The Vang

David and I both finished the Solvang Century last weekend! Now we know why there are windmills in a mock-Danish town. It's windy! I just hope Denmark isn't as crowded as this ride.

There were hoards of riders, an endless stream ahead and behind all day. To give you an idea of the mass of humanity taking part at this event, check out the scene at the first rest stop.




The ride heads west from Solvang past the huge Ostrich farm towards Lompoc. The ride didn't pass the place to eat Ostrich, which is east of Mission Santa Iñes at the intersection of 246 and the San Marcos Pass road, so we missed out on that snack. "Tastes like chicken".

The closer to Lompoc, the more the wind started to be a big factor. When the ride turned north, the wind kicked up. Found myself on a flat to downhill section going 12 mph. There was one section heading out to Lompoc where the cross wind was more behind us and that section was 22 mph. Except for when we did the longest hill climb of the ride, it seemed like we were never out of the wind.

The ride out to Lompoc took a nice country rode bypassing the direct route along 246. The 246 route is known for its flower farms, rectangles of vibrant reds, yellows, whites and blues at certain times of the year that's worth the drive sometime if you haven't seen it.



From Lompoc, the ride passes Vandenburg AFB, home to ICBM tests that target various atolls in the south Pacific, and also home to the launches of satellites worked on by our friends here at Lockheed and NASA/Ames, including Gravity Probe B (my friend Jeff worked on this).

Next it was past Casmalia, a 252 acre superfund site where 5.6 billion pounds of toxic waste were dumped. I didn't get off my bike anywhere near there.

The hoards never let up. At the 56 mile rest stop, David's comment was something like, "Holy cow, look at the food line". It must have been 50 people long. It was necessary to wait in line to use the Andy Gump. This is already 3+ hours into the ride and it really hadn't thinned out much.

Here we are at mile 70. Admittedly, there are a few less people but there's still big groups of cyclists around us.




The finish included two smaller but noticeable hills past the wineries back into Solvang. I kept my speed low on the downhills because the road was very rough.



We passed the Fess Parker winery above. Fess Parker played in the Davy Crockett, "king of the wild frontier" TV show I watched as a kid. The hotel and spa is 4-star but given who Davy Crockett was, I've got to wonder what they serve to eat. Ostrich!



Ride (CPU) time was 6hr15 minutes and I was pretty happy with it. Wall clock time was closer to 7:40.

While we were riding, our families checked out our favorite Solvang stop to sample the aebleskiver. I've been stopping in Solvang for aebleskiver for 20 years or more. Courtesy of my Mom, we actually own one of these pans. If they sold the ovens...

Dinner at Jocko's Steak House hit the spot.

The end looked like this.

Dog dreams