The Utah Randonneur

My first time as the lantern rouge…..

Doing the coastal cruise

I have never ridden with the Santa Cruz Randonneurs group before but I love to ride in new regions. This 600 km event looked like a nice route, and by the look of the roster I knew about 10 or so of the other registered riders. My riding partner Robert Owen and I decided that we should not miss out on this one. With almost 50 riders registered for the event, it should be a fun group to ride with!

It was forecast to be windy and for once the forecast was right. Small craft advisories were posted for wind and I guess that was intended for us! Northbound up the coast we had some small groups to help beat the wind but our progress was still slow. Once our route turned inland we had some relief from the wind but that is also where the climbing started. Ride with GPS shows this route having just under 19,000 feet of climbing in 376 miles.

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Here I am back in Oregon for another event, this time the Kings Valley 400 km brevet. The weather forecast was near perfect with a predicted 80 degrees inland and 60’s on the coast. The route looked like a nice loop on quite, low traffic roads with only moderate climbing. This would not all prove to be true!

Cruising into Amity, early in the ride.

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