Rough Stuff on Velodromedary

Biking the Crosstown Trail, San Francisco

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 06:00:07 +0000

I highly recommend the Crosstown Trail, a grassroots-developed 17-mile hiking route across San Francisco that strings together existing paths through parks, urban greenways, stairs, and the bits of road needed to connect them.

There’s an associated bike route that combines parts of that trail with parallel road routes where it would be impractical to ride (though even this route also includes some carry-your-bike staircases and narrow dirt paths). Just imagine, you can experience all of this within the city limits:

Wildcat Creek Trail Gravel

Thu, 18 Sep 2025 23:55:37 +0000

I enjoy mixing some gravel and dirt into my road rides, though I don’t have a specific “mountain” or “gravel” bike– just my all-around bike with 38mm tires.

A local example I’ve enjoyed several times in the past few years is Wildcat Creek Trail, which takes you from Wildcat Canyon Park in Richmond up to Tilden Park in the Berkeley hills. It’s a good local introduction to gravel roads (and nice and wide compared to a typical multi-use trail, avoiding conflict with walkers and dogs), and I’ve brought along friends on road bikes and they’ve been able to handle it:

Cycling Eastern Slovenia & Croatia, 2024

Fri, 09 Aug 2024 03:25:00 +0000

A few years back I met a friend who lives in Berlin and we spent a week biking to Copenhagen. It turns out we had compatible cycle touring styles, and said “let’s do this again some time… especially if I’m ever somewhere in Europe within a reasonable take-your-bike-on-the-train distance from Germany". Other vacation plans brought me to Slovenia, so we schemed up a week of self-supported cycling in Slovenia and a bit of Croatia, on a mix of paved and gravel roads.

DC -> Pittsburgh on car-free trails, 2022 (C&O/GAP)

Thu, 22 Sep 2022 21:46:52 +0000

For years I’ve daydreamed about biking from DC to Pittsburgh on mostly car-free dirt trails, on a ~330 mile winding route that combines the C&O Canal Trail (a dirt trail formerly used by mules to pull cargo barges along the C&O canal in the 1800s, a transportation method that eventually lost to the railroad, and was nearly converted to roads before being preserved as a park in the 1970s) and the Great Allegheny Passage (a combination of rail trails integrated and completed in 2013).

Bornholm: Island Life + Cycling

Sat, 25 Jun 2022 00:49:00 +0000

Bornholm: a large Danish island in the middle of the Black Sea, reached by ferry from Sweden, Germany, or Poland. It’s relaxing, lush, pastoral… and some might even say a little boring.

I love it– there are smokehouse for fish (optionally served with an egg yolks), a few cute towns, breweries, ice cream, beaches and forests… and most notably for this blog: ~230km of interconnected cycle trails around and through the island.

Del Valle Dirt

Sun, 27 Feb 2022 01:22:11 +0000

I’ve done variants on a 30-mile vineyard and trails loop in Livermore a few times over the years. One of those years we biked past Wente and up to the South end of Arroyo Road, and could see gravel trails stretching off along Lake Del Valle– but the gravel was too steep and loose and we turned around.

I’ve always wanted to go back with some wider tires and see how practical (and fun) it is to ride gravel along Del Valle, connecting Arroyo road to Mines road…

Hayduke Option - MTB Touring in Southern Utah

Thu, 14 Oct 2021 01:35:00 +0000

(retroactively writing up a quick summary, months later…)

I’ve dreamed about doing some sort of week+ off-road bike tour somewhere in the world. While I enjoy solo DIY exploration and have many great memories of going somewhere and figuring it out on the fly, my gravel touring experience is limited and I’ve never even really been mountain biking (at least, farther than a few miles), so perhaps it would be easier and more fun to join an organized tour…

Montana gravel bike camping + GDMBR (5 days)

Sat, 14 Aug 2021 07:31:00 +0000

I never really got into “mountain biking”, because for years I associated it with going fast on rough terrain and dodging obstacles, while I like to ramble and mosey and stop a lot. I also like rides where I can walk out my door (or hop off a train or plane) and get on the bike without having to drive somewhere.

I realize my impressions were a narrow caricature of what mountain biking can be, though, and I’ve always enjoyed the bits of off-roading that sneak into rides– the last mile of dirt getting to a camp site from the road, strange muddy paths I find myself on when trying to bypass roads, or detours through parks to avoid main roads, and even when “road biking” I generally run 32mm+ tires to give myself more comfort and flexibility for unexpected detours.

The Whitefish Trail, part of an 8-mile mostly singletrack route I took between the Whitefish Bike Retreat (excellent...

Mon, 02 Aug 2021 02:45:00 +0000

The Whitefish Trail, part of an 8-mile mostly singletrack route I took between the Whitefish Bike Retreat (excellent camping/hostel basecamp for local gravel and bikepacking exploration) and downtown Whitefish. I’m new to mountain biking and singletrack so I took it slow…

Old Cazadero local loop

Mon, 03 May 2021 05:19:00 +0000

I think I first heard about ‘Old Caz’ (Old Cazadero Road) when reading a recap of someone’s 300km (yes, 180 mile) randonneur ride that included it. That’s… ambitious.

