determined to coast as far as I could and actually made it over a couple of uphills without pedaling.  But damn 40 is pretty fast!!!

We finally got out of the hills and back to the ocean in a little town called Marrow Bay.  There is this huge rock sitting just off the coast.  

We did have another smaller climb after Marrow Bay but we had at least a 15 mph tailwind so it made the rest of the ride easier for sure.  Passed lots of strawberry plants and some wineries.  Mostly strawberries.

There was a lot of glass on the road so a bunch of people got flats today.  Couple of riders had 2 flats.

I was pretty lucky until I pulled into the hotel in Santa Maria when my rear tire blew.   If there is ever a time to get a flat - it's in front of the hotel versus in the middle of a really dirty road next to a strawberry field with 80 plus temperatures and no shade.

There are 4 days left of riding with one more 80 mile plus day.  Tomorrow we are heading to Solvang CA and the ride is only 40 miles long.  Given the short distance, lots of us believe that there must be some monster climb that they are not telling us about.

In any case we should be there by lunch - which should be fun as there are supposedly a bunch of wineries that we can visit in the town once we dump our bikes at the hotel (and after we take a shower).