Paradise Road Ride

Hello,

Well we had a few hearty souls that showed up in the cold this morning to ride Paradise Rd. But none as hearty as Eric Forte. You see Eric used to live here but now he lives in Boise Idaho. He's still on the email list and he wanted to do this ride so he left Boise at noon on Friday and arrived in Santa Barbara at 6:00am this morning........and showed up for the ride at 7:00am........I'm not kidding. He then proceeded to whip all our butts on the climbs.......aaaahhhhh just like old times. The ride was awesome. Paradise Rd has brand new pavement all the way back to Red Rock and it's gated at Upper Oso so we get about 15 miles of pristine pavement with no cars at all......pretty cool. And the views from the top this morning were spectacular. See ya out there!

Matt

Dec 1st's Ride up Hwy 33

Saturday Ride Re-cap:


First things first. Kim Turner is one tough cookie! Unfortunately she crashed on the back-side of the Casitas climb going about 40mph! Incredibly, she got up and rode home under her own power. I didn't witness the crash but half the group did and said it was incredible that she walked away. Gabe said she was yelling "I'm OK!" before she even stopped rolling! I hope you're OK Kim? Please let us know how you're doing?




We had a very large group show up at the start. Maybe 30 or so. The weather was cool and crisp. People peeled off as they needed but at the bottom of the Hwy 33 climb we still had 16 people. We've got a lot of strong riders! That's a great climb! For about the first half of the climb big Bob Wilcher just tapped out a nice tempo with everyone single file behind him. But Corey can never be contained and he ended up just riding away from all of us. Everyone rode their own pace the rest of the way and we ended up with 15 riders at the summit! Great job everyone! Then after an enjoyable descent the hard part began. We rode 45 miles home into a stiff and continuous headwind. Ouch. By the end it just felt like survival mode...at least for me it did. Great ride though and great turn-out. Good weather, good friends, good miles, you can't beat that!

Final ride stats: 97 miles, 6 hours and 27 minutes, 7,768 ft of climbing.


See ya next time!

Matt