The rainy season has some time for rides, and some time for dreaming about rides to do next summer. Here are nine ideas for Big Rides (I’ll try to actually do 3 or 4 of them):

January: Overnight bike trip down the coast to Montara via Old San Pedro (“Planet of the Apes”) road. [edit: did it, a great weekend]

April: Bike to Point Reyes during wildflower season for a three-day weekend. Carry gear and camp overnight, have a day to bike/hike and enjoy Point Reyes, then bike back. About 43 miles each way. [ edit: did it, awesome ]

May 1st:Grizzly Peak Century. Fairly hilly and challenging. I’m thinking of doing it. Here’s a NY Times article from 2008 about it. Some of us have covered significant sections of the route in past BikeIt rides Port Costa and Three Bears + Moraga. [ edit: after doing half of it as training in April, I realized I had no particular desire to do it and probably wouldn’t enjoy the last 30 miles ]

**Late July:**RAGBRAI, the week-long 10,000-person bike ride across Iowa. I had such a good time in 2010 that I’m thinking about doing it again some year [ edit: not this year, but some time  in the next two years, for sure ]. 450 miles total, 50-80 miles per day, mostly flat, more about endurance than speed. And not a race– days of riding filled with stops for pork chops and ice cream, and evenings of merriment, meeting interesting people, spaghetti dinners, and beer. Registration will sell out, probably some time in the spring.

Summer: Some bike adventure somewhere else in the world, probably by myself. We’ll see.

Fall: Bike camping trip in New England? (TBD, EB was talking about organizing something)

Fall: Waves to Wine, a 170ish-mile, two-day bike ride from the Bay Area coast up to wine country that several friends have done.

October: Foxy’s Fall Century starting in Davis, with both 100 km and 100 mile options (see the overview map). I’ve heard great things about this century being both enjoyable and a good “first century”. Still challenging, of course, but much less hilly than the Grizzly Peak Century.

Some day: A bike tour in the Southwest. The NYTimes article on biking in Monument Valley in Arizona was quite compelling.

[ image source: Christopher Solomon, NY Times article linked above ]

Some day: I want to go back to Spain. I like biking. Perhaps a week+ bike tour across the country some year? I’ve been reading about cycling the Camino De Santiago. So far, this is all talk.