I haven’t been biking much due to pandemic sluggishness and malaise, but I was going up to Guerneville for the weekend with friends, so I brought my bike and set out to do a much smaller loop that included the mythical Old Caz. I’ve been gradually biking on more gravel and forest roads (just with my normal bike) and enjoying it…

s24o bike camping from Munich

Tue, 26 Jun 2018 01:15:00 +0000

I had to travel to Munich for a few days for work, right before the summer solstice, a weekend when Swift Industries cheers people on to go bike camping anywhere (#swiftcampout).

So why not? I packed a single small pannier with only essential camping gear and stuffed it and a bivy sack in my suitcase with my work clothes and laptop.

When the work week wrapped up, I asked the hotel to hold my suitcase for a day, rented a basic city bike with a rack, and set out into the woods…

Mud and Debris

Mon, 13 Feb 2017 03:31:43 +0000

The biking along Skyline and Shepherd Canyon were more challenging than usual after the storms:

This was a smooth bike trail the last time I was here:

Still great views:

Exploring Wildcat, Tilden Parks by bike

Mon, 15 Feb 2016 21:33:18 +0000

Striking out solo on a Sunday to explore trails in the East Bay hills, from Nimitz Way -> Fire Trail #3 -> San Pablo Ridge Trail -> Belgum Trail -> Wildcat Creek Trail:

Roadblock (riding in Wildcat Canyon Regional Park). Reminds me of 5 years ago.

Mon, 15 Feb 2016 20:54:44 +0000

Roadblock (riding in Wildcat Canyon Regional Park). Reminds me of 5 years ago.

East Bay Trail / Salt Ponds / Marsh

Sun, 26 Jul 2015 06:25:24 +0000

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.

A few hours on a mountain bike in rural Uruguay

Mon, 24 Nov 2014 06:33:31 +0000

Biking it near, along, and in the shallow edge of Laguna Garzon.

Taking a "shortcut" back down on an unlabeled rutted path (4x speed). A bit gnarly, especially on our smooth-tired touring...

Tue, 14 Oct 2014 02:16:00 +0000

Taking a “shortcut” back down on an unlabeled rutted path (4x speed). A bit gnarly, especially on our smooth-tired touring bikes… but no one wiped out.

An adventurous 32-mile almost-exclusively-off-road ride in Livermore, some not-even-on-the-map paths, mostly paved, some dirt,...

Tue, 14 Oct 2014 02:06:00 +0000

Mt Biking the Marin Headlands

Sun, 04 May 2014 18:54:27 +0000

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…”)

Biking dirt roads (Old Railroad Grade) up Mt Tam

Sun, 09 Mar 2014 20:30:00 +0000

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:

Off-road mud adventures with boston bike share...

Thu, 05 Sep 2013 21:59:10 +0000

Off-road mud adventures with boston bike share…

Alviso Salt Flats ride, alien landscape

Sun, 26 Aug 2012 01:43:56 +0000

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.

Coffee jaunt, trail rides

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 06:22:00 +0000

A ride to the ocean for espresso, toast, and coconut with friends, taking some off-road trails through parks for variety:

This almost feels like a video game: bike through the mud directly under a large metal tank marked "flammable" suspended by an...

Sat, 11 Jun 2011 17:47:05 +0000

This almost feels like a video game: bike through the mud directly under a large metal tank marked “flammable” suspended by an unmanned crane.

a little mud

Sat, 11 Jun 2011 15:34:02 +0000

a little mud

This where-am-I-going? path through the woods led to a €10 hostel (Stayokay Dordrecht) w/ showers, wifi, bar with 7 interesting...

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 05:10:04 +0000

This where-am-I-going? path through the woods led to a €10 hostel (Stayokay Dordrecht) w/ showers, wifi, bar with 7 interesting dutch beers.

I think I need to go left here. Good thing I have wide tires.

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 05:01:05 +0000

I think I need to go left here. Good thing I have wide tires.

Soil Saloon cyclocross

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 18:36:00 +0000

I heard about Soil Saloon a while back – a renegade cyclocross race (held at a different secret location each time– this one involved 6 laps around a 1-2 mile “course” of narrow off-road dirt trails, with roots and rocks to dodge and mud and puddles to splash through … oh, and a local beer to drink after each lap). Some people have photos on flickr.

A few of us dropped by at the end of a morning city ride to watch it– and then impulsively decided to join, even with our non-ideal bikes (I at least had my heavy touring bike, unlike my friends who had narrow-tire road bikes).

Old San Pedro Mountain Road

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 00:45:00 +0000

10 of us rode from San Francisco to Montara this weekend, stayed the night in the Montara Lighthouse youth hostel, then rode back. I’ll post a full map and photos later (edit: Ok, the SF->Montara ride has been posted) – to start, I’m just posting photos of Old San Pedro Mountain Road, our detour inland from Highway 1.

From Short Bike Rides San Francisco (where I read about this route) “San Pedro Mountain Road is the old alignment of Highway 1 before Devil’s Slide was built.” It’s now closed to cars and overgrown, a mix of pavement, broken pavement, dirt, and light mud (still doable without a mountain bike, though). Some people in the biking community call it “Planet of the Apes Road”– not that it’s *that* decrepit, but once you know it used to be a road for cars, you can imagine you’ve come across a collapsed civilization.