gugie 

There's the pic you're looking for, @polymorphself

Manny66 

Since I already have my vacation days and hotel booked,Im still heading out to Cambria for the weekend of L'Eroica.

Let me know if you want to meet up for a ride that weekend. Im game for almost anything...well distance wise .

gugie 

Sounds good! Let's figure out a way to introduce ourselves and get a ride in.

squirtdad

would love to...work i crazy (and as my company is being acquired (amd buyin xilinx) after time for Cino I need to keep visible and at the keyboard so they will think I am really needed.....otherwise I might have a lot of time for biking Kings mountain sounds like a good ride to add for training for Cino 2022

gugie 

How about a BF ride on Saturday from Cambria to Cayucas for lunch and back? Sunday we can split off and do whatever ride we want.

Manny66 

That sounds like a good ride. I did the cambria to Cayucos the last time I was there, there are some long climbs ,nothing too steep and Cayucos definitely has quite a few cool places to eat on the main street .

gugie 

Long climbs? You must be a flat lander! At any rate, this would be a nice warm-up ride. I thought Sebastian's was closed in San Simeon, but I just checked and they've just relocated nearby while the original building is upgraded.

So, Cambria/Cayucas and back is around 30 miles, Cambria/San Simeon and back is 18 and flatter still. If one were looking to just loosen up on Saturday and save their legs for Sunday, that'd be the ticket.

What say you?

northbend 

Hope you Touricans have a great week. Can't wait to hear the stories.

gaucho777 

Glad to hear that Touroica is still a go. Sadly, I won't be able to participate or see you in Cambria for Fauxroica, but I hope you have a fantastic tour. Godspeed & safe travels!

SwimmerMike 

I'm trying to clear my calendar for Monday. If I'm successful, I can meet you guys in Woodside and provide company/someone to heckle/etc. on Kings, Tunitas, through to San Gregorio (potentially Pescadero, based on timing). From there I would peel off and head back to Woodside and leave you to your fun.

Mike

noobinsf 

Well, if'n you guys make it over to the East Bay hills for some reason, I'll pour you a cup of coffee on my front porch and fill your water bottles. This looks like a blast -- safe travels!

gugie 

PM me your contact info and I can let you know when we leave Redwood City. Estimated arrival in Woodside is 10:30.

SwimmerMike 

Calendar is cleared, so I'm in.

PM coming your way.

bikingshearer 

I can't make TourRica, and with my (incredibly slow) climbing, you probably don't want me along on King's Mountain anyway. But my extremely tolerant non-riding wife and I will be heading down to Cambria (arriving Thursday, leaving Monday) and have every intention to doing plenty of FauxRica silliness. I hope to meet up with th TourRica crew there.

It looks like TourRica will ride from Ragged Point to Cambria on Friday. Have I got that right? Where will you be staying? I'll be staying in the Cambria Landing Inn on Moonstone Beach Rd.

It looks like the weather will cooperate nicely for TourRica and for FauxRica.

Tailwinds, keep the rubber side down, and ride carefully - they're all crazy out there.

gugie 

Palazzo Touroica is an AirBnB on the west side of Hwy 1, arriving Friday. We're leaving Ragged Point around 9:30, there's a group ride that starts in Cambria around 8, arrives in Ragged Point then returns. We'll try to draft off of them. Rumor is that John Howard, Nelson Vails and other C&V illuminaries are on that ride.

Manny66 

I did San Simeon to Cayucos , 40 miles with 1,715 of climbing. The shoulder was pretty wide and the cars gave me a wide birth, all in all a good smooth ride. Im game to do it again or anything similar. Ill be riding my Windsor that weekend.

gugie 

Seen pix of your Windsor on the Pasadena ride thread, that's a beaut!

gugie 

Recruiting and invites started over 2 years ago, right after the 2019 Eroica California event. Postponements and cancellations whittled the group down to an eager 6. This year's Cino took out @davester (broken clavicle), then our Capo, James (from CR group) went down just a few days ago after loosing a battle with a bollard in San Francisco and broke his wrist! We're down to four of the few, the proud, the unbroken boned.

Myself, @mgopack42, Bob Minsky (check out the 2019 aftermovie) and Thor (Davester on the left, Thor on the right) have so far avoided major damage to body parts, and plan on leaving at 10 am from the Redwood City Caltrain Station. @73StellaSX76 and @SwimmerMike are playing hookie from work and will act as harbor pilots on Day 1. Day 3 a friend by the name of Patrick will be our rabbit from Pacific Grove to Big Sur, spend the night and like the booster rockets on the space shuttle, ride back the next day. @SquireBlack is driving down from the Bay Area on Friday to meet up with us in the Nuovo Palazzo degli Eroi for the fun and games of FauxRoica. Who knows where we'll ride? Without anyone to police us, @mgopack42 will be riding a modern gravel bike, and heck, I'll be sporting clipless pedals.

Hills will be climbed, beer will be drunk, and tall tales recorded for posterity on this thread. Until then we're wrapping ourselves in bubble wrap. If we lose anyone else, I'm changing the name from Touroica to "Giro dei Dannati"

bwilli88 

Che cosa potrebbe andare storto!
This sounds like something Lt Murphy would have said.

Spaghetti Legs 

Enjoy and be safe fellas. I’d feel better if Andrew showed up a little earlier to keep everything squared away.

