Recovery Day
Day 5
Lompoc to Santa Barbara
31.8 miles. Average speed: 13.7 mph.
Yup. This was our recovery day. On a ride this long, 32 miles is considered recovery. Because we’d be riding a lot shorter than most days, and we couldn’t check in til 2, we took the opportunity for a later morning and didn’t plan to leave till around 10. The ride would actually be from Lompoc down to El Capitan and then we would all jump in cars to head into Santa Barbara to the hotel.
We started by taking advantage of the free breakfast at the hotel. And I aint talkin about continental breakfast. This was breakfast made to order. Omelet, grits, bacon toast. Seriously, this hotel was sweet.
Just a bit before we were supposed to leave, I swung my bike over to Steve to make some adjustments so that my chain wouldn’t keep falling off. He and I both thought it would be a simple fix, so I ran to the hotel room real quick to grab the helmet I forgot. When I get back, they look at me and tell me I have some major problems. Apparently my whole bottom bracket was super loose. Too much longer and my bike probably would have just stopped working in the middle of riding. So he pulled the whole thing apart, lubed stuff up, and tightened everything up so I’d be good to go. So grateful!
One of the guys, Greg, waited around for me, so the two of us got a late start. Now, here was what I had heard about this day. Easy day, mostly downhill. What I remember hearing was a short climb to get out of town and then downhill the rest of the way. Maybe I inserted the word short on my own, cause I really didn’t expect the first 17 miles to be uphill! And it was stinking hot that day, too. So I was not feelin the “recovery” for a while there.
Once we finally got over the hill, it was a really nice downhill though! It wasn’t all downhill from there, but mostly just small rolling hills all the way into the ending spot, just north of El Capitan cause the RV got kicked out of there.
My legs were still hurting quite a bit from the past 4 days, so at 1pm I was really happy to have the rest of the day off. So Rachel met us at the stopping point and it was off to Fess Parker Double Tree resort! This is a really nice place that the ride gets great deals on. Here was the view from our room in my makeshift panoramic shot:
Caleb enjoyed lounging around and watching some TV when we got there.
We all hung out and lounged at the pool a bit, and then walked down to the wharf to have dinner as a family.
Great day to relax, give the legs a little break, and spend some time with the fam.
Quick pet peeve. Why is it that the expensive hotels are the ones that charge you for internet and everything else for that matter? There was a comp cpu for internet in the lobby, with really slow internet. I went down before bed and wrote the day 3 post, and when I went to publish, the internet stopped working and I lost everything. I was super ticked, but took that as a sign from God that it was time to go to sleep and get some rest before heading into the last 2 days of riding.
