Great organized ride..

The weather was looking dubious at best, but i only got wet while loading the bike back into the car, so timing was perfect.

Sea Otter Classic turned out to be a huge multi day festival, giant tent city at Leguna Seca raceway. Bicyclists everywhere, a bunch of them mountain bikers head to toe in mud from the soupy hills thanks to all the rain.

We had a bunch start at 7am on the racetrack, and then exited out to the surrounding areas, tackled a few small climbs within the first 5 miles that strung out the peleton into smallers groups of people. Managed to find a small informal paceline about 10 miles in and hung with them until the first rest stop. Great fun, looking forward to riding in pacelines more in the future. After mostly solo riding, it's still surprising how much more efficient it is to be tucked into a line, and of course you get the stark reminder when it's your turn to pull.

Rest stop was first class, probably the best one i've seen yet, with all kinds of foodage goodness.

The main climb of the day was long, but relative shallow grade, so tackled it without incident. Rest of the ride went pretty smoothly except for the last 1/4 mile. I figured there was trouble ahead when i saw a warning sign indicating 20% grade ahead at the base of the last hill back to the racetrack circuit. Cruel!

Expo was pretty cool, although spending all that time in the garmin booth probably going to end up costing me $400 for the Edge 305! ;)