So Why California?

Tuesday was to be a rest day but got an invite to join the 5:00pm club ride and had a good time with 15 others.  Only 30 miles but with 3 significant climbs on some roads I had not ridden, including Long Canyon Road, a 2 mile 2-5% continuous uphill before ending with a "Savage Hill" style end with one ramp at 22%.  In this area, hard against Figueroa Mountain, cows roam freely and sometimes scamper across the road.

I've been asked why I go to California to ride.  In 5 years of coming here and over 50 days of riding, it has rained one time.  Can't beat the weather.  I've looked at Greenville, SC or Georgia but too many crummy weather days in March and April.  Another factor are the roads and lack of traffic.  This is overwhelmingly agriculture and so there is little traffic, except on weekends when the crowds from LA come up but the roads they travel are easily avoided.  Besides Armstrong's Discovery team training here, so too have Team CSC and a month ago, Radio Shack's U-23 team trained here.  College teams visit here for a spring camp and many organized tours originate rides from here including Cycling Escapes, Undiscovered Tours, Trek Travel, Planet Ultra, etc..  Lastly, the climbing, with Figueroa, Gibralter, Painted Cave Road, Tepsuquet, Jalama Road offering sustained steep climbing. Anyway, that's it.  Today starts a stretch of long rides with a century today (Wednesday).

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