This morning started our superbly, with the sun shiny shine shining down on our little faces. It seems to us that every morning we wake up to now is really bright and sunny with not a cloud in the sky! how cool is that? we have forgotten all about those rainy days many days ago during our first 2 weeks of riding…

Our goal today was Carpenteria State Beach and supposedly what everyone had told us was that it was beautiful! and one of the best State Beaches in California. But not to jump ahead…This blog today needs to contain much for information because it was a good day. actually, it is getting harder and harder to remember what happened in these days as the days go on…so much happens….anyways, enough lolly gaggin about and time to get back to the details. ok, where was I…. right, we were leaving Lompoc- a really great town and it had a good community- and once again we ate porridge for breakfast (by now, our tummies have just about had it with that mush, and within a few days prob won’t be able to take any more) then hopped on our trusty ol bikes and head but one direction…south.

The wind made it chilly for about 15 minutes while riding and then came our first little hill. because of the wind we had put on our ‘bergs’, tights, and the whole sha bang, but even after 33 days, we all don’t get it that after the first hill, we ALL usually are fully warmed up and shorts and a tank does just fine. we got to the top of the hill and as soon as we reached the small summit….swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh….schripp. schripp schripp, schripp…. and schloop, schloop, schloop, schloop. the swooshes are our “bergs” being swished off, the schripp are the sound of our shoes being un-velcroed(the only sound i could think of velcro being undone) for quick removal of the schloops (our tights)…. all our extra layers came off and we were back to the ‘norm’ attire of summer wear.

we rode on some lovely paths for a while, then climbed another short hill into a little town called Solvang. The town was and old Dutch town and was manicured to still look super cool and clean. all the buildings were restored and it was the coolest town we have been in so far. Calen took some pictures to capture the coolness of it, then we sat for a snack break. Hey, I don’t think we have shared what we eat for snacks. It is the same thing every day (kinda like our other meals-not so surprising) but we love taking breaks, and bananas and power bars do the trick. these special nutritious, protien filled bars are pretty much like a chocolate bar so that is exciting. and bananas, well, they taste great, but are mainly just a good filler for us. it holds the guys rather large stomachs over till lunch.

After finishing our small tour through Solvang, we continued on our merry little way to the next town. and the next town. and the next town. and then…da da da daaaaaaa…(scary music) we had to climb a mountain.

We knew this mountain was coming up and we tried to prepare ourselves for it, but no matter how much we prepared ourselves, it was no use…this was big….our biggest one yet. we climbed for 2 hours straight and completed a vertical distance of 3400ft…pretty impressive i must say….except we four humans are rather silly at times, and though the map suggested we not take this route we took it anyway. why? well because this route get full sun exposure and the temperatures easily rise into the hundreds, in the summer. we thought the temp wouldn’t be so bad because, well you know its only like June 2 and thats not summer.

As we climbed it got hotter and hotter and hotter and hotter. It never quite reached the temperature like that one day in Brookings, OR, but I’m sure it was close. and this time we had our natural body heat working with us too. We took a million 5 sec breaks to let our heads stop pounding from the intense sun and allow our core temp to drop back into the safe zone.,,then continued on. This time we had lots of water which was beneficial to our well being, but we still were completely exhausted by the top. But only for like 1 min, because then we looked at the downhill which was like 8 miles of straight downhill, and we forgot how tired we were and started racing down the hill.

Calen and Jared always travel down first, cause they love speed and do not fear about crashing, i guess. They clock 70km/hr easily, then decide thats not fast enough after a few seconds and start peddling down the hill in their 27th gear…to gain even more speed…

Kinshasa and I, we are a bit different. we like speed, but keep it at a nice 65-70 and only as fast as we are willing to crash if we must. with loaded bikes, it feels a bit sketchy and quite honestly, we are girls and don’t know how to take the corners properly with a fully loaded bike. But the speed is still fun. o yea, i forgot to mention that Jay and Calen do all this downhill stuff…shirtless. one wrong turn and…. well we won’t say the rest. they would just be in a lot of pain for a very long time. Thankfully they are excellent cyclists and more importantly, Jodie is praying that no one will get killed as we literally fly down the mountain.

wow, all this exciting downhill and we finally coast right on into Santa Barbara. Here is where we ran out of water. we thought it would be no prob to fill them up in just a few minutes, but we were wrong. The road that would have led us to a small gas station or something was closed so we had to take a detour…a very long one that was not biker friendly at all. It was all uphill and i mean really steep uphill. we had just climbed a mountain for goodness sake, and here we go again climbing more mini mountains. our throats were parched and we could ride no longer without water and aha! we found the perfect spot to fill up our water bottles! It was at a Elementary school, so we filled up and guzzled water like crazy cuz we were so thirsty. Running out of water, I say, is one of the worst feelings that a cycler can feel. Horrid. Don’t try it on purpose.

Finally, after much pushing to the end, we made it to the grocery store. Bought some much needed food. rode to Carpenteria State Beach (which was just down the road like a minute away! ) and made supper. but it does not end there. We topped off our dinner with a huge watermelon we bought from the store! it was sooooooo goooood. We spent the rest of our evening just sitting and chatting to our new friend David, who we found out was hiking from San Diego to British Columbia….we are not just the only crazy people out there.

we went to bed early and did not fall to sleep all that well tonight, because 150 ft from our tent were the train tracks…I need not say more.