California

My trip to California for the third round of the NMBS in Sant Ynez started with me and my dad waking up at 1am on Thursday and driving to Dulles airport. Everything went smooth in the airport and on the plane except having to pay $100 to fly with my bike, I Had to pay again on the way home, what a rip. We Arrived in LA around 9am west cost time. We picked up the rental car, which wasn't bad, a brand new Carroll. Next we hit up a Green Burrito for some burritos then tackled the LA freeways. Once we got above Ventura and saw some beaches so we took a break from driving,both of us were dragging. I laid out on the sand and quickly fell asleep. After catching some sun and getting burnt. We headed in to Santa Barbra and checked out the downtown and a sweet bike shop, Fast Track Bikes. After that we headed toward our Hotel in Buelton which sent us through San Marcos Pass and Los Padres National Forest. Once checked into the hotel we headed up to the course so I could do some practice laps. The course was located in a hilly pasture consisting of about 6 short climbs and allot of hard packed single track. Also So Cal was experiencing record high temps and the lack of trees made for a hot race. After riding a lap my dad and I returned to are hotel grabbed a pizza and hit the bed, we had been up for about 22 hours. The next morning we went back to the course and I rode another lap and a half. We then went back and showered and headed back down to Santa Barbra to check out more of there awesome downtown. Explored some shops, grabbed some more burritos, and then headed down to the beach. Found a neat skate park right next to the beach. After hanging out on the beach for a while we went back to the hotel for a while then went to check out Solvang a town modeled after a Danish town. Solvang was neat except that all the stores and restaurants closed at 5:30, so my dad and I just hung out on a bench for while till heading back and going to bed early for the big race in the morning. My race started at 8am which was good because the high for the day was 101 degrees. My race was cut to 2 laps from 3 due to the heat. After warming up I headed to the staging area only to find 7 people in my class. That was a little disappointing for traveling so far. When the race started I was first off the line and into the single track. One rider hung on my wheel for a while and passed me once but when we hit the first climb I dropped him. With about 2 miles left in my first lap I broke my pedal and wasn't able to clip my left foot in. I continued riding, thinking that I would get caught for sure, but it never happened. I ended up winning by little over 1minute. After going back to the hotel for a shower, we returned for awards and watched the Pro women and men's races, both were very fast and exciting.

Here is a picture of my dad and his friend from Melbourne Australia that he made at the race and hung out with most of the time. He was repping some sweet really light lights. We stuck around a little later and watched some dual slalom racing and then explored some of California's wine country.

We were both really tired and went to bed early. The next morning we headed back down to LA to catch are flight. This time we took Highway 1 and got some awesome views of the ocean.

We then returned the rental car and head to the airport. I snapped some nice pictures of the Rockies on the flight home. I really had a great time doing this race and traveling with my dad, California is an awesome state. Hopefully I will be able to upgrade to semi-pro after winning this race, Ill have to see what USAC says.