Day 27: Oceano to Lompoc. 41 miles

Hello third graders, families, and friends!

Last night was not a good night for sleep!  There was a very disrespectful family in the camp spot next to me.  I needed my third graders with me to help remind them that we are respectful, safe, and responsible, we are RSR!  They were only about 20 feet away and were being loud all night.  I went to bed at 9:30, after laying there trying to get to sleep for four hours, at 1:30 I had enough and asked them to quiet down.  Why did I wait four hours?  I don't know.  I guess I'm really really patient.  I am a third grade teacher, so patient, yes.  HAHA!  Love you third graders!  Even after I asked them to quiet down they didn't until 2:30.  I got to sleep around 3 in the morning, but they were up again at 6 am making all kinds of noise again!  I couldn't believe they didn't sleep longer than that.  I only got 3 hours of sleep.  Oh well I tried to let it go and just get on the road and get rolling.  I packed up and hit the road early.  Hank and I stopped at a diner outside of Oceano that was made from an old train car.  It was really cool.  The whole ceiling was covered with business cards from way back to the 1950s.

After breakfast Hank and I hit the road.  We had a crazy side wind for the first ten miles of the day, but once we turned and headed southeast the side wind became a tail wind! It was awesome!  We flew for quite a ways before we got to our biggest hill of the day and the second to last big hill of the whole trip, Harris Grade.  1,000 feet of winding road that we had to go over to get to Lompoc.  This was the hottest I have been on this trip yet.  Since we are inland for the next couple days it is much hotter than the coast.  Going up Harris grade it was at least in the mid 80s.  As you all know I don't tolerate heat very well.  Hank and I had to stop and rest quite a few times and drink lots of water. One time we stopped and I looked over on the guard rail and saw a HUGE black widow spider just hanging out in its web.  This thing was enormous and so creepy looking.  I was going to take a picture to post but I was grossed out, so I rode away feeling all itchy and creepy crawly.  Once we got to the top of the Harris Grade I took this picture.  Lompoc, our destination for the day, is at the bottom on the other side.  You will notice there is a lot of smoke from wildfires burning down this way.  It is super dry and hot inland. 

For the second day in a row we found out the guide book we've been following is wrong!  The campground they suggested in Lompoc no longer exists.  So we got a hotel for the second night out of the last three, which I don't really mind because it's good rest and recharge time. Tomorrow we will push for a fairly long day, hopefully with tailwinds, to get us to Santa Barbara or maybe a little further.  We really want to get back to the coast where it is cooler, so we will at least shoot for that.

I haven't posted screen shots of my ride lately because I was having trouble with my GPS tracking app.  I think it's fixed now.  Below is a screen shot for today.  I zoomed way out so you can see how close I am to getting to Los Angeles.  You can also see on the elevation graph at around 35 miles for the day that big hill is the Harris Grade I wrote about.  One more big one like that tomorrow, and then almost no hills above 300 feet for the rest of the ride to the Mexican border!  That's awesome!

   Take care!