Steve's Cycling Blog

For my 107th and Vince's 35th Triple Crown Event we were really anticipating and excited about doing this ride on the tandem. I have always wanted to try it tandem even knowing how tough it is. We did many events in the 90’s that were this tough and even tougher on the tandem which included the infamous 93 Tour of Two Forests (new Heartbreak Course due to the giant land slide on the highway from Ojai over Pine mountain), where 26 of us finished out of around 300. This one would turn out pretty tough. The day before the event we found out that there was a fire in Julian so we were worried about whether the ride would be canceled or not. We also heard about some high wind warnings issued for Borrego Springs. We found out at the very last moment that the ride would continue but the much anticipated climb from Santa Isabel to Julian and the awesome decent down Banner Grade to the finish would be cut out of the ride. We instead were going to return on Hwy 79 North and ma

The Central Coast Double is one of my favorite rides. I could not make it last year so I was real excited to do it again. This would be my third time doing it. This year I decided to do the lowland course option which has a little less climbing and distance. It is just a hair under 200 miles and has about 12,700 feet of climbing. I drove up to Morro Bay the day before to visit with my cousin Ken and his wife Terri. They have a nice place right across from Morro Rock. I spent the night at their place. I drove to Paso Robles in the morning and checked in at 5am then got ready for the event. We had a pre-ride meeting then we were off at about 6:45am. First light. I was feeling fantastic right out of the start and warmed up quickly. I decided to ride “Old Dave” my 22 year old steel Davidson bike I had custom made for me back in 1990. I do allot of distance in training and did many of my early double centuries on it. The older “Dura-Ace” brakes are not too good