I’ve biked to the Santa Cruz / Capitola / Watsonville coast a handful of times, but this is my new favorite route from San Jose (BART or Caltrain), using the one-lane, often-empty Mountain Charlie Road: Most routes I’ve seen start the same: Take the Los Gatos Creek Trail from San Jose to Los Gatos (mostly paved, with some mild gravel bits and one very short but steep bit of gravel as you approach Lexington Reservoir) ...
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. ...
For a break from work on a long day I went on a 30-mile ride along the Bay Trail, across the Dumbarton Bridge (my first time), and up to the top of the hill in a park in Fremont just as the sun was setting. It was beautiful. ...
Saturday a friend organized a ride through Woodside / Old La Honda down to Pescadero (with a stop for the famous artichoke bread and to look at adorable baby llamas), up Highway 1 with great views along the ocean, and then up the always-intense miles of climbing that is Tunitas Creek Road and then down to Alice’s Restaurant. ...
Halfway from SF to Mt View, stopping for water as the sun rises. (from last week)
I tried commuting from SF to Mountain View by bike a month ago– it’s doable, and actually quite beautiful (morning fog, birds, marshy swamps along the bay) but involves getting up early (a 3 hour ride at a casual pace = leave home around 6AM). Here’s a GPS track of most of the route: