Friends, Big Sur and a Castle

We are now in Santa Barbara, which is the beginning of the end of our long West Coast adventure. Jay has cycled 1,415 miles. There are just 250 miles before reaching our end point at the U.S. – Mexican border just across from Tijuana. As we have shared, this trip is an adventure that just happens to include a bike ride. Last week was no exception.

After leaving Dianne, a new Unitarian Universalist (UU) friend in Half Moon Bay who hosted us for an evening, Jay continued cycling south to Monterey. There we again were hosted by a UU couple, Laura and Harry, whom Jay met through the Fifth Principle Project.

An Odd Mixture of Environments

Jay’s cycling in this part of California continues to be an odd mixture of environments. From Half Moon Bay, he rode through broad swaths of barren hills of sun-dried grasses until arriving in Santa Cruz where he was greeted by sandy beaches dotted with sun-worshippers lounging, playing volleyball, or surfing. Thankfully cell coverage is now better so Helen can track Jay on her Life360 app. As Jay entered a traffic circle opposite the Santa Cruz pier, Helen texted him, “Stop! I’ll be right there.” Jay stopped and seconds later Helen emerged from a restaurant 10 feet away. We walked 100 steps to our hotel.

In the evening we walked the long Santa Cruz pier, past an assortment of restaurants and gifts shops serenaded by sea lions who cluster below the pier and find ample reason to bark the night away.

The next morning Jay’s cycling started with riding along the now-empty sandy beaches before transitioning to the agriculture heartland of this part of California. His biking software diverts him off CA-1, a busy traffic artery that sometimes prohibits pedestrians and cyclists. These farm to market roads are not built for comfort. The road surface is jarring as is coming face-to-face with the first step in the process that provides us fresh produce; a process we normally only see at its final conclusion, as neat displays of strawberries, lettuce, broccoli and artichokes in grocery stores.

On a farm to market road, one sees boundless acres of crops expanding to the horizon and the human endeavor of hundreds of individuals in each field laboring to remove crops from the ground for our eventual consumption. No words or photos can capture the expanse of this effort. We will find it hard next time we are at our local Kroger to bemoan the cost of a quart of strawberries.

Monterey

In Monterey, we spent two days with Laura and Harry. They were hosts extraordinaire. On the first evening, two other UUs, Brian and Anne, were invited to dinner that started with cocktails and appetizers on the back deck, then dinner accompanied by local California wine. We are having too much fun, but we don’t intend to put any of it back.

The two days’ stay in Monterey was planned to allow Jay to ride down toward Big Sur and then be retrieved by Helen at the end of the day. Landslides blocked the lower portion of this part of CA-1. A bicycle ride south then being picked up by car to ride out was the only option if Jay wanted to ride any portion of the road around Big Sur.

Big Sur

Big Sur is the most notable portion of the coastal road that Jay cycled. Big Sur is marked by a long meandering two-mile climb. However, the Big Sur coastal ride is a constant cycle of climbing and descending. Jay spent 2:45 hours climbing and 1:17 descending. When Helen found Jay sweating four miles from today’s endpoint, Jay declared, “Close enough.”

Hearst Castle

We mounted the bike on the back of the Prius and left Monterey and our wonderful hosts, Laura and Harry, and drove a 150-mile detour around the Big Sur road closure to Cambria. The day was young, so we visited Hearst Castle just 12 miles up the road.

William Randoph Hearst inherited his father’s mining fortune, parlayed that fortune into another fortune in the media industry, and built his extravagant home on the top of a steep cliff in San Simeon. The Grand Rooms tour cost $30.00 a ticket, but the price was worth it to see Hearst’s opulent excesses.

The three “guest cottages” on the mountain top were each larger than our home in Roswell. There are 38 bedrooms in the main house. The 104 ft. long pool and terraces were works of art. The main dining hall sat 40-50 people, which Hearst entertained most weekends. The tour guide provided a very compelling narrative of Hearst’s desire to build a Mediterranean castle that he had seen as a child. Left out was any discussion of Hearst’s “yellow” journalistic tendency, flirtation with Hitler’s Nazis, and his eventual bankruptcy. Heck, if you are paying $30 a pop, let’s have a “good story.” We really enjoyed our visit to La Cuesta Encantada, The Enchanted Hill.

Back on the Road

We left Cambria and Jay continued riding among barren hills of dried grass and farmland. There was an abrupt change in the terrain at the end of his ride as he entered Pismo Beach on his way to our hotel in Arroyo Grande. The hardscrabble landscape turned into a well-manicured environment where the trees of the “well-off” crowd are fashionably topiary.  

We ended Saturday of Labor Day weekend in Lompoc at a comfortable Best Western hotel, then Jay started pedaling on to Santa Barbara on Sunday morning.

Snap

The 55-mile ride from Lompoc to Santa Barbara marked the end of the mountainous terrain that Jay has been cycling since he left Vancouver, BC on July 27. The last major climb was at the end of a long 20-mile gradual climb. As Jay approached the last half mile in his summit attack…snap! It was a subtle sound, but quickly recognized as the cable to Jay’s rear derailleur snapping. With a broken shifting cable, Jay lost access to his rear gears that gave him a mechanical edge in his daunting climbs. He could now only shift the two gears of his front chain ring. Basically, Jay could ride fast or faster.

With his limited shifting, he pushed over the last summit and then began the 35-mile ride on the relatively flat terrain to Santa Barbara. The big question was how to get the bike fixed. It was the Sunday of the Labor Day weekend.

Jay alerted Helen of his bike’s mechanical failure. As he pulled into the parking lot of our hotel, Helen shared she had found an open nearby bike shop. We drove over to Open Air Bicycles. The bike mechanic installed a new cable.  We are now ready to complete the last section of our West Coast adventure.

 

The indoor swimming pool had a diving balcony that made the diver the center of attention.

The main dining room had several 300+ year old tapestries hanging on the walls. Hearst sat in the middle of this table with this tapestry behind him. No tablecloths or cloth napkins; they used paper napkins. No flower arrangements; ketchup and mustard were the table decorations. 

This was one of the guest houses. Each one had a grand entrance, like this one. There was a total of 20 bedrooms in the three guest houses.

The outdoor swimming pool was redone several times, each time enlarging it and creating more grandeur and opulence. The final version is 104 feet wide and surrounded by marble pillars to mimic a Greek setting.  

The grounds are filled with statues and bas relief, many in this mode. One imported statue is over 3,000 years old, and several others are over 400 years old. Everyone is instructed not to touch anything except the handrails! 

Santa Cruz pier in the evening.

Strawberry fields with boxes ready to fill.

Signage showing closures of town on this section of Big Sur.

Views from the Big Sur coast.

More views from the Big Sur coast.

Cloudy day of riding in farmland.