40-mile flat ride from Lake Merritt to Fremont, joining about 30 people I didn’t know on the Bike East Bay “Spring Ride Series”. A nice route, especially all the paved car-free paths along various wetlands (with many birds on a misty morning)– and nice for variety to be following without having to plan a route or look at my phone.
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An all-afternoon ride from Fremont BART to the shoreline, under the Dumbarton bridge, then up along the water all the way to San Leandro– riding on levees stretching out into the Bay, past green-tinted salt evaporation ponds, pelicans, egrets, herons, vultures, and a red fox, through landscapes moon-subdued in palette but with occasional brilliant splashes of color, on paved paths and dirt… a great day. Riding into the fierce, relentless headwind slowed us down, and the occasional sections of bone-rattling gravel numbed the hands, but we all made it around the levees, on trails where we saw few other humans. ...
Take BART -> Fremont. Bike to Alviso. Ride for hours on levees, around salt evaporation ponds and in-progress-of-restoration wetlands habitats, past trains and abandoned buildings in an alien landscape. Jackrabbits and egrets galore. Ride on to Caltrain, completing a full circle of the Bay. ...
Six of us met up at Millbrae and biked South along the Bay Trail, through the Coyote Point recreation area (where we were tempted by the smell of barbeque), past San Mateo, and around Foster City, cutting back inland to Belmont, for lunch at Cafe Mossant, and then back via caltrain. I didn’t take any photos, but if anyone did I’ll post them. I tried out GPS track recording on my phone, you should see an embedded map below: A few stats from the cycle computer:17 miles, average speed 10mph, 100 minutes of cycling time. No organized rides for the next month or so, next ride mid-August.
Details to follow. This will be a more mosey-along ride than usual, a great starter ride. A few people have already said they’re coming on this as their first ride. It will be fun– minimal traffic, very flat, and a relaxed pace (much of it is on a paved path separate from the street, shared with the occasional jogger), though still a respectable distance (maybe 15 miles depending where we finish). ...
A few people from our usual group joined a group of maybe 150 bicyclists at Dolores Park at 8:30AM on a gray and misty morning (the people in the Dolores Park Cafe were confused by the crush of business). It was amusing to see another bicyclist heading to the park through the deserted streets of the mission and think “I bet I know where he’s going”. The group headed out around 9:30 (some with stereo systems, musical instruments, and other bulky objects), and took a route from Bayshore -> Tunnel -> Sierra Point -> McDonnell -> the Bay Trail south of the airport -> 3rd Ave in San Mateo. We didn’t ride on the Bay Trail itself for much of the ride– we took the slightly more direct (and wider, easier to bike on with a crowd) surface streets. The ride was at a slow pace, with a few bikes with stereos, and some periodic waiting to regroup, and we reached Maker Faire a little before noon. After Maker Faire, around 6:45, I was feeling my oats and decided to bike back on my own, trying to beat the setting sun. I took the more scenic bay trail routes much of the way, with a few accidental detours. Here’s a rough map of the overall ride. My recently-purchased bike computer says I rode 53 miles total, including getting to the park in the morning.
Heading South on Tunnel Ave
About 150 bikers at 9am on a Saturday.
I’m planning on joining someone else’s organized ride this Saturday, in case you’re interested – the Rock The Bike group biking to Maker Faire. http://www.rockthebike.com/node/10277 from the web page: “the ride is about 19 miles over mostly flat terrain, and we will take a leisurely pace, cruising with great music on our party bikes.” Plus, there’s valet bike parking and you get into Maker Faire at a discount. To get back without doing that length of ride again, the Hillsdale Caltrain station is just a few miles away. If you’re interested, let me know (I’ll mass-RSVP to the organizers), and meet at Dolores Park at 8:30AM.