Orange County Ride Suggestions

[majl]

OC folks - will be coming down this weekend for my daughter's soccer tourney and would like to bring my road bike. I should have enough time in the morning before the first game or in the afternoon between games to get in a good 40-50 mile ride.

We will be staying at my sister's place at UC Irvine and the games are being played in San Clemente (987 Avenida Vista Hermosa). Riding from UC to the fields would work before the first game or doing a ride that starts and ends at the fields would work in between games.

Any good route suggestions? Would like to get in ~1k ft of climbing for every 10 miles if possible. TIA.

[Jaq]

You might pm 54ny77; he knows the area pretty well. There are other OC locals around as well. There's a local shop down there called Bike Religion. I don't know a thing about them other than that they have some organized rides that a friend of mine likes to do. There's a shop right near the UCI campus.

http://www.bikereligion.com/rides

If you want to ride to SC, you could pick up University Drive to Irvine Center Drive, stay on that till it becomes Moulton. That rolls through Laguna Niguel, then south toward Dana Point (turns into Golden Lantern) and then you can pick up the PCH from there south to SC. Couldn't say about the elevation; it's mostly rolling.

Another way of doing that would be UCI out to Newport Coast Road, take that up and over to the PCH (it's a great descent on a great road). Then you could shoot down the PCH through Laguna Beach, South Laguna, Dana Point, San Clemente. PCH can get a little hairy on weekends through Laguna; it's narrow. Early to mid-morning is okay; after that, on a warm weekend, it can get crazy.

[majl]

Thanks for the tips. The Bike Religion shop ride on Saturday looks like it could work. I could make my way down to the Dana Point location and pick up their ride to SC at 8am on Saturday. That would give me enough time to get to the game at 10:30am.

[thashicray]

A while back a friend and I did a modified version of this route. Check out the link and you can reference Google Maps on how you want to tailor the ride so you don't miss any soccer games.

http://m.ocregister.com/articles/trail-341617-bay-loop.html

[559Rando]

As the other have said, the Irvine/Newport "Back Bay" to PCH is great ride and you can catch it by UCI, to boot!