I don't know what happened to my legs yesterday. Although it started with wet conditions for us both, on Monday I had a nice strong 40 mile ride with plenty of climbing and about 20 miles into direct strong headwind. I was pleased that I'd been able to keep up the fight (keep attacking) all the way. Then I met Tina at the Green Valley Ranger Station on San Francisquito Canyon Road after she'd hiked 24 miles and we spent a pleasant evening camped at the side of the road (seriously, we had a covered picnic table, water, and slept well -- if it'd had a restroom it would've been perfect).
But then yesterday I don't know what happened but I got whipped by a shorter (36 mile) ride with less climbing. Maybe it was improper hydration, maybe it was that I had to immediately start into a very steep climb without a warm up, maybe this, maybe that .. I don't know, but everything was screaming waaaa.. yesterday! LOL. I climbed up through the mountains about 1500 feet and I had thought that once I reached 4100 feet I'd have a long down hill. But no, it kept dropping me down a few hundred feet and making me reclimb to 4100.
Finally I got a long descent and then at a road junction my GPS had me turning left and clearly back into the mountains but I'd caught a glimpse of the desert floor a few miles down and away in the direction of the other choice. That caused a pause in operations for some study. Looking more at the GPS-planned route it did have me doing more of the same and even wound up putting me onto something called Old Ridge Road -- which I knew had to be bad. Roads with "canyon" or "ridge" in the name are risky business (not as bad as ones with the word "gap" or "mount" in them, but still bad ;-) .. but combining "ridge" with "old" and now that's for sure bad .. that means that the road was so bad that people had to come up with a replacement thus making it "old" .. :-} .. So I checked out the alternative and decided that I'd rather ride up the valley floor against the tougher wind. So down I went a most wonderful descent to the floor. I was so pleased with myself. The picture of me smiling is one I took of myself at a stop in the descent. ;-) And then the first 10 miles or so of progress against the wind wasn't too bad. I was managing about 10mph and, with this rig and against the wind, that's pretty good. But then, whammo .. the route started climbing and the wind picked up. I was down to 3-5 mph and couldn't afford to stand in the saddle at all because the increase in sail area would bring me to an almost instant halt. By the end I was having to stop and take a break every mile. That's a pretty shameful thing but I was beat! I even had to stop with just 1/2 mile left to go because I just couldn't take it. Now that's what I call fun stuff! :P Anyway, I made it to an actually quite nice EconoLodge next to I-5 and will head out to HikerTown Hostel in a short bit. That's where Tina and I will probably spend the night. She hiked 22.5 miles yesterday but didn't sleep all that well since it was very windy and she kept hearing animal noises (a concern since she's observed that she's clearly in bear country now). Hopefully Hikertown will be a nice break. When she reaches there this afternoon she will have covered the 63 miles from Agua Dulce in 3 days, i.e., today is a shorter day. The first two pictures are from the descent I mentioned. Mom, please note that the second picture is both a Scenic Vista(tm) and a Pastoral Scene(tm) ;-) .. The third is a look at the road up the valley floor (okay, boring, but just for documentation's sake ;-), and the fourth was actually taken first -- it's of me rolling up my condensation-soaked tent at the ranger station. ATB, Davidp.s. Oh, we've started signing registers "Hiker & Biker"