Today’s Date: Tuesday, September 3, 2019
District: 05–Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Monterey, San Benito and Santa
Cruz Counties
Contact: Jim Shivers or Colin Jones
Phone: (805) 549-3237 or (805) 549-3189
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
14th ANNUAL BEST BUDDIES CHALLENGE BICYCLE RIDE COMES TO THE CENTRAL COAST THIS SATURDAY
CENTRAL COAST – The 13th Annual Best Buddies Challenge Bicycle Ride will include the use of Highway 1 on Saturday, Sept. 7 beginning at the Quail Lodge on Carmel Valley Road at 7 am and finish at the Hearst Ranch Warehouse on San Simeon Road.
This event will include three additional starts at the Big Sur Station at 8:30 am, at Sand Dollar State Park at 10 am and at Ragged Point at 11 am.
Traffic control for this non-competitive ride will include rolling closures by the California Highway Patrol (CHP) as the riders continue in a southerly direction.
All riders will be off the road by 4 pm.
Electronic Message Boards will be posted alerting motorists to ‘Share the Road’ with cyclists. Motorists can expect delays not to exceed 15 minutes.
Caltrans reminds motorists to be aware of these cyclists and any support vehicles. For more information regarding this event, please visit the Best Buddies Challenge website at: https://www.bestbuddieschallenge.org/hc/
BEST BUDDIES ROUTE MAP BELOW
For traffic updates on other state highways on the Central Coast motorists can call Caltrans District 5 Public Affairs at (805) 549-3318
or visit the District 5 website at: https://dot.ca.gov/caltrans-near-me/district-5
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From my point of view, this is the most dangerous day of the year to be on Highway 1, especially heading north. There are a lot of cyclists, lots of groups of cyclists and lots of frustrated drivers heading south stuck behind them with no safe places to pass for long periods of time. After a while, the cars start passing cyclists in dumb places, blind bends etc. I’ve headed through this northbound a couple of times a few years ago and have since vowed to just stay away when I know it’s happening.
In the past some of the film crew filming the participants were acting like the road was closed and were heading around blind bends on the wrong side of the road (that year, I saw a CHP and pulled over to ask if the road was actually closed – it wasn’t – and once I told him about the film crew, he pulled them over to let them know it wasn’t closed too).
They should really close the road down like they do for the Marathon and the Tour de California. If you have the option, avoid the highway on Saturday – it’ll be a big mess.
The most dangerous and inexperienced riders I’ve ever encountered. Either shut the road down or shut the ride down completely. There are other ways to raise money and this is not one of them.