Nothing huge, up over Old LaHonda, out to San Gregorio, and return via Tunitas. Wet & windy but not too cold; 52 to 59 degrees. Pretty easy to dress for conditions like that. Much tougher when it’s in the lower-40s and wet! Still, there were a few times I had to kick up the watts a bit to feel comfortable.
Lots of road debris; not just the tree branches seen in the pictures, but some pretty large rocks have fallen onto 84 in places. If you’re driving out there, be careful. Something ironic about a cyclist thinking it’s no big deal riding in a storm, but the motorists need to watch out. But hey, that’s how we roll.
We saw maybe 10 other cyclists, including a woman on Mountain Home we stopped to help. She’s somehow dropped her ear pieces into her rear wheel, tangling the cord up into the rear gears. Kevin dutifully mentioned to her that it’s not safe riding with ear pieces. Out towards the coast we saw 2 guys heading east on 84; Strava showed they’d done a Pescadero/San Gregorio loop. Also, several people in full touring gear, carrying sleeping bags, everything, heading south on Highway 1. I doubt they’d planned on wet weather when they laid out their ride!
Descending Kings reminded me just how awesome disc brakes are in the rain. People think they have tire traction issues in the wet, but I think the biggest problem is predictable braking. Our tires felt solid, never sliding (except a few places climbing Tunitas, where the combination of road debris, chipseal gravel and water made it a bit slick), with Kings actually seeming like a pretty easy descent. Easier if rain hadn’t been pummeling our faces, of course.
