August 29, 2004
Santa Cruz
After yesterday's heat, we wanted to do an easy ride today. Sheila suggested going over to the beach. It would be cool and we could do something easy. In one of my cycling route books there were a couple of rides over in the Santa Cruz area. We decided to do the Aptos one...It was cold and foggy when we got over there.
The ride started out ok—down the hill to the beach, along the beach—it got bad when the road then went straight up the hill. This is less than 2 miles into the ride. We were still cold and not warmed up to do hills. It was awful. I had to walk up the last part of the first hill. The map gave a 7 mile out so we took it after climbing more hills to get back to the car. Of course by then we were warmed up. But this was supposed to be an EASY ride.
We got in the car and drove to the start of the OTHER ride in Santa Cruz. Labelled easy. We started at Natural Bridges and rode down West Cliff drive, through downtown and the boardwalk area. Past the boardwalk and the rides and around to cross over the river. We crossed and rode around the beaches until we hit East Cliff drive. We rode this along the cliffs and through really cute neighborhoods. We continued up some hills, down some hills, around the beaches and finally down a long hill into downtown Capitola. We stopped there and ate — peanut butter and jelly, apples, pretzels and trail mix. Then we turned around and rode back. Still foggy, still cold. Wore my coat the whole way.
This ride took forever but was only 21 miles. It was quarter of five by the time we got back to the car. It took us over 4 hours to ride both parts of this ride - plus a drive from Aptos to Santa Cruz.
I had not intended to lose my whole day doing this....yikes!
Posted by erin at August 29, 2004 08:34 PM