I had done this ride last year, but at that time the second half of the normal route was washed out (no thanks to El Nino) and had to be rerouted. Therefore, I had to do it again with the "real" routing. So this time Tera and I were going to try it on the tandem - this would be our first century together.

The hotels in the Solvang (California) area had all been booked for weeks. Since we wanted to get an early start on Saturday morning, instead of staying 20 miles away in Lompoc, we pitched a tent in the nearby campground.

We woke up at 5:45 AM to a dense fog blanketing the area. I'm glad we kept the bike in the car!

Luckily, the fog had showed signs of thinning out by the time we started riding from Solvang at 7:00. After some small rolling hills on Santa Rosa Road, and a brief downhill on Highway 1 we were already at the first rest stop in Lompoc at mile 25.

I was hoping that the food would be better than last year - I was tired of the same old peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and cookies! I went to the repair stand and borrowed a screwdriver to make a quick adjustment that was preventing us from getting into our big chainring.

We then headed west out of Lompoc. Normally there's a stiff headwind at this stretch, but I guess we were lucky and missed it because we got up so early. Since the road was flat and straight (not a common occurance in this ride), we took advantage of the draft from a couple of other tandems.

Not too long after that, there were two other tandems that flew right past us, pulling a train of about 40 Klingons! Right when we were about to be Klingon #41, it was time to slow down and turn into Vandenberg Air Force Base.

After some more rolling hills in Vandenberg and a brief rest stop (the PB&J sandwiches look a lot better when you're hungry!), we got in our low granny gear to tackle our first major climb of the ride. After that, we still weren't out of the woods yet - we still had a couple of rollers before descending into the valley. We were at about mile 50, but we weren't feeling too good. Once we hit the Santa Maria city limits, I shooed away the vultures circling overhead, and we made it to the Santa Maria stop (which also served at the alternate start/finish point for the ride).

This time we avoided the PB&J problem by buying a BBQ lunch ticket (normally meant for people who had just finished the ride) and shared the food between the two of us. With "real" food in our system, we were ready for the final 44 miles.

It was only 13 miles to the next stop, but most of it was spent riding through the city streets of Santa Maria and Orcutt, followed by climbing out of the valley. Finally, after a short downhill we rolled into the rest stop at Sisquoc.

As we turned onto Foxen Canyon, where we would spend 20 of the 30 remaining miles, a few of the local kids gave us high fives as we rode by for good luck. It turns out we would need it. The road was flat as we passed by the farms, but then turned into a barely noticable uphill. (After the ride, I verified it was about 900 feet of climbing in about 12 miles.) The road surface was rough, and I did my best to avoid any parts of the pavement that would send shock to the rear. We had to take frequent breaks, and as a result we kept passing the same couple of mountain bike riders about three or four times on this stretch.

The road went from seemingly flat to almost straight up as vineyards gave way to trees. I originally thought this was the section called "the wall", but that would come later. There was a discernable summit at around 1300 feet, after which we were able to keep our downhill momentum over the next few rollers into the 92 mile stop at Firestone Winery.

I was even wondering why there was a rest stop here so close to the end - until I looked straight ahead. Yes, "the wall". It was late in the day (around 4:15 PM) and some people were planning on bailing out at this point. Not us! No way! We had gone this far, and there was no way we'd bail now! Besides, the wall didn't look as bad as the previous climb! One last hill, and it's downhill all the way to Solvang!

I was right - it wasn't as bad as the previous climb. The worst part about it was its timing late in the ride and the intimidation factor, since you can see the whole climb from the rest stop.

We made it to the bottom at mile 95, but wait a minute - we couldn't see Solvang yet! There was another steep hill that we didn't know about! Luckily it was a short climb, but we weren't mentally prepared for it. But it was probably better that we didn't know about it at the last rest stop, otherwise we might had thrown in the towel.

After the hill, we retraced part of the route we went out on, but then we took a shortcut and shaved a mile off the planned 102.9 miles, getting back to our car around 5:45 PM - about a half hour before sunset.

Afterward we drove the 40 miles to Santa Barbara to get a hotel room with a hot shower and a real bed!

Overall, it was a fun ride with great scenery, but it was expensive and we're sick of PB&J sandwiches. Next time we'll save the money for a tandem rally, or another century.