If you take all three hundred cyclists and divide the work among the 128 miles required to pedal from San Francisco to Monterey on The Coast Ride’s opening day, that’s just 0.42 miles of pulling apiece. Of course, the biggest climbs come in the opening minutes of the seven-to-ten hour day, so that math doesn’t actually shake out. Within minutes the ambitious and well-caffeinated group is splintered throughout Golden Gate Park and San Francisco’s beautiful Presidio, and then strung out south all over Highway 1.
La Squadra Veloce, Team inGamba again joins the intrepid crew making the three day venture from San Francisco to Santa Barbara. While the ride itself is well into its twenties, our year one jaunt in 2016 resembled a damp sand blasting, whereas last year’s year two was sunny, albeit frighteningly cold. And not just “California cold” but “Seriously guys, I’m a thick skinned new Englander and it was freaking freezing” cold. So under a cloudless start and with equally friendly temperatures and faces this morning, we set off with the Pacific to our right and onto The Coast Ride.
To call today flawless is overlooking the fact that I was extremely bummed there was actually no official send-off photo, for which I had awoken early and even rode a bonus five miles to attempt to be a part of. There were a fair number of flat tires to boot, pun intended — the road which is generally in magnificent condition– was a sea of shattered glass.
And outside of that, it was pure sunshine and bliss, with California’s finest recovery chips and guacamole to welcome us back to our stable in Monterey. Bring on day two, clocking in just shy of 160 miles, with a glorious twelve thousand plus feet of climbing. Enough that we know you will want to check back here to hear how it went.
Photographs by Stephen Lam