Rob's Bday Part Two

We left from San Fran and drove about 2 hours up to a little town in Sonoma County called Monte Rio. We stayed at a bed and breakfast called The Village Inn. Romantic weekend? Not really. You see, my friends, I had arranged for an 'active' vacation. I booked a cycling weekend with Undiscovered Country Bike Tours.

This was the view from our room at The Village Inn.

UDC Tours is a company run by 2 great people named Terry and Mary Morse. I booked the 3 day Sonoma Wine Country weekend tour. I found UDC Tours on-line and they were very well reviewed on several travel sites. I can tell you that they lived up to every positive review and then some! We were fortunate to have the owners, Mary and Terry, as our guides for the weekend. I was worried that Rob wouldn't like the bicycles provided by UDC, but all of their bikes are made by Scott with Shimano Ultegra components. About a week before the tour, Terry sent us an email asking for some detailed fit measurements so the bikes were ready to go the first day. Rob and I brought our own shoes and pedals which Terry put on our bikes. We also had these cute little license plates so we knew who's bike was who's.

Notice the little clip holding our route for the day.

So Saturday morning, we got up and went down for breakfast. We had met Terry and Mary the night before when we arrived, but we got to meet the other people on our tour. There were 2 other couples- Don and Joan from Alaska, and Ben and Sarah from Tennessee. (Both couples were very nice and we got to know them much better as the weekend progressed.) Terry and Mary gave us a little briefing about our weekend. We got these awesome goodie bags with all kinds of stuff we might need like sunscreen, lotion, snacks, and UDC socks. UDC gave us each two water bottles that had our names on them so they didn't get mixed up with anyone else's. They also explained that one of them would ride with us and the other would be close by in the SAG wagon. (I think SAG stands for Support and Gear). If at anytime during the ride we needed something, the SAG wagon could come help us out. We could also keep personal things in the wagon that we might need in our bags.

Our ride the first day was great! It was about 37 miles with a stop for lunch at a winery. I had one very scary moment, when I thought Rob had crashed going down a steep hill, but it turned out to be another rider. Thank goodness for me and Rob, but the poor rider had to be AirEvac-ed to a hospital. I hope he is ok. When I was able to pull myself together, I took this picture of Rob to confirm he was ok!

Lunch was at a neat little winery called Harvest Moon. We had lunch and then a short wine tasting. ( I was very judicious with my wine consumption because we had about 15 miles to ride after lunch!)

Here's our group, drinking wine and enjoying the beautiful weather and scenery.

Harvest Moon had a sweet chocolate lab wandering around. Turns out her name was Charlotte! Don't tell Sunny!!

We got back to the B&B and showered up. Terry and Mary provided some delicious wine and cheese on the patio and then we had a great dinner at the hotel restaurant. It was off to bed to rest up for another ride tomorrow!! Stay tuned...