Christmas - Cycling Layoff

Merry Christmas everyone! I'm here in LA spending the holiday weekend at my folks place in LA. Normally, when I am traveling on a known holiday weekend, I'd try to travel at off peak hours. Ideally, I would have liked to get on the road no later than 6 am on Christmas Eve, but this year was a little different. This time, we carpooled to LA. At least this time, I'm not driving 6 hours, 350+ miles all on my own. However, we all decided to leave ~ 9 am.

With the winter weather, and ever present snow storms around, I was worried about conditions going over the grapevine. There was a winter storm warning going through I-5, so that was enough to convince us to bypass I-5, and instead, detour to 101 by the coast. This would mean more of a 8 hour commute, than a 6 hour commute.

I was driving first, and I seemed to be in auto-pilot mode. I was driving southbound on I-880, and the plan would be to continue on 101 all the way into LA. I'll need to emphasize PLAN. Like I said, I was in auto-pilot mode, then suddenly, I noticed I'm not anywhere near the route to Gilroy ... it then dawned on me, I'm on Hwy 17, approaching the Lexington Dam! Dang it .. time to brack-track ... luckily, I discovered this early enough, so there wasn't that long of a detour.

It started raining pretty hard beginning in Salinas. Winds were whipping up pretty hard, but at least the cold temps stayed away, for a little bit at least. If there is one positive note about this detour is it's a little more scenic. As we were driving, we started talking about burger, then all of a sudden, we see In n Out ... ok, so I wasn't really hungry, but how can you give up the opportunity of stopping at In n Out? It was really busy there, so we decided to go take out, since there were no seats to sit at (and we were not about to sit outdoors, freezing our buns off).

It was raining off and on all the way down through LA. Just as it looked like it would clear up, we'd get really dumped on again. This made me glad we did the coastal route instead of uncertainty of climbing the Grapevine, especially since I didn't have any chains.

It's still raining off and on as I type this. There was a slight chance to go out and ride, but as I started to get prepared, I heard a loud roar outside ... another huge dumping of rain. I guess today is a wash. Looks like I won't get in much riding this weekend. Combination of bad weather, christmas, and family get togethers ... but I guess it's just one weekend out of the year.