Day 2 - Soquel, CA to Half Moon Bay, CA

Day Total - 62.4 miles
Trip Total - 91.9 miles
Headwind all day.  Averaged less than 9 mph.  Physically hardest day of my life.  Held back tears when I saw the "Entering Half Moon Bay" sign.

If yesterday was a relatively easy start to the tour, today showed us just how hard touring can be. The day started with almost 10 miles through the streets of Soquel and Santa Cruz. They weren't much of a challenge apart from the traffic. The ACA route does a good job of sending riders along bike-friendly roads, so we mostly had a bike lane, except on side streets without much traffic anyway.

Farmland north of Santa Cruz

Then, as we left Santa Cruz, it began. The wind blew furiously out of the north. At first we thought it was just a gusty section at the northern end of Monterey Bay, but by the small town of Davenport, it was clear that it wasn't going away. The situation wasn't helped by the terrain - constant rolling hills through Santa Cruz County, with steep climbs of a few hundred feet each coming one after the other. Add to that equation almost no trees and beach traffic and you get miserable riding up to the San Mateo County line.

These pictures make it look like a wonderful day of riding...

But there's a reason I stopped and took so many pictures

Conditions weren't much better in San Mateo County though. We were already exhausted by that point with some 25 miles still to ride to our destination of Half Moon Bay. Though there were a few more trees to block the wind, and though the climbs decreased in frequency, I quickly got to the point where I could barely spin the pedals.

The breaking point was on one of the final climbs before the flat stretch into Half Moon Bay. I simply hit a wall and had to push my bike up a long hill because I was so physically drained. A stop at a fruit stand, where we bought some local cherries and strawberries, was what gave me the energy to pedal the last stretch into town.

Of course, that wouldn't be easy either. We decided to go through the center of town rather than follow Highway 1 as the ACA route suggested. We didn't find anywhere cheap to eat there, so we went to a McDonalds at the edge of town. After that, with the sun nearing the horizon, we went looking for the campground at Half Moon Bay State Beach. But unfortunately, we turned north on Highway 1 instead of south, and we ended up taking a three mile detour - not exactly ideal under these circumstances.

I still almost cannot believe that we made it. Both of us were looking for potential sites to bandit camp well before Half Moon Bay, but because we had reservations at Angel Island the next night, we knew we had to make it to Half Moon Bay. I held back tears when I saw the "Welcome to Half Moon Bay" sign, even with some five miles to go to camp. The end was in sight, and for a lot of the day, I wasn't sure I would make it.

This was only a few minutes after arriving in camp

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