Day 36 (Pescadero - Santa Cruz 61km)

Today was not so bad... There was still a headwind but it was slightly warmer and the scenery wasn't so grim.
After finishing off my soba noodles, 3 packages of oatmeal, a bowl of miso soup and some tea for breakfast I hit the road at a somewhat reasonable hour. The traffic was light in general and I was feeling a lack of motivation, so I turned on my MP3 player with some fast paced music to help me keep my cadence up. It really helped and I was travelling quite fast.
I told myself I would only stop at the end of each album. This schedule was interupted by another strawberry stand where I ate half a pound of strawberries, had a strawberry scone, a strawberry shortcake, strawberry cider and a sample of every other strawberry product they had. I was delighted to receive a 10% discount for riding a bike there (the caveat being that I had to have worn a helmet).
On a huge sugar rush now I put on some Rage Against The Machine that Carey had loaded onto my MP3 player for me and Raged Against The Wind. Sand was blowing in my face and I had to gear down on the downhills but I was making good progress. At one point a whole peleton of local roadies swept onto the road a few hundred feet infront of me and I desperately tried to make contact with them so I could draft off of them and ignore the headwind but they were way too fast and disappeared into the distance.
Finally arriving in Santa Cruz my GPS led me right to the hostel which was full so I had to stay at a motel instead.
Traffic lights in Santa Cruz laugh at pedestrians making them wait for obscene lengths of time before they can cross. This is of course of no concern to the scads of teenagers driving around in Mercedes SUVs...
I did some laundry at the laundromat, did a brief exploration of the town, and being unimpressed had a few beers instead.
Takeout Chinese food for dinner while I caught up on emails and blogging.