2 posts tagged “san marcos pass”
So Long January from the top of the mountain!
Sweet escape. I ran the halls of the office getting things filed, gathered, ready for a quick escape for an s24o. The usual protocol is to cut work at lunch on a Friday in order to make it to some distant location, but with short days and busy jobs, 4PM was the only choice. Nick was doing his own breakaway from his law office downtown. We checked in via cell phone and I could hear him shuffling papers and logging out of his various work gadgets.
It was 5 when we met up. By chance, the beginning of this ride happened to be at Nick's daughter's pre-school. So we got the opportunity to visit with Nick's daughter and wife before heading up the mountain.
Compared to the, say, the Rockies, the Santa Ynez range is nothing special. But for a couple of guys with loaded touring rigs trying to make it to a friend's land at the top, it it plenty challenging.
Here's a link to the relative zone where we started. You can follow the road up the mountain to get an idea of what our climb was like.
Lucky for us, we have a friend who gives us access to a little piece of land up near the top.
As the light was starting to vanish and the moon and stars were getting brighter, we tossed our bags onto a bed of clover and surveyed the views that span from downtown Santa Barbara to the Gaviota Coast. The views are magnificent and, with a couple of big gulps from the water bottles and a sip or two of good whiskey, things got better and better.
Doing an s24o with a long and trusted friend is a wonderful thing. We've had conversations going on that we pick up and put down over the decades. A few words and a smile are all the leverage needed to trigger a memory of the great ocean adventure involving Stubby, Gary, and the shark. A few moments of silence and we're both thinking about our families and our roles as fathers. Along with the conversations, we took turns plugging our iPods into some speakers and shared our current life playlists. Two songs for Nick, two songs for Don. This went on for longer than an hour until it became hard to keep the eyes open.
Nick teased me about having my tent and I ended up not using it. We woke up to a curiously warm morning (probably above 60 degrees) and no moisture on our bikes and bags. GREAT.
Sometimes a Sub 24-hour overnight bike trip becomes much less than 24 hours. Don and I wanted to observe the Perseid meteor shower, which peaked August12th. So after long work days we rode the 8 miles and 1100 vertical feet to the top of San Marcos Road, an old stagecoach route in Santa Barbara, hard up against the Los Padres National Forest. We arrived at 8:00 p.m., late dusk, but the ¾ moon provided plenty of light.
We laid down a Tyvek sheet and broke out Trader Joe’s delicacies - a sourdough baguette, smoked oysters, exotic cheeses and brandy. I sat on a stump and Don reclined on a semi-trashed chaise longue that had been conveniently discarded and we toasted our good fortune.
It got darker and we skygazed for a while. I saw only the heavens, but Don saw an excellent, Disney-esque shooting star.
We laid out our sleeping bags on top of cheap plastic dropcloths. We didn’t bring tents because we wanted to go light and we wanted to watch the meteors. When the marine layer came ashore with its wet mist, we flipped the dropcloths over ourselves like a waterproof taco shell.
After a lot of talking and rambling, I fell asleep, and slept great. My down bag was damp the next morning when the alarm sounded at 5:15. It was still dark as we put on our warm clothes and loaded the bikes.
Our headlights cut miner’s-lamp shafts of light in the misty fog as we
zipped down the 1,100 feet to a coffee shop for a cup of house blend.
Dawn was breaking as we hit our driveways, just as our families were getting up, and it was if it had all been a dream [note from Don -- Great post Mark. The pictures didn't come out well, so I won't post any of this adventure].
