Day Three, King City to Paso Robles

Day 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Quadbuster

Today's big hill was Quadbuster, which consists of roughly eight miles of climbing. There is a rest stop 1/3 of the way in, so we're talking 5-6 miles of climbing, the last two of which are pretty steep, which gets challenging, but I made it without stopping. That was the biggest hurdle of the day, and it was nice to get it out of the way. We took a new route out of town, so today's ride was 11 miles shorter than in previous years. 105 miles yesterday, 66 today, but with hills. (Tomorrow is long and hilly. Woo hoo!)

The rest of the day has some long, slight grades but is otherwise flat. The best part of the day is the end, on the outskirts of Paso Robles where we ride by some nice, scenic vineyards and a pumpkin patch. That's a welcome relief from the stretch we do on 101 (yes, the freeway), which was miserable. Fortunately it's brief.

Another highlight was lunch in the town of Bradley, population 120. The school throws a fundraiser bbq that pretty much funds their entire extracurricular program for the year. (Oh, and I just learned that they fund college scholarships with the money as well.) Hamburgers, hot dogs, chili- all the fixins of a home town cookout.

The weather was perfect today- usually it's a dust bowl heatwave situation but today was hot but not insane. I'm feeling good and looking forward to the big day tomorrow.