73StellaSX76

It was a fun, but all too short ride for me joining the Touroica riders this morning (I had to get back to work). Such a fine group of comrades for a ride! Here is a photo of the long-termers at Comfort Station #1 near the Redwood City node of the ride. I hope I have the names correct: Mark, Bob, Gugie and Thor. We picked up Mike in Woodside. Bon voyage mon freres!

nlerner

@gugie has cultivated quite a beard since I last saw him at Cino.

bikingshearer 

The Fantabulous Four have arrived in Cambria. I rode north out of Cambria with a group from Velo Cambria (great people) and found them just after they started out from Ragged Point, looking none the worse for their adventures. They deigned to let me accompany them back to Cambria (like I gave them a choice). Rick Denman of Velo Cambria arranged to have a docent from the elephant seal rookery ride along with us, and we learned more about the sex lives of elephant seals than I thought possible. Fascinating stuff. Cool bikes. Pacific coast views. Good company. Elephant seal porn. What a great day.

gugie 

As on many of my adventures, this one started with an early morning rise to get to PDX. No bike packing was required, when I ride in the SF Bay Area my zero bike is waiting for me. Handlebar and saddle bag were packed with my road kit in a small suitcase, additional clothing in a backpack, and a quick flight to Oakland (plane) + BART (train) + Uber (automobile) and I was deposited at @BoltBreaker's humble abode in the People's Republic of Berkeley. He snuck off early to lead some newby backpackers in Pt. Reyes, hid a key for the garage, so I broke in to collect my bike. It had a flat tire from my last TdMIL in 2019, which I fixed. The 34t inner granny was switched out to 28, and fresh brake shoes were installed. I had weighed the two loaded bags before I left, together they weigh 15 lbs, my standard credit card touring kit, probably just a bit more than what most would carry. Saddlebag went on to the bike, handlebar bag went on the front rack, went to engage the decaleur, and, . That travail and corrective action are covered in another thread, but the elevator pitch is that @davester (broke his collarbone at Cino) saved the day with the exact bit I needed. I spent the night in SF with James, our original tour Capo, who broke his wrist just a few days before the start of this tour. He was extremely gracious, changed all of the hotel reservations (which he prepaid), and loaned a car to @SquireBlack to drive down to Cambria so that a few other of us would have transportation back.

The Touroici:

Bob Minsky from Brooklyn, NY, who came in a few days early to meet with friends before launching off on our Tour.
@mgopack42 from Los Banos California, flat land rider in the Central Valley. His wife woke up early Monday morning to deliver Mark at the starting line
Thor from the middle of nowhere in Sonoma County
Myself, The Bike Butcher of Portland

Since Eroica California was cancelled, and Dave and James broke bones recently, we thought a good rename for this would be "The Tour of the Damned."

Bike packed, tires pumped up, ready to go.

gugie 

I awoke before my alarm went off, dressed to ride in my Fred ensemble, and rode over to the Mission District to pick up Bob, who looks exactly like a pocket Santa Claus, if said Santa Claus rode a bike a minimum of 25 miles a day. We all found out that he's a lean, mean, riding machine, after tentatively starting in the middle of the pack on day 1, he was almost always out front, especially on the long climbs. We picked up a harbor pilot, his host for the previous two days who led us to the Caltrain station at 4th and King, just a couple of blocks from the SF Giants' baseball stadium. There we met Thor, who I had only met a few weeks earlier at Cino. The three of us hopped on a lightly loaded train to Redwood City. @73StellaSX76 posted the money shot for the start of this ride above, then did harbor pilot duties to take us up and over the hills of the city I lived in for 13 years to pick up @SwimmerMike as our 2nd harbor pilot.

Soon we were on our chosen ascent assault, Kings Mountain Road.



There are several classic climbs from the SF Peninsula to Skyline Drive, a ridge road that connects them all. This one was chosen as it ends just as Tunitas Creek starts, a steep, winding "whoopeeeee!" descent that takes you almost all the way down to Highway 1 on the coast. After about an hour of unrelenting climbing we got to the top and fairly quickly regrouped before rolling off the dropoff.


@SwimmerMike slaloming down KMR

We could feel the significant difference in air temperature from one side of the ridge to the other. The Pacific Ocean is a giant heat sink, inland valleys can be 100 while just 20 miles away the coast is 60. By the time we got to the Bike Hut we were all bone dry.



Open 24/7/365, water, DIY drip coffee, munchables, tools, spare tubes, no attendant, a box to put your money in, I always drop a fiver in the cash box for those that can't or won't. It's possibly my favorite happy spot on the planet.

A quick stop in San Gregorio for fluids and ice cream @SwimmerMike peeled off to ride 84 back to the bayside, the rest of us rode up and over Stage Road to Pescadero.


Thor putting his hammer down on the ascent up Stage Road

From Pescadero we headed west to hit Hwy 1, then kept the Pacific Ocean on our right as the only directions needed the rest of the day.


Bob, Thor and Mark pacelining down the coast


Bici in repose

With a slight tailwind, we made it to the Costanoa Lodge, where we had two glamping tents rented with actual beds in them. Showered and changed we were ready to eat. The Lodge restaurant was open, beer was on tap, food and desert consumed.

The route and digits: