Well, that was a great weekend. A group of 10 of us biked from SF to Montara (on the coast, between Pacifica and Half Moon Bay, about 30 miles), stayed overnight in the Montara Lighthouse Hostel ($28/night, includes linens, fully booked most Saturday nights months ahead of time but the web site availability is often incorrect– you can call them directly to make reservations, and should if you’re going with a group), and biked back the next day. ...
Lighthouse, california bear, 10 bikes, at the end of a day of riding.
I spent a week biking and camping across Iowa with 10,000+ strangers. It was one of the better vacations I’ve taken. Here’s a map of the route, about 450 miles (50-80 miles/day, only one day with serious hills). I emailed some updates and photos to this blog from my cell phone while I was on the ride– I’m combining all those updates into this post (link below). Saturday: Starting off the trip with a near-disaster: the airline (Fronteir/Midwest) lost my bag (tent, clothes, cycling gear, everything except my bike itself). The bag wasn’t even in their system– they had no idea where it was. Then an agent in Milwaukee called me because he’d found my bag and it had my number on it. He didn’t know I was in Omaha. They said they could get it to be a few days later– not useful since I was about to get on a bike the next morning. They said there were no flights left today to send it on. Then I asked someone else and he found a flight to put it on. 4 hours later, it showed up at the airport! ...
The ride today was both a great success and a collection of minor disasters. On the up side: Eight people, including a few people who hadn’t been riding in a while. A casual-pace 29-mile ride, with successful climbs of many winding hills and a few thousand feet of elevation gain. People got tired of me saying “I think this is the last hill.” Port Costa was not at all sleepy– there were 100-200 motorcyclists (of the Harley / leather / chaps persuasion), a live band, and more loud-exhaust bikes rolling in every few minutes. It was a scene. We’d heard “the motorcyclists are taking over the Warehouse kitchen for the day” and it felt like a private party, so we weren’t sure we’d be able to get food… but they encouraged us to help ourselves to the spaghetti, salad, and bread, for free! A few interesting (and also large, and strong) beers. All in all, about everything I wanted out of the post-birthday ride, thanks everyone. On the down side, members of the group experienced: ...
About 150 bikers at 9am on a Saturday.
It was a nice 8-person ride today to Ocean Beach, where it was sunny, clear, and play-frisbee-in-t-shirts weather. Crazy. About 15-20 miles round trip depending where people started and ended, see a sample route