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B1866, a Brooks showroom recently opened in London:

Recently in London, slogging out of the Underground with my backpack after a long flight onto a road busy with construction, I saw someone glide by on a city bike. I had to try it, even if just for the short distance from tube stop to hotel. Fortunately, the Barclay’s city bike system is very tourist-friendly and doesn’t require preregistration or a chip-and-pin card. A swipe of a credit card, a few dollars, and I rented a bike, rode it the short distance to the hotel, and deposited it at another stand. No problem. ...

Saturday I organized a third “SF Bicycle Dumpling Tour“ (year 1: friends, year 2: public) for about 50 people. Good food, weather, and a casual 15-mile bike ride around the city, with a few hills…. A few photos I took or people on the ride sent me: Pork and chive dumplings arriving in the park by bike: For the $10 registration fee (definitely a zero-profit endeavor) you got all the dumplings you could eat, a low-tech copy-and-paste ride booklet (map, directions, trivia, and a dumpling recipe), and some useful tools… ...

A gorgeous day. Taking a spin on the fat-tired Pugsley along dirt roads and trails in the Marin Headlands (my first time off-road there, remarkably). Amazing views, trails mostly in good condition, a few uphill grinds, and one slightly gnarly downhill on Old Springs (at least, for a beginner like me): ruts, loose gravel, a long set of shallow stairs to ride down, and a few narrow sections of trail lined on both sides with glistening poison oak (“please don’t fall now…”) ...

Wooden seats for two

I was itching to get out of the city and just ride. So a small group of us headed North to Mill Valley, Panoramic, Pan Toll / Mt Tam, Ridgecrest, Bolinas-Fairfax, Alpine Dam, Fairfax… and back home. About 65 miles, very hilly, and took us all day (with the requisite stops for Sol Food limeade, looking at the ocean, burgers, and beer). ...

Scouting potential locations and routes for the Third Annual Dumpling Bike Tour on May 10th (see last year)… and it was a beautiful, sunny, relaxing day with a few friends.

A while back I heard about the 1st Annual San Diego Bike & Beer (I think via the citymaus tumblr), and just had to plan a trip down from SF for the weekend. And by lucky chance, two friends were already going to be in Southern California that weekend and drove down to join. In pictures: The 29-mile route visited four breweries (Hess, Modern Times, Stone, and Mission), taking a roundabout path to circle the city and include scenic ocean-side riding: ...

Packing up my bike for next weekend’s 1st Annual San Diego Bikes & Beer.

Five of us set off to ride dirt roads up to the top of Mt Tam, along the former route of the ‘Crookest Railroad in the World’. Starting with a little dirt warm-up on paths through the Presidio: New off-road dirt shortcut to the bridge, past old concrete batteries (involved some flights of stairs): Stop at the new Sol Food in Mill Valley (quite possibly my favorite place to eat on a ride) for a plantain-and-hot-sauce-heavy lunch: ...