I had this idea a month or two ago to ride a double metric century down to Santa Cruz and then take the train back to take advantage of the tailwind down and avoid the headwind back. Well I never did it because the winds were an abnormal headwind. When we decided to do the route for TdC x TdPSL, the wind was once again not the normal tailwind. I thought about reversing the route but the wind actually sucked and was almost headwind most of the way around the loop so we just stuck to the original. The views on the coast are better going south anyway. No one else wanted to join us. I don't know why. :) That made me think, I guess I'm Anthony's Tour de Pumpkin Spice Latte buddy and he's my Tour de Croissant buddy. :) The weather was pretty nice though. Winds were mild so it mostly didn't matter whether it was a headwind or a tailwind. Anthony installed new brake pads yesterday and they were rubbing. The front pads were making that horrible rubbing the rim of a wine glass sound. We stopped to try and fix it but no luck so we headed back to his place to put the old pads back in. It was much better and lucky for my, his rear brakes were still rubbing. A nice handicap that I needed. Now 30 minutes behind, we were on our way. It was chilly to start but for some reason once we got to OLH, it became warm and a little humid. WOLH was going back and forth between being warm and chilly and by the time we got to 84, it just settled on being chilly. It was on the chilly side until we made it out to Pescadero. Anthony didn't want to stop and we didn't need to stop in Pescadero so we short cut the route and took Cloverdale instead of Bean Hollow. The coast was so pretty. It started of with a tailwind but quickly turned to a headwind pretty much the whole way down to Santa Cruz. We got to Cat & Cloud at noon. I was hungry so I ordered their Big Cat breakfast burrito. It sounded pretty good but it ended up being not to my liking. I was looking for something savory and this was too bean/potato/sour forward. I ate half and gave the other half to Anthony. Tried a new path through Santa Cruz - the rail trail. It was nice. A bit of a change from my usual, riding along the coast. Unfortunately, Murray St. was closed causing a big detour onto busy roads, made busier by the detour. It's crazy that Murray St. was the only way to cross the harbor dredge and continue east. When I got to Gayle's I was feeling hungry. That burrito just made feel full but I got food anyways because I knew I needed it. I wasn't in the mood for pastries. I needed real food. Luckily it helped and I felt much better after. Gayle's was a decision point for us. Anthony's plan was to ride door-to-door rather than take Caltrain and wanted to get back before sunset. My original route took us to Corralitos and Eureka Canyon for some nicer, quieter roads. The less desirable way, but it cuts 20mi., was to climb Soquel-San Jose Rd. My legs were feeling a little tired so the thought of cutting sounded good. Anthony was also in favor of shortening. I thought, what the heck, maybe the climb isn't as bad as I imagined. The climb was better than I imagined but it was also as busy as I thought it would be with 58 cars passing me on that 6-ish mile climb. That's crazy busy compared to most roads we're on. I felt pretty good after the climb and even considered doing the whole route with Anthony. In Los Gatos, I ran into Tony Ballard when we accidentally exited Los Gatos Creek trail. It worked out because we needed water and I knew there was a fountain there but the route had us staying on the trail. Tony guided us back to the trail through town. Anthony had mentioned that he was planning on picking up the pace. Just before Caltrain, I asked him to ride at the pace he was planning to go at to see if I could keep up. Nope, that was going to be too fast for me so it was an easy decision to take Caltrain. It worked out because the headwind back was, as Anthony put it, "demoralizing". And on the train, I met a follower that uses an alias so I never knew who they were - Hugh Jassman (Brett). We had a nice chat on the way up. I think we both finished before sunset. I joked that Anthony met get back before I did but I ended up beating him by 20-30min. Forgot to mention, Anthony liked his PSL at Cat & Cloud but didn't like his Safeway croissant at Gayle's. :)