Total time in the saddle: 7 hours
Elevation gain: 6500 feet
At 67 miles with plenty of steep climbing, we knew that the stage from Big Sur to San Simeon was going to be a "long hard day", to quote from my Lonely Planet west coast cycling book. A part of me was looking forward to the challenge, while I think all of kc was dreading the pain it would entail.
Side note: my boss' boss' boss, a hard core cyclist, maintains that you have to be a bit of a masochist to love cycling. I suppose this is true, but I don't think that kc has reached the point where he has embraced the pain.
Anyway, because we had our printed cue sheets and elevation profiles with us, we knew that right out of the gate we'd have a climb up to 1000 ft. kc decided to leave Big Sur a bit earlier and walk up that first climb, in order to conserve his energy. I would leave a bit later and meet him 7 miles south of Big Sur, at the "cafe" at Coast Gallery. I was checked out of the campgrounds and on the machine by 8:45, and while the climb was a bit steep in places, it was manageable. At Coast Gallery I found kc waiting for me but still sans coffee. Turns out the cafe noted in my guide book had closed two years back. Oops.
Between Coast Gallery and Lucia, the next stop with services (mile 25), there was nothing but coastline and constant ups and downs. Along the way we did stop at McWay falls, which is the only waterfall in California that falls directly into the ocean (or beach at low tide, apparently). Kc noted that it was like the "Earth is pissing".
We stopped at Lucia, which is little more than a very expensive restaurant and general store along the highway, but it's pretty much the only stop along a 25 mile stretch, so there were plenty of tourists also taking a break there. We got drinks and ate the last of our soggy 2 day old PB&J sandwiches we had made in Monterey (blech), and met a couple of folks also touring along highway 1. They were heading back home to Redondo Beach, but were going to stop and camp just a few miles up the road.
After Lucia, it was more rolling hills until we reach the next village on the highway, Gorda. Like Lucia, Gorda is basically just a restaurant, cafe, and general store, but it has a little more character than Lucia, and we spent about 45 minutes just relaxing and chatting with some of the characters hanging out there, and contemplating the two climbs we had to look forward to.
Besides the initial climb of the day and the undulations of miles 5-35, there were two principal climbs between miles 40-45. Lonely Planet classified one as "moderate" and the other as "steep", and early in the day kc had taken to calling them los cuernos del diablo (the devil's horns). After a quick descent south of Gorda, the climbing began. We conquered the first cuerno, took a breather, and then took on the much steeper second peak and conquered that one as well. Victory! After that it was screaming descent past Ragged Point, then onto flatter terrain outside of San Simeon. We arrived at the motel at 6:40pm, 10 hours after I had left Big Sur. Good times!
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