Tag: Sonoma

With a bit of a train assist, it’s possible to be casually riding through wine / cider / beer country in central Sonoma County (roughly within the Santa Rosa - Guerneville - Healdsburg triangle), on the Joe Rodota Trail and West County Regional Trail: In my stronger days, I’d biked to Sonoma County all the way from SF or Oakland in a day (~70-100 miles one-way); I wrote up some of these rides as SF -> Russian River Brewing (Santa Rosa), SF->Petaluma-and-back, SF->Healdsburg overnight, and so on. But I’m not really interested in (or capable of?) a ride that long these days– 40-50 miles is my current sweet spot for an extended social ride with plenty of stops and exploration. ...

Ten years ago I’d go on a 70 or 80 mile ride to Santa Rosa for a beer at Russian River Brewing… but I’m not feeling anywhere near that strong these days. But I’d been musing for a while about some sort of Russian River area ride on some bike paths I’d wanted to scope out, assisted by the newer Marin/Sonoma SMART train. One transit-heavy way to do this could be to take BART to El Cerrito del Norte, change to Golden Gate Transit bus #40 from that station to the San Rafael Transit Center, and hop on the SMART train there… but there are some timing logistics to make work: ...

A few friends had been interested in doing a multi-night bike camping trip in the Bay Area before one of them moved out of town. I happened to be up in Guerneville for a few days, so we schemed to meet up there with camping gear and ride back to SF (a friend with a van who was heading up North for the weekend dropped them off in Guerneville to meet me). ...

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… ...

Riding, solo, SF -> Fairfax -> Point Reyes -> Tomales Bay -> Sebastapol -> Santa Rosa. Tomales Bay Oyster Farm: Hwy 1 North: Wild Flour Bakery ...