The California Lifestyle - laidback, easy-going, time to pursue one's passion.  Does it exist?  Especially at 6am in San Diego traffic after being cut off by some BMW asshat.  People here race around sitting in traffic for hours then work their butts off to make ends meet before doing it all over again.  Can they really enjoy The California Lifestyle?

I'm off to the legendary Swami's Wednesday Morning Ride ride in Carlsbad to find out.

It's the "go to" ride for SoCal cycling's best - bums, slackers, moochers, deadbeats, faux pros, still-living-at-home-gonna-make-it-somedayers, work ditchers, call in sickers and AARPers(Association of Aging Retired Pelotoners).  In other words, the ride attracts the best in the sport at foregoing worldly responsibilities so they can mix it up for a trivial victory that is oh so prized.            

Don’t these guys have jobs?
Bicycling describes the ride as "one of the top ranked group rides...rolling north through Marine Corp Base Camp Pendleton to San Clemente where it turns around and heads back.  The ride...is one of the hardest flat rides you can do. So bring your A game...and watch out for tanks."  All the ingredients of a great bucket ride - challenging (fast), beautiful scenery (CA coast) and adventuresome (tanks).

I roll up to the Carlsbad Starbucks at 8am.

"Is this it?"

"Yep," as the rider eyes the rookie grease marks on my calf.

"I'm JW.  1st time.  Any tips?"

"Go fast," as he rolls towards a growing mass of riders.  Everyone is wearing custom team kits on custom unubtainium carbon bikes sporting custom Super Red 9000 parts with custom deep dish carbon hoops.  Everyone except me.

I'm in my finest kit.  An old logoless jersey with holes, stains and pockets held on with safety pins.  It started out life as a beautiful solid Italian azure blue jersey.  Now it's just worn-out, washed-up and faded - like me.  Bibs match the jersey though, especially the holes, giving a new XXX meaning to the term threadbare.  Add a beat up vintage carbon frame with Shiramognolo 10 components, square box clinchers and I'm a picture perfect old skool rider.

They don't give me a second thought or glance.  Perfect.  My plan is working.  If you can't outride 'em, outsmart 'em.  Lure everyone into a false sense of security with the classic "Pay no attention to the old guy, old bike and old kit" ploy.

At 8:15 sharp a large group of riders roll out.  Young, old, male, female, national caliber, state champions and a bunch of poseurs and fakers like me.  All with nothing more important to do this morning than play faux pro bike racer.  Hmmm, this California Lifestyle ain't bad.

We roll through Camp Pendleton's main gate presenting IDs to Marine guards.  They pause and double check mine - it's from Texas.  Now it's game time.  The pace ramps quickly to 23, 25, 27mph on open military roads.  North into a stiff crosswind across Stuart Mesa we roll hugging the gutter single file.  Someone yells "Tank Up" as a line of Abrams M1A1 tanks maneuver in the distant hills.

Tank Up! Credit: USMC Camp Pendleton
Next is Old Pacific Highway.  An abandoned paved path of the famed El Camino Real.  Huge cracks, seams, tank tracks and carbon destroying holes everywhere.  Intensity increases again while the peloton shrinks.

At San Onofre Beach we thread our way like a high speed circus parade through concrete barriers 3-feet apart and onto a real road.  Mr. Park Ranger pulls alongside. "SLOW DOWN!"  We accelerate.  Now it's single file all out like the last 5k of a TdF stage.  I'm tail gunning and hanging on via bungie cord.

Déjà vu.  Been here a thousand times before with the same result - certain defeat.  Tension and anticipation permeate the air.  No one gives an inch.  Everyone knows what is coming - the fast and the furrious.  I stay glued to a little rider resembling Rocky The Squirrel(aka Rocket J. Squirrel), but with thighs the size of tree-trunks.  Who am I kidding?  I'm gonna get my ass kicked.

Nonetheless, somewhere ahead is The Sprint.  Just to make it interesting, I don't know where.  It's a Magical Mystery Sprint.  Kinda like Strava segments on your average Saturday group ride.  We hit a long straightaway.  This is it!   But where is the finish?  I duck my head out of draft scanning for a city limit sign, light pole, mile marker, fence post, dead animal, beer bottle, podium girls, etc.  Nothing.  Just a stoplight.  Uh-uh.  No way.  A stoplight sprint?   Hmmm.  It does offer a nice white finish line...

Our Lady of Blessed Acceleration, don't fail me now.  Someone shifts gears.  Another twitches.  It's time.  Chains and frames groan under 1000 watt accelerations while custom carbon hoops rock side to side making that wonderful swooshing sound.  My old aluminum wheels just creak annoyingly.  On the right a new line forms.  I jump on.  It takes off with me dangling at the back.  100 meters to the stoplight...I mean finish line.  Poseurs and fakers flail as Rocket J. Squirrel flies up the road delivering an arms up "V" victory salute.

Ouch.  That hurt, but in a fun way.

California’s cycling Mecca. Credit: visitcarlsbad.com
We regroup, turnaround, pick up the dropped and do it all again in reverse.  25 just-as-fast miles later we roll back into Carlsbad.  A few of us stop to enjoy coffee and relive the thrill of losing the Wednesday Worlds.

Afterwards, rolling back to my car I realize The California Lifestyle is alive and well - at least in Carlsbad on Wednesday mornings.

John is a former faux pro racer enjoying life as a geriatric cyclist in search of great bucket list rides to keep him in shape and out of trouble - well, at least in shape. 

He writes about his Bucket Rides in all their variety and glory for Granfondo.com. See his other pieces here

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