KITSBOW CYCLING APPAREL

Rare rainclouds threatened on the horizon, merging into the Pacific as they edged closer to shore. We picked up the cadence a bit. By our best guess, we would only have to ride in the rain for 20 minutes - a pretty fair penalty for a clear, windless afternoon in Montana de Oro state park, where the mountains meet the sea.

I’ll never be a professional cyclist for a long list of reasons. But somewhere near the top of that list is the fact that I love stopping to enjoy the view. Head down, nose on the bars, grinding out miles in a big group - it’s not that there’s anything wrong with that. But when you are on California’s Central Coast in spring, it feels near criminal to speed by the blooming wildflowers, coastal cliffs, and swaying grasses. My friend Ryan Riggins agrees, which is why our 30-mile ride had morphed into a 3-hour tour of this hidden gem. Our big time penalty today came in the form of a winding, sun-drenched canyon, steep orange sides boxing in a narrow gravel service road.

With bolts starting to strike out on the open ocean, we made the last-second call to peel right and commit to the canyon, ripping down the smooth, graded dirt through billions of years of uplift. The wind-whipped walls revealed shells from the Miocene era; tack on another 5 minutes to stop and stare at these imprints of oceans past. The ocean of now quickly came back into focus as we closed in on the coastline and the incoming wall of weather. Racing the storm to shelter, we meandered through a bit of singletrack on the marine bluffs and dropped into a grove of giant eucalyptus.

Back on the main road, the sky opened up, washing away the canyon dust and intensifying as we neared the car. I looked over at Ryan, helplessly trying to shelter his camera from the onslaught. We both smiled. It wasn’t the storm’s fault - we just couldn't help taking the long way home.