Lompoc, April 12

Workers harvesting lettuce near Guadalupe

Guadalupe, CA main street

We woke to cloudy skies and light wind. Got ourselves together, had a cup of coffee, some orange juice and a muffin, which is what was furnished by the motel. As we headed out the door, we discovered Rudy's front tire was soft, very soft. Changed the tire, put in a new tube as well and hit the road. Today we had our rain pants on for the first time. It was fairly warm, so just a jersey, rain jacket, leg warmers, shorts and rain pants. The wind was not bad at all and it was a good decision to delay a day as the wind was howling yesterday. We headed south on Hwy 1 out of Pismo and stopped at Tanner Jacks in Oceano for breakfast right after scaling a 3/4 mile long hill of at least 7 degrees and I could easy be convinced it was steeper. Oatmeal with brown sugar and dried cherries refueled us. Helen, the waitress at Tanner Jacks fixed me a couple of hard boiled eggs to go. We have discovered most restaurants get their hard boiled eggs delivered without the shell, who knew. We talked of yesterday's storm and Helen said her Meyer Lemon tree was knocked over and she thought the winds exceeded 30 mph. Back on the road toward Guadalupe. We passed workers in a field harvesting lettuce. Stopped and took a photo and got a wave from the workers. On down the road and rain came down pretty good but the winds were fine. Guadalupe is an old town, but a lot of construction is going on in the old buildings on the main drag. Took a photo of an old Gold Medal Flour advertisement on the wall of a building. We headed out of town past the Amtrak station. It was a little early for lunch at "Chicago Chop Suey" in Guadalupe so we stopped in Orcutt for lunch at Kays. Great place and we split a big salad with tri tip, chicken, bacon, avocado on a bed of spinach. As we were finishing up, the second storm of the day blew through and we watched it go by from the warmth of the restaurant. After about 5 minutes it was mostly gone and we were back on Hwy 1. Orcutt is in the center of an oil producing area. We saw several pumping wells and went by a small ConocoPhillips refinery. We had a couple of good climbs, one more rain storm, photo op at the gate to Vandenberg Air Force Base and rolled into Lompoc after 46.23 miles. Great shoulders, good road all day long. Showered, threw the clothes in the laundry and are thinking of dinner. Tomorrow, we head to Santa Barbara. According to our map, we are looking at our highest elevation tomorrow, around 1200 feet and then we fall off the other side mostly down hill to the coast and then some rollers into Santa Barbara